The Legacy Of Pioneering Newspaper Publisher And Organizer Dolores Sánchez

Dolores Sanchez never sought the limelight, but it found her anyway as she toiled away in community advocacy, newspaper publishing and mothering six children in East Los Angeles.

Sanchez died Sept. 28 at the age of 87, leaving a legacy of uplifting Latino voices that had long been marginalized.

Her family's Eastern Group Publications ran 11 newspapers and worked to shed light on the good stories in the Latino community at a time when the mainstream narrative seemed to focus on crime and violence. In 2018, the newspapers closed after a 40-year run.

Dolores Sanchez's life and career

Raised in Bunker Hill by a mother who was a union shop steward, advocacy came to her naturally, her daughter, Gloria Alvarez, said.

Before her 40 years in publishing, Sanchez helped found the Latino interest group Mexican American Political Association, the social service group Chicana Service Action Center, an east side rape hotline and shelter for homeless and battered women.

Co-owning grocery stores with her ex-husband, Joe Sanchez, she leveraged her connections in the grocery industry to feed striking and boycotting UFW farmworkers in the '60s and '70s.

"Out of all of that activism there was the constant feeling that the community was underrepresented when it came to media," Sánchez said.

She started Eastern News Group with her ex-husband to tell those stories. The newspapers covered a wide range of issues within Latino communities, from activism that pushed then-Gov. Jerry Brown to require cleanup efforts for a plant in Vernon responsible for lead poisoning to retrospectives on the 1992 L.A. uprising.

Later, former president Jimmy Carter appointed her to the Unemployment Commission and former L.A. Mayor Tom Bradley appointed her to the Commission on the Status of Women.

Alvarez remembers the Sundays they spent as a family, going to church, then the grocery stories, then breakfast and then a fundraiser or a meeting for one of the various organizations Dolores was part of.

“It was always important to her to not have people talking about the community, but for the people in the community to talk about themselves,” Alvarez said.

How she will be remembered

Monica Lozano, the former publisher of Spanish-language newspaper La Opinión, saw Sánchez bring heart and soul to her work. Seeing as they were both some the few Latinas in publishing in Southern California, Lozano learned from Sánchez's commitment to journalism that wasn't simply information but a vital line to an underrepresented community.

Lozano recalls the struggles they both experienced in finding resources to support their journalism, which had prompted Lozano and her husband to create the California Hispanic Publishers Association.

"I so respected Dolores always staying fiercely true to that mission of being community-oriented and then also understanding that these were businesses," Lozano said. "We had to be our own best advocate to make sure that we could raise the resources necessary to continue publishing."

Lozano, who now heads the College Futures Foundation, longs for the days of community-driven newspapers, a tool that could galvanize marginalized communities to hold the public sector accountable in terms of resource distribution.

"We need a thriving news and information ecosystem that in some ways models or replicates what Eastern Group Publications did," Lozano said.

Richard Alatorre, a former member of the city council member and California Assembly, remembers her as a giant in Latino and Chicano activism. He says she kept him honest and wouldn't hesitate to call him or any other elected official to hold him to account.

"Her impact was enormous because she used the newspaper to highlight the Latino community's positivity, as well as uncover the injustices in the community," Alatorre said.