Network Aztlan Latino Chicano Comunidades Transnacionales

He Taught Us All

The life and death of Ruben Salazar continues to reverbrate in the community

Paul Weeks | Web Published 8.26.2002

A colleague on the Los Angeles Times staff in the '60s left us forever in the Silver Dollar Café in East Los Angeles 32 years ago on August 29.

I remember him well.

The memories came alive again when I ran across an essay by Chrissie Castro, which she called "Yo Soy Chicana" written two years go and published on LatinoLA.

Chrissie struggled to define her identity and herself. She quoted from an article written by Ruben Salazar in the same year as his death from a deputy sheriff's firing of a gas cannister into the Silver Dollar She found her answer:

"A Chicano," she wrote, quoting Salazar, "is a Mexican-American with a non-Anglo image of himself . . ." And she went on to recite Ruben's account of the noble ancestry of Chicanos, elevating them to their deserved recognition in the society they live in.

His legacy is that the exploding population in the United States of Latinos who have long been citizens to immigrants from all Latin American countries can call themselves "Chicanos" with heads held high.

Ruben toiled in the vineyards to reach his desk at The Times. At the time it was a newspaper that was newly awakened by its then-publisher, Otis Chandler, to minorities -- Chicanos and Blacks -- long ignored by the major communications media.

"Hey, this is a good job!" Ruben would insist as we compared notes -- and difficulties -- of getting accounts of the then minority communities we covered onto the pages of The Times.

Born in Juarez in 1928, Ruben grew up in El Paso and got a degree of journalism from the University of Texas at El Paso in 1954.

It was during a stint as a reporter on the El Paso Herald Post that Ruben sharpened his awareness of the second-class citizenship of Chicanos, covering stories and comparing them with the police "blotter" of what had been reported to have happened.

Following seven years of maturing as a reporter on The Santa Rosa Press Democrat and The San Francisco News, he joined the L.A. Times in 1959 for a long valedictory to his career and his dedication to "la causa."

The newspaper opened opportunities for Salazar to range beyond his home turf. As bureau chief of the newspaper's Mexico City bureau, he got his initiation into war correspondence, covering the U.S. troops' move into the Dominican Republic.

Later, Jack Foisie, the bureau chief in Vietnam, summoned him into a bigger war, where his by-lines back home gave him increased insight and reputation as a reporter, no matter where his assignments led him.

La Voz de Aztlan, in their "Heroes of La Raza Series" two years ago, wrote that after returning from Vietnam, Ruben was reporting on the election of Arnulfo Arias as president of Panama when "he was captured and briefly held by terrorists who accused him of being a CIA agent or a puppet of the U.S. State Department."

In late 1969, he spread his horizons farther, taking over as news director of KMEX-TV in Los Angeles while still writing a weekly column for The Times and covering the rise of protest in the Chicano struggle.

It was on a sweltering day in August of the next year that Ruben was covering the National Chicano Moratorium's march in East Los Angeles in protest of the war in Vietnam.

Taking a break at the Silver Dollar Café he had ordered a cool beer when deputy sheriffs arrived at the door, presumably looking for perpetrators of alleged violence.

But accounts differ.

A tear gas projectile burst into the barroom, striking the correspondent, who had survived covering wars of nations elsewhere. He died instantly when the missile struck him in the head.

A coroner's jury found only that he "died at the hands of another," but the deputy who fired the weapon that snuffed out Rubin's life was never charged with a crime.

The official position of the Sheriff's office was that it was a "mistake" -- a missile fired when the law was searching for alleged rioters. The County, however, settled a suit by the Salazar family for $700,000.

Ruben's legacy for his enlightenment of a prejudiced society can never be measured in dollars. Paeans of honor have been heaped on him from organizations of journalists, the Chicano press, and university scholars in the humanities. Memorial fund-raising continues on websites listed on the Internet. Schools and parks have been named after him, and monuments put in place. Artistic renderings of the fatal shooting are in national galleries.

But memories are getting vague in the world outside. On Nov. 19, 1999, Robert J. Lopez, a Los Angeles Times staff writer, told of the newspaper's relentless pursuit of government documents about Ruben's violent death.

