Sobremesa: Phillip Rodriguez and the making of the Ruben Salazar Documentary

*Four months ago I sat with filmmaker Phillip Rodriguez to talk about his documentary Ruben Salazar: Man in the Middle, about the life and death of Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar. The reporter’s death came in the midst of the chaos of the Chicano Moratorium. Today is the 44th anniversary of the Moratorium and Salazar’s death. VL

By Victor Landa, NewsTaco

It’s been more than forty years since the Chicano Moratorium in Los Angeles, since the tear gas canister shot into the Silver Dollar Cafe, since the death of Mexican-American journalist Ruben Salazar. In recent years, a lawsuit led to a prying of the official investigation documents – witnesses, police testimony, coroner’s reports. It also opened the door for film maker Phillip Rodriguez to investigate and produce a documentary on the Salazar story.

The documentary airs tonight on PBS. I was fortunate to watch a screening of the film two months ago, during San Antonio’s Cinefesival Guadalupe, and I spent the better part of a day with Rodriguez, talking about his film, about Salazar and about the tumultuous times in the early 1970’s when Chicanos were rising, and when a journalist’s death became the iconic symbol of a political movement.

We spoke at San Antonio’s El Mirador restaurant. The conversation expanded in concentric circles: from the Chicano uprising in Los Angeles and the teargas canister that took Salazar’s life, to what Rodriguez called the “victimology” of Salazar’s death and the life, motives and background of a man who lived and died at the border between two cultures, and at the cusp of a Chicano awakening.

The following is an excerpt of a long conversation in the Sobremesa tradition, shared between several cups of coffee, in a restaurant filled with a typical Sunday breakfast crowd.

Ruben Salazar: Mad in the Middle airs Tuesday, April 29 on PBS, at 9pm EDT.