LOS ANGELES (AP) - Raul Ruiz, a journalist, professor and longtime activist in the Chicano movement in Southern California, has died. He was 78.
Friends tell the Los Angeles Times that Ruiz died Thursday in his sleep. No cause was given.
The Times says Ruiz experienced a political awakening while taking college classes in Latin American history.
He went on to found underground newspapers that criticized police brutality, apathetic school administrators and the mainstream media’s stereotypical depiction of Mexican Americans.
Later Ruiz co-edited La Raza, a pioneering paper that documented Mexican American life in the US. His photo of a sheriff’s deputy firing a tear-gas canister during a 1970 antiwar march ran on the front page of the Times. It became an iconic image of the Chicano movement.
Ruiz taught at Cal State Northridge for 45 years before retiring in 2015.
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