COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Recruiting: Youth of Color
Latinos enlisting in record numbers
Despite opposition to the Iraq war, pride motivates many to sign up for military duty
Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer
May 15, 2006
Amalia
Avila never supported the war. But after her first son, Victor
Gonzalez, told her he wanted to join the Marines, she felt a mixture of
fear, concern and, finally, pride.
"This war makes no sense to me," Avila said last week in her
Watsonville home. "I'd ask him why he wanted to go, and he'd just say
his brothers needed his help. ... But when Victor did get into the
Marines, when that day came, I was so proud of him."
Avila paused to allow her tears. "It was a beautiful day."
It was also one of the last days Avila saw her son. Gonzalez, 19, who
was born in Salinas shortly after Avila immigrated from Mexico, served
a little more than a month in Anbar province before he was killed by a
roadside mortar explosion in October 2003.
The discord between Avila's unsettled feelings toward the war and her
son's sacrifice reflects a growing paradox within the Latino community.
A majority of Latinos believe the troops should come home as soon as
possible, according to Pew Hispanic Center surveys, yet enlistment of
Latinos has steadily risen in the past decade.
According to the Department of Defense, in 2004, the most recent year
of confirmed data, Latinos made up 13 percent of new recruits. This is
an all-time high, nearly twice the percentage of 10 years earlier.
Latinos' presence in the military still does not match their 17 percent
share of the overall population ages 18 to 24. And African Americans
continue to be overrepresented in the military, making up about 18
percent of active duty personnel but only 13 percent of the U.S.
population. Nonetheless, the absolute number of Latinos entering the
armed forces continues to grow.
"The dichotomy is this," said Steven Ybarra, a member of the nonprofit
political advocacy group Latinos for America, "on the one hand, our
children view serving in the military as showing they are part of this
community; while on the other, their grandparents and parents have seen
this all before.
"But within the Latino family unit," Ybarra added, "maybe more than
others, there's a value system where the parents will look at their son
and say, 'Hijo, you're a man now. You're going to do what you're going
to do, and I will respect that' -- even if it means going to war."
Historically, Latinos have been underrepresented in the military, said
Beth Asch, a senior economist at the Rand National Defense Research
Institute who has studied Latino recruitment trends. An informal theory
held that the rising number of Latino enlistments during the 1990s and
early part of this decade simply mirrored a rise in the group's overall
population.
"Their growth in population was fast," Asch said. "Their growth in the military was faster."
Latinos accounted for about 17.5 percent of Americans ages 18 to 24 in
2000, while 13.7 percent were African American, 61.6 percent were
non-Hispanic white and 4.1 percent were Asian American.
The reasons Latinos are drawn to the military vary, Asch said.
Carlos Montes, an organizer with Latinos Against the War in Lost
Angeles, , cites a variety of reasons: Aggressive recruiters who prey
on youth; the enticement of skipping the usual five years legal
permanent residents must wait before applying for citizenship; the
immigrant's desire to assimilate.
"When you're young and naive you see a guy show up on campus, all
dressed up, promising things you don't have," Montes said. "That kind
of influence, especially in the barrio, can be greater than even a
parent's words."
But Dr. Curtis Gilroy, director of Accession Policy for the Office of
the Secretary of Defense, said in a national youth poll conducted last
year, Latinos ages 18-24 simply showed a "higher propensity to serve"
than other ethnic groups.
Gilroy said a full 25 percent of Latino respondents answered the
question, "How likely is it that you'll be serving in the military in
the next few years?" by marking the box "definitely" or "probably
likely." Meanwhile, only 16 percent of African Americans and just 11
percent of whites showed the same interest.
"We just don't know why that is," Gilroy said. "We don't try and get behind the numbers too much."
On the ground in San Jose, Army recruiter Sgt. Brian Ditzler recently
fashioned a theory behind the numbers. Ditzler, who was raised by his
mother in Corozal, Puerto Rico, and speaks fluent Spanish, staffed a
booth during the city's Cinco de Mayo festival. He said of the 22
recruits he enlisted last year, 15 were Latino.
