On Two Fronts: Latinos & Vietnam | Full Episode

[ ♪♪ ] WOMAN: During the Vietnam conflict, Mexican-Americans were extraordinarily vulnerable to the draft.

MAN: Every other male that I knew growing upMB was a Vietnam veteran.er MAN: The lower your education, the worse your English,MB the more likely you are to carry a gun into the field.

MAN: We were grunts.

We saw, firsthand, a lot of action.

a WOMAN: We just wanted the war to stop.JE We had a high proportion of Latinos die in that war.

On Two Fronts: Lat [ ♪♪ ] LYNDON JOHNSON: It is my duty to the American peopleLY to report that renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to order the military forces of the United States to take action in reply.ci MAN: We heard that we were going to war with North Vietnam, that there had been an attack, allegedly, on American ships on the Bay of Tonkin,me and the United States was considering how to respond.

MAN: Next morning they launched us in retaliation for that to strike at the naval basesle along the North Vietnamese coast.

They launched us last.

So, by that time, I got up there, they were ready.í There was a lot of flak, a lot of anti-aircraft.

MAN: The next thing we heard is that there were planes off of one of the aircrafts over there that flew into the Bay of Tonkin.ha And two of them crashed.do [ engine buzzing ] MAN: I was always interested in flying.

Growing up in Salinas, I had always had an interest.

Ever since we were kids, we used to live out by the old airport.ba The airport had a lot of little crop dusters.

And they were these biplanes.

And so as kids we would run over there and jump in and play in these biplanes.

And it was a real thrill when I was a kid, like 12 years old.

Guys I know would go up and take the exam to be a Navy pilot, and every one of them failed.

Turns out I was qualified to go in the Navy flight training.

[ explosions ]ne WOMAN: So Everett Alvarez, he's a Navy pilot, which is really unusual.

This is an elite status.

Especially for Mexican-Americans,er but for any military man.

He has an elite position.

He is shot down.

NEWS REPORTER: The Defense Department just moments ago announced that two Californians, Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr.un and Richard C. Sather, S-A-T-H-E-R, are the missing pilots of the two United States planes shot down in the raid over the North Vietnamese coast.

We knew two pilots had crashed.

d We didn't know which survived, which had not.

Then we heard one was dead, and the other one had survived,l but we didn't know which.

EVERETT ALVAREZ JR.: When I was in the water, they started firing at me.

And the first thing I said was, "I'm not going to make it.

They're going to kill me."

The second thing is, then I thought, "Well, what's going to happen to my mom?

What's going to happen to my wife?"

I was thinking of them.

And then the third thing I think is, I says, "I've got to think about what I do now."

And I really didn't have much time, because they were upon me.

The boats were all around me.

So they captured me, they got me.

They pulled me out of the water.

They didn't know what I was, because they were yelling at me and talking to me in Vietnamese.

I looked at them and I -- I -- I -- I said something in Spanish.

Don't ask me why I did that.

m It seemed like a good idea.

[ ♪♪ ] I was the first one into the Hanoi Hilton, into the prison.

WOMAN: When my brother was first captured 50 years ago, women were not in combat -- you know, fighting.mu They were not in the combat duties.

And I remember thinking, "I wish I was a man so I could go and fight the enemy.

""Q Who knew that it was going to continue for years and years and years?

From that point forward it just continues to escalate as the Johnson administration can't figure out -- they can bomb all they want under Operation Rolling Thunder,e- but they have to put troops in to protect the planes that are being attacked.s.

And over time they just continue to put q more and more and more troops in.nd To the point by 1967, you have between 400,000 and 500,000 Americans in Vietnam.es MAN: It's hard to find a familyRE that wasn't being affected by the Vietnam War inside of the barrios of the Southwest at that time.po Some of my earliest memories are of looking at the photo album of my dad from Vietnam.n You know, I mean, this old, tattered Army-green photo album and thumbing through it, and, you know, it was something that we talked about and that we knew about.

What does that mean for the community as a whole when war was such a part of their life?a WOMAN: I think a lot of people look at the Latino community and the Mexican community m and think that a lot of them are immigrants, and, yes, there's a large percentage that are immigrants,ll but there's many that have been here for generations.ie And so, in those generations, you had fathers and grandfathersta who were in the American military.fu [ ♪♪ ] LORENA OROPEZA: There is an enormous pride, there's this sense of hyper Mexican-American loyalty, a willingness to sacrifice and dieif on behalf of the United States.

That Mexican-Americans are not just patriotic,Co but they're better.

It's like, you think we're inferior, but, ha, look it, here we're actually superior.

And they can point to the meaning, the real sense of inclusion they felt as the result of their World War II experience.

The most recent information is probably 500,000 Mexican-Americans served during World War II.

EVERETT ALVAREZ JR.: In my parents' generation, they all served.

There was a lot of gratitude for the opportunities that we had here in this country, because my parents were born here, but my grandparents came here from Mexico.is This was a very commonly understood obligation that we were going to be fulfilling, and I knew someday I was going to do it in one form or another.

LORENA OROPEZA: What is really important to remember, just a decade back, the 1930s,na where you have so many people deported from the United States or intense anti-Mexican sentiment.ue And what that does is make Mexican-Americans feel extremely vulnerable.

They are extremely vulnerable, right?

They've seen their relatives deported.

It makes sense that they're clinging to their American identity as a form of protection.st They really need it.

And then there's the experience of World War II as well emphasizes their role as Americans.

The U.S. government knows what it's doing.ob It has a massive propaganda campaign.

World War II is an extraordinarily immense effort that requires the participation of all Americans,qu so that the slogan is "Americans All."

e That means even people who we might not have wanted to have here just 10 years before.

To be able to serve in the military is like the ultimate proof that you belong, that you are accepted in a society.

