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Subject: Latinos Who Think It's Better Now Should Reread Salazar
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Latinos Who Think It's Better Now Should Reread Salazar

URL:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-000069267aug26.story

      By FRANK del OLMO
   
   On Wednesday, it will be 31 years since my friend, mentor and
   former Times colleague Ruben Salazar was killed. Salazar was the
   first Mexican American journalist to write for this newspaper
   specifically about Latino issues, and he did it with such
   prescience that his work is still quoted.
   
   Salazar died Aug. 29, 1970. His head was shattered by a bullet-like
   tear gas projectile fired by an L.A. County sheriff's deputy. The
   lawman was one of hundreds of officers who descended on East
   L.A. that hot, smoggy afternoon to control the city's worst riot
   since Watts had exploded five years earlier.
   
   The deputy fired the projectile into a small bar on Whittier
   Boulevard, the Silver Dollar Cafe, after being told that a man with
   a rifle was inside. There was no gunman, we now know, only some
   frightened bar patrons, a news crew from Spanish-language TV
   station KMEX and Salazar, who was KMEX's news director as well as a
   regular Times contributor.
   
   In the final weeks of his life, Salazar had been writing about--and
   having KMEX reporters cover--egregious cases of police
   brutality. He was so aggressive about it that his superiors at both
   KMEX and The Times were pressured by local law enforcement
   officials to rein him in. For him to die at the hands of a local
   cop, whatever the circumstances, was a coincidence too incredible
   to be easily accepted.
   
   Although a coroner's jury concluded that Salazar died "at the hands
   of another," none of the deputies involved was charged with a
   crime. Once Salazar's family settled a lawsuit against the county,
   the matter was laid to rest. Or so local authorities hoped.
   
   Instead, Salazar became a larger figure in death than he had been
   in life. Much to the chagrin of many cops--and more than a few
   reporters who preferred to remember Salazar as the hard-boiled
   newsman he was--Salazar became, to the activist Chicanos he had
   reported on, a martyr.
   
   Today, the Eastside park where the 1970 rioting broke out after
   police broke up a Latino protest march bears Salazar's name. So do
   schools, community centers and scholarship funds.
   
   Yet I sense among a new generation of Latino activists a tendency
   to assume that what happened in 1970--not just to Salazar, but to
   the community he covered--can't happen again. Some even seem to
   think it isn't relevant to their more prosperous and
   better-educated generation.
   
   I can understand their confidence. With Latino population growing
   across the nation, Latinos are in powerful positions
   everywhere. The L.A. County sheriff is Latino, as is Los Angeles'
   city attorney and the president of the City Council. A Latino came
   very close to being elected mayor recently.
   
   Little wonder that some people assume that the issues Salazar wrote
   about are ancient history--and that anyone who brings them up is a
   crotchety old Chicano who should get on with life.
   
   They need to reread some of Salazar's columns about bad education,
   illegal immigration and, yes, police brutality. Many could have
   been written today.
   
   Or doubters can drop by the place Salazar died, at 4945 E. Whittier
   Blvd. It's still called the Silver Dollar, but has been turned into
   a cultural center by Ricardo Lopez, one of those crotchety old
   Chicano activists. For the next month, Lopez is featuring an
   exhibit of photos taken the day Salazar died. He's also produced a
   fictional play telling the story, which will be performed there
   through Sept. 16.
   
   If only it had been fiction. Because it wasn't, every police
   officer in the Southwest carries a special burden to this day. So
   do the Latino political leaders who are in positions to hold
   officers accountable when they treat Latino barrios as territory to
   be occupied rather than communities to be served.
   
   As the saying goes, those who cannot remember the past are
   condemned to repeat it.
   
   Frank del Olmo is an associate editor of The Times