Zoot Suits

I disagree with the statement declared by the Mayor of Los Angeles that the Zoot Suit Riots did not spring from racism. I believe that racism was the main reason on why the riot occurred. Racism happens when one believes that his or her race is superior than the other. This can be seen when Edward Duran Ayers, a spokesman for the L.A County Sheriff's Department declared that "the Mexicans were descendants of blood-thirsty Aztecs." He also added that the Mexican way of fighting is much more violent than that of Anglo-Saxon. In his words, "all he (mexican) knows and feels is a desire to use a knife or some lethal weapon." (The Good War, p. 207) To add to that, the newspaper La Opinion published that "the marines and soldiers

Since the zoot suits were so different and frowned upon by middle class citizens, society took to discriminating against pachucos, calling them criminals and gangsters. The military servicemen especially had strife with them. A growing conflict between the servicemen and the zoot-suiters would erupt in a historic event known as the Zoot Suit Riots. Despite the fact that many Mexican Americans were enlisted in the military, most Euro-American servicemen viewed pachucos as draft dodgers and regarded them as unpatriotic because of the unnecessary amount of

In the 1960’s, the Hippie Movement was lead by Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, and during this time one of the primary purposes was to separate hippies who were, followers of the Hippie Movement, from the mainstream materialistic society in the United States to establish social change. (“Hippie Subculture”). The followers of the Hippie Movement otherwise known as hippies have, “Evolved from the beats of the 1950’s and the bohemians of the decades before that, but it would be hard to see them as coalescing into anything that amounted to a distinct social movement before about 1966” (“Families and Communes” 87). Hippies preached love and were against violence. Hippies at the time were in opposition to the Vietnam War and the cruelty against

These “increases in arrests resulted more from changes in the law and in police practices than from changes in Mexican American behavior. Specifically, new immigration and draft laws for adults and curfew ordinances for juveniles, created new classes of laws that Mexican Americans violated, increasing the arrest statistics” (Escobar, 1996). The LAPD also employed selective enforcement in barrios than in white sections like the curfew ordinance as an example. This evidence strongly supports Escobar’s argument that the LAPD was more inclined towards the harsh treatment of Mexican Americans. Escobar focuses more on this than Tovares did throughout the film.

As diverse as the city of Los Angeles is, it has a history of racial tension and civil unrest. From 1910, the start of the Mexican Revolution and World War I when President Theodore Roosevelt instituted the “brown scare” (Coerver, 2001), to 1913, when the California Alien Land Act prohibited Japanese immigrants and citizens of Japanese descent from owning land in California, to 1934, when 3000 Chinese immigrants were displaced to make way for Union Station, to 1942, when 110,000 Japanese Americans were forced into internment camps, Los Angeles has historically been the center of racial controversy and tension (“Year by Year,” 1999). In 1943, Los Angeles was also full of young African Americans and Mexican Americans trying to protest the racism in the American culture by expressing themselves with their own music, clothing, culture, and style (Cosgrove, 1985). By the time of the Sleepy Lagoon murder in 1942, the stage had been set for the Zoot Suit Riots that occurred in June 1943. Although the riots only lasted ten days, the ramifications ranged from cultural repression on the part of many Mexican American families, to political activism on the part of others, and the beginning of reform within the Los Angeles Police Department.

Discourse from newspapers fostered public hysteria. A raised hand coming from a Pachuco that was misinterpreted for a Nazi salute started the riot in 1943 (Pagán pg 22). As attacks from White servicemen, civilians, and police officers expanded to all Mexican Americans and even African Americans, community members began to retaliate (Escobar Pg 2). The rioting didn’t subside until U.S War Department declared L.A “out of bounds” to military personnel (PBS).Yet, the goal of servicemen rioting was to exercise the power to humiliate and shame Mexicans back into their own private spaces by stripping the Zoot suits off(Pagán pg 30).

As mentioned before Greek ritual theatre honored the gods and where added in plays, for Medieval Theatre religious ritual was used in the form of creating plays to teach about the bible. In Medieval Theatre, mystery, mortality and miracle were used to create their stories and to honor the birth and rebirth. Both Greek and Medieval follow the ritual of birth, rebirth and the cycle of death. Rituals became a tradition. Even though modern theatre does not follow honorable gods or religion, we do honor culture. Ancient theatre is still being used in modern theatre because their stories are still being told till this day. The play Zoot Suit has a different spin off from early traditions; this is because Zoot Suit expressions the birth and rebirth

