On August 29, 1970, the National Chicano Moratorium brought 20,000–30,000 people through East Los Angeles against the Vietnam War — the largest Mexican-American demonstration in history, organized by Rosalio Muñoz's committee with the Brown Berets at its core. Sheriff's deputies attacked the rally in Laguna Park with tear gas and batons; in the hours of street fighting that followed, three people died and hundreds were arrested and beaten.
Among the dead was Rubén Salazar, the Los Angeles Times columnist and KMEX news director who had been documenting police violence: a deputy fired a ten-inch tear-gas projectile through the curtain of the Silver Dollar Café, striking him in the head. No officer was ever charged. The Moratorium's dead and defendants stand at the center of the Chicano movement's memory of state violence.