Spanish-language cinema and its attendant press grew rapidly and globally in the early 1900s, reflecting an industry and fan base with opportunities for multinational interests, growth, and connection—including in the United States. U.S.-based publications like Cine-Mundial (1916–1946) and Cinelandia (1927–1947) “linked the expansion of film culture with desires for cultural modernity that were at once cosmopolitan and local,” according to Rielle Navitski, highlighting the publications’ (and global film industries’) desire to maintain distinct separations while still participating in the Hollywood and New York ecosystems.

Los Angeles was indeed home to a thriving Spanish-language film production industry, and American publishers such as the Chalmers Publishing Company recognized the chance to broaden its readership (and profits) by launching Cine-Mundial as Moving Picture World’s Spanish-language counterpart. However, unlike its parent publication, Cine-Mundial incorporated items of interest to fans in addition to members of the film industry. It further distinguished itself by documenting the rise of national cinemas in Mexico and Argentina through letters from global readers, as noted by Laura Isabel Serna in her introduction to the MHDL’s Cine-Mundial collection.

Other magazines followed a similar pattern, emerging from the United States but engaging with other cultures through their own unique perspectives. “Cinelandia,” for example, refers both to the magazine, Cinelandia, and to Hollywood culture as seen and experienced by Mexican moviegoers. These cultural flows between Los Angeles and capitols of the Spanish-speaking world have been documented in Navitski and Poppe’s Cosmopolitan Film Cultures in Latin America, 1896-1960, Dickson and Heinink’s Cita en Hollywood, Jarvinen’s The Rise of Spanish-Language Filmmaking: Out from Hollywood's Shadow, 1929-1939, and Gunckel, Horak, and Jarvinen’s edited volume Cinema between Latin America and Los Angeles: Origins to 1960.

Although many publications started as fan magazines and shared a robust exchange of fan culture, the global Spanish-language film press also began to shift towards the trade journal format, thus expanding the readership even further. English-language trade publications also found a home outside the U.S. Throughout the Spanish-speaking world and especially in Latin America, the journals like Harrison’s Reports found devout readers in everyone from cinephiles to industry leaders, even prompting Argentina’s most important trade paper, Heraldo del Cinematografista, to borrow its format from Harrison’s.

Cine-Mundial and Cinelandia were joined in this field by several shorter-lived publications, including Mensajero Paramount (1927-1938), Empresario Internacional (1940-1941), and Teatro al día (1936-1939), a Spanish-language iteration of Quigley Publications’ “Better Theaters” section, which emphasized news and advertisements related to theater design, equipment, and accessories. Thank you to the Library of Congress, New York Public Library, and Karl Thiede for making rare copies of these magazines available for scanning.

All of the above-mentioned magazines are part of a much larger and longer history of Spanish language publishing within the United States. The University of Houston’s Recovering the U.S. Hispanic Literary Heritage project is one of the world’s leaders in locating, preserving, and sharing these works. In 2021, the Recovery project created a detailed catalog, identifying and describing 270 references to cinema within Spanish-language US newspapers and magazines. The catalog points toward the vitality of the Hispanic press within the United States and reminds researchers that it is important to consult historical newspapers alongside the MHDL’s large magazine collection. For more on this dynamic history, see “A Brief History of Hispanic Periodicals in the United States” and the Nicolás Kanellos Hispanic Theater Collection.

The Recovery project also contributed three issues of Cine Variedades (1953)—a film magazine published in the early-1950s for New York’s growing and vibrant Puerto Rican community. The Media History Digital Library wishes to thank the Recovery project team for their generosity and expertise and the ACLS for supporting this productive collaboration.