The Silver Dollar Bar and Cafe
East Los Angeles, August 29th, 1970
Earlier this week marked the 51st anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium—a peaceful march down Whittier Boulevard in East Los Angeles, demanding the end of the Vietnam War and its disproportionate amount of loss of brown life. The march down the boulevard to Laguna Park erupted in mayhem and death, likely instigated and exacerbated by the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department.
At the end of August 29th, 1970, three people would lose their lives. One of which was an LA Times columnist named Ruben Salazar, a Chicano journalist with activist sympathies. He would be killed drinking a beer in the Silver Dollar Bar and Cafe, attempting to find a peaceful respite from the chaos outside.
He would be killed by Deputy Tom Wilson.
Skirmishes broke out in the streets after an alleged shoplifting incident at a nearby liquor store. A group of protestors caught in the madness ran into the dark of the establishment, located at the corner of Whittier and La Verne. Salazar, who often wrote about police brutality, had just sat down at the bar and ordered a beer. Wilson pursued the group and fired a wall-penetrating 10” tear gas canister through the cloth covered entrance. The round hit Salazar directly in the head and killed him instantly. Fibers from the entrance curtain were found in his skull.
Deputy Wilson claimed he mistakenly used the round meant for barricades rather than people because they look exactly the same. Here’s Wilson reenacting the event during its investigation.
The office of independent review ruled that Salazar was not intentionally targeted or surveilled by the sheriff’s deputies.
To this day suspicions remain, though the sad truth of this tragedy is likely in the sinister act of stupidity, the evil of incompetence married with unchecked power. Hunter S. Thompson would describe this in his Rolling Stone article about the incident, “Strange Rumblings in Aztlan”, published a year to the day later:
Ruben Salazar couldn’t possibly have been the victim of a conscious, high-level cop conspiracy to get rid of him by staging an “accidental death.” The incredible tale of half-mad stupidity and dangerous incompetence on every level of the law enforcement establishment was perhaps the most valuable thing to have come from the inquest. Nobody who heard that testimony could believe that the Los Angeles County sheriff’s department is capable of pulling off a delicate job like killing a newsman on purpose. Their handling of the Salazar case – from the day of the his death all the way to the end of the inquest – raised serious doubts about the wisdom of allowing cops to walk around loose on the street. A geek who can’t hit a 20 foot wide ceiling is not what you need, these days, to pull off a clean first-degree murder.
Maybe. And maybe these days it’s different.
Over the years, The Silver Dollar Bar has changed ownership several times and the property has been used for different shops, at one time even a church. Today it is a music store. A plaque on the front wall commemorates Ruben. Posters of him hang on the wall inside. An old Silver Dollar lighted sign hangs from the ceiling.
A mural commemorating the 50th anniversary sits diagonally across the intersection.
Laguna Park is now named Ruben F. Salazar Park.
And the Los Angeles Sheriffs Department still patrols unincorporated East Los Angeles.