"The Salazar documents, which include previously classified material," Lopez wrote, "were released (Tuesday) in a response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed more than five years ago."

Twelve of the 277 pages had been withheld from their report, the FBI said, and some portions of the released documents "were blacked out often," Lopez reported, "often for what officials cited as national security reasons."

Lopez went on to detail the questionable surveillance of the FBI, under J. Edgar Hoover's eye on alleged "subversives."

Will the truth ever be known? Most of his colleagues and many of the fading elders in the Chicano community who still remember harbor their own suspicion of what happened on that day in August 32 years ago.

But, Chrissie Castro, we know that you can be proud to say, "Yo Soy a Chicana."

Ruben taught us all.

Paul Weeks was employed at The Times after its afternoon newspaper, The Mirror, ceased publication in 1962, where he was its Washington, DC correspondent. He can be reached at rand9999@aol.com

Peace The Fruit of Justice

Rev. Juan Romero

We gather this evening, two weeks before the first anniversary of the September 11 terrorist acts, while the country is once again bracing itself for the possibility of a hot war. We commend to the Lord the thousands of victims of last year's violent acts of terrorism in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania, and we pray for the perpetrators of those violent acts.

We also pray for all victims of violence and war, past and present, endured anywhere by soldier, civilian, American, Vietnamese, Arab, Jew, Christian, Muslim, or Atheist. We pray for ourselves that we be firm in our convictions that "Peace is the Fruit of Justice, and Non Violence the Means."

Thirty-two years ago this day, August 29--it was a Saturday morning--thousands of peaceful demonstrators gathered at Belvedere Park on Third Street, near the County Sheriff Station. People from all over the southwest, and in fact the country, came to protest the disproportionate number of Mexican American soldiers killed in the battlefields of Southeast Asia, Vietnam. As parish priest in La Habra, I recall frequently grilling Anglo college students about their sincerity before I signed their petition for draft classification as conscientious objectors to that war. At the same time, I was burying about two Mexican American soldiers a month, and the contrast really bothered me.

Our Chicano soldiers, whose uncles were highly decorated for valor in World War II, had no clear idea that it was all right to be a CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR to the Vietnam war or to any war. That is why I joined a delegation from my parish to the Chicano Moratorium at the end of August. It began as a festive and peaceful march, but sadly ended with the eruption of violence and death. The great majority of demonstrators were dedicated to non-violence.

Our parish delegation purposefully chose to walk behind the Black Eagle flag carried by a delegation of United Farm Workers. We walked south on Atlantic Blvd., and as we passed St. Alphonsus Church, a newly married bride and groom, together with their whole wedding party, joined us for a short distance. Their festive mood matched ours.

The marching crowd covered both sides of the whole street as turned right on Whittier Blvd. and arrived at this place then called Laguna Park. Black Berets were monitoring the march, and they asked us to maintain a respectful silence as we passed by Calvary Cemetery. The shouts of "Raza Si, Guerra No!" and "Chicano Power!" temporarily gave way to the un-cadenced sound of thousands of walking feet. There was an incident across the street, a "civil disturbance" ensued, many people were injured. Angel Diaz and Lyn Ward eventually died from wounds inflicted, and Ruben Salazar was instantly killed by an errant projectile fired into the Silver Dollar Bar, near Whittier and Atlantic Boulevards.

This LA Times and KMEX-TV Channel 34 reporter was with others also seeking refuge from the melee which had ended the peaceful demonstration. We now call this place the Ruben Salazar Park in his honor. His image is painted on the TV screen within this large mural in front of you. This evening, we pray for him and the others killed that day, and for their families. We pray for any who were directly involved with their deaths. We pray for all victims of violence everywhere. The prophet Micah holds out to us a powerful vision of peace reprised by the prophet Isaiah. The nations will climb the mountain of the Lord to be instructed in the ways of the Just Judge of all: "They shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again." To those whose values are challenged or denounced, the words of the prophets often seem visionary and impractical. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has the audacity to tell us, "Blest are the peacemakers, they shall be called sons of God". "Live according to what you have learned and accepted, what you have heard me say and seen me do."

