They Died Trying to Become Students - The Future for Latinos in an Era of War and Occupation
COUNTERPOINT
By JORGE MARISCAL
With the U.S. assault on Iraq moving from the invasion to the
occupation phase and the saber rattling continuing to echo out of
Pentagon, it is time to reflect on where the Latino community in
the United States finds itself within the larger context of the New
World Order.
Like many working class youth, Latinos and Latinas who buy
into the vision of military service as a short cut to college or job
training are simply looking for a way to grab a piece of the
American Dream. But the reality of that Dream continues to be
relatively distant for the Chicano/Mexicano community. More
specifically, alternatives to military
service available to Mexicano youth are significantly fewer than
for other groups. Until this fact is understood, the fundamental
injustice of Mexican and Chicano youth dying to "liberate" Iraq
(or any other developing nation) cannot be fully grasped.
One of the more remarked upon facts during the early days of
the war was the number of Spanish-surnamed soldiers and
marines killed or missing in action. The sense that Latino
communities were disproportionately sacrificing their youth once
again, as they had in Viet Nam, was widespread. Media outlets
began to comment on the fact that Latinos in
the military are over represented in combat and supply units
(especially in the Army and Marines) and thus more likely to see
hazardous duty.
The American public learned that thousands of non-citizens
were now in the U.S. military (approximately 3% of enlisted
personnel, a third of whom are from Latin America). The Bush
administration had established a fast track naturalization process
for foreign recruits in July 2002 as part of the "war on terror."
Instead of waiting three years before applying for citizenship,
green-card holders in the armed forces who entered after
September 11, 2001 could apply immediately for citizenship.
Such offers are often granted in limited form during periods of
"military hostilities" (This week John McCain, Ted Kennedy,
and eight other senators introduced a
bill that would reduce permanently the waiting period from three
to two years and provide benefits for non-citizen spouses of
non-citizen soldiers killed in action).
Although the Bush Executive Order contained no guarantees
that citizen status would be granted or even expedited, the
rumor that automatic citizenship was being granted for military
service began to circulate in Latino communities both here and
abroad. The number of permanent resident enlistees jumped
from 300 a month before the fast track reform to 1,300 a
month. Mexican nationals reportedly flooded consulates
attempting to volunteer.
Both citizen and non-citizen recruits most often enlist as a way to
get an education, seduced by the recruiters' promise of technical
training or money for college contingent upon an honorable
discharge. For the permanent residents who found themselves in
Iraq, their circuitous path to college carried them from Latin
America to the U.S.to Baghdad,
al-Nasiriyah, and Mosul. Some of them will not be attending
classes as they and their families had hoped. Instead they died in
the line of duty and subsequently received posthumous
citizenship amidst much fanfare and flag-waving.
Many in Latino communities, including some parents of the fallen
soldiers, sought refuge in traditional patriotic sentiments. The
father of colombiano Diego Rincón, an Army private killed in a
suicide bombing, was quoted as saying "The only thing that
keeps me going now is to make sure that he's buried as an
American. That will be my dream come
true" (USA Today, 4/9/03).
Writing on the HispanicVista.com* website about the death of
Guatemalan national José Gutiérrez, Gil Contreras wrapped
himself in the flag, "honor," and "Semper Fi" before criticizing
Chicano and Chicana antiwar protestors for complaining too
much. The subtitle of Contreras's article made the cynical
assertion that Latino casualties proved that "Latinos can be more
than gang members & criminals." Not unlike assimilationists from
earlier periods, Contreras apparently prefers dead heroes to
living and productive citizens.
For other Latinas and Latinos, the bestowal of posthumous
citizenship was bitterly ironic. Did Mexican or Central American
immigrants have to die to win the approval of the majority of
American society? Or as an old Chicano ballad from the Viet
Nam war put it: "Now should a man/Should he have to kill/In
order to live/Like a human being/ In this
country?"
If Latinos were good enough for military service (so much so
that the military academies continue to employ affirmative action
policies), why were they not good enough to receive a decent
education?
Finally, how could one reconcile the fact that foreign nationals
from Latin America were fighting with the U.S. military in Iraq at
the same time that armed vigilante "ranchers" hunted Mexican
workers along the Mexico-Arizona border for sport?
Despite the fact that Latino communities were divided on the
issue, initiatives for expedited citizenship began to proliferate.
Two senators from Georgia, where the Latino population
increased by 299.6% during the decade of the 1990s,
introduced a bill that would make posthumous citizenship
automatic.
Leaders in the Catholic Church made similar recommendations.
Little was said about the fact that posthumous citizenship was a
purely symbolic gesture with no rights or privileges accruing to
the deceased person's family (Last week, Representative Darrell
Issa (R-Ca) proposed automatic citizenship for the surviving
spouse and children of non-citizen soldiers killed in battle and
given posthumous citizenship).
WHY LATINOS AND LATINAS ENLIST
"Why should you consider getting an education in the Navy?"
[cut to aerial shot of aircraft carrier] "This is one of your
classrooms." -- U.S. Navy television ad, April 2003
On one level, Latino and Latina GIs are no different from other
poor youth drawn into the web spun by military recruiters. It has
been widely reported that former POW Jessica Lynch, the
daughter of a poor family from Appalachia, joined because she
wanted to be a teacher.
