Community Honors Publisher Gregorio Gutierrez at 12th Anniversary Celebration of Free Weekly Conexion Hispana

Friends and admirers of local publisher Gregorio Gutierrez gathered at the San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts Friday evening to celebrate the 12th anniversary of his free weekly Conexión Hispana. Today, the San Angelo free weekly covers news from as far away as the border city of Del Rio. The two cities are historically intertwined with families and business.

Gregorio’s son Ricardo relayed story of how his father recently taught him a lesson. Ricardo is in business in Abilene. Someone offered to buy Ricardo’s business, so Ricardo asked dad for advice. “What will you do then, son?” was the dad’s answer.

Gregorio said he has faced a similar challenge with Conexión when then-publisher of E.W. Scripps’s San Angelo Standard-Times Robert “Bob” Aguilar, speaking on behalf of the corporation, offered to buy Gregorio out. Gregorio said they offered a ridiculously low number for his paper, like $100, and a $65,000 per year job at the Standard-Times for an unspecified length of time. Gregorio turned Scripps down.

Soft-spoken and educated in Mexico, English is a challenge for Gregorio. Because of that, the chiefs at the big corporate newspaper entity underestimated his resolve and focus to fight a newspaper battle with Scripps. Gregorio survived the hardships and today reaps the benefits. Gregorio said that later and in retirement, former publisher Aguilar admitted to him that had his Standard-Times been successful in the business deal, Scripps’s intention was to shutdown Gregorio’s paper for good.

Standing beside her man throughout the trials and tribulations of the weekly’s startup was Gregorio’s wife Araceli. She manages the paper’s layout and back office operations. “I started tackling this day by day. My husband knew English, but I didn’t know it. I learned it slowly,” she said. Prior to going “all-in” for her husband’s publishing dream, Araceli said she worked at Community Medical Center as a surgical assistant. “Then my husband came to me and said, Araceli, we are getting too big. I need your help. So I joined the company and stayed,” she said. “It’s not so much a big challenge, there only trust in God. But if there was a ‘biggest challenge’, it is the daily focus required to reach out to the community more and more every day,” she said.

That is Gregorio’s vision for the paper he named Conexión, meaning to connect communities together. He said that his purpose was to not only offer a voice, and an intra-communications vehicle, to the growing Hispanic population in San Angelo, but to connect San Angelo’s Hispanic community with the mostly white middle class, and vice versa. That was successful, he said. Today, he is taking the idea of Conexión to join together entire towns. That is why he publishes a section on Del Rio news and distributes his paper there also.

The Mexican Consul in Del Rio Ricardo Santana Velázquez noted how Gregorio’s paper connects the communities throughout his district, and far-flung places like Sonora and Rock Springs. He gave Gregorio an award for doing that last night.

In addition to providing a vehicle for the connection of far-flung communities, Gregorio’s paper has been critical in the development of new public school education priorities, said San Angelo ISD Superintendent Carol Ann Bonds. “He is an advocate for expanding the education opportunities for Hispanics in San Angelo,” she said. As the district transitioned to a minority-majority status in San Angelo, Bonds said the shifting demographics have presented new challenges. Gregorio has fairly but forcibly kept the school district focused on meeting those challenges, she said. “As I’ve seen him grow in size and circulation, he has kept that focus. He always ends his interviews with me with ‘what would you like for my audience, the kids’ parents and grandparents, to know about how you’re meeting their needs,’” she said. “And I like that! He is a man of integrity and a good man.”

Working for Gregorio offers a chance to grow professionally said Conexión reporter Jimmy Sanchez. Sanchez earned his degree with a minor in journalism from Angelo State University and started writing for Gregorio almost a year ago. “One of the things Mr. Gutierrez has told me is that he wants me to just flourish under his guidance. He doesn’t really micromanage; he just lets you be who you are. And so he’s allowed me to develop the craft [of journalism], and I’m really grateful for that,” he said.

Pastor Paul Shero of the Southgate Church of Christ offered the invocation at last night’s event. “My association with Gregorio started when I ended by association with the Standard-Times. We run my weekly articles in his paper,” Shero said. “It’s given us a whole new audience.” Shero said that his column is printed in English and Spanish, and when the church organized an outreach earlier this summer in the Hispanic neighborhoods, people were familiar with him and the message of his church. “It was a real eye-opener for us,” he said.

Joe Munoz, Senior Executive Assistant to the President/Assistant to President for Multicultural Initiatives at Angelo State University said that Gregorio’s paper has been instrumental in the University’s outreach to the Hispanic community. “When Gregorio came here 12 years ago, he opened up doors for us,” he said. ASU runs a weekly alternating column and advertisement in the paper. In 2008, ASU began a program to reach out to the Hispanic community, primarily for student recruitment. Today, ASU has attained ‘Hispanic Serving Institution’ status, a federal designation that Munoz said was necessary to receive additional federal funding through grants. He credits Gregorio’s Conexión as instrumental in helping to attain that. 

City Councilman Johnny Silvas said he watched Gregorio’s company flourish from the beginning. “A lot of people think it’s just a Hispanic thing, but in reality it’s a ‘connection’. It’s connecting the Hispanic community with the rest of the community, or vice versa. It gets everybody together,” he said. “It’s been a voice for many people who have never had a voice. But it works both ways,” he said.

“He’s done a fantastic job, and I know he’ll continue to. Venturing into Del Rio is a big plus for him, because we see both worlds now… It’s going to grow and get bigger,” Silvas said.