Shownotes Transcript
This episode contains discussions of drug use, mental health conditions, domestic violence, miscarriage, and murder. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. You've probably heard the conspiracy theory that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by the FBI. But you might not have heard the theory that he wasn't the only 1960s-era civil rights activist the FBI targeted. Enter Martin Luther King Jr.
Oscar Zeta Acosta, an author, activist, and lawyer who gave voice to the Chicano movement. If you haven't heard his name, that's because he's a man who disappeared twice. Once off the coast of Mazatlan, Mexico in 1974. Then again, in the shadow of the incredibly popular book and movie character he inspired. Today, we're asking the question...
Who made him disappear? Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast. I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. You can listen to the audio everywhere and watch the video only on Spotify. And be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. Today, we're looking into the mysterious disappearance of Oscar Zeta-Acosta.
There are a wide range of theories. He died in a boating accident or drug deal gone wrong. He faked his own death or he was assassinated for his revolutionary activity. Stay with us.
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Before we dive into Zeta's story, there are three things you should know. First, his given name is Oscar Zeta Acosta Fierro. He used various names throughout his life, but I'll call him by his chosen name, Zeta. Second, finding the facts about Zeta isn't easy, because in his memoirs, Zeta plays fast and loose with details.
See, Zeta was the co-pioneer of gonzo journalism. It's a writing style where real events are filtered through the author's perspective, and details are often changed to serve the story. For example, in his book, Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo, Zeta makes himself a year older than he really was. 33 instead of 32. Why 33?
Well, in the book, Zeta goes through a psychological death and rebirth. He changed his age so he could compare himself to Jesus, who, Zeta believed, died and was reborn when he was 33. The trouble is, this led to inaccurate reporting about Zeta's real age and birth date. And that's not the only reason it's tough to separate truth from fiction. The last thing you need to know is...
Zeta's memory is overshadowed by a parody of him. He inspired Dr. Gonzo, the sidekick character in Hunter S. Thompson's book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Dr. Gonzo spends the book using drugs, committing crimes, and giving bad legal advice. Thanks to the book's popularity and the Johnny Depp movie based on it, tons of people know Dr. Gonzo.
Many even know he's based on Oscar Zeta Acosta, but they don't know Zeta himself. And that plays into the conspiracy theories. Because how can you uncover what happened to a man if you don't know who he even was? No matter how he died. Zeta's work and memory were obscured by fiction. And there's a question if that was by coincidence or by design. So...
Here's what we know about the real Zeta. In 1935, Zeta was born as Oscar Acosta Fierro, the American son of Mexican immigrants. He grew up in Riverbank, California. A high achiever, he became his high school class president, joined the marching band, and got so good at the clarinet, the University of Southern California offered him a music scholarship.
But Zeta faced challenges too, particularly around his identity. Regardless of his accomplishments, he had this constant feeling of being an outsider. Not Mexican, like his parents, but not white, like his classmates. He didn't know where he fit in. As a young adult, Zeta boomeranged between jobs and lifestyles, trying to find out where he belonged.
He declined the USC scholarship and joined the Air Force. He converted from Catholicism to Protestantism and became an Air Force minister. But soon enough, Zeta realized none of this felt right. He quit preaching, got an honorable discharge, and enrolled in the creative writing program at Modesto Junior College. Biographers tend to gloss over this time in Zeta's life, but it's important.
Beginning in his early 20s, writing was a huge part of who he was. It's one identity he kept coming back to even as he picked up new ones, like husband and father-to-be. By the late 1950s, Zeta was married to a woman named Betty Daves with a baby on the way. He shuffled through odd jobs to support his family. Betty said he even worked as a chemist for a while.
apparently hired on Charisma alone. But that job didn't last, and neither did the marriage. In 1959, Zeta walked out on his wife and newborn son Marco. He just disappeared. But Betty wasn't surprised. Zeta had already done this a few times. He always came back. She even convinced him to see a psychiatrist about it, but therapy didn't seem to help. Zeta just couldn't sit still.