It just comes at the ultimate price during wartime.bl And so, it is -- it's a powerful and deadly civil rights strategy.ra [ ♪♪ ]ME MAN: I got this draft notice, and I'm thinking to myself, my friends in Berkeley are protesting.

"M I don't know really what they're protesting.

And in my soul, I want to see what war looks like.

At 16, you have no idea who you are.lo But you want to have an idea of who you are,ui and you choose these things that will give you the value of who you are.qu One of the most imaginary portfolios that can ever be handed to a 16-, 17-year-old boy is the portfolio of "Hero, the Warrior Hero."

An entire life handed to you.ne Not just a piece of a life, but an entire life.

And the possibility of heroic death and heroic forever hereafter is handed to a boy.

u And you never have to make a decision again because you're doing something that cannot be questioned in our culture -- cannot be questioned.

Once you're in there, you are -- you are in the sacred halls of honor.

LEA YBARRA: A lot of Latinos went in as Marines because not only do they want to be in the militaryol and prove they were Americans, but they wanted to prove that they were the toughest of the toughest.ob A large number joined the Marine Corps, as did my brotherMu and some of my cousins, because, again, that's what they felt that would really show that they were a true American and a true man.y [ speaking heavily accented English ] But I told them no.

I wanted to be a Marine.

As simple as that.

I don't know if it was a foolish thing, but it was what I wanted.

I wanted to be a Marine.

When I was a kid, I would be training, doing push-ups and everything,ha because I wanted to be ready for that day, you know?y I already had in my mind that one day if there was a war, I would go to that war and I would die as a hero.

NEWS REPORTER: In some communities, Vietnam has claimed an unusually high number of young men.En Here is ABC's Dick Shoemaker with a report from Morenci, Arizona.

DICK SHOEMAKER: Morenci is a small mining town in southeastern Arizona, the population about 6,000.

A few years ago, nine boys from the local high school joined the Marines.

[ ♪♪ ] [ dog barking in the distance ] MAN: Just on my street,En I think there's only two people out of 12 houses that didn't have somebody in the service, or still isn't in the service,mo or didn't go in the Marine Corps or Navy or Air Force, Rangers, or Recon or any of these other units.

But everybody had a child or a brother or a sister or a cousin in the service.

MAN: I believe this whole county was very patriotic.

It's what more or less was expected of you during that time.

Your forefathers went to the service.

My father went to the service.

It was my duty to go also.

Their whole concept was, "If you're an American, then serve your country.

You're no better, you're no worse than anybody.

But just pay your dues, just like everybody else has."

MAN: We also come from a very strong military family, which goes all the way back to the Alamo.

My father said, "Once you came into this country," he says, "you owe your allegiance to this country."

And my dad said, "Don't you forget that.

So if another war happens to come up,tr you boys will serve your country."

[ train whistle blows ] [ crickets chirping ] STEVE GUZZO: Francisco Coronado, he came through here, this whole area.

That's why they call it the Coronado trail.

And they were basically following the river to get up -- trying to look for the seven cities of Cibola.

- Cities of gold.

- Cities of gold.

[ train whistle blows ] Maybe they brought a geologist with them, I don't know, but they walked right through big copper fields, you know.

[ ♪♪ ] Growing up in Morenci, there was a lot of freedom.

The area between our home and the San Francisco River was mountainous.

It was adventurous.ea It gave us an opportunity to hunt a lot.

OSCAR URREA: The whole operation of both towns was driven by the mine.

And we played football in the tailings,mo but we always came out -- our teeth were white, but then, after playing in that white dirt, they'd turn green.

And our throats were always scratchy l because we were taking all the dust and stuff.

We always had a smell like copper tailings.

For the better part, until the early 1970s,e it was a segregated town.ac You had your Anglos living on one section and the Hispanics and blacks were on the same street.

I thought all blacks could speak Spanish.

And I learned later on, that wasn't -- they just learned it v because they lived right next door to -- to us.

ART MONTEZ: You had a choice of either going to the mines, working in the fields, or going into the service.

Education wasn't too much of an option.tu And that's the way it was.

All the Mexicans went to the smelter.

c Nobody wanted to work in the smelter.

It stunk.

It was dirty.

It was filthy.

All the others would go to the cushy jobs, like in the machine shop, the powerhouse, the pit, things like that.

This is my brother-in-law's uniform!

And I just thought I'd try it on and all that.

Everybody said I was cheatingch because I got my picture taken in uniform before I left.ue But this is when they had already sent me the thing that I was to report to the Selective Service and all that.

q And that's just when we were drafted right here in Clifton.

We were all young there.

Most of those guys are still around.

I joined the Army because I felt, to me, it was like a way out, and I wanted to serve my country.

I said, "I need to serve my country."

I -- I just -- I just felt the need to, you know.

And also it was an escape for me to get out of here, because I didn't have nothing.

DAN GARCIA: I knew early onGA that it was a good place to grow up, but it was not a place I was going to live the rest of my life.

I was not going to work for the mine.

And I got a lot of friends and a lot of relatives that felt the same way.

[ ♪♪ ] KYLE LONGLEY: In the case of the Morenci Marines, they're friends.

One joins, they want to go together as a group,y and they want to be part of that group,ie they want to be part of something.lg So it's March of 1966, several of the young men are in English class, Ms. Arnold's English class, and she announces a pop quiz.s Right at that time someone from the principal's office shows up and goes, "All right, you come down and meet this Marine recruiter," who had just come over from Globe,lu "and we'll let you out of the pop quiz."

They know exactly what storiesta to reach out to these young men with about the promise of being the toughest fighters in the world,s, of getting to travel, to establish themselves as special.

MAN: I was in study hall at the time, Larry West and I. I seen the Marine recruiter there in the counselor's office, and I just knew then that I was going to go into the Marine Corps.

We decided to go in all together.

