Mexican American journalist to be honored with U.S. postage stamp
Ruben Salazar's columns for the Los Angeles Times and his management of a major TV outlet helped shape the community's political and social identity.
The U.S. Postal Service will issue a stamp Tuesday honoring Los Angeles newsman Ruben Salazar, who, through his reporting and opinion columns during the 1960s, became a provocative voice for a Mexican American community searching for its political and social identity.
Among the first Mexican American reporters to work at a mainstream newspaper, Salazar was killed Aug. 29, 1970, struck in the head by a high-velocity tear gas projectile fired by a sheriff's deputy during an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in East Los Angeles. He was 42.
A Times columnist and general manager of KMEX-TV at the time of his death, Salazar quickly became a cultural icon. Awards are granted in his memory, and roads, schools and parks have been named after him. His likeness appears on posters, murals and lithographs, including one by the famous Mexican painter David Alfaro Siqueiros. Folk songs were written about him.
Ruben Salazar: An article in Tuesday's California section about the U.S. Postal Service releasing a stamp in honor of Los Angeles newsman Ruben Salazar reported that he was general manager of KMEX-TV. He was news director. Also, the article quoted restaurateur Lucy Casado, whose husband was good friends with Salazar, as saying that when her husband learned of Salazar's death he had "grabbed a stick and scratched the words 'Ruben Salazar: 8-9-1970'" in wet cement. She actually said "8-29-1970," the date of Salazar's death. In addition, an image that ran on the front page and editorial page showed a Salazar stamp costing 41 cents. The image was of the stamp before a rate hike to 42 cents that takes effect in May.
He is one of five American journalists being honored with stamps. The others are Martha Gellhorn, John Hersey, George Polk and Eric Sevareid.
The work and death of the husky man with piercing eyes, wavy black hair and a penchant for Louis Roth suits continue to haunt and inspire people.
Among them are a restaurant owner who for half a century has been helping Latinos campaign for political office, a professor writing a book about injustices Mexican Americans have suffered at the hands of law enforcement, a woman trying to separate myths from facts about her famous father, and a continuation high school student trying hard to get back on track.
But after 38 years of reminiscing and interpretation, can the true personal, professional and political depths of Salazar's life ever be known?
The truth, like everything else about Salazar, is complicated. Born in Juarez, Mexico, he was a political moderate who married a young white woman and lived in a middle-class home with a swimming pool in Orange County. Salazar was especially fond of dining on steak and corn with his wife, Sally, and their three children.
Yet, Charlie Ericksen, the founder of Hispanic Link, a Latino news service that publishes a weekly newsletter, recalled, "The husband that Sally knew was so different from the man we knew that it was almost as though he changed uniforms while driving down the freeway on the way home from work.
