Requiem 29

On August 29, 1970, in East Los Angeles, Chicanos staged the largest antiwar demonstration ever organized in the United States by people of Mexican descent. More than twenty thousand marched in a spirited Chicano moratorium against the Vietnam War. Demonstrators came from all over southern California as well as from other parts of the state and from the Southwest. Although predominantly young, the demonstrators included older Mexican Americans. They protested, like Americans across the country, a war that many of them had initially supported. After years of seeing their young men killing and being killed, Chicanos began to question the reasons for the bloodshed and the U.S. role in the conflict. It was an especially relevant issue for Chicanos since they, like African Americans, were being drafted in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the total population. And once in the military, they were again being killed in numbers disproportionate to their representation in the armed forces.^[1] Hundreds of Chicanos were returning in body bags or seriously maimed, both physically and psychologically. For young Chicanos now further engaged at home in a militant social movement for self-determination and self-identity—the Chicano movement —the Vietnam War represented one more example of the ongoing exploitation of Mexicans in the United States, beginning

[1] See Ralph Guzmán, "Mexican American Casualties in Vietnam," La Raza (1970), Vol. I, no. I, 12-15.

with the U.S. seizure of half of Mexico's territory—virtually the entire Southwest—in the mid-nineteenth century.

And so they marched and protested that fateful day in August, down Brooklyn and Whittier avenues until they converged on Laguna Park. They arrived by the thousands and were greeted with Mexican music and a festive atmosphere on a filtered sunny/smoggy L.A. day. As the first to arrive sat on the grass, watching the rest of the marchers streaming in, they listened to the entertainment and to the speakers. But apprehension soon began to set in among the crowd, and then intermittent police sirens were heard. Rumors began to spread about a disturbance on Whittier Boulevard: police were roughing up and arresting some of the demonstrators. As the crowd turned to look, they saw the ominous arrival of hundreds of helmeted police —Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies—who were assembling at one end of the park, some wearing gas masks. Without warning (the Sheriff's Department would later claim provocation on the part of the demonstrators) they moved on the crowd. Pandemonium broke out as the deputies fired tear gas cannisters into the dispersing assembly of men, women, and children. Some of the Chicanos fought back. They pelted the deputies with their own tear gas cannisters and whatever else they could find. The deputies charged into the crowd. Flaying nightsticks found their marks. A young Chicana was struck on the back of her head and fell to the ground. Tears from the gas mingled with blood and streamed down the faces of the demonstrators. Moratorium leaflets were dropped and scattered on the streets.^[2]

Out of the park, many Chicanos began to vent their anger and frustration at having their peaceful moratorium violently repressed by the police—another example of the oppression of La Raza. Windows were broken, cars were set on fire, and rocks were thrown. Reinforcement deputies arrived and joined in the beatings. That afternoon, East L.A. became a battleground.^[3]

Ruben Salazar, a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and the news director of KMEX, the Spanish-language TV station in Los Angeles, covered the moratorium that day. He and his TV crew witnessed much of the disturbance. Later that afternoon, they retired to the Silver Dollar

[2] On the Chicano moratorium, see special issue of La Raza (1970), Vol. I, no. 3. Also see Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: A History of Chicanos , 3d ed. (New York: HarperCollins, 1988), 345-350; Oscar Zeta Acosta, The Revolt of the Cockroach People (New York: Bantam, 1974; orig. pub. 1973); and the film documentary Requiem 29 (1970; produced by Moctesuma Esparza and directed by David Garcia).

[3] Ibid.

Cafe on Whittier Boulevard to relax and have a beer. According to cameraman Guillermo Restrepo, Salazar believed that he and his crew were being followed after the breakup of the moratorium.^[4] Shortly after arriving, they heard a police radio outside the café. Through the window they saw armed deputies in riot gear. The deputies ordered everyone outside back into the café, and without warning, a tear gas projectile blasted through the door. Another cannister—a ten-inch missile—smashed into the café. Two others followed. The deputies would later claim that they had been told that an armed individual was inside the café, but no weapon ever turned up. Behind the café, Salazar's colleagues realized that Salazar was still inside. Their attempts to go back to find him were rebuffed by the deputies. Despite his friends' insistence that Salazar remained in the café, the deputies refused to check inside or to allow anyone to enter. When the deputies finally entered several hours later, Salazar's body was found. One of the projectiles, an inquest later determined, had torn through his head.^[5]

Raul Ruiz and Joe Razo of La Raza magazine, a Chicano movement publication, happened to find themselves across from the Silver Dollar at the time. At the first signs of a disturbance, both began to photograph the actions of the Sheriff's deputies. Their photographs, later published in both La Raza and the Los Angeles Times , revealed that one of the deputies fired directly into the café. Ruben Salazar was forty-two at the time of his death. He left a wife and three children.^[6]

Two other people died at the moratorium, and sixty-one were injured. More than two hundred were arrested, and property damage reached over $1 million.^[7] When news of Salazar's death reached the Chicano community, its anger and hatred toward the police were mixed with great sorrow over the death of a journalist whom many in the community knew and respected. The inquest into his death was televised and lasted sixteen days. According to Los Angeles County Coroner Thomas T. Noguchi, whose office conducted an autopsy of Salazar's body, Salazar had died almost instantly from a "through-and-through

[4] Interview with Danny Villanueva, February 8, 1994, by Mario T. García. Also see Edward J. Escobar, "The Dialectics of Repression: The Los Angeles Police Department and the Chicano Movement, 1968-1971," Journal of American History 79 , no. 4 (March 1993): p. 1503.