According to his former mentor, the young man from
Guatemala, José Gutiérrez, joined the Marines to get an
education. Twenty-one year old Francisco Martinez Flores,
killed when his tank fell into the Euphrates, enlisted so that he
could go to college and become a stockbroker or an FBI agent,
according to his friends (Betsy Streisand, "Latin Heroes,"
U.S. News and World Report, 4/14/03). In short, what
motivated these young people to enlist was less the defense of
"our freedom" or "honor" than it was simply to increase their
access to a decent education and a better life.
The myth that the primary mission of the armed forces is
education was given a boost by former Secretary of the Army
Louis Caldera during the Clinton years. Throughout the 1990s,
the Army was not meeting its enlistment quotas. Caldera and
Pentagon planners realized that Latinos were the fastest growing
population in terms of young people of military age, and they
began to pitch the Army's program offering to pay for GED
certificate training (roughly equivalent to a high school diploma).
The goal, according to Caldera, was to increase access to the
"Hispanic market" as a major recruiting pool. Aircraft carriers
became "classrooms."
The promise of education sat in an uneasy relationship to other
more traditional messages having to do with what the Pentagon
perceived to be Latino "machismo." The racializing undertones
of this approach cannot be ignored. An article in the ArmyLink
News pointed out that many of the surnames on the Viet Nam
memorial were Spanish and that three soldiers captured during
the Kosovo conflict were of Mexican descent. The author's
conclusion? -"By these and many other measures, Hispanics are
one of America's more martially inclined ethnic groups" (Sydney
J. Freedberg, Jr., "Not Enough GI Joses," ArmyLink News,
August 1999).
Some recruiters reported that even those Mexican American
recruits who "tested out of the infantry" (i.e., scored high enough
to qualify for other military jobs) opted to enter the infantry
anyway (this despite a 1999 RAND study that explained low
numbers of minorities in Special Operations units because of
their "preference for occupations with less risk"). Caldera
himself claimed that Hispanics were "predisposed" to military
service even as he argued that the Army provided the "best
education in the world."
And so the Pentagon launched a massive publicity campaign
targeting the Hispanic market. "$30,000 for college" claimed the
glitzy ads although the fine print did not point out that very few
veterans would ever see such amounts of money. Nor was it
mentioned that longitudinal studies show that people who go
directly to college earn more money over the length of a career
than those who enter the military first. "Education" became the
recruiter's buzzword because the Pentagon had learned from
studies contracted out to the Rand Corporation and other think
tanks that Latino and Latina recruits joined the military primarily
in search of "civilian job transferability."
With the possible exception of careers in law enforcement,
however, small arms expertise and truck driving did not translate
well into civilian success. Military service does not close the
economic gaps separating the majority of Latinos from the rest
of society but
potentially widens them.
CHICANOS/MEXICANOS AND THE LACK OF
OPTIONS
According to the September 2002 Interim Report of the
President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for
Hispanic Americans, ethnic Mexicans in the United States fall
below every other Latino group "on almost every social and
economic indicator." First-generation Mexican immigrants, who
make up 54% of all legal Latin American immigrants, have
significantly reduced life chances than their U.S. born Mexican
American counterparts. High-school drop out rates of around
30% for U.S. born Mexican Americans are bad enough, but the
rate more than doubles to 61% for new immigrants.
Although Mexican Americans do better in the field of education
than their recently arrived counterparts, when their educational
achievement is compared to every other Latino subgroup they
lag behind. Among all Latinos over the age of 25, for example,
only 10.8% of ethnic Mexicans hold a Bachelor degree or
higher compared to 13.9% for Puerto Ricans and 18.1% for
Cuban Americans (2002 Interim Report).
Although Latinos have a high rate of participation in the labor
force, over 11% of Latino workers live in poverty. About 7% of
Latinos with full-time jobs were still living below the poverty line
in 2001 (compared to 4.4% of African Americans and 1.7% for
whites). Among all private sector employees in the U.S., 41.5%
are considered blue collar, but 63.5% of all Latinos hold blue
collar jobs (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
1998). In 2002, 61% of all workers in agricultural production
were Latinos, the vast majority of Mexican descent. While
nearly 11% of non-Hispanic whites earn more than $75,000 a
year, only 2% of all Latinos earn as much. Among all high
school
graduates who attend graduate and professional programs,
Latinos make up only 1.9% (compared to 3% Black, 3.8%
Whites, and 8.8% Asian).
One could elaborate further this bleak picture of what the future
holds for Latino communities. The paucity of good union jobs
and the decline in public funding for cultural workers only adds
to the sense of diminished opportunities. Is it any wonder, in the
face of these daunting material conditions, that young Latino and
Latina faces are filling the lowest ranks of the military in the
lowest-tech occupations? As they do so, the pipeline of Latino
and Latina teachers, doctors, and other professionals continues
to dry up, a fact that will have devastating consequences for our
communities for decades to come.
So Latino blood now flows in the ancient waters of the Tigris
and Euphrates. A historical irony of stunning proportions--that
the spirits of the descendants of the great indigenous civilizations
of Mesoamerica now mingle with those of the heirs of ancient
Mesopotamia.
What can we say of the young Latino men who sacrificed their
lives in Iraq? That they fought without knowing their enemy,
played their role as pawns in a geopolitical chess game devised
by arrogant bureaucrats, and died simply trying to get an
education; trying to have a fair shot at the American Dream that
has eluded the vast majority of Latinos for over a century and a
half; dying as soldiers who just wanted to be students.
____________________________
Jorge Mariscal is a Viet Nam veteran who wonders how much
longer Latinos will have to die on the battlefield before they are
granted the basic opportunities promised to all citizens. Contact
at: gmariscal@ucsd.edu