Chapter 9 - Death at and Afterlives of the Silver Dollar Café in Chicanx Cultural Production

Summary

On August 29, 1970, Mexican American journalist Rubén Salazar was killed while covering the Chicano Moratorium in East Los Angeles. A gas projectile shot by a Los Angeles sheriff’s deputy ended Salazar’s life inside a local bar, the Silver Dollar Café, where he took a break from the demonstration occurring outside. In death, Salazar became a martyr of the Chicano Movement. And, as this chapter argues, the bar similarly experienced a mythical recasting in Chicanx activist consciousness and cultural production. This chapter traces two such afterlives of the Silver Dollar: first, in the photographic work of Raul Ruiz; and second, through the historical detective novel by Maria Nieto, Pig behind the Bear. I show how each respective text sets in motion a type of site-specific transformative witnessing and call to action that reverberates through time. Specifically, I analyze how this is done through the perspective of women viewing the incident of August 29 outside and inside the bar. I see this focalization as a blueprint in the establishment of the Silver Dollar Café as an ongoing political and cultural site of enduring Chicanx social change.