Jovita Idár

Jovita Idar Vivero (September 7, 1885 – June 15, 1946) was an American journalist, teacher, political activist, and civil rights worker who championed the cause of Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. Against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, which lasted a decade from 1910 through 1920, she worked for a series of newspapers, using her writing to work towards making a meaningful and effective change. She began her career in journalism at La Crónica, her father's newspaper in Laredo, Texas, her hometown.

While working as a journalist, she became the president of the newly established League of Mexican Women—La Liga Femenil Mexicanista—in October 1911, an organization with a focus on offering free education to Mexican children in Laredo. who strove to advance the civil rights of Mexican-Americans. The Idar family were part of the gente decente, who had better access to good education and opportunities than many méxico-tejano families had.

Education and teaching Idar earned her teaching certificate in 1903 from the Holding Institute in Laredo.

In 1910, La Crónica included articles on news, current events, biographical and historical essays that concerned Mexican Americans, literary essays and poetry, and commentary. It focused attention on the serious social and economic inequities experienced by Mexican Americans in Texas, in particular, and in the U.S., in general. and held the First Mexican Congress—the Primer Congreso Mexicano—dedicated to fighting inequality and racism, and to unite Mexicans on issues that affected them, including lack of access to adequate education and economic resources. Additional goals of the organization were to "unify the Mexican intellectuals of Texas around the issues of protection of civil rights, bilingual education, the lynching of Mexicans, labor organizing and women's concerns." The women within this league worked to transform these injustices into a plan of action and focused on relieving social problems through actively making changes within their communities. Women who participated in this organization were highly influential. "Some league members were trained educators and professionals, and the education of youth remained the organization's primary focus." It developed into a social, political and charitable organization for women that, in part, provided food and clothes to those in need.

Both the League of Mexican Women and the First Mexican Congress actively worked for the advancement of their members, "by holding studying and learning sessions, sessions where culture is acquired and talent is developed."

In March 1913, when Nuevo Laredo — on the Mexican side of the border — was attacked, Idar and other Laredo women crossed the Rio Grande River to volunteer to help with the wounded. While at the border, Idar later joined the La Cruz Blanca — the White Cross, an organization that provided relief similar to the Red Cross, that had been created and financed by Leonor Villegas de Magnón, who was also from Laredo.

After her father's death in 1914, she became the editor and writer at La Crónica, where she continued to expose the conditions that Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants were living under at the time.

Idar moved to San Antonio in 1921, where she founded a free kindergarten and also volunteered in a hospital as an interpreter.

In 1940, she co-edited the journal El Heraldo Cristiano. They lived together in San Antonio until her death, on June 15, 1946, which was reported to have been caused by a pulmonary hemorrhage. She had been suffering from advanced tuberculosis. the Women in Texas History series, The 19th Amendment prohibits any American citizen from being denied the right to vote on the basis of sex.

As part of Hispanic Heritage Month, the Google Doodle on September 21, 2020, paid homage to Idar by depicting her famous blockade of the offices of El Progreso against the Texas Rangers and commemorating via hover box her 135th birthday (two weeks after her actual birthday