And Betty couldn't tolerate his behavior with a baby in the picture, so by 1962, they divorced. Zeta left Modesto again, this time for Oakland, and studied law in night school. Four years later, he landed his first lawyer job at the East Oakland Legal Aid Society. According to his autobiography, he helped poor women win restraining orders and child support.
According to his son Marco, he represented tenants' rights. Either way, it was meaningful work. But like everything else for Zeta, it got old fast. In 1967, just one year into his law career, he quit his job to road trip around the American Southwest and Mexico. Once again, he threw caution to the wind in search of his true self.
At certain points, he traveled with his son Marco, now around eight years old. At others, he used recreational drugs, which wasn't new. Zeta started experimenting with drugs like LSD and amphetamines when he was a teenager. Still, he got into trouble. At one point, he picked a fight with a hotel receptionist and got thrown into a Mexican jail. It's not clear if drugs were involved.
But during his tour of the Southwest, he finally found what he'd been looking for, his identity, his people, the Chicanos. Chicano was a new term in the 1960s, referring to those of Mexican and indigenous descent in the American Southwest. For Zeta and others who embrace the identity, it's more specific than Latino and more personal than Mexican-American.
It honors a feeling Zeta had since he was a child, not quite Mexican and not quite American. In between, Chicano. It's also a political term. Chicano activists like Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta came together to campaign for their rights in the 60s. They formed a labor union and raised awareness of disparities in education. Zeta joined the charge with enthusiasm.
Around here is when he nicknamed himself Zeta, like the Spanish letter Z. It carried a lot of meaning for him. Zeta is the sign of Zorro, a vigilante who defends Mexicans from oppression. And General Zeta is a character in the 1959 film La Cucaracha, who Oscar Zeta Acosta called the hero of Pancho Villa's revolution. With his new name,
Zeta dubbed himself a revolutionary. He believed Chicanos deserved to reclaim their land and govern themselves by any means. By the summer of 1967, he was talking about, quote, ripping the system apart like a pile of cheap hay. That summer, Zeta was at a bar in Aspen, Colorado, preaching revolution to anyone who would listen.
There, he met Hunter S. Thompson, who you'll see here if you're watching on video. He's the man who'd eventually publish Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Over the next few months, the two grew close enough that Thompson remembered Zeta as, quote, an old friend and occasional antagonist. But even though Zeta had fun in Aspen, he was restless as ever.
By 1968, he was trying to figure out his next step, how to turn his passion into action. Working at a restaurant, he saw it. A TV newscast about 13 Chicanos indicted for conspiracy in Los Angeles. Dubbed the East Side 13, they'd organized a school walkout to protest the lack of resources and opportunities in primarily Chicano schools.
The walkout involved thousands of students chanting and holding signs. The government only prosecuted the 13 organizers. They were labeled as a disruption, even called communists. A big accusation in 1968. If they were found guilty of conspiracy, the charges could send them to prison for over 40 years. They needed a lawyer. Zeta was a lawyer.
He packed his bags and moved to L.A. He printed business cards with his newest name, Buffalo Z. Brown, Chicano lawyer. He picked Buffalo because it's, quote, the animal everybody slaughtered. Both the cowboys and the Indians are out to get them. To him, buffaloes were just like Chicanos or the, quote, cockroach people, as he now self-identified.
stomped out by anyone and everyone. Finally, he'd found his mission. He wrote, quote, Once in every century there comes a man who has chosen to speak for his people. Moses, Mao, and Martin are examples. Who's to say that I am not such a man? So Zeta suited up for court. It was time to become the voice of his people.
In 1968, Oscar Zeta-Acosta rolled into Los Angeles and somehow charmed his way onto the legal team representing the Eastside 13. It's not clear how much he was paid or if he worked pro bono. He may have even flirted his way into the case because before long, he was dating one of the paralegals, Socorro Aguiniga. But it doesn't matter how Zeta got there.