KYLE LONGLEY: By the end of the day, he's got eight recruits with a ninth one on the way,en Stan King being off at the University of Arizona.

They almost run over each other in their race to their destiny.

July 4th, 1966, they're boarding a bus and heading for San Diego.

DAN GARCIA: The day they left, we watched them get into the bus.

Well, I shouldn't even say bus.li It was like a Suburban.

They climbed in, and they're all waving, and as they drive away, their arms are stuck out the windows and they're waving, and then my cousin Johnny and I, we cruised,De and then later that evening watched the fireworks because it was 4th of July.

[ ♪♪ ] [ crackling and whistling ] ART MONTEZ: To the media and the outside world they're called the Morenci Nine.s But to a lot of us, p we just knew them as individuals.

They were hard-ass.

I mean, we knew these guys because these guys were all huge and big and tall.

KYLE LONGLEY: They're proud to be from Morenci.

They're proud to be tough, hard-nosed kids,re especially when they get to the rifle range and can show the city boys how to shoot.ir The odds of dying in Vietnam were under 10%.bi So by that logic, in the case of the Morenci Nine, one should have died, if you take probabilities.

Why do 66% die?

Why this one group?

Why?qu I have today ordered to Vietnam the Air Mobile Division and certain other forces which will raise our fighting strength from 75,000 to 125,000 men almost immediately.

Additional forces will be needed later, and they will be sent as requested.qu LORENA OROPEZA: During the 1960s,se during the Vietnam conflict, Mexican-Americans were extraordinarily vulnerable to the draft.

And one reason was that there were college deferments.

Well, it was unlikely for Mexican-Americans to get to collegeer when the average educational obtainment of the populationd, was less than an eighth-grade education.

MAN: The Vietnam generation was enormous.

It was part of the famous Baby Boom cohort of Americans that included 27 million men who came of draft age during the Vietnam War.

But, really, only about a little over 10% of the larger generation served in Vietnam.

LORENA OROPEZA: Lewis Hershey, the director of the Selective Service System, was really clear that in Vietnam you don't need to take every young man.

It's not like World War II.

e In which case you have to decide who goes and who stays.

And he's very clear that there's some people who you should preserve.

Those people in college are the people who, evidently, are smart enough to get to college: let's keep those.ar And other people aren't there -- well, maybe they're expendable.

CHRISTIAN APPY: And they were quite explicit about this.

They called the system "channeling," and the idea is that you could at least indirectly channel some people into collegeon and graduate school and the professions, and you would channel the non-college-bound people into the military.

LEA YBARRA: For the most part, Latinos didn't know about those alternatives.

I was against the war,en so I was involved in all the war protests.

And I had -- my brother was in the Marine Corps and really believed in what he was doing,y at least when he first went in.

I had cousins that were in the Navy and in the Army and in the Air Force, so we really were all involved in all aspects of it.

When we were involved in the draft counseling, c many of them didn't even know what deferments were.lu We'd see busloads of young men being unloadedé at the Oakland Induction Center to get sworn in.

e So we would get there at 6:00 in the morning and try to talk to them and say,am "These are options.

You don't have to go in.

"lo If you had a medical condition,".

and of course some of them did, but if they didn't have moneydi to go to a doctor to confirm that,ra then others were getting medical defermentsen when the poor were not.

KYLE LONGLEY: If you were from Berkeley, p if you were raised in Madison, Wisconsin --Si depending on what part of town you lived in -- Seattle, places like that that had a tie there to education,en that was an out.

Again, affluence was an out, and many people used those.

In our community it wasn't -- it was a sense of duty.

c You didn't go to Canada, you didn't go to Mexico, you didn't go someplace else.

You went and did what you had to do.

As one of the Mexicanos that I interviewed said,r.

"What am I going to do in Canada?qu A Mexican in Canada?

"vo If they went to Canada or even to Mexico,ce which was also an alien country,a because they had been born in this country, in the U.S., it was really not an option., Because, one, they could not think of never seeing e their family again, and then also they didn't want to be seen as cowards.

Really the options were few.ía They were the perfect target for the recruiters.

ALFREDO VEA JR.: I got out of high school T and I went to college, and I got a draft notice.cé That's because I guess I didn't go do things in a straight line.

You have to do things continuously.en The assumption was that you, you went to high school, then went to college, and there was no break in between, and there were no semester breaks or quarter breaksen or anything like that.e You had to be able to afford to do that.

CHRISTIAN APPY: At the local level, there were something like 4,000 draft boards that had the final say on who would go into the military and who wouldn't.

Overwhelmingly, those boards were comprised of older white military veterans of a conservative cast.

[ ♪♪ ] MAN: Well, I'm the ninth of twelve children.

My father was a farm worker.

I couldn't find a job in Salinas.

And I went by this place, and it said, "Join the Air Force and see the world.

"te I got home from the Air Force, and I looked for a job, and I still couldn't find a job, so I went over to San Jose State,i and the first class I took was a summer class.

It was a five-unit course, ten-week summer class.

It was really tough, you know, and I got a B. I said, "Holy smoke, I think I can do this!"

It was my first indicator that maybe I could do it.

I worked myself upha to the manager of industrial engineering for Sylvania in Santa Cruz.

And in 1970, the people responsible for the appointments to the draft board saw in me, I guess,a somebody that they would like to have sit on the draft board.

I was appointed to the draft board I think because they thought, "Well, he's a -- he's an engineer, and he's the Jaycee,n- he's a safe Mexican.

"n There was myself, and there was a Japanese guy from Salinas -- he was a grower.

And there were three white guys.

The people that were applying for deferments, medical or otherwise,mé would submit their applications to the staff.

And those that required a review by the board were brought to the board's attention,s and we would make decisions: yes -- it was thumbs-up or thumbs-down.ga Thumbs-down, they go into the service.

