Deborah Martinez-Martinez

Deborah Martinez-Martinez (born 1954) is CEO of the publisher Vanishing Horizons and is an author who explores the history of the Southwestern United States. She worked in higher education admissions and recruitment for twenty years and advocates for more Chicanas in education.

Biography Martinez-Martinez grew up on a farm in Huerfano Valley in the 1960s. She had a very large Catholic family. Her mother was Rose Lucero Martinez, who instilled in her a love of reading and learning from a young age. As a child she played with paper dolls that taught her about cultures of different peoples, which inspired her later book Chicana Activists of Colorado.

Martinez graduated from Walsenburg High school in 1972. She received her BA from University of Southern Colorado in 1976, her MA from University of Northern Colorado in 1982, and PhD from University of Colorado Denver in 2001. She retired from CSU Pueblo in 2004.

Martinez-Martinez worked with Ray Aguilera as he created the Pueblo Hispanic Education Foundation (PHEF). She was interim director, and on the board of PHEF for 10 years. Through this connection, she co-produced the show Hispanidad on the local PBS channel.

In 2010, she was inspired by Charlene Garcia Simms' own publishing company and founded Vanishing Horizons Publishing with Robert Pacheco.

Her 2020 book Chicana Activists of Colorado was a groundbreaking art book that included paper dolls of the women with biographies and cultural backgrounds.

In 2018, Martinez-Martinez suffered a lung collapse and in 2019 received a double lung transplant at the University of Colorado transplant center in Denver.