The Revolt of the Cockroach People is a novel by Oscar Zeta Acosta. It tells the story of a Chicano lawyer, "Buffalo Zeta Brown", fictionalizing events from Oscar Acosta's own life, including the East L.A. walkouts at Garfield High School, the founding of the Brown Berets, the Christmas protests at St. Basil's church, the Castro v. Superior Court decision of 1970, Acosta's run for sheriff of Los Angeles County later that year, the Chicano National Moratorium, and the death of Ruben Salazar, who is referred to as "Roland Zanzibar" in the novel. The novel is written in the style of Gonzo journalism, the conventions of which he helped codify with American journalist and friend Hunter S. Thompson. The story of Buffalo Z. Brown, a persona of the author, satirizes the East L.A. Chicano movement through the eyes of a participant observer. Acosta uses the historical events of the late 1960s and early 1970s "as the context for the construction of a Chicano identity and the realization of a revolutionary class consciousness." Critics argued the novel gave shallow explorations of ethnicity, and exaggerates many aspects of the Chicano movement in East LA in a manner not representative to the real events. During this time, Chicano literature assisted in shaping the cultural tropes and concepts of Chicanismo, "creat[ing] socially engaged works fusing mimetic reflections of the socio-political conditions of Chicana/os with myths and symbols." Critics hold a shared interpretation that the novel satirizes aspects of Chicanismo and criticizes the contradictions within the movement. Marc Priewe argues that Acosta proposes a "reflexive nationalism," against essentialist attitudes of the Chicano movement.