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Revision as of 18:07, 29 August 2005 by 128.95.91.178 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)March 3, 1928 - August 29, 1970
Ruben Salazar was a mexican-american reporter killed by the police during the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam war on August 29, 1970 in Los Angeles. During the 70s his killing was remembered as a prominent symbol of the unjust treatment of hispanic minorities by the police.
Salazar was a reporter and the news director for the Spanish language television station KMEX in Los Angeles. On August 29, 1970 he was covering the National Chicano Moratorium March against the Vietnam war, a march organized to protest the inordinate number of hispanic americans killed in the Vietnam war. The peaceful march ended with a rally that was broken up by the LA police using tear gas. This resulted in rioting, during which Slazar was shot in the head at short range with a tear gas projectile while seated in a bar. A coroner's inquest ruled the shooting a homicide, but the policeman involved, Tom Wilson, was never prosecuted. At the time many believed the homicide was a pre-meditated assisination of a very vocal member of the LA hispanic community.
In 1971 he was posthumously awarded a special Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award, and after the controversy of his death had subsided, Laguna Park - the site of the 1970 rally and subsequent police action - was renamed Salazar Park in his honor. His death was commemorated in a Corrido by Lalo Guerrero entitled *El 29 de Agosto*:
El 29 de Agosto
Cuando vino la policía
violencia se desató;
el coraje de mi raza
luego se desenlazó
por los años de injusticia
el odio se derramó;
y como huracán furioso
su barrio lo destrozó.
En un edificio cercano
desgracia vino a caer
un gran hombre y buen humano:
periodista mexicano
de fama interancional;
fino padre de familia
voz de la comunidad.
(When the police came violence was unleashed; the wrath of my people uncoiled from within; against years of injustice hate spilled out; and like a ferocious hurricane its barrio it destroyed. In a nearby building misfortune came to fall a great man and human being él fue Rubén Salazar, he was Rubén Salazar, Mexican newspaperman of international fame; a fine family man and the voice of the community)