Alejandro Junco de la Vega, who received a bachelor of journalism degree in 1969 from The University of Texas, has spent his professional career exposing corruption in his native Mexico and working to heighten the political awareness of Mexican citizens. "We need to make our country information-rich, for the construction of our democracy," the publisher says.

Junco has built one of the most powerful newspaper conglomerates in Latin America, with dailies in Mexico's three largest cities: Mexico City (Reforma), Guadalajara (Mural), and Monterrey (El Norte).

Upon returning to his hometown of Monterrey in 1969, he worked in the newsroom and in managerial positions at his family's struggling newspapers, El Norte (morning) and El Sol (afternoon). In 1973, when he became publisher of El Norte, Junco hired one of his former UT journalism professors, Mary Gardner, to train his young reporters in journalistic techniques and ethics.

"She was a demanding teacher," Junco says. "She would question our writing and our journalistic practices, and she would challenge us vigorously. If she saw us falling short, she would let us know in no uncertain terms."

With Mary Gardner as his guiding spirit, Junco prohibited his reporters from taking gifts from government officials and selling advertisements to subjects of their articles, as was common practice at most Mexican newspapers. Under his leadership, El Norte became a successful newspaper and grew from 17 reporters to more than 400.

In 1974, El Norte ran several articles condemning Mexican President Luis Echeverria after his government expropriated land from the state of Sonora. The president immediately ordered a suspension of the sale of newsprint to Junco's newspaper in an attempt to change his editorial position. Junco resisted by cutting El Norte to 12 pages per copy to conserve resources. Unable to strong-arm the defiant publisher, the government conceded and lifted the suspension, but warned him against selling El Norte in Mexico City.

In November 1985, Junco suspected that the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was preparing to rig several mayoral elections in the suburbs surrounding Monterrey. On the day of the elections, the publisher planted observers at every polling station to count the number of voters. When the results came in, the number of votes won by PRI exceeded the number of voters counted by the observers. Voting fraud was the front-page story in El Norte the next day.

With a ban on El Norte in Mexico City, Junco looked for other ways to reach the people in the capital. In November 1993, he spent $50 million of his family's resources to launch Reforma, a new daily newspaper in Mexico City. This groundbreaking newspaper soon became a must-read for the political and business elite in Mexico.

The PRI, a constant target of Reforma's muckraking campaigns, again tried to silence Junco in 1994, this time through the Union of Newspaper Vendors. Loyal to PRI, the vendors' union refused to sell Reforma in Mexico City, La Palabra in Saltillo, and El Norte in Monterrey. Left with no other choice, Junco and Reforma executives, reporters, and contributors took to the streets to sell the papers by hand. After a month they were able to establish a distribution system that reached their readers several hours before the other daily newspapers.

In recent years, Junco has faced a problem far more dangerous than government interference. An increase in drug trafficking has led to bribery and violence against his reporters.

"We have to make it clear that we are not collaborating nor becoming associates of these groups. We oppose drug trafficking on principle and we would never accept the benefits. The rules are clear," he stated in a 1999 interview.

Some of his reporters have even been kidnapped and beaten in efforts to stop investigations of drug rings. Despite promises from then-President Ernesto Zedillo to protect the press, these crimes remain unsolved.

Aside from his accomplishments in establishing an independent press, Alejandro Junco has also opened greater access to the electronic information industry in Mexico. In 1990, El Norte diversified its services to include the delivery of electronic information to computer subscribers through his company, Infosel, which also provides real-time financial information to the investment planners in Mexico and Wall Street. In 1995, Junco's company launched a new Internet strategy that has made it the largest web access provider in Mexico and the most important Internet content provider in Latin America. He plans to expand his enterprise to provide more electronic commerce services to the people of Mexico.

Despite numerous setbacks and increasing danger to his journalists, Alejandro Junco de la Vega and his defiant editorial practices have raised the quality of Mexican journalism and increased public awareness and expectation. Many other Mexican publications are now following his example. As Junco puts it, "There's been a big push throughout Latin America for more democratic processes and a free press, and we've raised the level a little."

To acknowledge his contributions to the field of journalism, The University of Texas at Austin bestowed its Distinguished Alumnus Award on Alejandro Junco de la Vega in the fall 2000.

Dax Gonzalez (B.S. public relations '00)

Links:

UT Austin:

• College of Communication

  • Department of Journalism