"The remarkable thing that is consistent with Latinos is the sense of
pride," Ditzler said. "More than any other group, they have a deep
sense of pride about serving for this country."
By comparison, Ditzler observed that his Asian American enlistees were
more interested in job-training skills, while African Americans spoke
of college tuition as the trade-off. Whites, the recruiter observed,
were most intrigued by the "sense of adventure" the Army provided.
"So, knowing that Latinos were focused more on pride," Ditzler added,
"that's the thing I'm going to show them: How they can make themselves
and their families proud."
For more empirical evidence, researchers such as Asch are just now
beginning to examine the results from field studies. Already consistent
with Ditzler's observations, Asch said recent post-enlistment surveys
indicate Latinos noted "patriotism" and "service to country" as the top
two reasons for joining, as well as "duty" and "honor."
Still, according to a Department of Defense poll conducted last year
that was aimed at tracking the influences that lead a civilian to
enlist, Latino parents were more likely than their African American
counterparts to recommend military service to their children as a way
to fight the war on terrorism.
"It's a conundrum, for sure," Asch said of the results.
When Orlando Mayorga, a 24-year-old in Antioch, told his mother he
wanted to join the Army, he said she was happy for him. Mayorga, who is
still awaiting a call for active duty, makes his living cleaning
buildings in the East Bay. Born in Nicaragua, he migrated to the United
States and obtained an alien resident card as a teenager, he said.
Mayorga enlisted to take advantage of President Bush's decision after
Sept. 11 to speed the citizenship process for green card holders who
enlist. "The first reason is for citizenship," Mayorga said flatly. "I
don't have a second or third reason," he said.
Mayorga's father and three brothers still live in their native
Nicaragua, and a sister lives in Costa Rica, he said. After his
four-year service, Mayorga will be awarded full citizenship. If he dies
while in the Army, citizenship is awarded posthumously.
Despite the risk, Mayorga said family discussions about his enlistment
have focused only on what he stands to gain. Even though he signed up
to obtain citizenship, his family is proud of his choice.
"My grandfather is proud that I'll be serving," Mayorga said. "My mother is, my father is. My whole family is."
Fernando Suarez del Solar, whose son Marine Lance Cpl. Jesus Suarez was
killed in Iraq in 2003, said he felt a reluctance to discuss the
casualty risk with his son who had been a citizen since he was 15.
Suarez said Jesus enlisted only after a recruiter told him a year's
commitment in the Marines would lead to a job as a Drug Enforcement
Administration agent. Since Jesus' death, Suarez has become a
counter-recruitment activist and recently participated in the
immigration protests in Los Angeles. The combination of the rising
Latino death toll, Suarez said, and the recent proposed immigration
legislation has only stirred more contentious feelings within him.
"I feel it twice," Suarez said. "First it's: 'My son served this
country in the military and died,' and now: 'They're attacking the
parents with this legislation.' On one end of the school campus they
want our sons to enlist. On the other, they want us out of the country.
"When my son told me he wanted to join, I said 'No, no, no!' " Suarez
added. "I never believed in this war, but, I believed in him."
Of the more than 2,400 U.S. casualties in Iraq since 2003, 270 have been Latino, according to the Department of Defense.
Jesse Martinez, 19, was killed after his vehicle crashed in Tal Afar,
Iraq in 2004. Jan Martinez described her son as a couch potato before
he joined, the kind of teenager who, "didn't have a smile on his face
most of the time."
As they watched the events of Sept. 11 on television from their Tracy home, mother and son had different responses.
Martinez said she sensed a war was coming. She did not favor it, she
said, nor could she disagree with the action, either. Her son,
meanwhile, felt compelled to join the Marines.
"I asked him to wait a little while," she recalled. "I asked him to let things blow over, because I knew things could get worse.
"But once he signed up, he started smiling. He felt good about himself. It gave him a sense of purpose."
After her son's death, Martinez said she still felt ambivalent about the war.
"There are good things and bad things that have come from this," she
said. "One of the bad things is that kids die. ... But you still got to
be proud of them."
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