Today is the feast of the Beheading of St. John the Baptist. He was killed because he dared to tell the King No! You can't live with your brother's wife." While we beat war drums and rattle sabers, we lift up a voice to say NO to our President. NO PREEMPTIVE STRIKE! WE ARE NOT THAT KIND OF PEOPLE! We do not want a split in the values by which we live daily and the faith we profess on Sundays.

Almost twenty years ago (1983), the American Bishops issued a pastoral letter entitled The Challenge of Peace: God's Promise and our Response. It was a NO to the nuclear arms race that threatened the human family. Its message was urgent and continues to have relevance today. It was a prophetic document, updated a decade later, in November 1993, in a document called "The harvest of Justice is Sown in Peace." Certainly not all prophetic documents about war and peace come form church or even religious people. One that is right on target for us in the United States at this time is a statement by the Parisian Anatole France who died in 1924. When he was twenty-seven, he witnessed the blood bath of the Franco-Prussian War. It was a formative experience that led him to become a writer and critic of war, business interests and politicians that promote war. His convictions led him to become hostile toward the bourgeois and to criticize the Church. In 1920, his writings were put on the "Index of Forbidden Books"? (which is no longer operative), and in 1921 he won the Nobel Prize for literature. His words are a hard truth for us today: The governing classes do not really want war, but they want to keep up a continual menace of war. They want the peril to be always averted, but always present. They do not want the cannon to be fired, but they do want it to be always loaded. Those who perpetually spread abroad rumors and alarms of war only half believe them, or more often do not believe them at all, but they see great advantages to themselves in inducing the people to believe them. You know, friends, what those advantages are. They are political and financial.

A people living under the perpetual menace of war and invasion, is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It does not haggle over expenditures on armaments and military equipment. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is an excellent thing for the financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.

Neither I, nor any of the religious leaders represented here, pretend to be politicians. The job of the prophets was often to say NO to the king, and sometimes that is our job as we continue in a prophetic tradition. Tonight we "say "NO" to the king," NO to first strike! We are not that kind of people! Our "YES!" is that Peace is a result of justice, and non-violence is a means. As a prophetic people, consecrated through Baptism to share with Jesus in His prophetic role, we are called to be a voice of conscience in our land. It is right and good that there be debate about our foreign policy. However, the voice of military intelligence should not be the most decisive. Part of our task as a people linked to a faith-tradition is to try to apply moral principles to specific problems in the debate of foreign policy.

1. We cannot really be peacemakers around the world unless we seek to protect the lives and dignity of the vulnerable in our midst.

2. We cannot turn to military force to solve the world's problems or to right every wrong. We need creative US leadership in foreign affairs that can resist dangers of both isolationism and unwise intervention.

3. We must reshape our programs of foreign aid to become a priority of development aid for the world's poor and the common good.

4. Through the UN and regional organizations, our nation must be positively engaged in devising new tools for preserving the peace. The kind of non-violence we advocate is not simply a non-resisting pacifism, but a stand to resist stark public evil with means other than force, e.g. dialogue, negotiation, protest, (strikes, boycotts, civil disobedience), etc. As a country, we do not yet know how to do this very well, but maybe we can learn how to do that and relate non-violently with countries we consider enemies. It may be difficult to learn to apply conflict resolution internationally, but we pray that the Lord will teach us the way, and that we be willing to learn. In a short while, we will quietly disburse and regroup at the corner of Whittier and Atlantic Boulevards. Please car pool to the large parking lot where the Golden Gate Theatre used to be, and then cross the street to the northwest corner and enter the upper level of the parking lot of the Footwear Store, formerly First Interstate Bank. There we will light our candles and, as close to 8 PM as possible, we will commence our brief procession to the place where the Silver Dollar Bar used to be. An altarcito, Day of the Dead style, is there, and we will ask the Lord to cleanse our streets and the world from violence of any kind.

Our heavenly King calls us to peace, not war! Say YES! Tonight we rededicate ourselves to justice through nonviolence, and prayerfully pray to the Lord for the church, for civil authority, for the poor and oppressed, and for all victims of violence whether in this country or anyplace in the world.

Lord, please hear our prayer!