On August 29, 1970, between 20,000 and 30,000 people marched peacefully through East Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam War. By the end of the afternoon, sheriff's deputies had broken up the rally, Whittier Boulevard was burning, and three people were dead, among them Rubén Salazar, the most prominent Mexican American journalist in the country.
This final book of the Chicano Civil Rights series tells the story of the National Chicano Moratorium and the years around it. It examines the war that took more than 58,000 American lives and the evidence that Mexican Americans died at a disproportionate rate. It places the Chicano Moratorium within the national antiwar movement, from the first campus teach-ins to the killings at Kent State and Jackson State. And it follows the Brown Berets from a youth group in East Los Angeles to one of the best-known organizations of the Chicano Movement.
Inside you'll find:
- Vietnam casualties, the Guzmán study, and Medal of Honor recipients such as Roy Benavidez
- The national antiwar movement, the 1969 Moratorium, Kent State, and Jackson State
- The Brown Berets, the El Barrio Free Clinic, surveillance, and the women who founded Las Adelitas de Aztlán
- August 29, 1970, and the killing of Rubén Salazar at the Silver Dollar Café
- Police harassment in the barrio, from "Bloody Christmas" to the Rampart scandal, with a personal note from co-author Armando Oscar Olmos
- Nixon, Operation Intercept, and the war on drugs
- Community power: MALDEF, voting rights, Chicana leadership, and community health clinics
- Chicano art, murals, theater, and literature
- The movement's legacy, from Proposition 187 and the 2006 marches to the fight for ethnic studies
Vietnam, the Brown Berets, and the Chicano Moratorium shows what the movement won, what it lost, and why its work remains unfinished.