By: juan josé garcía  (Page 6/7)

The 1980s were marked by the so called amnesty or legalization of 1986, a law that facilitated the regularization of more than three million Latinos in the country. More than half of those resided in Los Angeles. La Opinión was at the front of the information with pamphlets aimed to make sure that nobody was left behind. More than 1.5 million copies of a single pamphlet made and published by the newspaper were distributed throughout the nation.

In California, the community underwent anti-immigrant attacks shaped in the so called Proposal 187 that denied benefits to undocumented people. La Opinión fought it to the end when the voters approved it, even though it was soon declared unconstitutional almost totally by the courts. The "sanctuary movement;" that is, the protection of immigrants, considered the newspaper as a fierce defendant in that decade. Proposal 187 instilled a strange energy in the diverse Latino communities of California, which understood the necessity of being united for a collective defense.

That negative energy was freed in the 1990s. That decade marked by efforts, campaigns, and expenses aimed to help Latinos become citizens and make sure they were registered to vote, and in that way, to direct their future. Proposal 187 taught them that one’s vote is the weapon of progress, and that the Latinos that had regularized their migratory situation thanks to the reform of 1986 arrived with the desire to be noticed. Among other things, they supplanted the Republican Party in state positions of the general election. La Opinión took advantage at every moment.

These days, La Opinión watches its surroundings where at least 7 million Hispanics with a consumption power of more than one billion dollars live, but are still exposed to discrimination. Conscious that the community renews itself without stopping and that anyone that has just arrived is in need of information in Spanish, it has to provide information about all the resources necessary to give a deep and extensive vision of the new reality. The subjects of immigration, health, education, and security, to only mention few examples, are the priorities of the daily task.

Fusion

In January 2004, La Opinión became part of impreMedia , a publication chain in Spanish with the goal of reaching all Hispanics or Latinos in the country. At the moment, three publications form the chain: La Opinión of Los Angeles, El Diario/La Prensa of New York, and the weekly magazine La Raza of Chicago. Their intention is to create a national Hispanic newspaper group with the mission to cover relevant subjects in the community at a national, regional, and local scope, with sections accommodated to the diverse facets of every day. At the same time, the new company respects the individuality of each one of the present and future parts. Of the 13.9 million Hispanic residents in the cities with presence of impreMedia –New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles— 12.1 million (87%) speak Spanish to some degree, and for 63% (8.7 million), Spanish is the dominant language. However, only about two million read one of the three newspapers weekly.