Thumbs-up, they get a deferment.Co [ horns honking ]bo WOMAN: When we would get news about Everett, there would be calls coming in from my -- my mother's sister, Sally, or Soledad, or, we call her Tía Chole.

She would call to say, "They have film about Everett."

We knew there was a film that had come out of Hanoi, so in watching the news that nightes then we were of course watching the film very intently to see if we would see him.

[ ♪♪ ] EVERETT ALVAREZ JR.: They gave us new clothing, pajama clothes, with numbers on the backs,nú numbers that had been stenciled on the back.

They brought in trucks.

We figured, "Ah!

We're going to go home!"

They blindfolded us, loaded us up on trucks,No and it took us a while to get into Hanoi.

And it was mobbed as far as you could see,le just 10, 12 deep.

And they had people with... like, a cheerleader with a megaphone.

And they would be getting the crowd to yell.

LINDA ESPINOSA: He was marching down the streets, with the Vietnamese people on the sidelines of the street, shouting all kinds of things.

And we didn't know the language, so we didn't know what they were saying.

EVERETT ALVAREZ JR.: They would be shouting and yelling, and I remember him at one point saying to them, "Alvarez!

Alvarez!

Son of a bitch!

Son of a bitch!"

He was walking under his own power.

That, to me, was positive.

Nobody was carrying him, and nobody was, you know -- he was walking on his own.

That means he's okay.Es I don't want to say ela-- we weren't elated, but we were greatly relieved that he was alive -- at the time that that film was shot.

Because you didn't know from day to dayPo whether he was alive or dead.

EVERETT ALVAREZ JR.: The crowd was getting worse, and there were bottles flying and things were flying and shoes were flying.

And you just kept going along,do and people were coming up and hitting you.

I remember just walking along,Re I started saying the Lord's Prayer.

I just started, figuring, you know, "This is it."

You just basically just lowered your head and just went through it, pushed your way through.

Going back that night, out there, I remember, when we came in, we were optimistic,os hopefully optimistic that we were going home.te And on the way back, it was just silence,Y and, well, what we had just been through.

[ birds cawing and metal jangling ] [ ♪♪ ] Now picture yourself climbing up these hills when we were youngsu with 80 pounds of back -- of gear on us.

And you're coming as a platoon or a company, and then you're moving up to take the high ground.

They would leave us like on this hill, and we had to get to that hill... and take the top of the mountain.

That's where the battles would ensue, up there.

STEVE GUZZO: There's different sectionsZZ in the memorial itself.

Each one is dedicated to each war.

u This here is the Vietnam section.

Oh, wow, did that break?

- OSCAR URREA: Yeah.

- STEVE GUZZO: Wow.

It broke.

Somebody took the bolt off it.O: Because there was another bolt on here.

I just came up here a couple of days ago.

It had a bolt on here.y This is very unfortunate.

This has never happened.un Okay.

Why anybody would want to do that... OSCAR URREA: Well, there's always mischief, you know.

STEVE GUZZO: Yeah.

People in Greenlee County didn't tolerate hippies.

d They didn't tolerate the anti-war people.

You didn't question.

You didn't question the president.

And I think it was especially strongob in the Mexican-American community, because some people did question:po where was their loyalty?

Was it to Mexico?

Even though many of the people actually had been here long before most Anglos arrived in the region.te Military service was an out for them.vi It was an opportunity for them.

And many would join in '63-'64 not ever thinking about Vietnam.ch And then by '66-'67, suddenly they're on the front lines at Con Thien or in '68 in Khe Sanh or around Da Nang, where the major battles are being fought.

And they didn't anticipate that.

When they gave you those exams in boot camp,do you know, there's kids who couldn't read.

You knew where they were going.

I mean, they were going directly to the infantry.

The lower your education, the worse your English,Cu the more likely you are to carry a gun into the field.

And myself being a radio guy, humping that radio, I knew those crosshairs were always on my body somewhere.

You're scared.

I feared death.

l I feared it.

The thing that scared me the most was artillery.

I don't know why -- some -- it didn't bother some people or whatever, but with me it scared the dickens out of me.

CANDY CHAVEZ: We were grunts.Z: We saw, firsthand, a lot of action.

We saw firefights, we saw people die, we saw our buddies next to us die.a We killed people.

We killed gooks.

They taught us that gooks aren't people.en The military says, "You kill that gook.

That's what they are, gooks.

They're not human."

So it didn't bother us to kill gooks.

That's what we were taught.

When I was a little Mexicanan running around the deserts of Arizona, there was always this mystique about tall, white men with gray hair running industry,la running the military, running academies and colleges.

They deserved your respect.

And in the military, that idea fell apart.Y People are screaming in my face, telling me what to do, and telling me things that I just don't believe: we're going to go over there and kill indigenous people.

You're lying in bed with a black dude in the next bed, c you know, aren't we indigenous people?

We are.Sí Why is this supposed to be exciting to me?

It started wearing very thin rapidly.

[ ♪♪ ] MAN: I grew up in the Bronx, New York, in a neighborhood that was once a Jewish enclave.

Then when Puerto Rican families started to immigrate in the 1940s, they settled in these neighborhoods, these ghettos, so-called ghettos.

At first we didn't have any problems, so I was totally naive as to the racial tensions of the time.so When I joined the Marine Corps,an that's when I came into contact with people from different areas and I began to learn and experience what the racial tensions and relationships were all about in America.

I didn't see any high-ranking officers that were a minority.

There were a lot of Hispanics who died and who fought there, and who were sent to the front lines, who were sent as point guards.

I couldn't understand why an African-American, for instance, who would be new to a unit, be sent to pointer without the experience that the other guys had.on The American-born Puerto Ricans began to identifypu with the Puerto Rican-born Puerto Ricans.fi I began to embrace my Puerto Rican culture and to be proud of my heritage.

