Added to the National Register of Historic Places October 30, 2020

Every year on the eve of Memorial Day, a group of East LA volunteers stands vigil at the war memorials erected on two traffic islands across the street from Evergreen Cemetery in Boyle Heights. The area is often called Los Cinco Puntos, after the five streets that intersect there. It also represents an intersection of ideas about Chicano identity. 

On one hand, these memorials stand as proud reminders of the under-told story of Mexican Americans in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. They are monuments to the Chicanos who fought proudly for America, even when America wasn’t proud of them. 

But many of the children of these veterans saw the tradition of Chicano military service through a different lense. Los Cinco Puntos was also a symbolically potent starting point for the Chicano Moratorium March on December 20, 1969, the first large-scale protest in LA devoted to the impact of war on Mexican Americans. 

The Decades Before the March

The 1960s witnessed a political awakening for many groups, and Mexican Americans were no exception. They entered the ‘60s as a community forced to fight for its rights to basic services – even their rights to simply exist in America. The Great Depression had fueled discrimination against Mexican Americans, who were blamed for stealing jobs and government resources from whites. Laws were passed that made it harder to hire Mexican workers, and easier to deport them en masse. Under the Herbert Hoover administration, the Mexican Repatriation Program of the ‘30s led to the forced deportation of hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers from the US, the only time in the 20th century that their population had dipped. 

The Bracero Program opened up new economic opportunities for Mexican laborers during and after WWII. Chicano veterans could take advantage of the GI Bill, which gave them access to education and new industries, and helped many of them break into the middle class in the ‘40s and ‘50s. 

Still, by the ‘60s, decades of marginalization and immigration crackdowns left many Chicanos in LA without upward mobility, and limited access to basic healthcare. Infant mortality rates were rising. In 1968, Chicano student activists staged five days of walkouts (called “blowouts”) at east LA high schools, protesting their substandard treatment by teachers and administrators.

Chicano soldiers were also dying at disproportionately high rates in the Vietnam War. The American Patriots of Latino Heritage website states that 15% of the Californians killed in action in Vietnam were Latino, at a time when they made up just 7% of California’s population. While the Student Mobilizing Committee was active in antiwar activism around the country, their platforms didn’t make room for a distinctly Chicano perspective.

The Start of the Moratorium

In early December of 1969, a group of Mexican American activists gathered in Denver and formed the Chicano Moratorium Committee to protest the Vietnam War on a national scale. Co-chairing the Committee were two Angelenos: Rosalío Muñoz, head of the group Chale con el Draft (also the first Chicano to be elected student body president at UCLA), and David Sánchez, co-founder of the left wing pro-Chicano group the Brown Berets. 

The Chicano Moratorium planned a small-scale demonstration in LA for December 20, 1969, and publicized it with fliers and ads in La Raza magazine, proclaiming “MARCH AGAINST DEATH – Bring all our Carnales (brothers) home…ALIVE!” 

The march began at noon at the war memorials at Los Cinco Puntos, and kicked off with a recitation of names of the Mexican Americans who had died in Vietnam so far. Demonstrators walked south on Indiana Street then east on Michigan Avenue, six of them carrying a symbolic coffin to represent all the Chicano war dead. Their end point was Eugene A. Obregon Park, named after a Chicano Marine from LA who died in the Korean War. 

Some 2,000 people massed at the park to hear Muñoz, Sanchez and other Chicano activists. Representatives were on hand from the United Farm Workers, who were staging a separate rally across town on the same day in support of the Delano grape strike, led by Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta. Their point: Chicanos lay down their lives for a country that doesn’t treat them as equals. Something has to change.

The first Chicano Moratorium March drew attention from local and national press, attracted new members and encouraged the Committee to expand the scope of its platform. It also set the stage for much larger and more impactful demonstrations to come – especially the National Register-listed march that took place on August 29, 1970. That one brought out an estimated 30,000 demonstrators, and was met with violent repression by the LA Police Department and Sherriffs. Three demonstrators lost their lives that day.

But it all started with this very first march, a watershed moment for Chicano activism and identity, in LA and nationwide. 

Sources & Recommended Reading/Watching

+Chicano Moratorium March (12/20/69) NRHP nomination form

+NRHP Multiple Property Documentation Form: Latinos in Twentieth Century California

+Los Cinco Puntos (Los Angeles Conservancy)

+DOWNLOAD: La Raza Vol. II No. 10, December 1969 (U. of Arizona Library)

+DOCUMENTARY: Sal Castro & the 1968 East LA Walkouts (by Patt Morrison, produced by Alison Sotomayor)

+VIDEO INTERVIEW: The Chicano Moratorium: Looking Forward, 50 Years Later (LA Conservancy, 2020)

+About Us (American Patriots of Latino Heritage)

+Eastside veterans’ memorial square a place of pride yet source of division over its official name (LA Times, 2018)

+Zeferino and Julia Ramirez: Creating a War Memorial (Garfield High School website)

+”Chicano Rallies Hit War and Grape Firms” (Los Angeles Times, Dec 21, 1969; accessed via ProQuest Historical Newspapers)