‘Member the Chicano Moratorium?

The 40th anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium has come and gone, with little fanfare anywhere except California. It’s unfortunate, when you think about it, because it means in a way that we haven’t really learned our lesson, even in the face of laws like SB 1070.

I emailed NPR a story about the Moratorium to please reconsider their usual policy of ignoring Latino issues and make an exception for this. I got an auto response thanking me for my feedback. Do a Google News search and you only get barely two pages of results.

It’s really just one.

Not that I’m an expert on the Moratorium (our very own Carlos Guerra says he was scheduled to be the next speaker before the chingazos started) but here’s the Wikipedia version:

The National Chicano Moratorium Committee and other groups put on the protest on Aug. 29, 1970 to protest the Vietname War and other issues. About 30,000 people were at the rally in East LA. After going on for a while, LAPD remembered what they do best and started to break up the protest, and things inevitably got violent.

Four people died, including Rubén Salazar, then-columnist for The Los Angeles Times. The LA County Sheriff’s Office still is thinking up excuses as to why they can’t release records about the police actions that day, most especially related to Salazar’s death.

They came, they saw, they were chased away and 40 years later, nobody cares.

Qué gacho.