[ ♪♪ ] DAN GARCIA: You couldn't conceive that maybe one of them or any of them would be killed.

It was always a shock.

My dad went to the South Pacific, World War II,Mi came home.re Why wouldn't you think that the others would come home?

I don't know.

My dad was in some pretty... pretty brutal stuff, island hopping.

And he made it without a scratch, so why wouldn't you think that the others wouldn't?

I don't know, it was always a shock.

STEVE GUZZO: It was a scary time from '66 all the way to '68.

In 1968, there was four months in a row that there was a -- there was a funeral here.

It was fear.

Any time they seen two people in a uniform,da that meant that they were going to go to somebody's door and inform them that their son had just been killed.

For a small county like this, it is quite a bit.

KYLE LONGLEY: There are a lot of Greenlee Counties.

You can go find them in many different parts of the country.

And I think that's why this story means so much.ue It is a unique -- it has unique characteristics, but it also has significant similarities with what other young men who left small towns, in 1960s, and some died, some didn't come home,y others did come home and they bore the scars of what they'd seen in Vietnam.

The Communists may renew their attack any day.ni They are, it appears, trying to make 1968 the year of decision in South Vietnam.se The year that brings, if not final victory or defeat,ño at least a turning point in the struggle.

LEA YBARRA: Those that went in in the early '60s,YB before the Tet Offensive in '68 or so, were really pretty much believing in the American ideal of going and fighting Communism before they come to our shores, which was the belief.a But after the Tet Offensive, after the demonstrations really started in this country, the young men that were drafted after that time went in much more aware of what was going on.

They had FTA on their helmets, which meant "eff" the Army.

They were politically aware.

They weren't as ready to take orders and have that idea of, "Ours is not to ask but why, ours is but to do or die."

They were asking why: why are we here?eg LORENA OROPEZA: Chicanos and Chicanas across the Southwest are saying, "Why is it that at our high schools" -- and you have demographic concentrations of Mexican-Americans in East L.A.,ic San Antonio neighborhoods, there's really places where they're concentrated -- "Why is it in our neighborhood we get" -- and it still happens today --Y "we get the U.S. military recruiter from all forces,an but not a single college recruiter?lo Why don't we get college recruiters?

"r Back in 1969-70, students in Crystal City held a walkoutan demanding student rights and an increase in Latino teachersy as well as Chicano studies.

85% of the population was Latino and 15% was white, but they had the power.st Before this revolution happened, many young Crystal City Latinos were sent to Vietnam.os And you have counselors that are telling them they don't belong in college.la But in Crystal City we had won the war, so to speak, you know?

We decided that we weren't going to let military recruiters to come into Crystal City.

LORENA OROPEZA: And this is a huge shift because a few years before, the same people who were involved in the Mexican American Youth Organizationen are thinking, "No, we can't talk about it.

It will be too upsetting."

And it takes almost an entire decade for Mexican-Americans to reach this point.

[ protesters chanting ] And so you have this shift among the broader population as well.

There's time for doubts to accumulate.

The easy answers no longer seem so easy anymore.

[ ♪♪ ] JULIAN CAMACHO: A fellow I knew -- he was a professor up at U.C.

Santa Cruz -- his name was Rafael Guzman.

He did a study on who was dying in Vietnam.es And the great bulk of them were white guys and young Mexicans and blacks, the children of the working class.

TOMÁS SUMMERS SANDOVAL: The Chicano anti-Vietnam War movement does not exist without the research of Ralph Guzman.an He is the verifiable proof of their common-sense understanding that this war was disproportionatelyes affecting our communities.

LORENA OROPEZA: He looked at the number of Mexican-American males of military age,ic and he figured out they composed 13.8% of the population in 1960.

And then he looked at the casualty rolls coming out from the five Southwestern states,de which is where the Mexican-American populationte is concentrated, and he deducedoa that you have disproportionate casualty rates: 13.8% of the population, 19.4% of casualties.

The Vietnam War is affecting Chicano and Latino communities at a statistically higher rateun because the Selective Service is affecting them at a disproportionate rate as well.

JULIAN CAMACHO: I served on that draft board with the idea that I was going to be there to be sure that the conscientious objector's case was given a worthy review.di I saw the stream of sons of the clergy and business people.

It was just unbelievable, that what I'd thought and what I'd read in the papers was true,ue that we were sending the children of the working families to die in the war, and the children of the privilegedy were being saved from that by this induction system.

Well, that upset me a lot.Bu I resigned from the draft board to protest --Re to protest the war in Vietnam.ar I am moved today to make a protestHo against the war in Indochina,en not only as an American citizen,no not only as a minority American, but also as a member of an agencyno which provides manpower for the most unjust war in American history.or After consultation with my friends and family, and most importantly, as an act of conscience, I have decided to resign from local Draft Board #59, Santa Cruz County, effective immediately.

C I caught a lot of flak for that.

They called me a Communist... and other derogatory names associated with my race.

But I wasn't going to support the war in Vietnam.

LORENA OROPEZA: The Guzman statistics becomes just a way to crystallize what is wrong with this war and what is wrong with the plight of Mexican-Americans on the home front, that whereas an earlier generation might have said,nt "Look at how willing we are to serve," they're asking, "Why do we only get equality, or even more than equality, on the battlefront?

Why can't we get it at home?

"ra It's a very big joy for us and in this parish to welcome tonight as the preacherla Mr. Rosalio Muñoz, the first Chicano ever to be elected president of the entire student body at UCLA.di As the war went on, as the number of dead went on,A and all the dudes in your neighborhood are caught up with the draft, and all the dudes on campus, basically white, were -- had deferments.

The two things that were growing on my mind now, the Mexican-American movementan and the movement to change the country, and actually a third, my own futureY as to whether I was going to be drafted.

