Nathan Legge
Tommy Stickles
Juan Maciel



Acosta has a radio interview with Zanzibar.
In December: The trial of the St. Basil 21 (lasts a
month).
Roland Zanzibar- Works at the KMEX. He is the
news director at the Chicano station. Helps
popularize Acosta for sheriff and his roles in the
revolution. He always helps the Chicano
movement by reporting on everything that is
going on in East LA. Also denounces police
brutality in the LA Times.



Acosta gives his closing statements and the
jury finds six guilty and fifteen innocent.
Jean Fisher tells him of corruption in the jury.
Jean Fisher- One of the jury members in the
case of the St. Basil 21. Tells Acosta about how
the jury was rigged. That one or more of the
jury members was influenced by an outside
source that knew the practice of law.





A rally is held at USC on behalf of all Chicano candidates for
office. 168 – Chicano celebrities coopt the Chicano Militants.
170 – “[Anthony] Quinn brings one star after another to make his
or her confession. They each have the same message. They each
apologize, rationalize, and explain why in the past it had not been
possible to come out for their raza.”
Acosta tells off a crowd of hippie protestors at UCLA.
Anthony Quinn- “ the most famous Chicano of them all” (pg 169).
An actor. Helps the Chicano movement in speeches and rallies.
Corky Gonzales- Started in Colorado and is a big protestor.
Creates and helps many rallies through out the country. Helps
plan one of the biggest demonstrations of the Chicano Movement.
Known to be the second biggest name in the revolution next to
Cesar Chavez. Acosta meets him at the UCLA student union.




The Court of Appeals rules that the East Los
Angeles Thirteen are free of indictment.
Acosta comes in second place for sheriff. He
retreats to Acapulco with his brother Jesus.
Jesus- Acosta’s brother. Looks almost like a twin
compared to Acosta. Helps Acosta get away from
the movement and also inspires him to try harder
in the movement when he goes back.
Acosta returns to LA to find that Zanzibar has
been killed and Corky arrested for his murder.
Things seem to be falling apart.




Acosta is debriefed with raw footage of the Chicano riots in LA
during the summer. His first impression is that the riots were
incited by the police and made to look like protests.
201 – “We need to get our own land. We need our own
government. We must have our own flag and our own country.
Nothing less will save the existence of the Chicanos. . . . I did not,
nor did any other speaker tell them to take up arms prior to
August 29, 1970.”
204 – Pintos are named for the Pentecostal Chicanos that started
the organizations. These organizations are to help former gang
members, convicts, and drug addicts to deal with and improve the
quality of the slums that led them to becoming undereducated
criminals.
205 – “ . . . it is obvious to me that if I never went to Acapulco,
everything would still be the same.”



Chicano Liberation Front protests against the
war and to express outrage over the death of
Zanzibar.
The Court of Appeals allows Acosta to
subpoena all of the judges that selected citizens
to be on the jury that indicted Corky and the
other defendants.
209 – “Back from the land . . . . With
misdemeanor gun possession.”



Acosta examines the judges involved with assembling
the jury that indicted Corky and others for the murder
of Zanzibar. The Grand Jury is not ruled to be
defective, so Corky and his affiliates are still tried.
216 – “So when we enter government buildings, I carry
my own briefcase with Sailor Boy’s black .357 Magnum
under the yellow pads. We are determined to go out in
a blaze of glory when the time comes.”
248 – “They are vatos locos! Nobody tells crazy guys to
do. . . . It is they who have converted me and driven me
to the brink of this madness.”

Corky’s trial continues.

Acosta presents witnesses for his defense.

251 – “All of them . . . . Would like them to
be.”


The jury rules that the Biltmore Seven are
innocent. Upon leaving, Acosta, Pelon, Sailor
Boy, and Gilbert plant detonate bomb in a
courthouse lavatory.
A small epilogue tells of Acosta’s subsequent
trek to Frisco Bay, Mexico.



Historia: The Literary Making of Chicana and
Chicano History (2001) by Louis Gerard Mendoza
Mexicanos: A History of Mexicans in the United
States – 2nd ed. (2009) by Manuel G. Gonzales
Race and War on Poverty: From Watts to East L.A.
(1964) by Robert Bauman

Spanish Conquistadors of 1509 AD.

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848.


217 – Dr. Joan Moore “First of all, the name is
relatively new. It has been used throughout the
years to refer to persons whose ancestors were
native to this continent and whose last names are
Spanish, or Spanish-sounding. Originally, it
referred to a poor immigrant from Mexico, a
mexicano, shorten by slang to Chicano.”
213 – UMAS and other student organizations
supported El Movimiento Estudiantil de Aztlan
(MECHA, MEChA, or the Student Movement of
Aztlan) thought up by none other than Corky
Gonzales.



