Saturday, August 29, 2020

Chicano Moratorium: No War on Vietnam

FUSION, Aug. 29, 2016; Crystal Quintero, Pfc. Sandoval, Ashley Wells (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly


(Fusion) White war-loving racism strikes again, as Los Angeles police kill four peaceful demonstrators marching against imperial U.S. involvement in Vietnam. It was called the "Chicano Moratorium" in 1970, when 30,000 marched through East Los Angeles. Meet Rosalio Munoz, the man keeping the memory of it alive.
What was the Chicano Moratorium?
Chicanos are people of Mexican descent blending indigenous, European, and other blood.
.
It was formally known as the National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War, a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican-American groups to organize opposition to the U.S. War on Vietnam.

Led by activists from local colleges and members of the Brown Berets, a group with roots in the high school student movement that staged walkouts in 1968, the coalition peaked with a August 29th, 1970 march in East Los Angeles that drew 30,000 demonstrators [Note 1].

The march was described by scholar Lorena Oropeza as "one of the largest assemblages of Mexican Americans ever" [2]. It was the largest anti-war action taken by any single ethnic group in the USA. It was second in size only to the massive U.S. immigration reform protests of 2006 [3].

The event was reportedly watched by the Los Angeles FBI office, who later "refused to release the entire contents" of their documentation and [COINTELPRO] activity [4].

The Chicano Moratorium march in East L.A. was organized by Chicano activists Ramsés Noriega and Rosalio Muñoz [5]. Muñoz was the leader of the Chicano Moratorium Committee until Nov. 1970.

On that date he was ousted by Eustacio (Frank) Martinez, a police informer and agent provocateur for the ATF (Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms) Enforcement Division of the U.S. Treasury Department, who committed illegal acts as a pretext to allow the police to raid the headquarters of the committee and make arrests [6].

Muñoz had returned as co-chair of the Moratorium in February 1971 [7]. More

No comments:

Post a Comment