RECORDING OF ROSALIO MUÑOZ: We are dying at twice the rate of all other soldiers in Vietnam.e We're protesting against the discriminatory draft laws that give deferments to all the Anglo middle-class people of this country and make the heaviest burden of the war fall on the poor, fall on the Mexicano!

ROSALIO MUÑOZ: I got in the mailó a draft notice to report on September 16, 1969.en September 16th is Mexican Independence Day.em And it came to me that those things could be put together.

I wanted to challenge the draft and the war.

In September 16th, I refused induction 1 in a very, very public way.

RECORDING OF ROSALIO MUÑOZ: Today, the 16th of September, the day of independence for all Mexican people, I declare my independence of the Selective Service System.

Specifically, I accuse the draft,es the entire social, political, and economic system of the United States of America, of creating a funnel which shoots Chicano youth, our Chicano youth, into Vietnam to be killednu and to kill innocent men, women, and children.

ROSALIO MUÑOZ: I knew I could refuse because it was happening on the campus, and there was a draft counseling going on there.

In a way, I kind of look at it, I had a chance to be a hero, and I took it in terms of the war.ua To begin challenging some of the -- what I would see as the inferiority complex,Lo that we Mexicans had to prove ourselvesde by dying for this country in order to deserve the American Dream.ía [ ♪♪ ] A LORENA OROPEZA: I think the story of Delia Alvarez is important here because there's a sense that women are supposed to support the men at war, right?

g They have these, literally, supporting roles.

DELIA ALVAREZ: When my brother was captured, if you were a family member of a serviceman, you did not speak out.

It was unheard of, it was unthinkable to speak out.

But then the anger just started growing, and frustrations, tremendous frustrations over the years.la Can you imagine?

Five, six years?

My mother, who had a sixth grade formal education, was so well read -- I mean, she read all her life -- she became so well informed of Indochinese history, she could have taught a class in collegepo on Indochinese history.

She recognized the war was wrong much earlier than I did.

I like what my mother says, though, about -- in just being able to tell the length of time of my brother's imprisonment and what's happened as far as his career in the Navy, because when he was captured, he was a Lieutenant JG, and he is now a Lieutenant Commander, and she doesn't want him to remain in prison to become an admiral.nv And I think that really -- I have said that so many times.

I want him home.

v I don't want an admiral in North Vietnam.

DELIA ALVAREZ: I remember very distinctly, when I went home and my mother was watching the news.

And it was the typical news of the day, and the Marines had gone through a village and there was deaths of villagers and children, and a Vietnamese woman was holding her child and crying because the child was dead.a And I looked at my mother, and she was crying.

So I said, "Mom, why are you crying?

It's the enemy that's crying."

And she said, "No, mija, I'm crying for my child as that woman is crying for her child."

There wasn't an enemy.

I mean, there was a mother crying for another mother.

So I started thinking a lot about, "Wait a minute, what's going on here?"

What also had a profound impact on me was about 1969 when Life magazine had a special edition.

q And it was 100 pictures of the soldiers killed in one week's time period.qu And to see actual soldiers and their faces was really quite profound.

And so it became clear that this war went beyond just my brother.

This was a lot of people suffering.

And for a long time, all the country heard wasra about the support of the war in the sense of "We have to support our troops," which I totally agreed.

And -- but there wasn't anyone speaking out against the war.

Well, then, we spoke out.

You're talking about being used.

One of the things that we have highly resented,de and I'm talking about my family, is that the reasons and excuses for my brother being a prisonermi have changed like the seasons.

In 1964, my brother was captured, to February of 1965, our government was stalling for time in order to initiate the involvement in Indochina.

My brother lost six months of his life at that time.

We just wanted the war to stopue and bring all our loved ones home.

t NEWS REPORTER: This is the grave of Clive Garcia.

He was a Marine, 22 years old,a the last of six young men from the small town of Morenci, Arizona, to die fighting in Vietnam.de The town, population 6,000, is still in a state of shock.

KYLE LONGLEY: Clive is sort of the stereotype of the Marine.

Had he lived, he probably would have beener the commodore of the Marine Corps at one point.

I think he was going to -- he was going to be a lifer.

He was going to be in there for a while.

I met Clive one time when I was back -- I was a rifle instructor and a pistol instructor on a rifle range.

And he said he'd volunteered to go to Vietnam.

I pleaded with him not to go.

I said, "You're not missing anything if you don't go."

But he was pretty adamant about it that he wanted to go.

He would never feel like a Marine if he didn't go.en And, I mean, I understood that, but I tried to talk him out of it anyways.

KYLE LONGLEY: He wanted to do his part.

He didn't want to be the one left behind in garrison duty.rt I had an after-school job, and I was working at the Ritz's furniture store.

Larry Taylor, he was married to the owner's daughter.

He comes up and he goes, "Hey, Dan, you got to go home."

I said...

It was a means to get money, and I didn't want to go home, I wanted to put in hours.

I wanted to be able to take the girlfriend out to a dinner and buy clothes and have gas money.

He took me to the door, and I told him,ó "I don't want to go!"

And he kicked me in the ass.

He says, "You go home!

Your parents need you."

I walked in the door to the living room, and there stood two Marines.

I kept saying -- I kept saying, "No.

"o The radio man, he tripped a bouncing betty --ga that's a mine that jumps and then explodes -- and he was killed instantly.

Clive was wounded bad.Cl And when the medivac finally came,l because they were definitely so many clicks on the South Vietnam side, he said, "Your brother was able to see the medivac hover, start to come down, but he died in my arms."

The church was packed.

I remember sitting thereRe and then my dad stepping up and leaving.

He went outside.

My younger brother did, too.

I wanted to stand up and leave.

t I remember my mom grabbing me, and she says, "Not you.

You stay."

And so I stayed.

I stayed there next to her through the funeral.

[ sniffs ] It took a lot... it took a lot to get her upset.

