Essay On Zoot Suit Riots

As diverse as the city of Los Angeles is today, its history has had a lot of racial tension and civil unrest. During the 1940’s people of color were always seen as nothing better than a group of minorities, with the Zoot suit riots it showed just that. As a show of protest to how they they were unfairly treated Pachucos wore zoot suit as a means of political and social rebellion. What is a Pachuco and what are zoot suit one may ask, a Pachuco refers to a latino during the 1940’s who wore flamboyant attire or zoot suits, and used a certain slang, a hybrid of spanish and english. A zoot suit included flowing high waisted pegged pants, a long broad shouldered jacket, nice shoes and a chained wallet. These zoot suits were worn proudly by Mexican

“Just as Journalists, novelist, and propagandists appealed on behalf of servicemen went to emotions of empathy compassion and brotherhood the injunctions against zoot suiters solicited fantasies of revenge, retribution and annihilation” (Mazon). The press had from the start instigated and fueled hostility against zoot suit wearers and pachuco culture. One example, city newspapers began running stories about the “ juvenile war” being waged on the country streets by latino kids. During this disorder their daily and false accusations sparked up the flames. “The media constantly referred to the latino youth as delinquents, goons, and hoodlums” (Acuna). The media portrayed the chicano youth as a nuisance and applauded the servicemen for their “heroic” acts making the pride and joy of the public. Headline after headline, stories of how the servicemen were being mistreated making them the victims by only telling one side of the story, made civilians want to help the servicemen. Now not only were the servicemen beating and humiliating Zoot Suiters but civilians as well, because of what they read in newspapers, reasoning their violence by saying they were doing their part for the war

“The attacks represented a kind of ritualistic humiliation, not aimed to kill latinos but to put them in there place both by beatings and destroying their uniform” (Bruns). Since none of the sailors were getting arrested, these kinds of raids and violence made chicanos take matters into their own hands, fighting back and defending theirselves. One day over 200 marines and sailors from the navy went to east L.A. and whenever they spotted a young Mexican the boy was beaten in minutes. “Servicemen and civilians ran up and down mexican neighborhoods hunting for zoot suitors and the fight was on. One Mexican american woman yelled out, you disgrace your uniform!” (Griffith). There was a point where it was normal to see zoot suitors beaten and naked in the street. The reasoning that some sailors were giving for these acts was because there had been accusations of zoot suiters harassing women close to them. Despite precautions taken on the part of the military police and local authorities to control the situation, the servicemen continued to walk the streets of Los Angeles armed with clubs their attacks increased from Mexicans to African Americans as well. Finally on June 8th military officials have declared Los Angeles off limits to all military personnel; the next