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Military Targets LatinosTracked into Combat JobsDuring the early days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the number of Spanish-surnamed soldiers and marines killed or missing in action became evident. Latino youth were being disproportionately sacrificed once again, as in Vietnam. In fact, many of the Latinos and Latinas in the armed services are non-citizens. Immigrants with green cards make up approximately four percent of enlisted personnel--almost 40,000 individuals, one-third of whom are from Latin America. The Bush administration actively recruited non-citizens by establishing a fast track naturalization process in July 2002 as part of its "war on terror." Recruiters have even crossed the border into Mexico. In May a U.S. military recruiter triggered a diplomatic incident after the headmaster of a Tijuana high school threw him out and the Mexican government protested vehemently to Washington. The targeted recruitment of Latinos and Latinas into the armed forces began in the Clinton years when the Army was not meeting its enlistment quotas. Louis Caldera, then Secretary of the Army, realized that Latinos were the fastest growing military-age segment of the U.S. population. The Army Times reported that "Hispanics" constituted 22 percent of the military recruiting "market," almost double their numbers in the population. This meant that the Pentagon's goal was to more than double the percentage of Latinos and Latinas in the military. LATINOS ON THE FRONTLINESAnd so the Pentagon launched a massive recruiting campaign targeting "the Hispanic market." Non-citizen and citizen recruits alike most often enlist as a way to get an education, seduced by the recruiters' promise of technical training or money for college. Caldera argued that the Army provided "the best education in the world." "$30,000 for college" claimed the glitzy ads, although the fine print failed point out that very few recruits ever actually receive such amounts. The Army's program also offered to pay for GED certificate training (the equivalent of a high school diploma). The Pentagon had also learned from think tanks that Latino and Latina recruits joined the military primarily in search of "civilian job transferability"--career-building skills. However, according to 2001 Department of Defense statistics, while about 10 percent of all military personnel are Latinos, Latinos make up 17.7 percent of the frontline combat occupations--"Infantry, Gun Crews, and Seamanship." In the Army, Latinos and Latinas occupied 24.7 percent of such conscripts and in the Marine Corps, 19.7 percent. In other words, Latinos and Latinas are over-represented in combat positions that offer little if any "civilian job transferability," but much increased chance of death or injury. And so many Latinas and Latinos, along with other poor and working class youth, die on the frontlines trying to become students and get decent jobs. They are lured by the myth that military service will enhance or build their careers; instead it often results in death, permanent injury or psychic distress. The psychological and social costs of such dreadful contradictions cannot be overcome by patriotic zeal. In Iraq, for example, Sgt. 1st Class Jeff Luján ordered his men to shoot into a civilian truck at a checkpoint, only to discover they had killed a woman and a young girl. "We did the right thing, even though it was wrong," he said afterward. Today's militarism threatens both the future of our children and the soul of the nation. Jorge Mariscal, a Vietnam veteran who teaches at the University of California, San Diego, works with the Project on Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (www.comdsd.org). |
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