Chicano Anti-War Movement Action: The Chicano Moratorium

Title

Chicano Anti-War Movement Action: The Chicano Moratorium

Description

The Chicano Moratorium march was held in Los Angeles on August 29, 1970, with more than 20,000 Mexican Americans of all ages marching through East Los Angeles to protest the Vietnam War and the effects of the disproportionate draft and heavy casualties among Mexican American youth.

The National Chicano Moratorium Committee Against The Vietnam War was a movement of Chicano anti-war activists that built a broad-based coalition of Mexican American groups to oppose the Vietnam War. At the height of the war, around 10 percent of U.S. residents were Latino/Mexican American but they made up about 20 percent off all U.S. troops killed in Vietnam. With fewer Latinos/Mexican Americans eligible for draft deferments due to their lower rate of college enrollment, opposition to the draft grew.

The Moratorium march is widely considered one of the largest and most significant political demonstrations in Mexican American history. On that day, as protesters gathered for a rally at Laguna Park, Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies used the pretext of a theft nearby to brutally break up the gathering, resulting in three deaths. Among the dead was Ruben Salazar, a Los Angeles Times columnist who was hit in the head by a tear gas canister launched by police while he was seated in a bar after the march. The violence demonstrated by police at the march increased distrust and hostility of the community toward law enforcement and increased support for The Chicano Movement.

Additional Online Information

1970: National Chicano Moratorium - A Latinx Resource Guide: Civil Rights Cases and Events in the United States

Thousands of Mexican American antiwar activists march in Chicano Moratorium | August 29, 1970 | HISTORY

Chicano Moratorium: A Question of Freedom (1971)

UCLA Film & Television Archive helps keep full picture of L.A.’s Chicano history alive

Protests, Yesterday And Today

“50 Years Later: The Political and Social Impacts of the 1970 Chicano Moratorium”

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic Six: Slide 005