!Feliz cumpleaños!

Having a 29 February birthday does make it hard to celebrate, but La Jornada dates its beginning as Mexico’s most intelligent hell-raiser to a public fundraiser slash consciousness raiser, held in the Hotel de Mexico 29 February 1984.

The story of that first “editorial meeting” (Gabriel Garcia Marquez had to pay for a ticket like everyone else) is here.

I once described Jornada as the kind of paper where the review of last night’s baseball game includes sly references to Antonio Gramersci and where the editorials include footnotes and bibliography (the second of those statements is sometimes true), but then, it is an intellectual read.

Though — like all Mexican newspapers — high priced (10 pesos a copy), it’s always been worth the investment.  It doesn’t matter if you don’t ascribe to their political persuasion.  Jornada is the voice of the Mexican left and the Mexican intelligencia.

For a newspaper with no advertising,  surviving twenty-five years is an accomplishment.  Surviving… and thriving to the point where it now includes nine regional editions as well as the national edition… and the on-line edition which receives 73 million hits a year (in a country that supposedly doesn’t read), Jornada has become required reading for anyone interested in Mexican politics and culture.