[5] See La Raza (1970), Vol. I, no. 3, and Acuna, Occupied America , 345-350.

[6] Ibid.; Raul Ruiz, "August 29th & the Death of Ruben Salazar," in program for production of "August 29" produced by the Los Angeles Theatre Center Latino Theatre Lab and directed by José Luis Valenzuela in 1990 on the 20th anniversary of Salazar's death.

[7] Ibid.

projectile wound of the left temple area causing massive injury to the brain."

The police, including Deputy Thomas Wilson, who fired the missile, were questioned, as were some of the Chicanos who were at the moratorium. One of the key issues was whether Wilson was acting in accordance with proper procedures when he fired the projectiles. This question, however, was never examined because the Sheriff's Department refused to turn over its training manual, which covered the use of tear gas equipment, and the manual was never subpoenaed by the inquest officer, Norman Pittluck. According to Sheriff Peter Pitchess, "There was absolutely no misconduct on the part of the deputies involved or in the procedures they followed."^[9]

Instead the questioning turned into an indictment of the moratorium. The District Attorney's office, which was supposed to remain neutral so as to determine the facts of the case, in fact functioned as defense attorneys for the Sheriff's Department. The moratorium, it was suggested by Pittluck, was an unruly mob determined to do violence. And the Sheriff's deputies, furthermore, were there only to protect the community and restore law and order. The demonstrators were also portrayed as subversives: "Is that Castro's man?" Raul Ruiz was asked about a photograph that showed some of the demonstrators holding a picture of Che Guevara. "Che Guevara," Ruiz responded, "was a great hero to the people of Latin America. He struggled against oppression and injustice." The Chicanos in the court cheered, and the jury ruled by a 4 to 3 vote that Salazar had met death "at the hands of another."^[10]

However, District Attorney Evelle Younger concluded that the facts from the inquest did not justify criminal charges against Deputy Wilson or the Sheriff's Department. According to Younger, no criminal intent on the part of Wilson or the other Sheriff's deputies could be determined. Younger further concluded that the split decision by the jury suggested that it would be difficult to convince a trial jury that a crime had been committed. The Department of Justice added insult to injury when it also refused to investigate Salazar's death after requested to do so by twenty-two California state legislators.^[11]

The case was closed for the police and the investigating officials but

[8] See José Angel de la Vera, "1970 Chicano Moratorium and the Death of Ruben Salazar," in Manuel P. Servin, ed., An Awakened Minority: Mexican-Americans (Beverly Hills: Glencoe Press, 1974), 274.

[9] Ibid., 281.

[10] See Requiem 29; de la Vera, "Chicano Moratorium."

[11] See de la Vera, "Chicano Moratorium," 279, 281.

not for Chicanos, who held the police guilty of murder. A well-known Chicano attorney and subsequent celebrity, Oscar Zeta Acosta—aka the "Brown Buffalo"—accused authorities of criminal conspiracy to commit political assassination, another vicious example of police state tactics in America with precedents not confined to the Chicano community.^[12] Acosta was twice forcibly ejected from the hearing room for protesting the injustice of the hearing. The ejections in turn provoked scuffles in the courtroom between Chicanos and courtroom deputies.^[13] Danny Villanueva, who was then station manager of KMEX and Salazar's boss, is perplexed to this day by the lack of prosecution of the officers involved in the Silver Dollar incident. "If there wasn't a conspiracy," he concludes, "it is an incredible set of circumstances."^[14]

The protests continued, and the Chicano movement had another martyr. Yet, ironically, and despite the many dangerous assignments he undertook throughout his career, Salazar would never have conceived of himself in this way. Salazar was neither a martyr nor a politico but a hardworking reporter whose career and work needs to be appreciated beyond his tragic death.

Salazar can be seen as a "border correspondent," not only because he himself was literally a product of the U.S.-Mexican border or because he covered the U.S.-Mexican border as a reporter at one point in his career but symbolically as well. Salazar's career was marked by crossing new borders or frontiers. Although there exists a long history of Mexican American journalism in the United States primarily catering to a Mexican American or mexicano immigrant population, Salazar was the first journalist of Mexican American background to cross over into mainstream  English-language journalism.^[15] He was the first Mexican American journalist to work as a reporter for the Los Angeles Times . He was the first Mexican American journalist to become an important foreign correspondent. And he was the first Mexican American journalist to have a column in a major American English-language newspaper.

[12] See Acosta, Cockroach People . For transcripts of the Salazar inquest, see Oscar Zeta Acosta Collection in the California Ethnic and Multicultural Archives (CEMA) in Special Collections at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Library.

[13] See de la Vera, "Chicano Moratorium," 278.

[14] Villanueva interview.

[15] Examples of such nineteenth- and twentieth-century newspapers exist in microfilm. These include La Prensa (San Antonio) and La Opinión (Los Angeles). Also see my chapter on the Mexican-American journalist Ignacio López, publisher of El Espectator in the Pomona Valley of southern California from the 1930s through the 1950s, "Mexican-American Muckraker: Ignacio L. López and El Espectator ," in Mario T. García, Mexican Americans: Leadership , Ideology , and Identity , 1930-1960 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 84112.

In his short career, ended too soon, Salazar crossed a variety of borders, certainly professional ones and undoubtedly personal ones as well. This work is dedicated to examining Salazar as a professional border crosser—a border correspondent.