Revolt of the Cockroach People Pg. 134-158

1. Revolt of the Cockroach People Pg. 134-158 Nathan Legge Tommy Stickles Juan Maciel

2. Chapter 11 • 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.

3. Chapter 12 • 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.

4. Chapter 13 • 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.

5. Chapter 14 • 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.

6. Chapter 15 • Acosta is debriefed with raw footage of the Chicano riots in LA during the summer. His first impression isthat 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.”

7. Chapter 16 • 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.”

8. Chapter 17 • 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.”

9. Chapter 18 • Corky’s trial continues. • Acosta presents witnesses for his defense. • 251 – “All of them . . . . Would like them to be.”

10. Chapter 19 • The jury rules that the Biltmore Sevenare 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.

11. Chicano Movement“El Movimeinto”

12. Sources • 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

13. History • Spanish Conquistadors of 1509 AD. • Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, 1848.

14. “Chicano” • 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 MovimientoEstudiantil de Aztlan (MECHA, MEChA, or the Student Movement of Aztlan) thought up by none other than Corky Gonzales.

15. “White” • 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.”

16. Ideologies • 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

17. 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).

18. Johnson Administration • 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 RazaUnida 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 RazaUnida conferences in El Paso. • The RazaUnida 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.

19. UMAS • United Mexican American Students • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL4rQHKza9Y&feature=related

20. 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.”

21. Context • 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

22. 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.”

23. MECHA • 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 RazaUnida: 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 self-indulgent, given to rhetoric and organizational inconsistency.” (Lawrence of Arabia)

24. Identity • 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.”

25. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=famNeiosTVk