He threw his heart and soul into defending these high schoolers. And as you might expect, it was an uphill battle. According to scholar Ian F. Haney-Lopez, East L.A. was 87% Chicano at the time, which meant the Eastside 13's jury should also be mostly Chicano. Instead, it was mostly white. To Zeta, this was grounds for dismissal.
how can his clients get a fair trial with none of their peers on the jury in fact he found that over the past 10 years only three chicanos were selected for a los angeles grand jury three out of 210 jurors that's just over one percent zeta found that statistics were similar across the state of california
He argued that the entire East Side 13 case should be thrown out for racism. His argument was powerful, but then the case got way more complicated. By early 1969, the Chicano civil rights protests garnered enough attention that the state of California took action by holding an educational conference in Los Angeles.
The stated goal was to work through issues at these primarily Chicano schools. It was a big deal. The state rented out the Biltmore Hotel downtown, known for hosting the Oscars and JFK. Governor Ronald Reagan came all the way from Sacramento. But during the conference, in fact, as Reagan spoke, protesters, including some of the East Side 13, set the hotel on fire.
Though Reagan was there to help, they didn't like him. They didn't like the government, and they didn't want to be lectured. In their eyes, this conference was a band-aid, not a solution. But setting a building on fire wasn't a solution either. Suddenly, three of Zeta's clients were facing multiple charges, including arson. Their possible sentences rose from 40 years to life.
Zeta didn't back down. He doubled down, signing on as a lead attorney in the second case. They called it the Biltmore Six, and Zeta was determined to keep them out of jail. Now, the Biltmore Six clearly committed arson, damaged a historic building, and endangered hundreds of lives. We won't argue that they weren't criminals. Neither did Zeta, who was
Like with the Eastside 13 case, he focused on getting the charges thrown out. He argued the crimes didn't matter if the defendants couldn't get a fair trial. And maybe a life sentence is too harsh for a crime where no one was actually hurt. Maybe the real problem was the system. According to scholar Mary Romero, Zeta spent months building his case...
He got help from the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, and numerous Chicano law students. He solicited donations from local Chicano leaders to help pay for the defense. Between both trials, he called 109 witnesses. He also adopted a new persona.
Leaning into the Chicano firebrand image, loud, arrogant, and brash. Twice, he screamed at the judges and was cited for contempt of court. Around this time, Zeta married the paralegal he'd been romancing, Socorro Aguiniga, while dressed like a revolutionary. Then he emblazoned an Aztec war god on his business cards. As he wrote in The Revolt of the Cockroach People,
This upset the judges. According to documentarian Philip Rodriguez, Zeta once walked into court in a galleberra, which you'll see on screen if you're watching the video on Spotify. It's a style of shirt popular among Chicanos. Another time, he showed up barefoot. This also upset the judges. Eventually, things got so heated, Zeta set a judge's front lawn on fire, and
This really upset the judges. It also wasn't the brightest idea to set a lawn on fire during his client's arson trial. But for Zeta, it really wasn't about this specific case. It was so much bigger than that. And the courtroom wasn't the only way to change the system.
In 1970, 35-year-old Zeta joined the race for sheriff of Los Angeles. He ran with the Raza Unida Party, whose platform centered on Chicano rights. If every Chicano rallied behind him, he had a fighting chance. At this point, Zeta probably saw himself at the precipice of a long and public career. In actuality, this was his peak.
Because that summer, everything fell apart. In June, police arrested Zeta for amphetamine possession. Now, some people say the arrest was a conspiracy to ruin Zeta's chances of becoming sheriff. Eventually, the charges were thrown out, but it was still a blow to Zeta. Because even though he was actively running for sheriff and defending two buzzy court cases, his arrest didn't garner much public attention.
According to Hunter S. Thompson, Zeta litigated to clear his name, and in doing so, realized that actually there wasn't much name to clear. He wasn't the hotshot voice of a generation he thought he was. Largely, he was seen as an inexperienced lawyer with a big mouth and a penchant for drugs. Even though he got over 100,000 votes, no one was surprised when he lost his campaign for sheriff.
