SOURCE: "Zoot Suit: From the Barrio to Broadway," in Ideologies & Literature, Vol. III, No. 15, January-March 1981, pp. 124-33.

In the essay below, Davis and Diamond charge that Zoot Suit is "a bad play, politically and aesthetically. "

Zoot Suit, by Luis Valdez, was the first Chicano play on Broadway. Valdez chose as his subject an actual event—the

Sleepy Lagoon Murder case. On August 2, 1942. José Díaz was found dead in a dirt road near Los Angeles. There were no witnesses and no murder weapon, but twenty-four Chicanos were indicted for the murder of this one boy. The Hearst papers played it up as a "Mexican crimewave," and in the trial the Chicanos involved were referred to as members of a "gang." The prosecution charged that...