That would be Oscar Zeta Acosta - lawyer, activist, writer and bull-goose looney. Acosta was the true life Dr. Gonzo of
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas fame. He met Hunter S. Thompson in 1967. Oscar's involvement in the Chicano Moratorium March and the killing of journalist Ruben Salazar led to Thompson's article,
Strange Rumblings in Aztlan.
What is not mentioned in
Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas is that Acosta accompanied Thompson to discuss southern California's racial tensions and Salazar's killing privately, away from LA. The picture to the right is the only one of them together in Las Vegas during that epic adventure. I love that he's wearing gloves. Discretion means not leaving fingerprints. You just never know.
Oscar's partnership with Hunter is not the focus of this rambling. His life, even without the "fear & loathing" association, enthralls me. Before his mysterious disappearance in 1974, he wrote two books:
The Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo and
The Revolt of the Cockroach People.
The first describes his upbringing as a bright, young Mexican-American enamored by the American Dream, and yet simultaneously repelled by America's violent, racially prejudicial underpinnings. It contains his first meeting with Hunter in an Aspen Bar. The second tells of Acosta's connection with the Chicano Moratorium and the radical Brown Berets. Both reads that I highly recommend.
In 1970, Acosta ran for sheriff in LA. While he only garnered 100,000 votes, his notoriety and flamboyance attracted attention to the Chicano cause.
Fitting that this iconoclast known by most from Hunter Thompson's caricaturisation, and believed by many to be only a figment of his imagination, enigmatically evaporated into the ether. The Brown Buffalo was last heard from in May of 1974. In his short 39 years, this meteoric mutant, stomped on the terra - to use Lord Buckley's phrase. He truly was the Number One Crazy Dude! As ever BB
"One of God's own prototypes. A high-powered mutant of some kind never
even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to
die." - Hunter S. Thompson from his eulogy of Oscar Z. Acosta,
The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat
No comments:
Post a Comment