|
Healy, José Santiago (1895-1968),
media entrepreneur, was born
on 16 December 1895 in Monterrey, the capital of Nuevo León
State in northeast Mexico, the youngest son of James Healy and
his wife Mary Brennan. James Healy had been taught mathematics
at Queen’s College, Dublin and spoke seven languages. In 1882
the couple emigrated from County Kilkenny to Boston, and then
settled in Texas, where two children (Elisa and Daniel) were
born. Subsequently, the family moved to Monterrey, where Nicolás,
Patricio and José Santiago were born, and finally to Mexico
City in 1903.
José Santiago Healy received his primary education at
his father’s school in Monterrey, and later at the Hogar de Niños
Trabajadores and Escuela Elemental N° 51, both in Mexico City.
In 1909, José Santiago and his brother Patricio began working
at El Combate, a newspaper of the Maderista Revolt led by
Francisco Madero in November 1910. In 1914, Healy joined the
rebel forces of Venustiano Carranza, and met with Adolfo de la
Huerta, who would be governor of Sonora and Mexican president in
1920. In Veracruz, he fought against Victoriano Huerta’s army,
and then worked as a journalist during the campaign against the
Zapatista forces in Morelos.
In 1916, José Santiago Healy was invited to Sonora by
Adolfo de la Huerta to open newspapers in some of the cities of
this northwestern state. The objective was to promote the
revolutionary ideas that would be included in the Constitution
of 1917. In June 1924, owing to the failure of Adolfo de la
Huerta’s revolution, Santiago Healy was banished to the United
States of America together with Huerta, the filmmaker Emilio
Fernández Romo and other followers of the rebellion against
President Obregón. Healy remained in the US for eight years,
where he married Sonora-born Laura Noriega and founded El Eco
de México newspaper. In 1932 he returned to Sonora on the
invitation of Governor Rodolfo Elías Calles.
Back in Mexico, Healy established El Tiempo of
Sonora, which lasted only three years, and in 1937 founded El
Imparcial, the leading regional newspaper and the most
significant of the titles founded by him and his family in the
region. In 1938-1942 he worked on the establishment of the
University of Sonora.
José Santiago Healy died on 7 October 1968 during a
family visit to Los Angeles, California. He was buried in Panteón
Yáñez in Sonora. On 22 January 1982 Nogales Street in
Hermosillo was renamed on his honour.
Edmundo Murray
Acknowledgements
I
am grateful to Alejandra C. Astrain of El
Imparcial and Jorge Murillo Chisem, who
provided valuable information from José Santiago Healy’s
memoirs, a 96-pages manuscript kept by his son José Alberto
Healy Noriega.
References
-
Fundación Educativa y Cultural Don José S. Healy, A.C.,
website (http://www.fundacionhealy.org/), cited 2 September
2007.
|
