Winner of the Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Library Association.
Ruben Salazar was a reporter and correspondent for the Los Angeles Times from 1959 until his death in 1970. Mario T. García is Professor of History at the University of California at Santa Barbara. His most recent book is Memories of Chicano History: The Life and Narrative of Bert Corona (California, 1994).
"A reporter translating parts of a changing America to itself. Salazar's strength . . . is the sheer fact of his access and sensitivity to a community little understood by Anglos."--"Publishers Weekly
"A reporter translating parts of a changing America to itself. Salazar's strength . . . is the sheer fact of his access and sensitivity to a community little understood by Anglos."--"Publishers Weekly
The first Mexican-American journalist to become prominent in the mainstream press, Salazar (1928-1970) was killed when Los Angeles police violently dispersed a Chicano antiwar protest and shot a tear-gas cannister through him. As Garcia, professor of history at UC Santa Barbara, points out in his well-sketched introduction, Salazar's subsequent martyrization by L.A. Chicanos obscures his contribution: he was no activist but a reporter translating parts of a changing America to itself. In this selection of journalism, Salazar's strength is not literary style; it is the sheer fact of his access and sensitivity to a community little understood by Anglos. There are barrio reports for the El Paso Herald-Post and, later, pieces for the Los Angeles Times in which Salazar covered issues of Mexican-American identity and growing political consciousness. The year he died, Salazar became a columnist, and his voice grew more assured and pointed, suggesting the increasing contribution he could have made had his life not been cut short. (Aug.)
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