Sanchez gets his street back

July 8, 2010 2:53 PM PT

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

In April, I wrote about the long-frustrated effort of one Los Angeles resident, 90-year-old Jack Sanchez, to have a street sign reinstalled downtown. Jack Sanchez is the great-great-nephew of the man Sanchez Street was named for: Vicente Sanchez, who was a mayor of Los Angeles when it was still a frontier outpost of the Republic of Mexico. Sanchez Street is a one-block alley that runs south from the old Plaza downtown, opposite the small square from Olvera Street. It’s still listed as Sanchez Street on official city maps, but the street sign was taken down decades ago.

On Thursday, the street sign went back up, thanks to Los Angeles City Council members Jose Huizar and Tom LaBonge. It’s a small recognition of the city’s Mexican past, and of the American family that’s kept alive the memory of ‘Don Vicente’ for 150 years. Sanchez, his son Greg Sanchez, and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren were there for the ceremony.

-- Hector Tobar in Los Angeles

Photo Credit: City of Los Angeles

La Plaza

Hector Tobar

Hector Tobar worked at the Los Angeles Times for two decades: as a city reporter, national and foreign correspondent, columnist and with the books and culture department. He left in September 2014. Tobar was The Times’ bureau chief in Mexico City and Buenos Aires and was part of the reporting team that won a Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the 1992 L.A. riots. He has also worked as features editor at the LA Weekly and as editor of the bilingual San Francisco magazine El Tecolote. Tobar has an MFA in creative writing from UC Irvine and studied at UC Santa Cruz and at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City. The Los Angeles-born writer is the author of five books, which have been translated into 15 languages. His novel “The Barbarian Nurseries” was named a New York Times Notable Book in 2011 and also won the California Book Award Gold Medal for Fiction; his latest work is “The Last Great Road Bum.” He’s married, the father of three children and the son of Guatemalan immigrants.