The Great Latino Revolt, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and the Birth of the Latino Insurrection. By Burton Moore.

The Great Latino Revolt, Oscar Zeta Acosta, and the Birth of the Latino Insurrection. By Burton Moore. Edited by Roberto Cabello-Argandoña and Yasmeen Namazie. ISBN 978-1482773781. $17.95.

This is a joint publication of Floricanto Press and Berkeley Presses. The Brown Buffalo, as he was known in the barrios of Los Angeles among street people, at the height of the riots in in the late 1960’s and 7O’s, was the epitome of the Movimiento. He was smart, rebellious, unpredictable, occasionally high on drugs, but terrifyingly honest to himself and the world. This is the story of the rage and fury that swept the streets and courts of LA during the gestation of the Movimiento Chicano and particularly on Saturday August 29th, 1970, and of the remarkable life of Oscar Zeta Acosta, a radical civil-rights lawyer who defended Chicano activists, won new rights for Latinos, and challenged the LA estab1ishment.  Ruben Salazar, the first latino L.A. Times 

journalist, was accidentally killed in the Silver Dollar Bar by the Sheriff of Los Angeles.  A coroner's inquest ruled the shooting of the tear gas canister a homicide, but Tom Wilson, the sheriff's deputy who fired the shot that killed Salazar, was never prosecuted. At the time, many believed the homicide was a premeditated assassination of a prominent, vocal member of the Los Angeles Chicano community.

The riot started when the owners of the Green Mill liquor store, located around the corner from the Silver Dollar Bar on Whittier Boulevard, called in a complaint about people stealing from them. Deputies responded and a fight broke out. Later on that day, cadets from the nearby Sheriff's Academy were bussed to the area and marched into the park. A fight ensued, with the untrained cadets being beaten up. This led to more rioting. The Green Mill liquor store is still located at the same place on Whittier Boulevard. The owners later denied contacting the Sheriff's Department.

Half a century ago on Saturday, August 29, 1970, about 20,000 anti-war Chicano protestors marched through the streets of East Los Angeles barrio to demand an end to the Vietnam War for the Chicano Moratorium Committee had organized the protest to protest that Latino men were dying in the war far out of proportion to their numbers in the population. The issues were that Mexican Americans and other Latinos were dying in Indochina in higher proportions, but also Latinos were more likely than non-Hispanic whites to experience poverty, poor housing conditions, substandard education, and police brutality

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