Eduardo López Rivas

Eduardo López Rivas (10 September 1850 – 22 July 1913) was a Venezuelan editor and journalist. He founded and directed several Venezuelan publications throughout his life, among them the newspaper Diario El Fonógrafo and the magazine El Zulia ilustrado. He was the founder and owner of a Venezuelan editorial house, Imprenta Americana, the first publishing house to print photographs in Venezuelan periodical publications.

Biography Remains of Eduardo López Rivas enter Panteón of Zulia State, on 24 February 2015. Eduardo López Rivas was born in Maracaibo, Venezuela, on 15 September 1850. His mother was Encarnación Rivas and his father was Eduardo López de Triana y Espina, one of the founding members of the Great Liberal Party of Venezuela. He studied at Colegio Federal del Zulia until the age of fifteen, when he was sent by his parents to Marseille, France, to continue his education. The years he lived in France made him a keen supporter of the ideals of freedom of the French Republic.

When he returned to Venezuela he started to work as a teacher of languages and professional drawing, but the autocratic government of president Antonio Guzmán Blanco motivated him to do something for freedom. This fact led him to start his career as a journalist, inspired by the ideas he had acquired in France.

He married Carmen Bustamante, niece of pioneer Venezuelan physician Francisco Eugenio Bustamante and a descendant of General Rafael Urdaneta. The couple had six children, among them journalists Eduardo López Bustamante, Carlos López Bustamante and Teresa López Bustamante. Some years after his wife died, he married Carmen López Castro. They had two children.

Eugene H. Plumacher, U.S. consul in Maracaibo between 1878 and 1919, mentions El Fonógrafo in his memoirs: "this newspaper was one of the best-run newspapers in Venezuela, modest and refined in its words but firm and serious in matters related to public welfare." Plumacher also writes about one of the many occasions when government troops entered the offices of El Fonógrafo and confiscated everything. "All the machinery of El Fonógrafo´s workshop was sent to the government office in Maracaibo, to edit a newspaper that supported President Antonio Guzmán Blanco".

Due to its support to the Allies during World War I, Venezuelan president Juan Vicente Gómez, a German Empire sympathizer, closed El Fonógrafo permanently on 23 August 1917.

Imprenta Americana

In 1881 Eduardo López Rivas created his own publishing house, Imprenta Americana (American Press). This publishing house printed the newspaper El Fonógrafo and the magazine El Zulia ilustrado, and it also edited books on a variety of subjects. It became a well known firm in Zulia State, with the most advanced techniques of the time.

Imprenta Americana was closed down permanently by Venezuelan dictator Juan Vicente Gómez, on 23 August 1917.