Things continued to spiral. A few months later, a Chicano journalist and friend was murdered by police. In 1971, Zeta's wife had a miscarriage. Zeta preserved the fetus in a jar of tequila and displayed it on their mantle next to a painting of an Aztec god. It grew clear to everyone who loved him that he was unwell.
Even though he managed to get both the Eastside 13 and the Biltmore 6 acquitted, which is a massive win, Zeta quit law. He didn't know how to move forward or who he wanted to be anymore. And just as Zeta hit rock bottom, his wife, Socorro, left him. He coped the way he always did, by running away.
This time to Las Vegas with Hunter S. Thompson. Officially, the trip was for Thompson to cover an off-road race, the Mint 400. Unofficially, it was for Thompson and Zeta to work together on an article about the Chicano journalist who was murdered.
Though, as you may have already figured out, this work trip wasn't all business. Thompson and Zeta spent two days running around Vegas high on amphetamines. By the end of the weekend, gonzo journalism was born. Thompson's article about the Mint 400 morphed into fear and loathing in Las Vegas. And Oscar Zeta Acosta found his next identity, author-based.
But like everything else, he had to fight for it. Fear and Loathing was set to be published through Rolling Stone magazine's imprint, but Hunter S. Thompson didn't want to give his friend credit for his part in writing the manuscript, even when Zeta asked, which made Rolling Stone nervous. Because while Thompson fictionalized certain elements of the story, so much of it is autobiographical.
Zeta alleged that Thompson tape-recorded their conversations on the trip, then used segments of that dialogue in the book, verbatim. Also concerning, much of the story is criminal. In the book, Dr. Gonzo breaks and enters, impersonates a police officer, and threatens to bomb a house, in addition to using a litany of illegal drugs.
If found guilty of even one of these offenses in court, Zeta would be disbarred. And if the book got published as is, Zeta technically had a case for a libel suit. Thompson's fix was to change Dr. Gonzo's race from Chicano to Samoan. But it wasn't enough. Rolling Stone's legal department said Zeta was too easily identifiable as the inspiration for Dr. Gonzo.
They needed him to sign an agreement that he wouldn't sue before the book came out, which was easier said than done because Zeta ran off again. This time to Mazatlan, Mexico. When the publishers finally got in touch, he said he only took offense to one thing, the depiction of Dr. Gonzo as Samoan.
Portray him using drugs, committing crimes, and giving terrible legal advice, no problem. But dare to separate Oscar Zeta Acosta from his Chicano identity? That's gonna cost you. At this point, the book was ready to go to the presses. All the wheels were turning. Too late for rewrites. Rolling Stone managed to get Zeta in for a meeting, and allegedly, he graffitied his name in the office bathroom.
He was a man with nothing left to lose. Eventually, Thompson, Zeta, and Rolling Stone came to an agreement. Zeta's name and picture would appear on the book jacket. He wouldn't be credited as an author, but as an inspiration. In addition, Zeta would release all claims for a libel suit.
Dr. Gonzo would stay Samoan and Zeta would sign a two-book contract to publish his own work. He spent the next two years writing as if it's what kept his heart beating. This was Zeta's newest chance to make his name, to cement himself as the voice of his people. Everything he couldn't do as a preacher or lawyer, he could do with these books.
Along the way, Hunter S. Thompson and Zeta made up. It probably helped that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was a hit, and Thompson realized that's in part due to Zeta. Now it was time for Zeta to have hits of his own. The autobiography of the Brown Buffalo and the revolt of the Cockroach People. Except the books didn't sell.
