Supervisors Approve East L.A. March Commemorating 1970 Protest

The county Board of Supervisors has overruled the Sheriff’s Department and granted Chicano activists a permit to march in East Los Angeles this summer to commemorate the 20th anniversary of a chaotic anti-war march that ended in the death of newsman Ruben Salazar.

Prodded by Supervisor Ed Edelman, the supervisors on a 3-1 vote Thursday overturned the sheriff’s denial of a request for a parade permit by the Los Angeles members of the 1990 National Chicano Moratorium Committee for a march Aug. 25 along Atlantic and Whittier boulevards.

The request was rejected two months ago by sheriff’s officials at the East Los Angeles station who said the 3-mile march would unduly disrupt traffic and business along the proposed route and would cost too much. Overtime pay for deputies was estimated at $37,400.

Some merchants on Whittier Boulevard also were fearful of a reoccurrence of violence that marred the march on Aug. 29, 1970. More than 200 people were arrested, 60 others were injured and three people died in the march’s violent aftermath. Among the dead was Salazar, then a Times columnist and news director at Spanish-language television station KMEX.

Parade organizers were pleased with the decision, saying that concerns about violence were overblown.

“It was a smoke-screen excuse to deny us our rights,” said Carlos Montes, co-chairman of the committee organizing the parade.

An estimated 10,000 people may participate in the march to mark what organizers say is a significant chapter in the modern history of U.S. residents of Mexican descent.

About 20,000 protesters marched 20 years ago to decry the high casualty rate among Chicano soldiers in Vietnam. But the march turned violent and rioting and looting ensued along Whittier Boulevard. Businesses there suffered $1 million in damages.

In the violence, Salazar died inside a bar when he was struck by a tear-gas projectile fired by a sheriff’s deputy. A coroner’s inquest later found that the newsman died accidentally, but many Chicano activists believe that Salazar, then 42, was murdered.

Although other observances have been held in the past to mark the 1970 march, some Whittier Boulevard merchants said they wanted no part of another march this year.