First Supper (After A Major Riot), 1974/2012

Harry Gamboa Jr.’s First Supper (After a Major Riot) documents a guerilla-style street performance by the experimental Chicanx artist collective Asco. Bedecked in carnivalesque costumes, donning Día de los Muertos–like masks and makeup, and surrounded by theatrical props, Patssi Valdez, Willie Herón III, Humberto Sandoval, and Gronk held a banquet on the median strip of East LA’s main artery, Whittier Boulevard. It was the site of the riot referred to in the title: on August 29, 1970, twenty-five thousand people marched in the Chicano Moratorium, protesting the war in Vietnam and the disproportionate number of Mexican American casualties. What began peacefully ended with police brutality, with dozens injured and three dead. For months after the Chicano Moratorium, East LA was under unofficial martial law; public gatherings were forbidden. With First Supper (After a Major Riot), Asco sought to reclaim public space, insisting on their visibility in a spirit of celebration.