Oscar Zeta Acosta didn't become a household name like Hunter S. Thompson. In the fall of 1973, Playboy ran a story about Thompson inventing gonzo journalism. In a letter to the editor, Zeta submitted a correction. He co-invented the style. Playboy published the letter and left it at that. Eventually, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas got a reprint.
without Zeta's name and photo. By the end of 1973, Zeta was crumbling. He'd failed at two marriages, two religions, two books, and two different legal careers. He'd been reduced from a man at the front of a movement to a side character in his own story. He coped the only way he knew how. He ran to Mazatlan, Mexico, and the next thing he wrote was his last will.
and testament. In early 1974, Oscar Zeta-Acosta left California for Mexico. Zeta told his mother he planned to write another book down there, but that wasn't his only plan. He also went into the drug business. Zeta had always been a wild card, but this felt like a big shift, even for him. It's hard to say what exactly drove him to join the cartel,
But we do know that by 1974, Zeta was broke. He almost always had been. The drug trade may have seemed like the easiest way to make quick money while working on his book. And remember, Zeta had a really difficult few years, so it's possible he wasn't in the best headspace to make smart decisions. Either way, he headed to Mexico, leaving behind a handwritten will. According to his son Marco...
this wasn't unusual. Zeta left plenty of wills throughout his life, though this one both discussed his next book project and mentioned his paranoia something might happen to him before he finished. He spent the next five months in Mazatlan writing and trafficking cocaine. The evening of May 15th, 1974, Zeta called Marco, who was now a teen,
Zeta said he was sailing back to Santa Cruz, California on, quote, a boat full of white snow. He said he'd see Marco in a few weeks when he'd be in town to sell drugs. Marco waited a month for his dad to turn up, then two. At first, no one thought much of it. Zeta went missing plenty of times before and always returned with a new plan for his life. But as the months passed and the rumors flew...
The family worried. As far as they knew, Marco was the last person to hear from Zeta. A whole year passed with no word. After three years, Hunter S. Thompson hired a PI on Rolling Stone's dime. He planned to track down Zeta and write an article about whatever happened to him. Except the PI didn't turn up much of anything. Still, word got around that Thompson was looking.
Tips came in saying Zeta is everywhere from Addis Ababa to Acapulco. Then around 1977, Thompson was contacted by a Miami drug runner. Thompson called this man Drake and Drake said a few months earlier Zeta offered to pay him $5,000 for a ride on his racing boat. Zeta wanted to go from Miami to the Bahamas and back at midnight.
Drake didn't ask questions because it was obviously a drug run. He just took the money and gassed up the boat. They got to the island safely, but on the way back to Florida, another boat shot them out of the water. In the chaos, Zeta made it to shore, then disappeared into the swampland. Now the DEA, FBI, and Coast Guard were all looking for Zeta-2.
Thompson incorporated this story into his Rolling Stone piece, The Banshee Screams for Buffalo Meat. It turned out to be more of a eulogy than a detective story because Thompson came to the same vague conclusion as Marco and as Zeta's second wife, Socorro. Zeta died in a drug deal gone wrong. When and where, they weren't sure, but they were sure.
But Marco believed his father was mixed up with the wrong people, said the wrong thing, and was killed for it. In the years since, Marco spoke to some of Zeta's friends in Mazatlan. Though none of them witnessed a fight or a death, they also heard rumors Zeta was murdered by a drug cartel. And even if Zeta wasn't killed by drug traffickers, there are other dangers in the trade.
Like the drugs themselves. Many people believe Zeta could have died of a drug overdose or a drug-induced accident. If you've read or seen Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, the theory explains itself. That's the problem. The theory fits the character of Dr. Gonzo, not necessarily the real Oscar Zeta Acosta.
Yes, Zeta was known to use drugs. And yes, he was involved in trafficking them. But Marco said his dad was never dependent on any substances. He was too committed to his work as a lawyer, then a writer, and that Zeta mainly used LSD, a psychedelic. It's extremely rare to overdose on LSD.
And his most famous drugs of choice, on the trips that inspired Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, were Dexedrine and Benzedrine. Dexedrine is sometimes prescribed for ADHD, and Benzedrine is a similar drug that's been discontinued. There's potential for abuse, but it's more likely they helped Zeta's mental health. But, like I said, it had been a rough few years.
