The Sleepy Lagoon case: with a forward by Orson Welles

THE
SLEEPY LAGOON CASE
I
ON THE NIGHT of August 2nd, 1942, one Jose Diaz left a drinking party at the Sleepy Lagoon ranch near Los
Angeles, and sometime in the course of that night he died. It seems clear that Diaz was drinking heavily and fell
into a roadway and was run over by a car. Whether or not he was also in a brawl before he was run over is not
clear.
On January 13th, fifteen American-born boys of Mexican descent and two boys born in Mexico stood up to hear
the verdict of a Los Angeles court. Twelve of them were found guilty of having conspired to murder Diaz, five
were convicted of assault. Their sentences ranged from a few months to life imprisonment.
The lawyers say there is good reason to believe the seventeen boys were innocent, and no evidence at all to
show even that they were present at the time that Diaz was involved in a brawl, assuming that he actually was in
a brawl, let alone that they "conspired" to
8
murder Jose Diaz. Two other boys whose lawyers demanded a separate trial after the 17 had been convicted,
were acquitted on the same evidence.
Seventeen for one! You don't have to be a lawyer to know that the Los Angeles District Attorney and the Los
Angeles press were not "prosecuting" only 18-year-old Manuel Delgado or 19-year-old Henry Leyvas. Jose Ruiz,
aged 17, was convicted "of murder in the first degree and of two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with
intent to commit murder." You don't have to be a lawyer to know that Jose Ruiz did not stand alone at the bar of
"justice."
It wasn't only seventeen boys who were on trial.
It was the whole Mexican people, and their children and their grandchildren. It was the whole of Latin America
with its 130,000,000 people. It was the Good Neighbor Policy. It was the United Nations and all for which they
fight.
It was that kind of trial.
It began to be that kind of a trial even before Jose Diaz met his death on August 2nd. The Los Angeles paper
started it by building for a "crime wave" even before there was a crime. "MEXICAN GOON SQUADS." "ZOOT
SUIT GANGS." "PACHUCO KILLERS." "JUVENILE GAND WAR LAID TO YOUTHS' DESIRE TO THRILL."
Those were the curtain-raisers, the headlines building for August 3rd.
9
On August 3rd the death of Jose Diaz was scarehead news. And the stories were of Mexican boys "prowling in
wolf-packs," armed with clubs and knives and automobile tools and tire irons, invading peaceful homes, beating
and stabbing their victims to death.
On August 3rd every Mexican kid in Los Angeles was under suspicion as a "zoot-suit" killer. Cops lined up
outside of dance halls, armed with pokers to which sharp razor blades were attached, and they ripped the pegtop trousers and "zoot-suits" of the boys as they came out.
Mexican boys were beaten, jailed. "Zoot-suits' and "Pachuco" hair cuts were crimes. It was a crime to be born in
the U.S.A. of a Spanish-speaking father or mother.
About this text
Courtesy of Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library, 405 Hilgard
Ave, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575; http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb7779p4zc&brand=oac4
Title: The Sleepy Lagoon case : with a forward by Orson Welles
By: Sleepy Lagoon Defense Committee, Author, Welles, Orson, 1915-, Author, Bachrach, Marion, Author
Date: 1943

Contributing Institution: Dept of Special Collections/UCLA Library, A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library,
405 Hilgard Ave, Box 951575, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575; http://www.library.ucla.edu/libraries/special/scweb/
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