A Man’s Legacy: Salazar’s Work Continues to Inspire : Role Model: Ruben Salazar died 20 years ago this week. But his life continues to influence a new generation of Latino journalists.

As a child, I once pointed out a portrait of Goethe in the “Guiness Book of World Records” to my mother, reading aloud that he was believed to have had the highest IQ.

“Oh really? What was he?” my mother asked, glancing at the portrait.

Learning that he had been a writer, she said, “What a shame. He could have been a doctor.”

I can only wonder if my mother would have reacted the same way if she had known about Ruben Salazar. I never met Salazar. I was never able to follow his coverage of the war in Vietnam, or the one in East Los Angeles. I never witnessed the sparks he set with his often unsettling column which spoke of and for the Chicano community. I never knew him because I was not quite 3 years old when he was killed by a bullet-shaped tear gas cannister during a riot. I would learn years later that this event would affect me as well.

I was introduced to Salazar in college, in my first Chicano studies course. At the time I was an economics student, a freshman still shaking the San Joaquin Valley farm dust from my shoes. While the professor treated the 1970 East Los Angeles riot and Salazar’s death with importance, even this event could only receive brief attention in a 10-week course trying to encompass as much Chicano history as possible. But the story of Salazar’s life struck me because it was my first introduction to a Chicano journalist and the first time the career of journalism had been spoken of with respect and honor.

It’s not that I grew up oblivious to the press or that my family was biased against journalists. I suspect that my upbringing was typical of many Mexican-American families, especially in a rural setting. My mother worked hard in the fields of California with the desire that her children would have more than she did--a chance at a college education.

But in such dreams, the hope is often to see one’s son or daughter prosper as a doctor, lawyer or executive. The contributions and benefits of journalism can be relatively intangible and seem esoteric to someone who has worked hard with her hands to put food on the table.

Many Latino Americans are first concerned with survival -- matters of life and death. Taking the time to read a newspaper, much less write, is a lower priority. In my predominantly Latino rural high school, several doctors and nurses came to recruit students into health care. A Latina lawyer even spoke once. But never a writer. My English teachers never suggested journalism as a career. My sociology classes never discussed Chicano culture. My history classes certainly never mentioned Salazar.

Yet, Salazar has a place in history. He saw the importance of journalism and recognized the need for journalists who understood the Latino community. At the time of his death, he wrote a weekly column for the Los Angeles Times which focused on Latino issues and was the news director for the Latino-oriented television station, KMEX. His colleague, Frank del Olmo, recalls Salazar felt that at this point “for the first time he was talking to his own people instead of trying to explain Chicanos to Anglos.”

As a Chicana journalist, I cannot help but respect his opinions and dedication to his work and people, and to be inspired to continue in the path he helped clear. As journalists, we must build bridges between the Latino and mainstream worlds. But as Salazar saw, we should not simply try to offer explanations.

In fact, Salazar once noted that trying to explain the term “Chicano” is an impossible task. “Chicanos say that if you have to ask you’ll never understand, much less become a Chicano. Actually the word Chicano is as difficult to define as ‘soul.”’

Many mainstream journalists have never been exposed to Chicanismo, or any part of Latino culture. It is vital to our society to have journalists who do have such understanding. Salazar and his colleagues knew this. His death was part of the inspiration behind the 1972 founding of what is now the California Chicano News Media Assn., a coalition of journalists trying to increase the number of Latinos in the field. I am a product of the group, and have benefitted from the professional advice and scholarship money it has alloted.

But while the efforts of this and other groups has helped bring Latinos into journalism, I know that if Salazar were alive, he would be saddened by the fact that there is still so much to do. Hispanics make up about 2.8% of the staff at 56 of the top newspapers in the country and only 1.5 % of their managers, according to a report delvivered at the 1990 National Assn. of Hispanic Journalists convention.

Even more unfortunate, it does not appear that the numbers will significantly improve in the near future. Young Latinos, and minorities in general, are simply not showing enough interest in the field. A 1989 study by the School of Journalism at Ohio State University found that only 3.3% of journalism and mass communications students are Hispanic, far below the national Hispanic population figure of 7.8 %. What’s more, schools report that figure is dropping.

At UC Santa Barbara, I have witnessed the trend. In my four years at the student newspaper, I have seen a handful of Latino students enter the office, only to slip out later -- most often to give more time to school, or a part-time job. Many Latino students are the first in their families afforded the luxury of a college education. Many of our parents can only see working at the school newspaper as wasted energy. As their children, we feel obligated not to squander our opportunity on such “fancies.” And, we also know that it is important to our communities that some of us become doctors, lawyer and executives.

But Ruben Salazar’s example made me feel comfortable in telling my parents that they were losing their daughter the economics student to journalism. And as a journalist, he was hard to ignore. There are some that believe he was a threat to Anglo Establishment forces. Some even believe his death was not accidental.

I will not judge these suspicions. I can only hope that more Latinos will come to see journalism in a similar light, and that students wishing to become writers will not always be told they should become doctors.