Monday, August 13, 2012

Mapping Truth: Following the Paper Trail in the Murder of Ruben Salazar



A presentation by Raúl Ruíz at the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC)

WHEN: Wednesday, August 29, 2012
TIME: 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
WHERE: CSRC Library, 144 Haines Hall, UCLA Campus
COST: Free!

Please join the CSRC for a commemorative event in honor of the journalist, Ruben Salazar, slain 42 years ago at the Chicano Moratorium. The event will include a photo exhibit from the personal collection of Dr. Raúl Ruíz who will discuss his eyewitness account of that day's events. In addition, CSRC will launch its newest digital collection of the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Investigative Files into Mr. Salazar's homicide on the UCLA Digital Library server.

Dr. Raúl Ruíz is a professor of Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge. As a journalist activist in the 1960s and 1970s, he documented the Chicano Movement’s seminal events and created many of its most iconic images. From the student walkouts to the anti-war marches, Dr. Ruíz used photography and advocacy journalism to bring attention to La Causa Chicana. His forthcoming book, Silver Dollar Death: The Murder of Ruben Salazar, asks the question: “Why did Ruben Salazar, an American newsman, husband and father have to die covering a domestic news story?”

To learn more about the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center, visit its official website.

IN OTHER NEWS...

Hector Tobar, writing for the Los Angeles Times, reviews Rubén Martínez’s new book, Desert America: Boom and Bust in the New Old West (Metropolitan Books), where he notes, in part: “Martínez treats all the people he writes about, and the places where they live, with the kind of profound respect all too rare among the legions of Western writers who have preceded him. The result is an emotional and intellectually astute portrait of communities long neglected and misunderstood by American literature.” You may read the entire review here, and you may revisit (or read for the first time) my recent La Bloga post where I ask Rubén Martínez a few questions about his new book.


◙  Daniel Hernandez offers a evocative appreciation in the Los Angeles Times of Chavela Vargas on her recent passing and the memorial held in her honor at the Plaza Garibaldi near downtown Mexico City.  Here is a lovely passage where Hernandez describes her style:

When she sang, she'd sometimes lift her chin in a slow physical gesture, as if exposing both her dignity and wounds. At a microphone, she'd take her arms and raise them past her head, palms open, as though conjuring a ghost. Vargas might have laughed out loud if she was observing the memorial Monday night from the comforts of the Aztecs' underworld.

Chavela Vargas

◙ And the noting of another passing of another remarkable woman, Gregg Barrios, writing for the San Antonio Current, offers an appreciation of iconic film critic, Judith Crist, who was one of a kind.  Barrios observes, in part:

Crist was flexible and generous enough to change her mind about a film after initially giving a negative review or reviewing a genre film that wasn’t likely to play well in Middle America. After she panned 1967′s Casino Royale, the film’s screenwriter Woody Allen sent her his original script. She saw that it had been ripped to shreds and little remained of what he had written. She told him he was right. They became friends over the years, with Allen asking Crist to play a part in his film Stardust Memories. She initially didn’t review the Beatles’ A Hard Day’s Night since her TV audience wouldn’t consider a teen film. However, after her young son raved about it, Crist attended an afternoon showing and loved it. She told her editor she was leading her segment with a review of the Beatles film.

Judith Crist

◙ And of course, if you’ve been reading our tributes here at La Bloga, you know that we have lost our own amazing woman of many talents, tatiana de la tierra. I will end on that note and leave you with tatiana's lovely smile.

tatiana de la tierra

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