It breaks the heart just a little to see a newspaper go belly-up — even one where half the words read like Chinese to a fellow who never did get the hang of Spanish. You don’t have to read every line to know when something came with import. You could see it in how the ink smudged on folks’ fingers at the bus stop or how the readers at the market would argue over it like it was the Ten Commandments printed sideways.
So it is with El Mundo, which in English means The World — a fitting name for a thing that tried to gather up all the little joys and sorrows of Las Vegas’ Latino community and roll them up between two staples once a week. And now, like the world, it’s spinning in a new direction — leaving behind its paper skin for the bright, cold ether of the digital age.
Edmundo Escobedo Jr. and his late father — God rest his soul — started El Mundo in 1981, when the city was just a sparkle on a zoning map. It was a family affair–Dad wrote the stories, the Son laid’em out, and Mama ran the social column, which sounds just about right.
Like a good tamale, a good newspaper is best made by hand and with family.
For a spell, the thing was booming. One hundred pages a week, by some counts. Weddings, quinceañeras, soccer scores, protests, dances, baptisms — every line of it proved that something real was happening in the world, and someone was there to notice. And all of it for free.
The Escobedos didn’t just make a paper; they made a map of the lives around them.
But time, like taxes and toothaches, comes for us all. The pandemic hit, ads dried up, and one by one, pages thinned. And then, like a candle in the wind that Elton John probably sang about, El Mundo flickered out in March of this year — at least the printed kind.
Edmundo Jr. says his father’s likely up in Heaven shedding a tear–but understanding just the same. And I believe him. El Viejo, after all, was a veteran of both the Air Force and the free press — no stranger to battles or endings. He knew that spirit counted more than pieces of paper and that the press was never about pulp but people.
Now, Escobedo says he’ll bring El Mundo back in a new form–and it’ll fit in a pocket instead of on a doorstep, but still speaks from the same heart. And maybe that’s all we can hope for these days–to carry our old voices into new places without losing their warmth.
Still, it’s a bitter sip to swallow–because some folks in Las Vegas won’t work a smartphone and refuse to know the digital interface. These people waited every Friday for El Mundo like a letter from home, and now that house is abandoned.
But let the record show that El Mundo didn’t die because it was weak — it died because the world got louder and faster and forgot to listen. And maybe when the fever of progress dies down–folks’ll look and remember how a little Spanish newspaper gave a community its voice.
We should be so fortunate.
The Old Blog in the Desert 