We do not question and we do not become bitter because we believe that this was godsent, and we accept Him and we thank Him for the many blessings He has given us.da I've said over and over, you know, "He lent him to us.

"He I can't in any way disgrace the Corpsdo or any part of the service.in This is not right.

This not our belief, you know.

But the grief, the sorrow, is too much, you know.

And, again, with the grace of God we're able to bear it.

It's got to be brutally tougher on a mother than a brother.

It's got to be.

LEA YBARRA: I saw the trauma to the family in my own family.

I think my mother aged 20 yearsCr in the two years that my brother was gone.

She was, you know, depressed all the time because she was crying all the time.

It was very traumatic for the family, and my dad tried to keep us all together.

LORENA OROPEZA: All of a sudden, women are having second thoughts:s Do I really want my son to fight and die over there?re And there's women in the protest march who carry signs saying, "Yo quiero mi hijo, no un heroe."

"I want my son, not a hero."

ROSALIO MUÑOZ: I like to think in a way in terms of the women that this is Uncle Sam is calling you.

Well, Tia Lupita is calling you to be home and do business here and take care of things here with us.gu In Tucson, visiting my grandmother, she was getting old, she was 90 or so at the time.es It was Thanksgiving, D and I was just starting to campaign against the war.s, And I had an uncle that was irate.

He says -- I was on a fast, too ---- and he says, "He's all long hair and he's not wanting to go.

My kids, they served in the military!"

My grandmother called everybody to sit down for dinner and had me sit next to her, q and she said, "Quiero ver tusojos, te vez muy Mexicano."

"I want to look in your eyes, you look very Mexican."

And that was the message.

She was backing me up and her clan, my mother's side of the family, against the war.

l [ protesters chanting "Brown Berets!"

]AN The local Brown Beret chapter in L.A.ió decided they would reach out to the community and let's have an anti-war march.za They called it a "Chicano Moratorium"ra because that was the term being used for peace protests.

c [ protesters singing in Spanish ] We marched to what was called Laguna Park at that time,rc in the heart of L.A., maybe two and a half miles.l [ protesters shouting ] Five thousand people marched that day, maybe more.

The vast majority of the people were not students.

They were working people in the communities, and they were from the barrio.

[ protesters shouting "Chicano Power!"

] Who knows how big it might have beenié had it not been raining so hard.

[ speaking in Spanish ][ CROWD: No!BR [ crowd chanting "Hell, no, we won't go!"

] [ ♪♪ ] EVERETT ALVAREZ JR.: We were getting word from others that there was a division in the country.

The Vietnamese used to show us homemade movies of the riots and the demonstrations, anti-war demonstrations in Berkeley,ra the riots in Watts and Detroit,lo the Washington riots, and how the American peoplelo are supportive of the peace-loving people and against the colonial --ba neocolonialistic policies of the U.S. imperialists,on war-loving-mongers, and all this stuff.

DELIA ALVAREZ: My brother's still living in the world of '64 and it's hard to explain to him what has happened.

You know, I have written some letters, hoping they'd get through to him, and trying to describe the Chicano movements:de the grape boycott, the lettuce boycott,co you know, brown -- "proud to be brown," and there's the black movement.

And I'm afraid he doesn't understand it.

How can he?od I thought it was really important to really express how we felt.

And of course our family was unique because my brother was the first pilot captured.e And we were Latinos, and for a number of different reasons, there was a lot of interest in what we had to say, yes.

I've asked for this television time tonight to make public a plan for peacera that can end the war in Vietnam.pu It is a plan to end the war now.a It includes an offer to withdraw all American forces within six months of an agreement.s Its acceptance would mean the speedy returnes of all the prisoners of war to their homes.

EVERETT ALVAREZ JR.: We knew that when he started the bombing again, and especially after he was re-elected, he wasn't going to stop bombing until they were ready to talk seriously.st And sure enough, one day they read the Peace Accords.

A ceasefire, internationally supervised, will beginEl at 7:00 p.m. this Saturday, January 27, Washington time.

Within 60 days from this Saturday, all Americans held prisoners of war throughout Indochinata will be released.

During the same 60-day period, all American forces will be withdrawn from South Vietnam.

We knew about four or five weeks before that the war was finally ending.ue You know, the end of 1972.

It had been very frustrating because the peace talks weren't continuing because they were --go the North Vietnamese and the United States government were arguing about the shape of the -- the table at the Paris peace talks.

[ ♪♪ ] NEWS REPORTER: A huge crowd here at Travis Air Force Base in California, on the third homecoming day for America's prisoners of war.ri ANNOUNCER: Everett Alvarez Jr., United States Navy.TO [ crowd cheering ][ DELIA ALVAREZ: We were just relieved that he was coming home,po that he looked good.

You know, I'm the younger sister, and I even thought, "Wow, he looks handsome."

Commander Alvarez, on behalf of all America,Co it's really my sincere pleasure to say to you, welcome home.

Thank you, sir.

We have come home.

God bless the president and God bless you, Mr. and Mrs. America.

You did not forget us.

REPORTER: How do you feel the anti-war activityRT here in the United States affected what went on where you were?en I, as most of the other men up there, i believe that the anti-war activities did prolong our stay.

To what extent, I cannot really say.

It was hard.Fu See, they didn't know what we were going through.

But I could sense what they were going through.ro But as a -- so as a matter of policy, I just don't talk about it.

REPORTER: Just before you came home, your sister Delia said "All hell might break loose"ue when you found out about her anti-war activities.

What happened when you did find out about it?

[ clears throat ] Well, first of all, all hell did not break loose.

We were glad -- I was glad to be home,co and she was glad to have me home, for sure.

I'm convinced that, of course, to a large degreey her activities were based on emotion.

We were there for a long time, and she wanted us home.

