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21 de Abril, 2008
Ruben Salazar Remembered
Categorized under Medios , Política Estados Unidos , Raza , Salud | Tags: Chicanos, El Movimiento, Hunter Thompson, Ruben Salazar, Salazar Park
RUBEN SALAZAR, a respected Mexican American journalist whose face and voice became important to El Movimiento in the 70s will be posthumously recognized on a stamp.
Salazar was shot and killed while covering the National Chicano Moratorium March, which was organized by the Mexican American community mostly to protest the unfairly high number of Latinos being fed to the Vietnam maw. Salazar lost his life while sitting and enjoying his beer by a cop who fired a tear gas cannister into his head from about ten feet away. Very much like a recent demonstration in the Mexican American community, a peaceful, non-violent and constitutionally-protected (cough) demonstration was churned into a violent happening by the police, who decided that so many Chican@s in one park (Laguna Park, now named "Salazar [Memorial County] Park") was a cause worth fighting against.
Ruben Salazar, a pioneering Latino journalist who was killed in 1970 by a tear gas canister fired by a sheriff's deputy after an anti-war demonstration in Southern California, will be honored Tuesday with a commemorative U.S. postage stamp.The stamp is to be unveiled in Washington, D.C., along with four other stamps recognizing courageous American journalists. In Los Angeles, where Salazar became the first Mexican American foreign correspondent and columnist at the Los Angeles Times, his life will be remembered on a day the City Council has declared Ruben Salazar Day.
Journalists and scholars remembered Salazar, who was 42 when he died, as a brave and intrepid reporter who opened doors for future generations of Latinos to enter U.S. newsrooms.
"After his death, he was elevated into a martyr of the Chicano movement ... but first and foremost, Ruben Salazar was a damn good journalist," said UC Santa Barbara history Professor Mario Garcia, who edited a 1995 book of Salazar's writings. "He translated the issues of the Chicano community to the larger community ... because he had access through the L.A. Times. He was the only voice who could connect" the two.
It's not his life back. But marking the event and remembering the why is important. As is honoring his work. Now, his and our stories will be told again. And maybe one day soon we'll learn the lessons therein.
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kick it, ése.