Thoughts on Latino’s Service in the Military

I am proud that my Chicano activist roots included protesting the Vietnam War. It was an unjust act of U.S. imperialism that many Chicanos (and a vast majority of the U.S. public) eventually believed should not be supported.

During the Vietnam era a lot of young Chicanos put aside Anglo lies in the realization that the U.S. had stolen over half of Mexico and continued to deny Chicanos-Mexicanos any true political power. We believed that La Raza had no business supporting U.S. interference in Vietnam.

I still believe that La Raza’s only fight should be the one for our self-determination, political empowerment, and human dignity. That belief led me to become a member of the 1990 National Chicano Moratorium Committee. On Aug. 25, thousands of Raza took to the streets both in remembrance of the largest Chicano demonstration against the Vietnam War and in a call for our right to Chicano-Mexicano self-determination.

The Chicano-Mexicano military legacy began with the blue and gray armies of the Civil War. It is ironic that we have provided the U.S. with over a century of honorable military service and, until World War II, our war dead were buried in segregated cemeteries. In the 1940’s racist white servicemen were attacking young Raza “zoot suiters” while their older brothers were dying in Europe, Africa, and the South Pacific.

U.S. military service has never been our ticket to first-class citizenship and social acceptance. It does not provide our young people with viable job skills, effective access to higher education, and bettered futures. From Vietnam to Kuwait, we Raza continue to endure a high school “dropout/pushout” rate of over 50%, serve as a source of cheap labor, and see our children used as cannon fodder in U.S. foreign aggressions.

I don’t want to see any more young Chicano-Mexicanos dying in any unwarranted military incursions.

JUAN PARRINO, Los Angeles