Latin Heroes
Hispanics have been joining up in record numbers. But no one planned on dying
LOS ANGELES--It had practically become a family joke. From the time he was little, Jorge Gonzalez loved all things military, from GI Joes to video war games. And, from the time he was little, every Christmas, Gonzalez's Mexican mother, Rosa, would indulge her denial and put a set of toy doctor's instruments under the tree for him.
But the white coat really never stood a chance against the dress blues. Gonzalez joined the Marine Corps straight out of high school at 17, hoping that the training and education benefits would lift him out of the gang-ridden Latino neighborhoods of El Monte on the outskirts of L.A. and into a brighter future.
This week, Gonzalez's beloved dress blues will be used to bury him. The 20-year-old marine died on March 23 in fighting near Nasiriyah, Iraq. He leaves behind his parents, three brothers, two sisters, a wife, and a 3-week-old son, Alonso, he never met. And he joined a growing list of fallen Latino marines from the Los Angeles area--four thus far, out of a total of 58 American service personnel killed by late last week. The others: Lance Cpl. Jose Antonio Gutierrez, 28, an orphan and Guatemalan immigrant who was among the first soldiers killed in battle at Umm Qasr; Pfc. Francisco Martinez Flores, 21, who died when his tank plunged into the Euphrates River; and Cpl. Jose Angel Garibay, 21, of nearby Costa Mesa, who died during heavy fighting at Nasiriyah. These deaths have rocked L.A.'s tightly knit Hispanic communities, where support for the war is high and military service is a long tradition. "Young Latinos have been among the first killed and the first captured," says Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center, which studies Latinos in the military. "And it has brought them to people's attention, with an element of surprise."
Joining up. Hispanics are still modestly underrepresented in the American military (chart, above), but over the past decade, no single group has grown as quickly; the number of Hispanic service personnel has increased by 30 percent since 1991, even as the military itself has shrunk by 23 percent, according to Suro. Hispanics make up 9.7 percent of the Army, 10.5 percent of the Navy, and 5.6 percent of the Air Force. But at 14 percent, they are especially well represented in the Marine Corps and are drawn disproportionately to frontline assignments involving weapons.
At a Marine recruiting center, squeezed between the Salon de Fiesta and Esbeydi's Beauty Salon in an East L.A. strip mall, Gunnery Sgt. Jorge Montes has known the sad statistics would be coming. A Gulf War veteran, Montes, 32, has been enlisting recruits for three years, most of them Latino and most headed for the infantry. "Even recruits who score out of the infantry choose it anyway," says Montes, who chalks it up to a macho culture. "There is a certain pride in being in the front lines at the tip of the spear." The Marines recruit heavily in Latino high schools and in Latino communities here like Pico Rivera and Montebello. They lay on the aggressive, testosterone-heavy image, and it sells.
advertisement
