Fotos: When Zeta Read At Flor Y Canto

Michael Sedano

Fotos Michael V. Sedano.Copyright 1973, 2008.

Click on an image for a richer visual experience.

In Saturday's guest column, "When Zeta Met Hunter and rascuache became gonzo," Gregg Barrios, conducts an arresting examination of the chicano originator of "Gonzo" journalism, Oscar "Zeta" Acosta and Zeta's friendship with Hunter S. Thompson, who took credit for Acosta's creation and vindicated himself by writing prolifically in the distinctive style.

Barrios refers to the first Festival de Flor y Canto, held in 1973 at the University of Southern California, where Acosta read the autopsy chapter from his outstanding autobiograpical novel, Revolt of the Cockroach People. Click this link to view the thirty minute reading. Acosta's reading is doubly moving, first, because of its subject matter, and second because of Acosta's emotional response to his recounting an autopsy of a chicano murdered in jail by police. A perfect crime.

The first Festival de Flor Y Canto brought together a pantheon of notable literary giants. Subsequent festivals in New Mexico and Texas failed to equal the energy, breadth, and greatness of the California event, but all left behind published anthologies. At any rate, only the Los Angeles event left a videotaped record. Many of these writers now are dead. Acosta. Ricardo Sánchez. Abelardo Delgado. Tomás Rivera. raúlrsalinas. Omar Salinas. As this first generation of writers passes, the videos provide the only means to appreciate these writers in propria persona, in their own voice. Alarmingly, these videos may be endangered.

I was dumbfounded when I learned of the Google video of Acosta's reading. Ironically, this is currently the only publicly available video document of the festival, that I can locate. Not even the University of Southern California has copies of the videos. In California, only the University of California, Riverside library has them, some forty tapes in the obsolete U-Matic 3/4" cassette format. Even with top notch conservation, it's likely that these old tapes have begun to deteriorate. For this reason, I have recently begun a project to digitize these programs to DVD. 

If possible, the DVDs will include the outtakes. Working with USC's El Centro Chicano and the university archivist, Claude Zachary, the project targets a newly revised and updated edition of the published anthology, to feature diachronic exemplars from those writers, expanded to include new work from the present generation of writers. Included in the proposed anthology will be a multimedia component, including the videos, interviews with surviving artists and participants, and the still photos I shot during the 1973 conference.

Here is a suite of Zeta photos, along with other people Gregg Barrios mentions in his La Bloga guest column. (Remember to click on the small fotos for an enlarged image).

Acosta steps into the crowd milling about the artist entrance. A beautiful woman catches his eye. He wraps an arm tentatively around her shoulder. They are introduced and she smiles in joy as Acosta pulls her into his chest. Cherchez la femme, que no? The scene recalls the incident early in Revolt of the Cockroach People where Acosta's persona, the lecherous Brown Z. Buffalo, narrates fondling a pair of underage teenaged girls during a political protest.

Now Frank "Pancho del Rancho" Sifuentes, a key organizer of the festival, joins the waiting artists. All horniness aside, Zeta points angrily at the television production trucks. They proclaim the name of the company, "Tom Reddin Productions." Reddin, former chief of the LAPD, is a blood enemy to chicana, chicano and antiwar activists. Interesting sidenote: seen over Sifuentes' right shoulder is Juan Felipe Herrera, who has become one of today's more notable chicano poets.

Sifuentes' face shows his concern at Acosta's reluctance to take the stage. Poet Alurista stands at Acosta's right shoulder, his serious rostro mirroring Sifuentes' belief of Zeta's threat not to read, out of Acosta's ire at being co-opted into helping Reddin's company. The crisis seemingly averted, Acosta enters the hall and stands at the back to enjoy the program.

Acosta's straightforward outspokenness is one facet of rascuachismo, as Gregg Barrios quotes critic Tomás Ybarra-Frausto, who observes, It is a witty, irreverent, and impertinent posture. Here, Ybarra-Frausto chats with Rolando Hinojosa-Smith and Tomás Rivera.

When Acosta takes the stage, he's not mollified. Acosta pauses at the lectern then explodes. He  points angrily at the television cameras. "Turn those fucking things off!" Acosta shouts at full volume, then repeats himself, "Turn the fucking cameras off!" He accuses Reddin of being an enemy of the people--specifically a chicano killer. Acosta declares his complete unwillingness to do anything that would put money into the pig's pocket and refuses to begin the program until the cameras are turned off.

Acosta stands in silent rage awaiting the departure of Reddin's employees. Pianist Javier Pacheco doesn't know what to do. Pacheco's role is to time the speakers and play a few notes to signal the end of the speaker's segment. The anger of the moment probably won't be calmed even by Mozart, so Pacheco stares helplessly into the house. Listen to the Google video and near the start, and at the 18 minute mark, you'll hear Pacheco's tinkling notes, that Zeta ignores, since so much of his alloted time was consumed in the delay.

