For the last several years, residents of Denver Harbor, a largely Latino community in east Houston, have looked for ways to connect with their neighbors. Last month, a new effort launched in the form of a bilingual newspaper that aims to do just that. 

“Solamente el que carga el saco sabe lo que lleva adentro,” reads the masthead of La Voz de Denver Harbor News, meaning only those who carry a burden know the extent of its weight. 

This new, community-driven newspaper launched its first edition in August, with locals Carolyn Lopez, Arturo Eureste, Juliana Chavez, Sam Robles, Peggy Vasquez and Rene Porras at the helm of operations. Their goal is to connect the community to each other, report on pertinent issues and encourage civic engagement.

“It’s exciting. It’s new. I hope the community embraces this,” said Lopez, editor of La Voz de Denver Harbor. “Our community is so rich in culture. We are a community of family and friends… and it’s all going to be for the interest and advancement of Denver Harbor.”

Porras’ face greets the readers on the cover of the first issue. The lifelong Denver Harbor resident is well known as the owner of the local restaurant Porras Prontito and through his volunteer work to civically engage his neighbors. Porras and the rest of the editorial team for La Voz de Denver Harbor are also involved in Denver Harbor Cares, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that seeks to increase civic engagement in the area. 

Over the last few years, organizers have made hundreds of calls, knocked on doors, and delivered hundreds of informational pamphlets to get their neighbors to vote, regardless of who they vote for. 

La Voz de Denver Harbor is a side project detached from the nonprofit, but it was born out of the realization that most of the population, especially the elderly, were not engaged with local news, especially online forms of news, Lopez said. 

“It is our hope that we can bring stories on a variety of topics and invite you to share your own thoughts and points of view(s),” she wrote in her welcoming remarks for the first issue. 

On Tuesday morning, Lopez headed to Columbus, Texas, to pick up 2,000 copies of the second issue. It was a halfway meetup point for publisher Alfredo Rodriguez Santos, who prints the issues in Austin and delivers them in person. 

This second issue features local educators with Michael Debakey, principal of Michael DeBakey High School for Health Professions, on the front cover. Copies were set to be distributed on Wednesday to close to 50 locations across Denver Harbor, Lopez said.

“What happens when you introduce a publication is that you are doing some guessing, you are trying to stay on top of what’s happening in the immediate neighborhood, in the larger neighborhood,” Rodriguez Santos said. “You have to also make it an attractive newspaper, an interesting newspaper. There’s all these little balancing acts that you have to go through.” 

Roughly 25,000 residents live in the zip code of 77020, which includes Denver Harbor, according to U.S. Census data. The median age here is 35.7, the median household income is just under $45,000 and, unsurprisingly to most residents, the most common language spoken at home is Spanish.

‘There are a lot of untold stories in the Hispanic community’

The publication is a homecoming of sorts for Rodriguez Santos, who lived and worked in the area in the late 70s and early 80s. The La Voz network of newspapers was started by his mother, Molly Santos, in June 1990 with the first issue of La Voz de Brazoria County. 

At the time, Rodriguez Santos wrote articles from the University of Delaware, where he attended graduate school, and mailed them to his mother to Angleton, Texas, to be published in English and Spanish.

La Voz de Brazoria County is still in publication, and over the years, the network grew to include Austin, Uvalde, Crystal City, New Braunfels, San Marcos, Seguin, Lockhart, and Williamson County. 

Although La Voz de Denver Harbor is a free monthly publication to the public, advertising sales will cover the costs associated with the newspaper, Rodriguez Santos said. For now, the La Voz network is taking care of expenses for the new publication until it becomes self-sufficient. 

Transitioning from activism to news is not an easy feat, Rodriguez Santos said. It takes time, maybe a year or two, to understand the type of news their neighbors are interested in.

“First of all you have to learn to like the smell of ink,” he said. “With a paper that comes out monthly, you are not doing news-news, nothing breaking. But there are a lot of untold stories in the Hispanic community, and in every community.”

Despite his mother’s efforts, culturally, the Latino, Mexican-American, or Hispanic community is not used to seeing their stories featured in mainstream media, he said. But once a specific neighborhood discovers stories that resonate, a new opportunity opens. 

“When people come out on the paper, when los mexicanos come out on the paper, it is still a big deal,” he said. “If there’s a convenient newspaper with a local twist to it, and it is informative and interesting, people are going to pick it up.”

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