el abrazo

 As San Antonio prepared for Hemisfair ’68, the fair produced a magazine called El Abrazo. In Spanish, el abrazo means “the embrace.” Published in the years leading up to the fair, the magazine promoted Hemisfair’s development, participants, attractions, and ambitions to the public. 

Frank Duane Rosengren, a San Antonio writer who served as Hemisfair’s Special Consultant for Theme Development and editor of El Abrazo, later described the publication much less romantically. He recalled it as largely a vehicle for corporate and national participants and for the rhetoric surrounding the fair: “It wasn’t really about anything. It was full of promises.” 

At the same time that Hemisfair was extending an embrace to the world, it was pushing out a well established community.