Ruben Salazar was a prominent and award-winning journalist born in Juarez, Mexico, who later moved to El Paso, Texas. After attending high school in Texas, he studied at the University of Texas at El Paso, served in the U.S. Army for two years, and returned to earn his journalism degree in 1954. He then worked for the El Paso Herald Post before moving to California in the late 1950s to report for the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat and San Francisco News. In 1959, he joined the Los Angeles Times for an 11-year career as a reporter, Vietnam correspondent, Mexico City Bureau Chief, and Chicano issues columnist, and in the early and late 1960s he reported extensively on equal rights activism and advocacy for Mexican Americans in Los Angeles and beyond. In 1970, he became news director of Spanish-language KMEX-TV, Channel 34, and also became a columnist for the Times. On August 29, 1970, while covering the National Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War and the disproportionate number of Chicanos and ethnic minorities being killed there, he was at a demonstration that drew 30,000 people to Laguna Park and ended in a riot after Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs charged the crowd with batons and tear gas. While resting with his crew inside the Silver Dollar Cafe at 4945 E. Whittier Blvd., he was struck in the head by a tear gas projectile fired by a deputy sheriff and was killed instantly. His name was later given to the park and to other memorials across the country, and his legacy endured in East Los Angeles, throughout the nation, and beyond.
