These tensions ultimately fed into the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943, in which white servicemen and civilians violently targeted Mexican American people and other minority groups who wore zoot suits. Still, the trial did lasting damage, especially since the media’s coverage of the entire ordeal villainized the Mexican American community as violent and dangerous. All the same, 12 of the 17 defendants received prison sentences, though they were later acquitted of all charges in 1944. However, this was a highly reactionary decision, since the police didn’t actually have sufficient evidence to link anyone to Díaz’s murder.
He died shortly after being taken to the hospital, and his death led the Los Angeles Police Department to arrest 17 young Mexican American men. In August of 1942, a man named José Gallardo Díaz was found nearly dead on a road near a swimming hole outside of Los Angeles known as the Sleepy Lagoon. Valdez’s Zoot Suit is based on the real-life Sleepy Lagoon murder trial, which took place in early 1943. Valdez lives in San Juan Bautista, California and received the National Medal of Arts in 2015. He has since directed many films-including the well-known La Bamba in 1987-and won a number of awards. All the while, he wrote political plays that were comedic yet emotionally striking, including The Dark Root of a Scream in 1967, Bernabé in 1970, and Zoot Suit in 1979, to name just a few. Valdez also founded another theater organization called TENAZ, which he moved once again when he resettled just south of San Francisco in 1971.
He then moved to Fresno, where he reestablished the cultural center while teaching at Fresno State College. El Teatro Campesino quickly became popular, but Valdez decided to leave the company in 1967, at which point he founded a Chicano cultural center in Del Rey, California. The company was made up of farmers, and Valdez served as its artistic director, primarily putting on short political plays about the importance of farmers’ unions.
After graduating, Valdez spent some time in the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and then he founded his own theater company, El Teatro Campesino. He then attended San Jose State College and focused more seriously on theater, producing his first play, The Shrunken Head of Pancho, when he was a senior. All the same, Valdez was a good student and even appeared rather frequently on a local television show when he was a teenager in high school. The second of 10 children, he rarely stayed in one place long enough to become acquainted with a specific school system, since his family constantly moved to follow the best seasonal crops. Luis Valdez was born in Delano, California to migrant farmers.
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