Ruben Salazar documentary probes journalist’s life and mysterious death

*Film maker Phillip Rodriguez was in San Antonio recently to present his documentary at the annual Cinefestival Guadalupe. I spent the better part of a day with him and interviewed him about his film and about Ruben Salazar. I’ll publish part of that interview on the day the movie premieres on PBS. In the mean time, this is a taste of what you can expect from the film. VL

By Joe Rodriguez, San Jose Mercury News

Back when my father drank too much, my mother used to send me and my little brother to pull him out of the “beer joints” and bring him home. One of them was the Silver Dollar Cafe.

That was enough heartache from one dive in East Los Angeles. But then came worse, when Ruben Salazar — a crusading Latino journalist and my role model — was killed when he was hit by a tear gas missile fired into the Silver Dollar during a riot.

It was Aug. 29, 1970. The police had broken up a peaceful protest against the war in Vietnam by some 30,000 people, most of them Mexican-Americans upset that too many of their sons and brothers were dying for nothing. Skirmishes broke out and traveled up the street toward the Silver Dollar, where Salazar sat on a bar stool.

Why the most prominent Latino journalist of his time was even in the bar and died there remained a mystery for decades …

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