The Zoot-Suit Riots - Essay Example

The Zoot-Suit Riots   The Zoot-Suit riots are one of the strangest of riots I have ever come across, may it be in reality or in books and newspapers.  They are remarkable event in that they defy simple classification.  They were not, in any conventional sense of the word, "riots."  No one was killed, no one sustained massive injuries, property damage was slight, and no major or minor judicial decisions stemmed from the riots.  There was no pattern to arrests; convictions were few and highly discretionary.  There were no political manifestos or heroes originating from the riots (Mazon 1). But it did cause damage to those involved. By the beginning of 1943, America was deeply engaged with the Second World War.  In Los Angeles, the city had already been emptied of its residents of Japanese ancestry.  Young Latinos, unlike their elders, were not content to stay within their barrios, but were spilling into downtown dance halls, movie houses, pool halls and clubs.  As young men are prone to do, many young Latino males distinguished themselves with distinctive hairdos and apparel.  They wore drapes which resembled the zoot suits worn in Harlem.  It was designed to be comfortable to dance in, and some believed that it was sometimes used as a signal that the wearer belonged to a club or gang.  Most Anglos called the outfit a zoot suit and assumed that only hoodlums wore them.  Long before the riots, Mexicans and Mexican Americans were the victims, and often the authors of many other descriptive names.  Now, due to the drapes, the term Zoot Suiters was attributed to this riot.  However, the Mexican American teenagers called themselves pachucos. (http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi07t.htm) The Zoot-Suit riot is believed to have begun with a rumor rather than on concrete evidence.  What the riots lacked in hard incriminating evidence, they made up for in a plethora of emotions, fantasies, and symbols.  On June 3, 1943, the Zoot-Suit riot began with a number of sailors claiming to have been beaten and robbed by Mexican pachucos.  In my opinion however, the riots may have begun on June 3, 1943, but surely not as a result of the event that happened on that day alone.  According to me, the Zoot-Suit riots were a result of enduring legacy of discrimination that the Mexican Americans suffered. In March and April of 1942, the entire Japanese and Japanese American population on the West Coast of the United States were deported to relocation centers located in the interior of the U.S..  Without the Japanese Americans around to focus the locals racial paranoia, Los Angeleans began to look toward the Zoot Suiters.  As a result, a "Mexican Crime Wave" was announced by local newspapers, and a special grand jury was appointed by the city of Los Angeles to investigate. (http://www.suavecito.com/history.htm) There were also specific events that occurred right before the Zoot-Suit riots actually began.  First, there was the case of the Sleepy Lagoon.  This ordeal began in August 1942 with the body of Jose Diaz found on a south-central city road.  The proximity of the mortally wounded Diaz to a ranch, where several Mexican American adolescents had scuffled on the preceding night, led to the mass arrest of suspected gang members.  The alleged crime had occurred near a swimming hole dubbed Sleepy Lagoon by Mexican American youngsters who were prevented from using the segregated public pools.  On January 12, 1943, convictions of first and second degree murders were handed down on twelve of the defendants.  Many of the judicial procedures initiated by the prosecution were stripping ceremonies in which the young pachucos were deprived of their identity, prestige and self-reliance.  However, this case brought about the formation of the Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee and the committee dismissed the charges and released the defendants.  Irrespective of the effective support of the committee, racism increased in the years to come (Mazon 20-28). In the months to come, the zoot-suit image underwent further elaborations at the hands of Al Capp and his "Zoot-Suit Yokum" cartoons.  More than any other individual or institution, Capp was reponsible for introducing the American public to the perils of zoot-suiterism.  Although Capp was attempting to satirize reality, it was reality that followed his cues (Mazon 33-35). In the May of 1943, there were minor, but telling disturbances which were a preamble to the most disruptive summer of the American home front.  The key military installations, the Coast Guard base, the navy compounds, and the operations base, along with the adjoining army facilities at Fort MacArthur were in close proximity to Mexican barrios.  This layout added a dimension to the conflicts between servicemen and the civilians in Los Angeles.  Instead of confrontations between civilians and servicemen, the newspapers recorded clashes between servicemen and zoot-suiters.  The young servicemen, predominantly white, trained for combat, piqued and depressed by the excesses and restraints of military life, enjoyed the immunities of soldiers in a second front - the fight against zoot suiters.  In the two weeks preceding the Zoot-Suit Riots, there were six incidents of violence between zoot-suiters and civilians with the majority of the civilian victims being Mexicans (Mazon 59).  As mentioned earlier, on June 3, 1943, a number of sailors claimed to have been beaten and robbed by Mexican pachucos.  The following evening, a mob of about 200 sailors, tired of boredom and fired up with bigotry, hired a fleet of cabs and rolled into East Los Angeles to beat up and strip the clothing off any young Latino male they could find. The authorities seemed to approve. Police made a few initial token arrests of sailors, but they were quickly released. This emboldened the sailors.  During the first three days of the disturbances, the general public had not been aware of the nature and perhaps the existence, of the riots.  By 7 June, civilians began to join servicemen in chasing, stripping, and occasionally beating zoot-suiters or non-zoot-suit wearing Mexicans and blacks (Mazon75).  By 11 June, both the army and navy were fully cognizant of the extent and nature of the servicemens behavior and they acknowledged the fact that completely innocent civilians had suffered at the hands of the servicemen.  Then the military authorities did what civil authorities would not. Navy and Army commanders sought to get control of their men by ordering that the City of Los Angeles be declared off-limits to military personnel.  Though there were little consequences for the rioters (servicemen and local law enforcement authorities alike), there was some public outcry.  On June 16th, 1943, Eleanor Roosevelt commented in her column that, "The question goes deeper than just suits.  It is a racial protest.  I have been worried for a long time about the Mexican racial situation.  It is a problem with roots going a long way back, and we do not always face these problems as we should." (http://www.laalmanac.com/history/hi07t.htm) (http://www.suavecito.com/history.htm) As during many other riots, even as a result of Zoot-Suit riots, investigation and human relations committees were appointed and the police department was instructed to train its officers to treat civilians equally.  The incidents were soon forgotten by general public.  As I see it, the helpless victims of this entire situation were the Latinos who were arrested during the riots and also those who otherwise suffered the effects of the riots. Bibliography Mazon, Mauricio. The Zoot-Suit Riots. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002. www.laalmanac.com . "Los Angeles Zoot Suit Riots". 17 April 2009 . www.suavecito.com. 17 April 2009. < http://www.suavecito.com/history.htm> Read More