Finally, the camera operators get direction from the truck outside. They remove their headphones and slink out of the hall. What I didn't realize until last year when the Google video surfaced, Reddin's director pulled a slick move. The cameraman turned off the camera's red light but allowed the cameras to continue shooting. 

None of Acosta's outburst makes the video. The Google video begins just after Zeta removes his shirt to reveal the netted garment you view in the videotaped reading and these fotos.

The tryptych captures Acosta as he chokes up recounting how the coroner peels back the corpse's face and scalp to reveal the sand-filled cranium and the small bag holding Robert Fernandez' brain.

His reading winds to a close and Acosta has grown distraught. He grabs his clothing as he walks off stage. By the time he reaches the back of the hall he's broken down in tears. In the distance you see poet Roberto Vargas grimacing at the incident while poet raúlrsalinas wraps a comforting arm around the broken Oscar "Buffalo Z. Brown, Zeta" Acosta.

Published Anthologies
Festival I - Festival de flor y Canto : an anthology of Chicano literature / Editorial Committee, Alurista ... [et al.] ; publication arrangements. Silas Abrego, F. A. Cervantes, Mary Ann Pacheco. Los Angeles : University of Southern California Press, 1976.

Festival II and III - Festival flor y canto II : an anthology of Chicano literature from the festival held March 12-16, 1975, Austin, Texas. Albuquerque, N. M. : Pajarito Publications, (1979?)

Videoprogramming
Click here to conduct Melvyl search on "Festival de Flor Y Canto".

Gallery Prints
For information about gallery-quality prints of Zeta or other Flor Y Canto artists, visit readraza.com or email here.

That's August's second Tuesday. Remember, La Bloga welcomes your comments and inquiries on this and every column. To discuss or leave a comment, click on the Comments counter below. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists who have extended remarks, book or cultural reviews, or something interesting to add. If you'd like an invitation, click here.

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c/s

When Zeta Met Hunter

And rascuache became gonzo

BY GREGG BARRIOS

Originally published 7/30/2008 at San Antonio Current

Nearly 40 years after an uneasy friendship between Hunter S. Thompson and Oscar Zeta Acosta created gonzo journalism, the urban legend that Thompson alone was its genesis persists while Acosta’s collaboration has been virtually whitewashed out of the picture.

Last month, on a program about the recently released documentary film Gonzo, Charlie Rose remarked: “Thompson was a maverick journalist. He is the creator of gonzo journalism — that made reporters not just witnesses but central figures of their stories.”

There is a telling moment in Gonzo that flies in the face of such assessments. It is a reenactment featuring the actual audiotapes that Acosta and Thompson made on the freewheeling road trips recounted in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

“We are looking for the American Dream, and we were told it was somewhere in this area,” Acosta says to a waitress at a roadside taco stand. Thompson then asks about the quality of the stand’s “5 for $1” tacos. Acosta’s retort is priceless: “Don’t judge a taco by its price.”

The late poet raúlrsalinas and Acosta were part of the first Floricanto Chicano Literary festival held at USC in 1973.

“Zeta was a very important person,” Salinas told an interviewer, “an optimist, a dreamer, always encouraging things to change. But the Anglo establishment exploited his talent. In his case it was Hunter Thompson. That guy stole Brown Buffalo’s gonzo style; he turned it into mass-produced merchandise.”

Oscar Z. Acosta, born a Tejano in 1935 in El Chuco, grew up in California. He later became a lawyer and part of the Chicano cultural and civil-rights movimiento in the late 1960s. He ran as a Raza Unida candidate for sheriff of Los Angeles County in 1970. Despite a minuscule campaign budget, he came in second with more than 100,000 votes. His platform: Abolish the police department.

Later that year he journeyed to Aspen to help Thompson campaign for sheriff in the Colorado town. One look at the respective campaign posters shows how Thompson appropriated the Chicano power symbol for a gonzo fist.

Shortly thereafter, Oscar approached Hunter for a favor. Would he write a piece on the death of Los Angeles Times columnist Ruben Salazar at the hands of an L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy and the cover-up by the L.A. police that had left the Chicano barrios in an uproar? “Strange Rumblings in Aztlán,” published in Rolling Stone in April 1971, was a groundbreaking piece. Acosta’s righteous Chicano flow and rascuache-influenced voice resonates passionately in Thompson’s prose. In the interaction between Zeta and Hunter, gonzo was born.

During Thompson and Acosta’s research for “Rumblings” and again after it was published, the two compadres undertook a road trip as Raoul Duke and Dr. Gonzo — the dope generation equivalents of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, el Gordo y el Flaco, or Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady. The resultant narrative, “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” appeared as a two-part series in Rolling Stone with the byline Raoul Duke.

In its 25th-anniversary tribute to “Fear and Loathing,” Rolling Stone called it a “literary byproduct” and “a happenstance of artistic genius.”

Acosta felt Thompson had betrayed him. Later, in a letter to Playboy Forum, Acosta accused Thompson of appropriating all the credit for gonzo journalism. “My God! Hunter has stolen my soul,” he reportedly told his editor. “He has taken my best lines and used me.”

