IRAQ-MEXICO: Mexicans on the Front-Line

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Apr 3 2003 (IPS) - The list of soldiers of Latin American origin who have died in Iraq as part of the U.S. armed forces rank- and-file continues to grow, but that has not discouraged hundreds of Mexicans who have offered to enlist and go to war as a way to legally emigrate to the United States.

The list of soldiers of Latin American origin who have died in Iraq as part of the U.S. armed forces rank- and-file continues to grow, but that has not discouraged hundreds of Mexicans who have offered to enlist and go to war as a way to legally emigrate to the United States.

U.S. consular sources told IPS that more than 200 people, mainly ”campesinos” or peasant farmers, visited U.S. consulates and embassies in Mexico between Mar. 20 – the day the attack on Iraq was launched – and Apr. 1, with the intention of enlisting in the U.S. armed forces.

That despite the fact that the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City carried out a media campaign explaining that only legal residents or U.S. citizens could enlist.

Nor were the would-be soldiers scared off by press reports of the deaths of four Mexican-Americans at the battlefront as of Mar. 31, or by the media images showing the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq in all its harshness.

According to reports out of Washington, four Mexican-American soldiers were among the 34 battlefront casualties that the United States recognised as of Mar. 31. A fifth is among the prisoners of war (POWs) being held by Iraq.

”It is people of humble origin who have been asking for information in the consulates about the possibility of joining the U.S. army to go to war,” said Armando Esparza, an official with Mexico’s National Migration Institute.

Tens of thousands of Mexicans attempt to enter the United States every month, and many of those who make it across the border are accompanied by young children, or become parents in the United States.

”I joined the army to partly repay the nation (the United States) for what it has given me since I was a child,” José Espinoza, a Mexican-American who served in the U.S. forces sent to the first Gulf War in 1991, commented to IPS.

Espinoza emigrated to the United States with his family as a child. As a legal resident, he enlisted in the U.S. army as soon as he was old enough to do so.

Many Latino recruits also have in mind the fact that ”if you join the army, you are offered citizenship and economic aid, which is a further attraction,” said the former soldier, who became a U.S. citizen after seven years in the army.

”Joining the armed forces brings you certain benefits,” was all a source at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico would say on the subject.

Espinoza, who lives in San Francisco, California, said many Latinos also enlist to climb up the social ladder, since ”here (in the United States) we are not well-accepted, because we are seen as a subculture.”

Most of the 120,000 Latinos or Latin Americans in the U.S. armed forces – who account for 8.7 percent of the total personnel – are of Mexican descent, according to a report provided by the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

That is a lower proportion than the 12 percent that Latinos represent in the U.S. population of 281 million.

But most Hispanics – the label used by the U.S. government – in the army and the marines are privates, the lowest rank of enlisted military personnel.

Less than one percent of the two-star generals and around two percent of the one-star generals in the U.S. armed forces are Hispanic or Latino. In the highest echelons, three or four-star generals, the percentage is even smaller.

Thus, the stories of Latino soldiers dying in battle will continue to crop up as long as the war drags on, as just one more dramatic feature of the phenomenon of emigration to the United States, Guillermo Alonso, a researcher with the College of the Northern Border, remarked to IPS.

The College is a scientific research and graduate education institution specialising in the economic, social, political, cultural, demographic and environmental issues of the Mexico-U.S. border region.

”They killed my son,” said Fernando Suárez, whose 20-year-old son Jesús died in Iraq.

Suárez, who lives in Escondido, California, said the death of his son made him regret his decision to emigrate to the United States nearly a decade ago.

Jesús joined the U.S. army after he was contacted by a recruiter in high school, who offered him a scholarship that would enable him to continue his studies if he enlisted, said Suárez.

”Today I realise that we all made a mistake by agreeing to that sham,” he said.

The first marine to die in Iraq was José Antonio Gutiérrez from Guatemala. Before making his way to the United States, Gutiérrez was an orphan who lived on the streets of Guatemala City, until he was taken in by Casa Alianza, the Latin American branch of Covenant House, a New York-based child advocacy organisation.

The Mexican government of Vicente Fox offered support to the families of the soldiers of Mexican origin who died in battle so they could travel to the United States to attend the funerals of their loved ones. Fox also sent them his personal condolences.

Foreign Minister Luis Derbez reported that he was studying the possibility of interceding with the Iraqi government on behalf of Edgar Hernández, the Mexican-born POW.

But Jesús Velasco, a researcher at the International Affairs Department of the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico, argued that the Fox administration should not pay special attention to the issue. The soldiers of Mexican descent ”joined the U.S. armed forces of their own free will,” he pointed out.

”Of course we should feel sorry for the loss of human life, but I think there is no reason for us to take an especially sensitive position towards this question,” Velasco told the daily newspaper Reforma.

Espinoza, the former soldier who served in the first Gulf War, disagreed with that view. ”It is a source of pride for us that the Mexican government and Mexican society are concerned about troops of Mexican origin,” he said.

”In the United States, we Latinos are seeking a sense of belonging to something, and Mexico’s attitude reminds us of who we are and where we come from,” he added.