In editing the Selected Writings of Ruben Salazar, Mario T. García intended to remind those familiar with Salazar’s journalism how insightful he was and to introduce him to the generation born since his death. The 38-page introduction as well as the 230 pages of selected essays do just that. The volume competently fills the need for a compilation of background and original material on this respected Mexican American journalist, who tragically died at the hands of a Los Angeles county sheriff during a now historic Chicano protest march in East Los Angeles on August 29, 1970. In the Southwest, Salazar gained prominence among college-educated Mexican Americans for his coverage of their civil rights activities during the 1960s.
For someone who worked to gather and interpret information, Ruben Salazar wrote precious little on himself. Consequently, Mario García is able to provide only scant information on Salazar’s formative experiences or the early influences on his development. García does offer a benign explication of the changes at the Los Angeles Times during the tenure of Salazar’s employment, and he concisely summarizes Salazar’s presentations on the subjects he covered between 1955 and 1970. The selections that García publishes, over 80 in total, provide abundant information on the liberal social issues and moderate reformist views current during the 15-year period that the book spans. Salazar’s temperate judgment, primarily concerned with civic fairness, earned him the professional respect of many readers and, apparently, the enmity of recalcitrant Los Angeles conservatives. García, however, does not probe deeply into the civic context and the political web of Salazar’s final year at the Times, nor into his straitened professional circumstances at his death.
García endeavors to contemporize his biographic subject by interpretively casting him in the role of a multicontext border-crosser, a person who, during his lifetime, traversed various terrains and their junctures. For the “border” image to energize the empathy of diverse readers, however, would require more personal material than the editor obtained and more interpretation than he is able to deploy. As “border” is used by García there are no troubling resonances, contradictions, or ambiguities; “border” here is an overused excuse for the absence of a questioning analysis of the subject, as well as the context of his life and the aftermath of his death. Users and beneficiaries of the Salazar heritage and memory will appreciate the publication of selected materials, and none will be disturbed, even though neither Salazar nor his family wished notoriety. Salazar never claimed to speak for a personified movement or to have influence among activists. And the “movement” did not make him a hero—although specific individuals did, perhaps like García, for their own as yet insufficiently explored reasons. If the materials are obtuse and individuals have been reticent in providing information on the private side of Salazar’s life, surely at least the basis of the status he assumed as a result of the circumstances of his death can be queried.
There are indeed many questions that Border Correspondent poses to historians interested in substances, ironies, and meanings that during periods of transition are associated with public individuals, such as Salazar, and the circumstances of their lives. Although not unaware of the truisms applied to the times, García has underplayed the interactive relations between the personal and the political, between documentable substances and their mythic dimensions. Presumably Salazar’s future biographer will not hesitate to examine the interconnectedness of his life, work, death, and memory; and the project of this potential future historian should neither dissociate these elements nor hierarchically prioritize them, nor should he or she blur or deny conflicts. Now, close to 30 years after Salazar’s violent death, two contrasting aspects of borders remain: conflicts and syntheses. One might ask how far a journey, how painful a route, was the road traveled by Ruben Salazar, a border-crosser who went from the El Paso jail to the Los Angeles morgue. Or, was perhaps the journey but a pleasant trip on the old Sunset Limited, except for the regrettable juncture at the end. In his short introduction to Border Correspondent García unfortunately does not evidence much critical energy for exploring the intricacies of his subject’s journey.