Framing Mexicans in Great Depression Editorials: Alien Riff-Raff to Heroes

Great Depression editorials published in English-and Spanishlanguage newspapers in San Antonio, Texas, waged a war of ideas about the role of Mexicans and immigrants in the United States that went beyond socially constructing news events to another kind of storytelling-the mythmaking power of idea-driven opinion writing about “the other." Against a backdrop of mass deportations and repatriations to Mexico, the city’s three major daily newspapers staked dichotomous positions. William Randolph Hearst’s Light railed against “the criminal menace," competing against the independent San Antonio Express and its concept of the Mexican as “indispensable” worker hero. Meanwhile, the Spanish-language La Prensa offered a complex representation of the immigrant, creating a mythology that was largely absent from the mainstream media.