Latins Honored

THE PRESS

If in Buenos Aires last week tall, tea-colored Jose Santos Gollan, professor of journalism at the University of La Plata, had given prizes to the New York Times and the Minneapolis Journal, it would have been the exact reverse of a ceremony that took place in Manhattan. Instead, La Prensa of Buenos Aires, El Comercio of Lima, Peru, got the awards. And Professor Gollan (who is also Sunday editor of La Prensa) received them with Dr. Luis Miro Quesada, president of the board of El Comercio.

Offered for the first time this year by 78-year-old Dr. Godfrey Lowell Cabot of Boston (for journalistic achievements promoting public understanding in the Americas), the prizes were presented in Columbia University's Low Memorial Library by President Nicholas Murray Butler. To La Prensa and El Comercio went twin bronze plaques; to Sr. Gollan and Dr. Miro Quesada gold medals.

El Comercio earned its plaque last spring when it celebrated its 100th anniversary with a 216-page issue summing up the history of Peru. A typical South American journalist is grey-haired, diminutive Dr. Miro Quesada, formerly Peru's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister to Switzerland. A successful publisher, he has served also as dean of philosophy and letters at Lima's University of San Marcos, oldest (founded 1551) in America.

Innumerable were the feats which won La Prensa its prize. For La Prensa is more than a newspaper: it is an institution worthy to rank with The Times of London (which it resembles) or the New York Times. Because of its exhaustive foreign coverage (La Prensa prints probably more cable news than any other daily) it has been called one of the ten greatest newspapers in the world. Beyond question it is Latin America's greatest.

So conscious of their moral obligations are its editors that they publish no divorce actions, no slander suits, no suicides. Some years ago a member of the Argentine Cabinet killed himself, explaining in a note that because of political opposition he could no longer do what was best for the nation, no longer cared to live. Next day La Prensa simply said that he had "died suddenly."

Owner and publisher of La Prensa is Don Ezequiel P. Paz, son of the late Dr. Jose C. Paz, who founded the paper in 1869. (Argentina's oldest newspaper is the English-language Buenos Aires Standard, founded 1861.) Now past 65, childless Don Ezequiel leaves the active management of La Prensa to a nephew, Dr. Alberto Gainza Paz. Until this year Don Ezequiel spent his winters at a French estate near Biarritz. For the sake of his diet he always carried with him a cow, sacrificed her as his ship entered the Rio de la Plata because of Argentina's strict quarantine against imported cattle.

It is a settled policy of La Prensa never to comment on personalities: its editors hold that nothing matters except principles. These are the special concern of Sunday Editor Gollan. La Prensa's editorials, skipped by most readers, supposedly wield great power with the Government. When a significant editorial has to be written, even on a weekday, Don Ezequiel or his nephew usually calls in Sr. Gollan.

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