Love And Riot: Oscar Zeta Acosta And The Great Mexican American Revolt

by Burton Moore

Brown Buffalo, as he was known in the barrios of Los Angeles among street people, at the height of the riots in in the late 1960's and 70's, was the epitome of the Movimiento. He was smart, rebellious, unpredictable, occasionally high on drugs, but terrifyingly honest to himself and the world. This is the story of the rage and fury that swept LA during the gestation of the Movimiento Chicano and of the remarkable life of Oscar Zeta Acosta-- a radical civil-rights lawyer who defended Chicano activists, won new rights for Latinos, and challenged the LA establishment.

126 pages, Hardcover

First published August 29, 2003

Reviews

[Kim Fay · Rating 4 out of 5]

I came across this book while researching the Chicano movement in LA (and Ruben Salazar and Oscar Zeta Acosta). For anyone interested in that moment in history, I would say this book is a must-read. But I would add a caveat: read Acosta's novel, "Revolt of the Cockroach People," first. It took me a while to realize how autobiographical that novel is; this particular book, "Love & Riot," puts much of what happens in the novel into a larger context. It works well as a companion and as a footnote, but I wonder if readers might not be a little lost of they're not already familiar with the major events of the Chicano movement in LA. Thinking it over, I would say that my complaint is wishful thinking; I wish this book had been twice as long because the author clearly knows the situations and people involved.