Death of Rubén Salazar

FRANK ROMERO: People have told me that I use color very well. I love bright colors, and in fact I’m fascinated with acrylic paint because the colors are so brilliant. In my training, I was told that purple is the opposite of yellow and all of that stuff, but I don’t use that as a theory, I just react instinctively to the way I feel. It’s emotional.

The part of me that’s Mexican or Latino, I think of Mexicans like hot vibrant color. You see that in the way the houses are painted in Mexico and East LA. I grew up in East Los Angeles, and we always had problems and feared the sheriff’s department because their policy was to come down hard on minorities.

“The Death of Ruben Salazar” is one of my police brutality series. He was a newspaper reporter for the LA Times. He was reporting on a demonstration by Latinas against the Vietnam War in ‘70–‘71, and he, after work, they went out with some friends and had a beer at the local saloon, Silver Dollar, and the police got some disturbance call and shot a tear gas canister into the building and hit him in the head and killed him instantly. No one was ever prosecuted. No one was ever found guilty for anything they did. He became a martyr.

If you look at the paintings, they’re very beautiful. They’re in lovely pastel colors and so forth like that. So people are attracted to the image, with these, on an abstract level, and then they see what it’s about, then I hope somehow that they come away with the message.

With color, when one paints into a wet background it tints the colors you apply, and of course the skill is in trying to keep them pure. I’ll do a painting and, you have to excuse me, because I’m not supposed to say this, but I’ll do painting in 30 or 40 minutes and, I’m supposed say 65 years and 40 minutes. I think I stole that from Picasso. But I really enjoy painting in oils and lately even more so in acrylic, because the paint is drying so quickly that you really have to work very fast. Sometimes when you put this paint down the light catches it and it makes it glow. To me it’s a challenge to paint very quickly and assuredly with no mistakes. You just have to do it.

EDUARDO DÍAZ: My name is Eduardo Díaz. I am the director of the Latino Center at the Smithsonian Institution. I picked ‘Death of Rubén Salazar’ by Frank Romero as my favorite painting in the “Our America” show because it resonates with me very personally.

I lived the Chicano Movement. In 1970, I was a student at San Diego State, worked part-time at a south San Diego Barrio school and was a member of MEChA, a Chicano student activist organization. I participated in establishing Chicano Studies at the university and establishing Chicano Park in San Diego’s Logan Heights Barrio in April 1970 and was involved with the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego’s Balboa Park.

Unfortunately, I did not participate in the April 29, 1970 rally and police riot in east LA. There was a subsequent rally there in response to what happened on April 29 which I did attend. The death of Rubén Salazar was a very serious blow to those of us involved in the Chicano Movement. Rubén Salazar was a writer for the L.A. Times and was active in the civil rights battles of the 1960s.

When Chicanos rallied against the Vietnam War on August 29, 1970, the Los Angeles County sheriff fired tear gas canisters into the Silver Dollar Bar where Salazar was struck and killed. Frank Romero’s painting is stunning and brings the reality of the conflict, the sheriff’s deliberate overreaction, and the tragic sense of loss of an important voice and defender of our community, to the viewer in a way that is direct and beautifully rendered.

Romero painted “Death of Rubén Salazar” on the scale of Mexico’s revolutionary murals and naturally, used the brilliant colors of the east L.A. barrio. In the painting to the right, a movie marquee announces ‘La Muerte de Rubén Salazar” that is now playing. At the left of the Silver Dollar, the Casa de Cambio suggests not only the exchange of paychecks and cash but also the idea of change in the community. Officers, clouds of gas, buildings, and lowriders all share the bold brushwork and fiery colors of graffiti, but this exuberance masks the emotional toll that the painting of the scene really exacted.

Romero acknowledges that it takes years to think through and to paint these episodes in the life of his community. He did not grow up thinking of himself as a Chicano but embraced that identity after years of working with three other Latino artists in an informal group known as “Los Four,” ‘The Four.’

The year he painted “Death of Rubén Salazar,” Romero said that “There’s all this talk about America not having a culture other than McDonald’s. I do have a culture. It’s Aztlán.” He was referring to the mythical birthplace of the Aztec people and the transcendent cultural marker of the Chicano Movement. Every time I see “Death of Rubén Salazar” I’m transported back in time to my more formative years, to a place in time that is important not only to me but for this nation. This singular painting compels us all to come to terms with injustice and the right of the people to redress. It stands as a beautiful testimony to the true power of great art.

Frank Romero’s “Death of Rubén Salazar” is great art in the truest sense of the canon of American art.

E. CARMEN RAMOS: This is Frank Romero “Death of Rubén Salazar” from 1986, and the painting comes from a larger series of works that he has titled his police brutality series. It depicts the events of August 29, 1970, a day in which the Chicano community of Los Angeles came out to protest the Vietnam War. The event is known as the Chicano Moratorium, and it was one of the largest anti-war protests by Mexican Americans in the United States history. On this day Rubén Salazar, who was a very important Mexican American journalist who worked for the Los Angeles times as well as a local Spanish-language TV station went out to cover the moratorium. After the largely peaceful demonstration was over, he retired with his crew to the Silver Dollar Cafe. Reports say that the police heard of disturbances at the silver dollar and sent deputies to the scene one of which shot the gas projectile into the Silver Dollar which hit Salazar’s head and killed him instantly.

In this painting, Romero reflects on whose Salazar was and his legacy in history. One of the interesting things about this canvas is how Romero collapses several moments in time. In the center of the canvas we see the actual events of August 29, specifically when one sheriff shot a projectile through the roof, although when the event occurred the projectile went through the door. Then, we see Romero thinking about the impact and legacy of that event but also Rubén Salazar’s life. We see the boulevard theatre which is an actual theater that existed in East Los Angeles and existed on the street but several blocks down the road. On the marquee, Romero has written “La Muerie De Rubén Salzar,” the death of Rubén Salazar, as if the film were being screened in this movie theater about the life of Rubén Salazar.

Salazar was an important journalist who during the late 1960s wrote and chronicled the development of the Chicano movement for civil rights. He penned a very important essay called “What is a Chicano and What is it that Chicanos Want,” in which he defined Chicano as a Mexican American with a non-anglo image of himself. After his death he became a martyr, and this painting pays tribute to his legacy and also documents the tragic circumstances of his death.

Frank Romero was part of a generation of young Chicano artists working since the late nineteen sixties but began to consciously explore aspects of Chicano history and culture. He formed part of one of the first Chicano collectives, Los Four, that included other artists in our collection like John Valadez. He and other artists who are part of Los Four were muralists, and many of them painted murals throughout the streets of Los Angeles. In this painting, we see him referring in many ways to that tradition of muralism, but at the same time the historical subject of this painting urges us to view it as a contemporary history painting that presents pivotal events that shaped American history.