U.S. Army Recruiters Leave No Latino Youth Behind

by Liz Fox

(GIN) -- For weeks, Amalia Avila feared for the safety of her oldest son Victor Gonzalez, a 19-year-old Marine from Watsonville who was recently sent to Iraq.

Her worst fears came true when she was notified that Victor had been killed in a roadside mortar explosion just five weeks after his arrival in Iraq.

Now, three weeks after his Oct. 13 death, Amalia Avila thinks her son was misled, as much by military recruiters who promised him a bright future as by police officers who mentored him. She says they never dispelled the notion that a few years with the marines would make him a cop someday. School "Why didn't they tell him that he didn't have to go?" she asked. "Why didn't they advise him?" She, for one, doesn't know of any police officers in Watsonville or neighboring towns who have served in the Marines.

Despite her instinct to protect her son, Amalia supported Victor when he enlisted in the Marines at age 16 in an early enrollment program. He waited until his 18th birthday and high school graduation before starting boot camp a year ago.

Victor told his mother, "'When I return from Iraq, I'm going to have credit,'" she said. The recruiters "tell them that. It's a lie."

Recruiters often look for ways to relate to potential recruits, even when they can't really help, says Jorge Mariscal, a Vietnam veteran and Chicano Studies professor at University of California at San Diego.

In the case of Victor, who wrote on his Cadet program application that he specifically wanted to be a Watsonville police officer,"(law enforcement) is the classic occupation that a recruiter would jump on and say, 'Oh, yeah, this is what you gotta do'," Mariscal said.

Monique Rangel, a fellow police cadet, says recruiters have called her house to convince her that "whatever your plans are, (the military) can do it for you or they can help you get there."

Military recruiters themselves are under increasing pressure to attract new recruits, especially during wartime, Mariscal said.

In the mid-1990s, when Luis Caldera was serving as the first Latino Secretary of the Army, Defense Department officials stepped up the campaign to recruit Latinos, who the census projected would become a majority of the civilian population.

Today, Latinos make up 11 percent of the armed forces and the Defense Department spends approximately $27 million of its $180 million recruitment budget on bilingual personnel and Spanish-language publications, according to department statistics.

In many recruitment pamphlets and Web sites, young Latino recruits appear with parental figures because officials know that family is a key component of Latinos' lives and usually that's who needs the most cajoling.

"Typically more than in other cultures, Hispanic parents are a little more skeptical and most of the time they also have the power to tell (their children) not to go," said Army Sgt. Jose Bustamante, a Salinas recruiter. The armed forces send Latino recruiters like Bustamante to communities with large Latino populations.

When Victor graduated from Watsonville High School in 2003, 86 percent of the 3,300 students at the school was Latino. The low percentage of college-bound students slightly more than half and the high unemployment in the area make military life a viable option, said David Scott, Victor's drama teacher, "which leads me to believe that we're going to receive more news like Victor's."

Part of the federally mandated "No Child Left Behind Act" requires schools that receive federal dollars to provide a list of students' names and home phone numbers to military recruiters.

In Watsonville, recruitment has become so aggressive that Dan Dickman, the high school's career counselor, set guidelines for recruiters so that their presence "would continue to be welcome," as he wrote in a memo to them, limiting their visits to the last Friday of each month.

Others also accept the military's invitations cautiously. Even if you don't agree with where and when the military is being used, Latino inclusion remains important, said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), a Washington D.C.-based organization.

"The military has been a vehicle for Latinos to move into the middle class," he said.

Although some people worry about too many Latinos dying in wars, he said, "when other groups are overrepresented, that's reason to be worried, also, because that's an opportunity that Latinos are missing."

"We want to make sure information gets to our community," Wilkes said, "and that they're not just recruiting at the lower levels."

This presents a dilemma. Generally, recruits' previous education and work experience determine their entrance rank. When potential recruits seek to join the military to help pay for college, they are already at a disadvantage, he said. The best chance to start at the highest rank possible is to obtain a degree from a military academy which requires a congressional letter of recommendation. With few Latino congressmen, it's hard for Latinos to get into military schools, Wilkes said.

Amalia says she's speaking out about her feelings of betrayal because she doesn't "want them to keep tricking more children."

Master Sgt. Sean Washington, from the Santa Cruz Marine recruitment office, says that recruiters don't mislead anyone. Marine training exercises make people mentally and physically stronger, he says.

Since Victor's death, Washington says he doesn't think recruiters' jobs will be any more difficult when they return to Watsonville High School on Friday.

"There are always scenarios that someone can always conjure up," he says, "but the truth is only going to come from one person. And they're not here to answer for themselves."