Acosta threatened to sue Rolling Stone and prevent the book version from being published. The magazine relented and forged a deal: Zeta would not receive credit as co-author of Fear and Loathing, but to validate his participation in the writing, a dated photo of Acosta and Thompson in Las Vegas would appear on the back cover.

In return, Rolling Stone’s Straight Arrow Books would publish two novels by Acosta. Additionally, Rolling Stone was required to refer to him in all print publicity as “a creator of Gonzo Journalism.”

Acosta published two major American novels in the gonzo style in less than two years: Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo in 1972 and The Revolt of the Cockroach People in 1973, his version of “Rumblings in Aztlán.” He was lauded as one of the first novelists of the Chicano literary renaissance. But, by the end of the following year, he vanished in Mazatlán. No one has discovered under what circumstances he died or if he is still alive.

Thompson later wrote a long, moving obituary, “The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat,” in which he wrote, “Zeta was too weird to live and to rare to die.”

Still, Hunter wasn’t about to wax poetic about his friend’s death and quickly sold “Banshee” to the movies. The result? Where the Buffalo Roam, a Dumb and Dumber type comedy with Bill Murray as Hunter. Oscar’s character, played by Peter Boyle, is no longer Samoan or Chicano, but a Rumanian attorney named Lazlo.

In 1997, I met Thompson at a book signing on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood. He seemed genuinely touched when I mentioned my involvement in the Raza Unida Party in Crystal City. Afterward, he offered me a ride in his limo. I had parked near the infamous Viper Room off Sunset, then owned by Johnny Depp, who later portrayed Thompson in Terry Gilliam’s film version of Fear, with Benicio Del Toro as Acosta.

Inside the limo, Thompson adjusted a wrist splint and juggled to sign my books without spilling his drink. Finally, in disgust, he handed over a roll of signed bookplates. “Let’s see if these are worth more some day.”

I had brought a copy of the 25th-anniversary edition of Fear that Modern Library had published the previous year. The famous Vegas photo was on the cover, but Acosta had been cropped out and only the quizzical Thompson remained.

I was about to ask him why he had betrayed Oscar’s legacy by approving the change when we reached my car. As I drove away, I honked at Thompson, now standing outside the Viper on the exact spot where the young actor River Phoenix had died of a drug overdose.

Hunter did his best to stand at attention, then shouted into the neon night, “¡Qué viva la raza!” He then saluted and raised his clenched fist in a sign of Chicano Power, or perhaps his own gonzo fist.

“Is Zeta a hero? A myth?” Salinas told an Acosta biographer. “I guess it depends on whom you ask. The older Chicano generation has a deep affection for Brown Buffalo, but young people know very little, if anything, about him. Tú sabes? They know almost nothing about el movimiento.” •

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Acosta gonzo

Oscar Z. Acosta’s most important work remains in print and on video. This list highlights the best.

His two gonzo novels The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and The Revolt of the Cockroach People (Vintage paperbacks) contain an introduction by Thompson and an afterward by Acosta’s son, Marco.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson is required reading to see who influenced whom in this ultimate gonzo novel in search of the American Dream. The Modern Library edition also contains “Strange Rumblings in Aztlán,” the first time Zeta and Hunter appear together in print.

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: The Criterion Collection DVD of Terry Gilliam’s film contains a supplementary disc that spotlights Acosta. Included are a short bio, photos, a 30-minute reading of Revolt by Acosta at the 1973 Floricanto Festival, and a recording of Thompson reading his gonzo obit for Acosta.

Acosta’s gonzo reading from Revolt is also available online at:
video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4138728998208728904


— Gregg Barrios

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Backgrounder: Rasquachismo

Chicano art critic Tomás Ybarra-Frausto defines rasquachi or rascuache as: “ ... a bawdy, spunky conciousness. To seek to subvert and turn ruling paradigms upside-down. It is a witty, irreverent, and impertinent posture that recodes and moves outside established boundaries. Rascuachismo is an underdog perspective.”

Current contributor and culture critic Pablo Miguel Martínez summed it up in last week’s profile of artist David Zamora Casas as “the art of making do with what you’ve got, no matter how meager, and turning it into something beautiful.”

Yolanda Broyles-Gonzáles, in her book Teatro Campesino, defined it thusly: “Rasquachismo, or the Rasquachi Aesthetic (all spellings are acceptable), encompasses a shared memory system of performance elements grounded in a working-class, underdog perspective.”

Photo captions:
Thompson and Acosta in Las Vegas in a photo dated April 16, 1971. The image appears on the back cover of the first edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

A 25th-anniversary Fear and Loathing (and other stories) features the same photo, sans Acosta.


La Bloga happily welcomes Gregg Barrios as our Saturday guest columnist. Thanks go to Gregg's editors at San Antonio Current for permission to reprint article and art from the July 30, 2008 issue. Click link in title to view the article at San Antonio Current. Please join La Bloga on Tuesday, August 12, 2008, for photos from the Festival de Flor Y Canto referred to in Gregg's article.