Though many people became hippies or just supported the hippies, there were a number of Americans who did not approve of the hippie lifestyle and culture. When Ronald Regan was the governor of California, he once defined a hippie as someone “who looked like Tarzan, walked like Jane, and smelled like Cheetah.”Along with stating this, he did not support the way hippies thought life should be lived in America (Chepesiuk 1). The violence increased as the population of hippies got larger and violence was greatly increased after a black male was stabbed at a California “free music festival” (Firm 128). The number of drug arrests and rapes raised as more criminals moved in to take advantage of the young, free living people (Chepesiuk 1). Hippie icons began to die of drug overdoses and the outraged emotions of the hippies who looked up to them, eventually led to more violence. Along with the violence came more antiwar movements (Firm 128). There were not only antiwar movements but also political, environmental, religious, and more. To organize together, hippies would use word of mouth, letters, and posters to get a large movement or rally together for a specific cause that they believed in (Chepesiuk 2).

Counter-culture progressed in the early 20th century and represented the lifestyle of the young, who opposed dominant values and behaviors in their society. The young would create protest movements to oppose the culture of the modern American society. Throughout Professor Corey’s lectures I learned various types of counter cultural dating back to the era of the moderns, the beats, SDS, Port Huron statement, and from the novel “What Maggie Knew”. Each of these counter-cultural subjects was tempered by an opposing value that triggered to start a counter culture era of new dominance, in the way they see the world. The Moderns era consist of intellectuals and youths in the 1920s.

The aims of the hippie counter culture were to end the war in Vietnam, spread the use of psychedelic drugs, achieve equal social and civil rights for all and they aimed to question the money-orientation system that their parents had raised them in. The Vietnam war initiated the

Although SDS had a number of issues they were passionate about in the mid-to-late 1960s, their most crucial point of discussion revolved around the Vietnam War. It could be argued that the advent of the war was one of the factors that contributed to the increasing militancy of the group, the group eventually dissolving into multiple factions including the Weathermen. Similarly, the hippie counterculture eventually developed a strong anti-war sentiment regarding the American intervention in Vietnam. However, the doctrine of love and pacifism resulted in the hippies never developing militant behaviors in the way that the members of SDS did. This emphasis on non-violence, as the 60s and 70s went on, became an increasingly valuable point in which the hippies diverged from other groups that shared similar foundational philosophies given that the growing unrest in America resulted in, for many groups including SDS, more violent

It was the summer of ‘69, and the air of Bethel, New York, reeked of pot, history making psychedelic guitar riffs, and teenage rebellion. The three day music festival, Woodstock, was the epitome of the peace movements during the sixties and seventies, encompassing three days of undeniable harmony in which the youth of 1960 was united, embodying ideals of peace akin, demolishing the foundation of conformity within society. The newly surfacing culture brought about by the “hippies” and further popularized during the festival countered the commonplace unchallenged mainstream culture that the majority of U.S. citizens were confined to. Half a million people peaceably gathered from August fifteenth to the eighteenth, demonstrating the ability

"What is not illusionary is the reality of a new culture of opposition. It grows out of the disintegration of the old forms, vinyl and aerosol institutions that carry all the inane and destructive values of privatism; competition, commercialism, profitability and elitism…It's not a "youth thing" by now but a generational event; chronological age is the only current phase". The previous quote was written by Andrew Kopkind in Rolling Stone on the Woodstock festival observing that a new culture was immersing from the roots of the adult American life (1960's 198). Words such as "counter-culture", "establishment", "non-violence", "free-love" and "Woodstock" were not even in the American vocabulary until the war against North Vietnam started in

With a country in shambles as a result of the Vietnam War, thousands of young men and women took their stand through rallies, protests, and concerts. A large number of young Americans opposed the war; with a common feeling of anti-war, thousands of youths united as one. This new culture of opposition spread like wild fire with alternative lifestyles blossoming, people coming together and reviving their communal efforts, demonstrated in the Woodstock Art and Music festival. The use of drugs, mainly marijuana, became a staple in the community of anti-war youths. The countercultures’ radical views and actions caused American society to turn its head and look to the young. They set themselves out as a

Fifty-seven years ago the Hippie; “a young person who reject the mores of established society and advocates a non-violent ethnic” made a tremendous amount of differences in the lives around them and within themselves. They brought change worldwide and stood risen for their beliefs - stood risen to the point whereby many suggest that the defiance of the hippie generation has reincarnated into the lives of the youth today, still rising. Their ability to openly resist against the government, and society itself left the world and mostly their elders in awe. In relation with the youth of today – it in is in a crowd of thousands when you