Hispanic and Latino women in America have been involved in journalism for years, using their multilingual skills to reach across cultures and spread news throughout the 19th century until the common era. Hispanic presses provided information important to the Hispanic and Latin American communities and helped to foster and preserve the cultural values that remain today. These presses also "promoted education, provided special-interest columns, and often founded magazines, publishing houses, and bookstores to disseminate the ideas of local and external writers." Early 20th century During the early twentieth century several women along the Texas-Mexican border in Laredo were instrumental in spreading word about their concern for the civil rights of Mexicans and disdain for then dictator, Porfirio Díaz, through their writing in Hispanic newspapers. Jovita Idar, a teacher in Ojuelos, began to write for her father's newspaper, La Crónica. In 1910 Jovita's family led the organization of the first Mexican Congress in Texas to protect Mexican-American rights and helped to found La Liga Femenil Mexicana, a women's organization led by Idar herself focusing on education reform. At the same time another educator, Leonor Villegas de Magnón, began to write for covert revolutionary publications. Villegas "rejected both the ideals of the aristocratic class and the traditional role assigned to women in Mexican society." After moving to Laredo, she began to write for a local newspaper and became a member of Junta Revolutionaria. Villegras and Idar both worked together in La Cruz Blanca, a small organization that helped wounded soldiers which Villegras founded and financed. As a result, Villegas wrote about the experiences of the nurses and people of Juárez in The Rebel, which was not published until 1994 by Arte Público Press. Sara Estela Ramírez was an educator who joined Partido Liberal Mexicano, a progressive Mexican political party that consisted of mainly men. Ramírez had her writing published in La Crónica and another Hispanic newspaper, El Democrata Fronterizo, including two of her own self-publications, La Corregidora and Aurora. Ramírez's most popular work was Rise Up!, a poem urging "readers to look beyond traditional definitions of woman’s place [...] It (urged) women to look beyond their role as passive and supportive, finding meaning and action within domestic tasks." During this time, Colombian born Blanca de Moncaleano was also working on Pluma Roja an anarchist newspaper based in Los Angeles that contained articles targeted toward women and challenged them to increase their knowledge