A generation ago, Everett Alvarez, flying air support during the Gulf of Tonkin incident, became the first American POW in the Vietnam tragedy. My own family, immigrants to L.A. from the northern Mexican state of Sonora during the Revolution, has sent sons, cousins, and nephews to every branch in the military-my father a Marine in World War II, my uncles in the Navy and Seebees in the same war, my cousins and I in the Army in Korea and Vietnam. Since the Vietnam era, opportunities in most Chicano communities have not improved. Chicanos find themselves locked out of California's elite universities and excluded from the state's high tech future. In high schools across the country, young men and women of Mexican ancestry whose families have recently immigrated are especially attracted to Junior ROTC programs in order to prove they are Americans.
Military recruiters are eager to exploit the situation.
The Pentagon recently considered revising the military aptitude test in order to admit scores of Latinos who previously had failed the exam. These facts together with diminishing life chances mean that Chicanos will be on the front lines of every U.S. military intervention for decades to come. In the 1990s, what the Pentagon calls a volunteer army is in fact a thinly disguised economic draft. This is not to question the patriotism of Mexican American enlistees. It is merely to point out that for many working class people, the military is one of the few ways out of a world of limited opportunity and continuing discrimination.