Oscar Zeta Acosta

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Oscar Zeta Acosta (April 8, 1935 – 1974?) was an American attorney, author, politician, and Chicano Movement activist. He is most famous for being the inspiration for the "Samoan" attorney in Hunter S. Thompson's book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

1 Life and career
2 Disappearance
3 Quotes about Acosta
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Life and career

Acosta was born in El Paso, Texas, and raised in a small San Joaquin Valley rural town near Modesto, California. Acosta's father was drafted during World War II, so young Oscar had to take care of the family. At times, Acosta felt like an outsider and he presents his feelings of alienation, mistrust, and dislocation in his works. He was both an intelligent and sensitive student.

After finishing high school, Acosta joined the U.S. Air Force. He then worked his way through college, becoming the first member of his family to do so. He attended night classes at San Francisco Law School and passed the California Bar exam in 1966. In 1967, Acosta began working as an antipoverty attorney for the East Oakland Legal Aid Society in Oakland, California.

In 1966 Acosta moved to East Los Angeles and joined the Chicano Movement as an activist attorney, defending Chicano groups and activists such as the Católicos por la Raza, Brown Berets member Carlos Montes, and other underserved members of the East L.A. barrio. His controversial defense earned him the ire of the LAPD, who considered the "Brown Pride" movement more dangerous than the Black Panthers. He was often followed and harassed by the LAPD.

In 1970, Acosta ran for sheriff of Los Angeles County against Peter Pitchess, and received more than 100,000 votes. During the campaign, he spent a couple of days in jail for contempt of court, and vowed that if he were elected, he would do away with the Sheriff's Department as it was then constituted. Acosta, known for loud ties and a flowered attaché case with a Chicano Power sticker, didn't come close to Sheriff Pitchess' 1,300,000 votes but did beat Everett Holladay, Monterey Park Chief of Police.

His first novel, Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, was published in 1972, followed in 1973 by The Revolt of the Cockroach People, a fictionalized version of the 1970 Chicano Moratorium.

In the summer of 1967 Acosta met gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson, who would in 1971 write an article on Acosta and the injustice in the barrios of East L.A. for Rolling Stone magazine titled "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan." This article also discusses the murder of Los Angeles Times columnist Ruben Salazar. When working on the article, Thompson and Acosta decided a trip to Las Vegas, Nevada was in order so that Salazar and the racial injustice of L.A. could be discussed openly. The trip has now been immortalized in the book and movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Acosta's photograph and biography appear on the back cover of early editions of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It is said that Thompson's publisher became nervous at Acosta's being mentioned by name in the book, together with Thompson's accounts of copious drug use by the two. Contacted by the publisher, Acosta refused an offer to have his name excised from the book. Acosta demanded that the book only be published on condition that his name be left in, and that his name and picture be prominently displayed on the cover. They settled on having his name removed but his picture left on the back cover.

[edit] Disappearance

In 1974, Acosta disappeared while traveling in Mexico. His son, Marco Acosta, believes that he was the last person to talk to his father. In May 1974, Acosta telephoned his son, telling him that he was "about to board a boat full of white snow." Marco is later quoted in reference to his father's disappearance: "The body was never found, but we surmise that probably, knowing the people he was involved with, he ended up mouthing off, getting into a fight, and getting killed."[1]

According to Thompson's obituary of Acosta "Fear and Loathing in the Graveyard of the Weird: The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat", Acosta was a powerful attorney and preacher but suffered from an addiction to amphetamines as well as a predilection for LSD-25. The obituary alternates from vitriolic to touching, but on the whole conveys the sense that Acosta was a man who felt he was doomed to martyrdom and destined to be a messiah, but was brought down by his inability to be either. The article was Thompson's response to rumors that Acosta was alive somewhere around Miami.

In reference to Acosta's death, Thompson allegedly told interviewers, "...and someone onboard shot him two or three times in the stomach, with a .45. Then threw him over the side."

[edit] Quotes about Acosta

"Oscar was not into serious street-fighting, but he was hell on wheels in a bar brawl. Any combination of a 250 lb [113 kg] Mexican and LSD-25 is a potentially terminal menace for anything it can reach - but when the alleged Mexican is in fact a profoundly angry Chicano lawyer with no fear at all of anything that walks on less than three legs and a de facto suicidal conviction that he will die at the age of 33 - just like Jesus Christ - you have a serious piece of work on your hands. Especially if the bastard is already 33 1/2 years old with a head full of Sandoz acid, a loaded .357 Magnum in his belt, a hatchet-wielding Chicano bodyguard on his elbow at all times, and a disconcerting habit of projectile vomiting geysers of pure blood off the front porch every 30 or 40 minutes, or whenever his malignant ulcer can't handle any more raw tequila."

- Hunter S. Thompson, Rolling Stone #254, Dec. 15, 1977

[edit] References

Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972), ISBN 0-679-72213-0 (Random House)
The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973), ISBN 0-679-72212-2 (Knopf)
Oscar "Zeta" Acosta: the uncollected works. (1996) (Arte Público Press)
The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time. Hunter S. Thompson (1979), Ballantine Books, ISBN 0-345-37482-7