Bridges column: Why Jovita Idar will be on the side of a U.S. quarter

Sometimes one person in a community can have an impact that continues to be felt for years afterward.  Jovita Idar, a woman armed only with a pen and passion for helping those in need, would have an impact felt across Texas in her lifetime.  She would run several newspapers, founded a school, and volunteered as a nurse in time of disaster.

Jovita Idar was born in Laredo in September 1885, one of eight children.  Her parents were active members of the community, and the importance of helping others became an important part of her upbringing.  They emphasized helping those in need and speaking out against injustice and discrimination.  Unlike many Hispanics in Laredo at the time, she and her siblings had access to education, and her parents emphasized all the children going to school.

By the time she turned 18 in 1903, she had earned a teaching certificate and began teaching at the segregated Hispanic schools in the Laredo area.  She and her fellow teachers struggled with inadequate supplies such as paper and pencils and how there were never enough desks or chairs for them.

Her father, Nicasio Idar, began a Spanish-language newspaper in Laredo, La Cronica (The Chronicle), shortly after the eruption of the Mexican Revolution in 1910.  She joined her father and two of her brothers in writing articles and editing the small paper.  She became an outspoken proponent of the poor immigrant families living along the border.  She called for equal rights for Hispanics and better educational opportunities.  The paper also highlighted poetry and literature emerging in the Spanish-language community and the economic concerns of Hispanics across Texas and the Southwest.  She also wrote a number of editorials calling for giving women the right to vote.

In part because of the efforts of the Idar Family, Hispanics in Laredo organized to improve their community.  In 1911, the League of Mexican Women was formed and named Idar its first president and worked to provide free education for all the Hispanic children of Laredo, whose families were mostly from Mexico.  The League also called for civil rights, labor rights, and an end to the lynchings of Mexican immigrants.  They also collected food and clothing for the victims of the war.  Idar would later be active in the “Primer Congreso Mexicanista” (“First Mexican Congress”), which worked with Hispanic groups in many communities to promote civil rights.

As the Mexican Revolution wore on and the bloodshed increased, more refugees streamed across the border from Mexico into Texas.  Eventually, more than one million people would die in the decade-long civil war.  In 1913, a fierce battle erupted in Nuevo Laredo, just across the border.  Many civilians were killed and injured, with many more fleeing for safety in the United States.  Idar and others went into Mexico to help with the wounded.  Though she had no formal medical training, she volunteered as a nurse through the Mexican White Cross, an organization founded in Laredo to help the wounded and the refugees.  She would continue to work with the organization periodically throughout the fighting.

In 1914, she began writing for El Progresso (The Progress).  When President Woodrow Wilson ordered troops to the border and discussed possible intervention in the war, Idar wrote a scathing editorial in the Spanish-language journal opposing the move.  When Texas Rangers got word of the editorial, they attempted to shut down the paper.  Idar stood in the doorway to prevent their entry.  Texas Rangers returned several days later when she was not present and destroyed the printing press, ending the run of El Progresso.   

She returned to La Cronica. After her father died later in 1914, she continued to serve as editor in a time when few women could even get jobs working for newspapers.  In 1916, Idar, started a new paper, Evolution.  Her brother Edouardo, who had also worked with their father on La Cronica, helped with writing and editing.  Idar continued her strident calls fro women’s rights and civil rights for Hispanics.  In the meantime, she married Batrolo Juarez in 1917.  The paper would run for four years until it shut down in 1920.

Shortly afterward, Idar and her husband moved to San Antonio.  She served as a translator at the local hospital and founded a free kindergarten for Hispanic children, continuing her passion for education.  In 1940, she began editing El Heraldo Cristiano (The Christian Herald), a Spanish-language newspaper run by the Methodist Church in South Texas.

Idar’s health declined in the 1940s after she contracted tuberculosis.  She died at her home in San Antonio in June 1946 at age 60.  Since her death, her work has been studied extensively by scholars and has been a part of the National Women’s History Museum.  In 2023, she will be included in the U. S. Mint’s American Women quarter series, on the reverse side of George Washington.  She will join such figures as astronaut Sally Ride, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and fellow Texan and African-American aviation pioneer Bessie Coleman.

Ken Bridges is a writer, historian and native Texan. He holds a doctorate from the University of North Texas. Bridges can be reached by email at drkenbridges@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Texas history column: Jovita Idar armed with pen, passion