Franco and French Families Papers

The Franco family, whose members include a Mexican foreign official, the founders and publishers of El Sol (one of the first Spanish language newspapers in Phoenix), and the originators of the Fiestas Patrias, were prominent in central Arizona's Mexican and Mexican American communities during the mid-20th century.

Jesus Monreal Franco was born in Mexico in 1888 and graduated from the Mexican Military Academy in 1919. He joined the Mexican Foreign Service in 1921 and was stationed in San Francisco, California, where he represented the Mexican government and helped to organize the Mexican Blue Cross (a charitable organization designed to help Mexican nationals return to Mexico during the Repatriation Movement). Franco moved to El Paso, Texas in the 1920s, where he married Josephina Carascosso (1897-1972) on May 5, 1926. The couple had two daughters, Juanita Violeta (Franco) Martin (1933-) and Maria Josephina Mary Jo (Franco) French (1936-2015).

The Franco family settled in Phoenix, Arizona in the early 1930s. Here, they established the Fiestas Patrias in 1934 and founded El Sol, one of the first Spanish language newspapers in Phoenix, in 1938. Jesus Franco served as Arizona's Mexican Consul from 1947 to 1953, during which time Josefina and Mary Jo Franco continued to edit and publish El Sol. As Consul, Franco provided legal counsel to Mexican citizens to resolve legal and socio-economic problems they experienced in Arizona and used his newspaper to express his strong sense of Mexican patriotism. After Jesus Franco's death in 1974, the Franco family continued to publish El Sol until 1980.