Chicano Moratorium May Have Saved Lives

“There Was a Time of Chicano Protest and Heat: Let’s Not Forget,” Commentary, Aug. 11: I too join Frank del Olmo in applauding the Chicano Moratorium Committee, which organized a massive protest in East Los Angeles on Aug. 29, 1970, against the Vietnam War and the disproportionate number of Latinos being killed in that war. To attack and ridicule the organizers of the upcoming commemoration, as Del Olmo suggests some might do, is to be unaware of our past.

In his book, “Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers & Vietnam,” professor Christian G. Appy notes, “Had the civil rights movement not brought attention to racial disproportions in Vietnam casualties, those disproportions almost certainly would have continued.” As a result of the criticism of the war by prominent black leaders--Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967, and Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Adam Clayton Powell and Dick Gregory, among others, well before 1967--the Department of Defense “took steps to readjust force levels in order to achieve an equitable proportion and employment” of blacks in Vietnam. Appy also observes that a detailed analysis of exactly what steps were taken has yet to be written. One can reasonably infer that the political heat of the Chicano protest, with some 20,000 people, was felt in Washington and probably saved some lives.

Gilberto Y. Moreno

North Hills