Cardenas, printer, publisher and poet

POSTED BY: CARDENAS.AE@GMAIL.COM JANUARY 6, 2020

I’m glad to be back in a brand new year. Please accept my wishes for a Happy 2020 to one and all. I pray that you are off to great start this New Year and that you make the best of what is still to come.

I will start this year’s blogging by taking a leave of personal privilege.

Servando Cardenas

Today, January 6, is my father’s 110th Heavenly birthday. Servando Cardenas was born on January 6, 1910, in Linares, Nuevo Leon, Mexico, to Servando Cardenas and Rafaela Gonzales. You may think that he has nothing to do with Duval County history but, aside from contributing yours truly and seven other offspring to the development of Duval County, he was an accomplished poet and writer in his own right. He was a newspaperman, a printer, a veteran of the U.S. Army, and, most of all, a devoted husband and father.

Allow me to pay tribute to this great man. Indulge a proud son in some well-placed hyperbole.

As that often-repeated phrase goes, “he was not born in Texas, but he got here as fast as he could.” At the age of fourteen, he followed the railroad track out of Linares, heading north—to America. He got as far as Monterey, where he became a baker’s apprentice. His wise old mentor got him to talk, and before long, he knew where he was from and who his father was. The baker sent word to my grandfather, who went to Monterey to fetch his young son.

My father had two older brothers, Manuel and Norberto, from his father’s first wife, who died when the boys were still very young. Abuelito married again, and my father was the oldest of that family. My grandmother Rafaela also died at a young age when my father was only ten-years-old. It was a tragic memory, which he wrote about in his poetry. In the poem “Mujer y poeta,” he reveals some of the pain his mother’s passing caused him. He wrote movingly:

¿Porqué lloras? Me has dicho conmovida

cuánto ves que mis ojos vierten llanto:

Es que piensa mi mente enloquecida

que no volveré a ver más en la vida

a la madre a quien yo quería tanto.

(Why are you crying? you ask me, moved

by how much you see me in tears:

I think my mind goes crazy when I realize

that in this life I will never again see my mother,

whom I loved so much.)

My father had several other siblings, but he and his only sister, Blanca, were very close. Dad could not tolerate that his father placed his daughter with the inlaws from his first marriage, and they treated her no better than an indentured servant, which is why he wanted to leave home.

It was also a rough time in Mexico. The revolution was rampant as my father grew up. He, no doubt, observed first hand the atrocities of war, although I never heard him speak of it. He did write about his utter distaste of war, rebuking and rejecting every act of war. In his poem El monstruo de la guerra he writes:

¡Maldita sea la GUERRA, porque es obvia

Su invasión destructora, siempre deja

Ya a la madre, ya al hijo, ya a la novia

¡llorando al ser querido que se aleja!

(Damn the WAR, because it’s obvious

its destructive invasion always leaves

the mother, and the son, and the bride

Crying for the loved one when he is gone!)

When he was seventeen, my dad hightailed it out of Linares again. This time he made it to Brownsville, where his maternal uncle lived. He took up with a Vaudeville troop and traveled up and down the Valley entertaining, perhaps reading poetry or acting.

He also decided to learn a “real” trade and became a printer’s apprentice in Mercedes. It was there that the son of Don Pancho Pico, also known as Francisco Gonzales, the publisher of La Libertad in San Diego, found him. The son was on a mission for his father to find a printer to help in his shop in San Diego.

Dad made his way to San Diego to take on a new job and a new adventure. At first, he resumed his life of a carefree bachelor, spending time hanging out with new friends playing billiards. But soon, he fell in love with a local girl, Aurora Esparza, and they got married. With responsibilities as a married man, dad implored Don Pancho that he needed to get paid as agreed. Before that, Don Pancho had paid him sporadically. His boss’s answer was to call “la migra” and report him as illegal.

Dad and mom soon found themselves in Linares, living in a shack my grandfather provided. Mom was pregnant and returned to San Diego because she wanted her baby to be born in Texas. After several months and several visits to the American Consuls in Monterey and Nuevo Laredo, dad finally returned to San Diego. He obtained his citizenship and opened a newspaper, La Voz, in 1935-1936, whose slogan was “Here is the newspaper, an inexhaustible source, that satisfies the thirst of your spirit.”

His newspaper’s focus was the community of San Diego and Duval County, covering all sorts of events, much like his son did many years later with the Duval County Picture. Dad often wrote a personal column of comment, fortunately not as acerbic as his son’s “Telling It Like It Is.” He also provided his readers with much poetry, both his own and that of other poets. Song lyrics from the most popular Mexican singers of that time also appeared in the columns of La Voz.

In addition to La Voz, dad also published several literary journals, including Alma Azul in Mercedes, Alma, in San Diego, and Cumbres in Victoria. These publications allowed dad to share his literary talent in Spanish language magazines and newspapers in the United States, Mexico, and several outlets in the Carribean and the Americas.

One of dad’s proudest accomplishments was wearing the U.S. Army uniform during World War II. Unfortunately, due to a grave illness of one of his daughters, he was given a hardship discharge after only six months of service. He returned home and helped war veterans return to civilian life.

Servando Cardenas

Dad spent more than twenty-five years working for the Freer Enterprise. At the same time, he also operated his print shop in San Diego.

This is a brief history, it is only a blog, after all. Thank you for taking the time to help me pay tribute to my dad. It is mainly because of him that I believe I can share with all of you my humble writings. I invite you to take a look at my dad’s life through his poetry in the book La Voz de Amor. You will also learn much about living in Mexico and South Texas in the early part of the twentieth century. Also, click on the link above and here on La Voz and enjoy life in San Diego in the mid1930s.

I leave you today with some wisdom from my favorite poem of his, “Retrato de mi padre”, in which he wrote:

…un hombre distinguido,

casta de hombres en estos tiempos rara;

Tenía de la moral un gran sentido,

palabra firme y una sola cara.

(…a distinguisehd man

a man with a temperament that is rare today

He had a great moral fiber and an acute awareness

he was a man of his word, not two-faced.)

La Voz de Amor

La Voz de Amor

$9.95 | Buy Now

10 COMMENTSON "CARDENAS, PRINTER, PUBLISHER AND POET"

Lauro Salazar | March 24, 2020 at 10:10 pm | Reply
Great tribute to your father….Enjoyed it very much…..Thank you.

cardenas.ae@gmail.com | March 25, 2020 at 8:47 am | Reply
Thank you, Lauro.

Ramiro C. SALINAS | January 6, 2020 at 12:20 pm | Reply
Great tribute. Loved it

cardenas.ae@gmail.com | January 6, 2020 at 7:53 pm | Reply
Thank you, Ramiro.

Alvaro GONZALEZ | August 7, 2020 at 9:38 pm | Reply
Nice to have you back love your stories and my grandpa was Ynes Gonzales lived on 1017 in Jim Hogg cty married to Ma Isabel Saenz.

cardenas.ae@gmail.com | August 7, 2020 at 10:09 pm | Reply
Thank you, Alvaro, for your kind words. I am glad my stories provide joy to people.

Berta | January 6, 2020 at 12:15 pm | Reply
Happy heavenly b day to him! Remember him well. Today is my grandma Reyes 116 heavenly bday. And my brother Ray is 69.