In 1939, the drums of war were beating ever more insistently across Europe and Asia. In the United States, public opinion remained divided between those who believed American involvement in a second world war was inevitable and those who favored neutrality. Nevertheless, a stark reality confronted the nation: fascist influence and footholds were spreading throughout the Americas.
Meanwhile, a young American journalist named Edmund A. Chester was working his way up the ladder in the Associated Press.
His youngest daughter, Carolyn Chester, has written a book about her father's work, called The Reporter's Passports: Through His Eyes, which was released earlier this year.
Carolyn Chester said of her father's work, "AP wanted to expand, and so he was put in charge of organizing and executing La Prensa Asociada, which is the Spanish version of AP. They were bringing Spanish news to the Spanish people. So when he got promoted to be the vice president and to run all that and to set that up, that's kind of when he became a little bit more well-known throughout because of the fact that he was the man in Latin America."
Chester's time in Latin America enabled him to know many government leaders throughout the continent of Central and South America, handy relationships for a reporter. But his life then took a new turn. He was no longer covering the Latin American beat as a journalist, his identity for seven years, but now returned to Latin America as a talent scout.
"Elsa Miranda, born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, had arrived in New York as a 22-year-old typist at an advertising agency," said Carolyn Chester. "Within months, had become one of La Cadena's most heard voices receiving hundreds of letters weekly from admirers across the America. Her recording with Viva America was extensive. So, and then it names some of the songs, and of course, the most famous one is Chiquita Banana, and that's in the book. I figured I would put QR code for that one in the book because it's hilarious."
By early 1943, what at one time had seemed a dream began to emerge as a reality. The infrastructure, essentially a network of shortwave transmitters and receivers strategically located in such a way that a signal originating in New York City could be heard all the way to the tip of Argentina. Along the way, shortwave signals became AM signals, which could be received on home radios. Over one hundred local stations came together to complete the network. La Cadena was a reality.
Writes Carolyn Chester in her book: La Cadena: Voices That Linked the Americas,
As a talent scout, Edmund sought after the finest voices the hemisphere had to offer. Mind you, La Cadena de las Américas was not yet to be found on the airwaves. First it needed a team of talented field and studio reporters, plus a wide array of entertainers from throughout the Americas who would share equal time with the newsmen.
One of the first to be recruited, Mexican tenor Juan Arvizu, boarded the Monterrey, a Cuban mail transport, and headed immediately to work in New York City. Arvizu was already established as an idol of Latin America in the field of popular song. Through the growing La Cadena, or network, Arvizu found a much broader audience on Columbia's broadcasts to Latin America and the United States. What a voice!
