Snapshots of Change
That is exactly what journalist, photographer and activist Raul Ruiz captured for La Raza, a newspaper and magazine in East Los Angeles led by Chicano activists and creatives in the last half of the ’60s and ’70s.
Ruiz and the magazine focused on covering the struggles of Chicanos (Mexican Americans), and his photographs captured the community’s mobilization that flourished despite hardships. Ruiz and La Raza covered school walkouts, marches and other forms of protest.
The Library recently acquired the Raul Ruiz Chicano Movement Collection, some 17,500 photos by Ruiz and original page layouts for La Raza. It also acquired nearly 10,000 pages of manuscripts, which include original correspondence, the unpublished draft of Ruiz’s book on Los Angeles Times journalist Ruben Salazar and handwritten minutes from La Raza staff meetings.
As an undergraduate at California State University, Los Angeles, Ruiz became active in student and community organizing during the height of the civil rights era. Once he began reporting for La Raza, it was apparent to him what role the publication played for the community.
“A lot of us wanted to bring out the truth of who we were,” Ruiz recalled years later on “Artbound,” a documentary series by PBS SoCal. “We wanted to come out with our own news, with our own version, with our own story.”
After La Raza’s dissolution in 1977, Ruiz became a college professor, teaching Chicano studies and journalism at Cal State, Northridge, until his retirement in 2015. He died in 2019, leaving a legacy as an important voice of the Chicano movement and as a storyteller who captured a critical era in American history from the perspective of those who lived it.