La Cucaracha Newspaper
The newspaper known as La Cucaracha was a Chicano newspaper published in Pueblo, Colorado. La Cucaracha was published from May 1976 to September 1983. The paper was started by University of Colorado-Boulder students Juan Espinosa, Deborah Espinosa, and David Martinez. Juan "Freddie Freak" Trujillo soon got involved with the newspaper. Trujillo was a lithographer by trade so he was the one to lay out the paper and print it. With his help the paper was able to cover topics on police brutality, education, healthcare, local, and international news.
By publishing articles in Spanish, the newspaper enabled people that did not speak english to have access to current affairs, as well as a way to stay informed. The use of Spanish drew a crowd that generally avoided newspapers on account of not being able to read them. The employees of the paper also offered to watch the children of community members that needed the assistance.
Of course, the newspaper was not without opposition. Trujillo claims that some of the more prominent newspapers in the area, mentioned in a later chapter, had opposed them for running chicano based stories that they considered unimportant. Yellow journalism has always threatened honest reporting, and La Cucaracha had to fight against publications that were less focused on important stories than a narrative.