This is a replica of the REVISED Edition, which is the second printing of 20,000 copies in September, 1943. It has a new introduction by Marion Bachrach, Executive Secretary of the Council for Pan American Democracy and significant changes to Part I of the text. On the night of August 2nd, 1942, one Jose Diaz left a drinking party at the Sleepy Lagoon ranch near Los Angeles, and sometime in the course of that night he died. It seems clear that Diaz was drinking heavily and fell into a roadway and was run over by a car. Whether or not he was also in a brawl before he was run over is not clear.On January 13th, fifteen American-born boys of Mexican descent and two boys born in Mexico stood up to hear the verdict of a Los Angeles court. Twelve of them were found guilty of having conspired to murder Diaz, five were convicted of assault. Their sentences ranged from a few months to life im-prisonment.The lawyers say there is good reason to believe the seventeen boys were innocent, and no evidence at all to show even that they were present at the time that Diaz was involved in a brawl, assuming that he actually was in a brawl, let alone that they “conspired” to murder Jose Diaz. Two other boys whose lawyers demanded a separate trial after the 17 had been convicted, were acquitted on the same evidence.Seventeen for one!It wasn’t only seventeen boys who were on trial.It was the whole Mexican people, and their children and their grandchildren. It was the whole of Latin America with its 130,000,000 people. It was the Good Neighbor Policy. It was the United Nations and all for which they fight.It was that kind of trial.It began to be that kind of trial even before Jose Diaz met his death on August 2nd. The Los Angeles papers started it by building for a “crime wave” even before there was a crime. “mexican goon squads.” “zoot suit gangs.” “pachuco killers.” “juvenile gang war laid to youths’ desire to thrill.” Those were the curtain-raisers, the headlines building for August 3rd.On August 3rd the death of Jose Diaz was scarehead news. And the stories were of Mexican boys “prowl ing in wolf-packs,” armed with clubs and knives and automobile tools and tire irons, invading peaceful homes, beating and stabbing their victims to death.On August 3rd every Mexican kid in Los Angeles was under suspicion as a “zoot-suit” killer. Cops lined up outside of dance halls, armed with pokers to which sharp razor blades were attached, and they ripped the peg-top trousers and “zoot-suits” of the boys as they came out.Mexican boys were beaten, jailed. “Zoot-suits” and “Pachuco” hair cuts were crimes. It was a crime to be born in the U.S.A.—of a Spanish-speaking father or mother.