She wanted me home.

m Of course, she lives in a free country.

She has a right to express her opinions.

REPORTER: You and he disagree on some pointsER regarding the war.

r Would you describe this as a friendly discussion,rr or did you have a heated discussion?is We have an understanding that we need each othero and that there's a lot of things that I'm going to learn, our family's going to learn about his experiencesnu and his -- and that's going to work, you know, both ways.

So that the only thing we have really been able to discuss, and which is the only thing that really has to be said, is that we respect each other's opinions.

We moved on.

l We were very close.

We grew up together.

And we just -- it was time to move on.

For us, the war ended in February of 1973. n I know it went on until 1975, but for us it was over.

Propaganda, constant propaganda of -- that we were fed about the American people, against the U.S. government and its policies,en and the American pe-- you know, it sort of affected you, in a way.

That's why it was such a surprise to seeaf this enthusiastic, emotional welcome home.re [ playing upbeat song ] CHRISTIAN APPY: The 591 American prisoners of warAP who returned to the United States in early 1973e were given the closest thing to a hero's welcome of any of the Americans who served in Vietnam.

This was the first time we had a coherent group of soldiers coming back as one.

c And it was basically the only thing from the war that could be celebrated.

DELIA ALVAREZ: I must say that our elation was tempered by our constant awareness that there were over 50,000 families whose loved ones were never going to come home.

There were thousands of families throughout the country whose loved ones came home wounded,cu physically and mentally.

And there were thousands of families whose loved ones came home --cu there was no parades for them, there was no celebration that they were home.

Our family was very -- empathizedli with a lot of other families and especially Latinos, Mexicanos.

We had a high proportion of Latinos die in that war.

CHRISTIAN APPY: Ordinary American G.I.s returned to the United States not as a group, not even as part of a division or a battalion, but they came back by themselves.

It was a very isolating experience.

[ ♪♪ ] ALFREDO VEA JR.: The thing that really bothered me, most of all, was that when I saw people who were injured or dead, they were all perfect the minute before.

And they were as physically perfect as possible, 18-year-old boys.

And it's hard to take.

And it's not supposed to happen.

They're supposed to be 85.

I was happy that I saw it, because I would never have imagined it before that.

You'd have to be able to fly at the speed of sound or speed of light all around the world, every day, to every automobile accident,da and look in the car before the first responders got there, and see how people look and how they feel and how they sound in order to match the things that you can see in a war zone.

And who survives something like that intact?

Nobody.

CANDY CHAVEZ: A lot of us didn't know how to reactVE to this "civilian life," so to say.es And that's why a lot of veteransY would never say they were veterans, because we were baby killers.

We were murderers.

We were everything but human.

So I never let anybody know I was a veteran, never.

I came back a different person because of my experiencesa that were learned... and I was really disappointed.

When I got back to Camp Pendleton and they asked me where I wanted to go, I had a choice.

I could have gone to New York because I had my job waiting for me in New York, in the bank.

Or I could have gone, you know, up to Puerto Rico.

I decided I wanted to go to Puerto Rico because I was so disgusted in the fact that people didn't treat us the way we were supposed to be treated.

I felt like dirt.Me STEVE GUZZO: The end of the war, there's no such thing to a Vietnam vet, the end of the war.

The war never goes away.La Some people fight it every day.gu Some people are on the battlefields every day.s Some people, when they hear a chopper, you know,na a helicopter, instantaneously throws you back into the 'Nam.

Smells.

Rain.or [ thunder rumbles ] What did we learn from this?

Don't go to war.

v [ ♪♪ ] There are over 1,800 dog tags hung on the cables between the flags,ad from different wars, conflicts.as We started by honoring the veterans from Vietnam who were killed from Greenlee County,qu and these are their dog tags in there.

So we started with them first to honor them and went on from there.

These are the newer ones here.

These are the newer dog...so The only thing that we did that was different or wrong is that we didn't ask, "Why are we going to war?

Why do we have to kill people?

Why do we have to do this?"

We just did what we were taught to do..

But a lot of mainstream America, young America, they were questioning that.

They were doing things that weren't done before.

They were voicing their opinions in actions and by voice.

The questions that were asked during the Vietnam War -- Why are we fighting and dying?qu Why is U.S. citizenship -- why is this, like, one of the best and most secure ways to obtain equal rights within this country?

Why is this a price that we need to pay?

-- those continue to resonate today.

Whether or not you are pro- or anti-war,ea Chicanos served in Vietnam.ch And they came back.

And my question is what did that do to our communities?Mi What did that do to their understanding of themselves as men and women?to What did that do to our understanding of what a community is, l of what our place is inside of the nation as a whole?

What did it do to their lives,su to the 40 years that they've spent alive since coming back from Vietnam?

My position about the military is that most of the young men,ue the children of working families,s most of the young women,la are there because they need a job.n It's not a fervor of protecting our country and fighting for democracy.

It's 'cause they need a job.

Unfortunately, it's a very dangerous way to make a living.

You see them coming out of the service, and they have the same problem when they come out of the service that they had when they went in the service: they can't find a job.no And that was true then.

It was true for Julian Camacho, it's true now.

When Clive was escorting Robert Moncayo's body home, they stopped there in California, I think it was Los Angeles.

And there was a lot of anti-war protesting, lots of it.

And a reporter came up to him because he was wearing his dress blues,st and he asked him, "What do you think of all this?

"o And Clive said, "I wear this so they have the privilege of doing that.

"ra [ playing "Taps" ]ut [ ♪♪ ] This is to honor our comrades in arms, those who have fallen, those that are alive.

This is in their memory.

[ ringing ] On Two Fronts: Latinos & Vietnam is available on DVD.

To order, visit shopPBS.org or call 1-800-PLAYPBS.Pa Captions by LNS Captioning Portland, Oregon www.LNScaptioning.com