It's impossible to know where Zeta was at mentally or what other drugs he might have been using, even if he didn't overdose on a harder drug. It's possible his drug use caused a psychiatric crisis. It's also possible they skewed his vision or made him more clumsy and he fell off the boat and drowned. The point is, Oscar Zeta Acosta was not Dr. Gonzo.
So while an overdose or a drug-related accident seems possible, it might not actually be the best explanation. Especially because both Zeta's sister and his first wife believe the wheels for his disappearance were spinning well before the Mazatlan trip. Let's go back a few years. By the early 1970s, Zeta was really paranoid. He thought he was being followed.
So much so that he hired a bodyguard. Some people blamed it on the weed, but apparently Hunter S. Thompson told Zeta he can't be paranoid enough. Thompson suggested the U.S. government could be out to get him, partly because of his 1970 L.A. County Sheriff campaign. I mentioned earlier that Zeta ran with the Raza You Need a Party, whose platform centered on Chicano rights.
But Zeta's personal platform was defunding the police. If he became sheriff, he'd tear the whole system down. On top of that, he rallied Chicanos around getting their land back and governing themselves. He encouraged them to form their own country called Aztlan in the area that used to be Mexico but is now the southwestern United States.
He decried the US government as imperialist occupiers and said he was a Mexican in America, not an American of Mexican descent. He didn't just campaign for fair treatment or better education. He preached revolution. Though Zeta got over 100,000 votes, he lost to a former FBI agent.
And the FBI and LAPD put tabs on Oscar Zeta Acosta because it wasn't just his campaign. In his autobiography, Zeta included this anecdote. As a kid, he spat on the American flag. The other kids fought him over it, but he still thought he was right. This may or may not be true, but it certainly makes a point. One that might have scared the FBI.
This man had no respect for their authority. He was different from his fellow civil rights activists. Author Alon Stavins calls Zeta the Hispanic Mahatma Gandhi, and some might be tempted to call him the Mexican MLK, but there's a major difference between hunger strikes or sit-ins and basically everything Zeta did. Documentarian Philip Rodriguez told NBC...
civil rights leaders are portrayed as more patient understanding and drained of agency oscar vibrates still you don't have to be perfect you don't have to be a saint oscar was no saint
Oscar was educated. He was entitled. He wasn't going to go on no hunger strike. He was no martyr. He was not engaged in the politics of pleasing. He was not going to be anybody's mascot. He rejected those kinds of maneuvers. So it's not totally surprising that the FBI narrowed in on Zeta during COINTELPRO.
Regular listeners might recall, it was an illegal operation in which agents surveilled anyone deemed politically subversive, especially civil rights leaders. Most famously, they tapped Martin Luther King Jr.'s phone. While there's no confirmation they actually listened into Zeta's calls, he was confident the Chicano movement had been infiltrated by FBI informants.
And his sister told author Alon Stavins, And here's the real kicker. When Zeta's second wife, Sakharo, left him in 1971, she turned over all of their letters to the FBI.
This might seem harsh, but according to Socorro's brother, Zeta wasn't a great husband. He was unfaithful, physically abusive, and once graffitied her family's house. But the wildest allegation from Socorro's brother is that he wasn't cheating on Socorro with just anyone. He was cheating on her with women in the Manson family.
Now, there's no evidence Zeta was involved with the Manson family's crimes. It's more likely he was just going up to Spahn Ranch to party every now and again. But it would further explain his presence on the FBI's watch list. And here's where we reach the conspiracy theory. The one Zeta's first wife, sister, and others believe. Zeta was assassinated by...
by the FBI the feds definitely knew when Zeta went to mazatlan and they probably knew he was trafficking illegal drugs although Zeta normally had a bodyguard no one came with him to Mexico besides seeing some friends here and there he was on his own he was surrounded by dangerous people if anyone was out to get Zeta this was the perfect time to strike
And that could also explain why, in the wake of his disappearance, the authorities stopped looking for him pretty quickly. There didn't seem to be any kind of big search effort for Zeta outside of an initial canvas. The FBI has thousands of pages of old files from COINTELPRO online available to the public. But Zeta's file isn't there. It's only accessible in the UCSB College Library.
