D. Russell Martinez has written extensively on Hispanics for newspapers, magazines and U. S. Government agencies. His work has been syndicated by the Los Angeles Times Newspaper Syndicate through its "Hispanic Link" column feature, appearing in such major newspapers as the San Diego Union and the San Antonio Express-News. He has also written "Op-Ed" columns for the Baltimore Sun and Denver Post newspapers, worked as a "stringer" for Newsweek magazine, and contributed to Americas, the magazine of the Organization of American States. In 1984, he contributed to the book Portraits of the Puerto Rican Experience. His writing career began in earnest at age nineteen when he joined the Riverside, California Press-Enterprise newspaper as a part-time general assignment reporter while still attending Riverside City College. As the daily newspaper's only Latino or bilingual writer, he was quickly thrust into covering (on a full-time basis) the turbulent struggle of the Chicano Civil Rights Movement and of Cesar Chavez to organize farmworkers toiling in the county's lucrative grape growing agribusiness industry. His reporting from the front lines takes on a new dimension with this book, in which the front lines of the Hispanic Civil Rights Movement are often in our pop and political cultures.
