La Ciudad de San Antonio is a welcoming environment and home to toda la gente. Love for our beautiful city is not dependent on your birthplace. Once you are here, you are a part of la cultura y familia. Co-Publisher and Community Liaison of La Prensa Texas, New Braunfels’ own Ramon Chapa Jr. found a home here with the rest of us and has worked tirelessly and effectively to build and develop our community.
Inspired by former Mayor Henry Cisneros, Chapa, a San Antonio Community College graduate and War veteran, found his path towards public service and ran for City Council in New Braunfels after finishing his degree at The University of Maryland. With his love for cultura y la gente, our board member brought his work, his community service, and his nonprofit to our historic city. Though he may live in New Braunfels, his heart and soul is here with us.
Chapa’s involvement with La Prensa began many years ago when he served as Vice President of the Westside San Antonio Chamber of Commerce, where Tino Duran wanted to know more of Chapa’s great positive works in our city.
“ ‘I’ve never given an award for community service,” Chapa recalls the words of the institute we know as the late Tino Duran, “I’m gonna give you the first award for community service in the history of La Prensa because you’re doing so many things out in the community,’ ” Chapa remembers, describing the honorable recognition as he chokes up with great admiration and pride.
“I really looked up to him because of the fact that he had his own newspaper,” Chapa continues, “I knew his story, how he rose up, and now to have the number one bilingual newspaper in the United States of America…that’s a testament in its own self. So to get known or recognition from an institution like that, man it was a tremendous honor. And it’s still a tremendous honor today.” And we, Ramon Chapa Jr, are honored to have you leading the charge for positive cultural community content.
“A lot of people thought we had folded. A lot of people thought we’d just gone digital, but we’re here with the print edition. We’re getting bigger. We’re getting better. We’re getting smarter. Anything that y’all out there have to say that’s positive about anything positive in the community, reach out to us because we want to share that…you turn on the news, first thing you hear is rape, robbery, and murder, all the bad things. There’s a lot of great things happening in our community, and we want y’all to share that with us, so we can share it with the masses,” urges Chapa with genuine excitement.
Our stories are important, gente. Nunca olvides eso.