And according to author Alon Stavins, who did read the file, it's censored. Most notably, they censored the reasons they stopped surveilling Zeta. Perhaps because they killed him. It's also possible he wasn't killed by the FBI exactly, but by another political enemy. As Hunter S. Thompson wrote, Zeta's paranoia was deserved.
Many people in Los Angeles had the means and motive to make him disappear, including Zeta himself. That's the last conspiracy theory here, that Zeta faked his own death to become a legend and make sure his name and message lived on. If he was seen as a martyr, he had a better chance of actually becoming the Mexican MLK, a rallying point for his cause.
Zader wrote about eventually going totally underground. And his son, Marco, once proposed his dad was simply scheming on a faraway island, getting ready to storm back into Los Angeles and change the world. He said his father's, quote, whole life was given for the people. So he seemed to believe that to make a difference, he'd have to sacrifice everything eventually.
And one last odd detail. According to the New Yorker, after Rolling Stone moved to New York City in 1977, hospital bills for Oscar Zeta Acosta started showing up at the magazine's offices three years after he disappeared. At this point, Zeta's loved ones have accepted they'll probably never have clean answers again.
After all, Zeta led a messy, color-outside-the-lines kind of life. The revolution he preached wasn't always easy to stomach. And perhaps in part, that's why he didn't just disappear off the coast of Mexico. He also disappeared behind his drugged-up caricature. Think about political cartoons. They make the enemy so over-the-top. They stop feeling real. They stop feeling serious.
Dr. Gonzo is a very over-the-top version of Zeta. So, did the powers that be turn the conversation from the real Zeta to Dr. Gonzo, to the point where the real man was lost? Perhaps that was the true conspiracy to make Zeta disappear. It was easier to banish him to fiction. After all, the character remains more famous than the revolutionary.
So maybe the key to solving his disappearance is to remember the real man. According to his loved ones, Zeta would want to be remembered as a person who was willing to die for his cause. He may not have been the heavyweight he thought himself to be, but he was fiercely devoted to the fight for Chicano civil rights. In part due to Zeta's legal work,
The early Chicano civil rights movement did succeed in many of its goals. Today, many Chicanos work in education, and two of the last three mayors of Los Angeles have been Mexican-American. The Chicano civil rights movement is ongoing, but these are major wins in the fight for equality.
Marco got his father's books, the autobiography of a brown buffalo and the revolt of the cockroach people, back in print and part of the Chicano literary canon. And one last thing. In the late 1990s, Zeta's sister, Anita, confronted Hunter S. Thompson. She wanted to know if the rumors that Zeta co-wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas were true. Thompson confirmed Zeta was, quote,
responsible for some part of it. When we remember Oscar Zeta Acosta, we shouldn't think of the sidekick Dr. Gonzo. We should remember the literary pioneer, the lawyer, the brown buffalo, and the voice for his people.
Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts or email us at conspiracystories at spotify.com.
For more information on Oscar Zeta-Acosta, we found Bandido by Alon Stavins, Racism on Trial by Ian F. Haney-Lopez, Abby Aguirre's New Yorker article, What Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas Owed Oscar Acosta, and Marco Acosta's interview for UCLA's Chicano Narrative Literature class, extremely helpful to our research.
or take Zeta at his own words and check out the autobiography of A Brown Buffalo or The Revolt of the Cockroach People. Until next time, remember, the truth isn't always the best story, and the official story isn't always the truth. This episode was written by Maggie Admire, edited by Karis Allen, Allie Wicker, and Aaron Land.
Fact-checked by Haley Milliken, researched by Mickey Taylor, video edited by Spencer Howard, and sound designed by Alex Button. I'm your host, Carter Roy.