196 – “According to [Manning] Marable, the
insidious conflation of racial and ethnic categories
is revealed by examining the ‘white’ America:
‘[To] be ‘white’ in contemporary American society
says nothing directly about an individual’s cultural
heritage, ethnicity, or genetic background. To be
‘white’ in racial terms simply means that one’s life
chances improve dramatically over those of
nonwhites, especially in terms of credit, capital,
quality housing, healthcare, political influence, and
equitable treatment in the criminal justice system’
(189).”
204 “In a 1973 letter . . . . like myself.”


Moderate: The conventional view held that race is
unimportant; that all can be equal in US society.
Radical: Separatist cultural nationalism. Heritage
should be a matter of pride. And besides, US
society is deeply flawed, unethical, and inherently
corrupt.

Cesar Chavez ≈ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Corky Gonzales ≈ Malcolm X



250 – “He [Cesar] is still my leader, but I no
longer worship him. I am pushing for Corky
because when things go political, I will push
for the more militant of the two.”
“The East LA 13 vs. The LA Supreme Court”:
“ . . . . [T]he Mexican Americans ultimately rest
their claims on the right of prior possession
and ancestry. And whether we speak of
historical or Einsteinian time, it was only a few
moons ago that this Southwest was inhabited
exclusively by Indians” (18).



208 – The year is 1968. Lyndon Johnson realizes that many
Mexican Americans prefer his political rivals in the Democratic
Primary. Johnson has the Vietnam War to worry about, along with
conservative Democrats who are not at all favorable to the
Chicano Movement. His response is to attempt to alienate radical
Chicano groups—hoping that their complaints will not be heard
by a vast audience. Reaction is swift and immediate. La Raza
Unida was a political party founded by Jose Guteirrez and Corky
Gonzales. Both of these men are radical counterparts to Cesar
Chavez.
Jose Gutierrez starts Mexican American Youth Organization
while in a San Antonia Catholic college. This organization would
later begin La Raza Unida conferences in El Paso.
The Raza Unida party found early success in several states, but
upon its first national convention in El Paso, September of 1972,
the party was torn between conventional and radical members.
Gutierrez was willing to cooperate with the other national parties
(Republicans and Democrats) to try and sway their political
agendas with votes. Gonzales wanted to turn the party into a third
conventional party for Chicanos. Moderation won out, and
Gutierrez became the chair of LRUP. Shortly after, the party made
little success in any state.


United Mexican American Students
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL4rQH
Kza9Y&feature=related
212 -- “Beginning at the college level, student militancy
soon spread to younger students. On 3 March, 1968,
Latino dissatisfaction with the school system became
evident at the high school level. On that fateful day,
Chicano students in East Los Angeles, in an effort to get
school administrations to address their many pressing
problems, walked out of several local high schools...
They were led by Sal Castro, a Lincoln High School
teacher…
The “blow outs,” as they were called, soon erupted in
other schools of what was then the largest school district
in the country. Altogether, including UMAS members
Montezuma Esparza, from UCLA, and Carlos Muñoz Jr.,
an ex-serviceman, now chapter president at Los Angeles
State College, were indicted on conspiracy charges, which
were dropped two years later.”







Muñoz on 192. (Acosta 53).
205 – Black Eagle and Mangas represent the
Chicano students, who were the central
proprietors of the Chicano Movement in LA.
216 – Anti-war protests – “The most memorable
demonstration . . . . angry demonstrations
continued for months.”
Chicano Militants = Brown Berets
Roland Zanzibar = Ruben Salazar
Stonewall = Hunter S. Thompson
La Voz = La Raza



214 – The Brown Berets – “A paramilitary group,
founded in East Los Angeles in 1967 by David
Sanches, Carlos Montez, and Ralph Ramirez, all of
them college students at the time. . . . They also
took special interest in the youth and play a
conspicuous role in the 1968 school walkouts.
Sanchez, Montes, and Ramirez were among the
strike leaders put on trial afterward.”
(Chapters 14-15)
215 – Ralph Guzman of UCLA in 1969 –
“Constituting about 11 percent of the population in
the Southwest in 1960, Mexicanos apparently
represented close to 20 percent of the region’s
soldiers killed in battle during the following
decade.”



216 – Like the Black Panthers after whom they modeled
themselves, the Brown Berets “gradually changed their
emphasis from confrontation to more productive and
concrete forms of community service, including educational
projects and soup kitchens. Beset by internal dissension, the
Brown Berets announced their disbandment in 1972.”
La Raza Unida: In 1974, Corky Gonzales and his followers
left the party, and by 1976 the party had dissolved to
nothing.
213 – Juan Gomez-Quiñomes: “At its best, the work of
student activists has been seminal in its influence on much
later activity as well as generously courageous in its
militancy; at its worst, it has been anarchic and selfindulgent, given to rhetoric and organizational
inconsistency.” (Lawrence of Arabia)




Gonzo Journalism
206 – (Bottom) – “Imagining the Self: Fact,
Fiction, and History”
205 – “Despite his self-proclaimed egotism,
apparently in the books and in his personal
papers, the fact remains that Acosta is, in many
ways, a product of his times.”
206 – “Reading Acosta’s . . . . Formation of
political consciousness.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=famNeios
TVk