1928–1970
Los Angeles Times / KMEX-TV | Los Angeles, California | August 29, 1970 | Age 42
His pioneering coverage of the Chicano Movement bridged two worlds—prestigious foreign correspondent and voice of his community—until his death at a civil rights march made him a symbol of the story he was trying to tell.
The Journalist
Ruben Salazar was born in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, in 1928. When he was just a year old, his family moved to El Paso, Texas, that border town that had welcomed so many Mexican immigrants before him. He grew up straddling two worlds, speaking two languages, navigating what it meant to be Mexican in America.
After high school, he served in the U.S. Army before returning to El Paso, where he landed a job at the El Paso Herald-Post. He became the first Latino reporter there, honing his skills as an investigative journalist. One of his early standout stories involved exposing the terrible conditions in El Paso jails—so he got himself arrested to report from the inside, documenting firsthand what no outsider could see.
The Work
Salazar’s career took off in 1959 when he was hired by the Los Angeles Times, where he would stay until 1970. In his first decade at the Times, Ruben Salazar climbed up the traditional news hierarchy with remarkable speed. He became a foreign correspondent, managing other writers, and eventually serving as the bureau chief in Mexico City—prestigious roles that took him far from the border towns of his youth.
But in 1968, his editor summoned him back home. The reason? “Because of all the new Mexican-American uproar here at home,” his editor said.
That “new Mexican-American uproar” referred to the Chicano Movement, a growing push for Mexican-American identity and civil rights that was gaining traction across the Southwest. Salazar would spend his final two years at the forefront of covering it.
THE CHICANO MOVEMENT
The Chicano Movement emerged in the 1960s as Mexican-Americans, especially young activists, began organizing for civil rights, educational reform, and political representation. The term “Chicano,” once considered derogatory, was reclaimed as a badge of pride and political identity. The movement included student walkouts, farmworker organizing under Cesar Chavez, and demands for cultural recognition. It peaked in 1970 with the National Chicano Moratorium, protests against the disproportionate number of Mexican-American casualties in the Vietnam War.
At first, Salazar was hesitant. He wasn’t sure he needed to leave his prestigious position abroad, wasn’t certain the Chicano story had the same weight as the major revolutions and uprisings he had been covering in Central America. But he quickly recognized the urgency and significance of the story. For two years, he reported on this political movement while balancing the tension of being both observer and participant—a Mexican-American journalist covering Mexican-American activism.
The Final Story
In early 1970, Salazar made a surprising choice. He took a position as news director at KMEX, a small Spanish-language television station in Los Angeles. There was something about returning to his roots that called to him—despite the comfort and prestige of the LA Times, he left that behind for something that felt closer to home. He wanted, as he put it, to write for the people he had been writing about.
With his day job now at the TV station, Salazar felt free to express his views as a Chicano more openly. The constraints he’d faced as a news reporter for the Times—the need for objectivity, the distance required—loosened. He started writing opinion columns for the Times, shedding his reporter persona and writing full-throated pieces about the needs of the movement.
In a notable column from February 1970, just six months before his death, Salazar tackled a fundamental question: What is a Chicano? When critics asked why Mexican Americans did not simply refer to themselves as Americans, Salazar’s response was prescient:
“Mexican-Americans, though indigenous to the Southwest, are on the lowest rung scholastically, economically, socially and politically. Chicanos feel cheated. They want to effect change. Now.”
On August 29, 1970, Salazar was covering the National Chicano Moratorium March, a massive protest against the Vietnam War and the disproportionate number of Mexican-American casualties. The demonstration drew thousands to East Los Angeles. When violence erupted between protesters and police, Salazar and his camera crew sought refuge in the Silver Dollar Bar on Whittier Boulevard.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department fired tear gas canisters into the bar, one of which struck Salazar in the head, killing him instantly. He was 42 years old.
His death sparked immediate controversy and grief. The fact that he had been taking a break in a nearby bar, rather than actively participating in the protest, fueled theories that he had been intentionally targeted. The LA County Sheriff’s Department maintained it was an accident, and despite the persistent suspicions, the theories remain unsubstantiated.
In 1973, Salazar’s family settled a wrongful death lawsuit against the LA County Sheriff’s Department for $700,000. While the settlement did not resolve the questions surrounding intent, it acknowledged that something had gone terribly wrong that August day.
The Legacy
Ruben Salazar’s death transformed him from a journalist into a martyr of the Chicano Movement. The reporter who had spent two years navigating the line between observer and participant became, in death, inseparable from the story he was covering. His funeral drew thousands, and murals depicting his face appeared across East Los Angeles. The march he had been covering became as much about him as it was about the war.
But his legacy extends beyond the circumstances of his death. Salazar pioneered a model of journalism that rejected the false dichotomy between professional objectivity and community accountability. He showed that a reporter could maintain rigorous standards while also acknowledging their personal stakes in the story, that covering one’s own community was not a conflict of interest but could be a source of insight unavailable to outsiders.
His transition from foreign correspondent to KMEX news director—trading prestige for proximity—challenged assumptions about what constituted important journalism. The revolutions in Central America mattered, but so did the struggles in East Los Angeles. The perspectives of Spanish-speaking audiences deserved dedicated news coverage, not merely translation.
Salazar’s columns for the Times, written in his final months, remain essential documents of the Chicano Movement. They captured a moment when Mexican Americans were redefining their relationship to American identity, when “Chicano” shifted from slur to rallying cry. His writing provided the movement with a voice in mainstream media, while his death became a powerful symbol.
Today, the Ruben Salazar Journalism Awards honor Latino journalists who continue his work. California State University, Los Angeles, has named its library after him, and Salazar Park in East Los Angeles stands at the site where marchers gathered the day he died. His life and death are studied in Chicano Studies programs as examples of both the possibilities and dangers of engaged journalism.