G. Alarcon, Mexico Entrepreneur, Dies

MEXICO CITY — Gabriel Alarcon Chargoy, president and director of the influential daily newspaper El Heraldo de Mexico and founder of Mexico’s largest theater chain, has died after a long illness.

Alarcon died Tuesday at home here. He was 78.

Known as one of the nation’s top businessmen, he got his start as a teen-age vegetable vendor, later becoming an aide to a prominent businessman before setting out to build his own financial empire.

Alarcon opened his first theater in the state of Puebla. From that base, he expanded the business into La Cadena de Oro, The Gold Chain theaters. He sold part of the chain to the Mexican government in 1960 to go into other business enterprises, including El Heraldo, which he established in 1965.

In 1980, the Alarcon family spent $3 million to enter the Spanish-language newspaper field in the United States with a tabloid called Imagen, circulated initially in Los Angeles. Gabriel Alarcon Velazquez, one of the elder Alarcon’s sons and president of the company that published Imagen, folded the tabloid after 16 months.

Gabriel Alarcon is now general manager of El Heraldo, and his brother, Oscar Alarcon Velazquez, is assistant publisher. Other survivors include his wife, Herminia Velazquez de Alarcon, and two other children.