Isabel M. Estrada Portales
07/01/2005

Recent data has proved what so far was mere anecdotical evidence: Hispanics in particular, and minorities in general are military targets... for recruitment, and their deaths are disproportionate not with their number in society, but with their number in the armed forces.

In 1999, Raul Yzaguirre, then President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza said he found it ironic that Latinos are welcomed into the armed forces in times of war, but now are denied the opportunity to serve in peacetime.

“Is it simply an accident that 25% of front line casualties in Vietnam were Hispanic - when we constituted 5% of the total U.S. population - but only 6% of today's peacetime ranks are Latinos, at a time when we're more than 11% of the population?, Yzaguirre asked.

“Moreover, the polling data collected by the military clearly show that Hispanics have a greater propensity to want to serve in the Armed Forces than other groups. One need not be a conspiracy theorist to suspect there is more happening here than mere coincidence.”

Well, now things have changed again. We are not in peacetime anymore, and peace doesn't seem to be coming our way any time soon, so, the irony Yzaguirre referred to is well manifested in the new statistics.

While Latinos comprise 8.7% of U.S. military personnel in Iraq now, 11.5% of the U.S. military casualties are Latino. This is so regardless of the strong opposition of the Hispanic community to the Iraq war.

Attitudes towards the war in Iraq are more negative among Latinos than in the general population with most saying that U.S. troops should be withdrawn as soon as possible, according to a Pew Hispanic Center survey conducted as President George W. Bush began his second term in office.

A slight majority of Hispanics (51%) think U.S. troops should be withdrawn from Iraq as soon as possible. Significantly fewer (37%) say that the United States should keep military troops in Iraq until the situation has stabilized.

The Pew Hispanic Center also has found how Latinos are distributed in the armed forces, and that distribution may help explain the high number of casualties in this community.

While Latinos make up 9.5 percent of the actively enlisted forces, they are over-represented in the categories that get the most dangerous assignments -- infantry, gun crews and seamanship -- and make up over 17.5 percent of front lines soldier. In other words, Latinos are not just working desk jobs in the military-they are assigned to some of the most dangerous work.

Between poverty and death
With the economy going south, especially for the Latinos whose salaries seem to have decrease consistently for the last few years, college becoming increasingly expensive, a war on terror with no end in sight and recruitment goals getting harder to meet, Hispanics have become a coveted segment of the market for the military.

The military recruiters know full well Latinos are in a crossroad and the economic picture looks bleak. This is clearly stated in the document "Strategic Partnership Plan for 2002-2007" written by the U.S. Army Recruiting Command that targets the Hispanic population for being the fastest growing demographic in the United States and is projected to become 25% of the U.S. population by the year 2025.

"Priority areas [for recruitment] are designated primarily as the cross section of weak labor opportunities and college-age population as determined by both [the] general and Hispanic population," the document says.

The recruiters appeal to many things, but one of them is the wealth of opportunities the army could provide, and the many assurances that college education and citizenship are guaranteed... if you come back from Iraq.

But using the stereotypes of the macho culture also seems to work. Somehow, probably given the many military dictatorships in Latin America, there is a belief that Hispanics have a natural inclination for military service.

This notion is perpetuated by comments such as those of the Mexican American commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, in an interview with Hispanic magazine: "When I became a soldier the ethics and the value system of the military profession fit almost perfectly with my own heritage. It made it very easy for me to adapt to the military value system."

Sanchez was the General that was in charge during the Abu Ghraib scandal.
But for all the talk about the mutual love between Hispanics and the arm services, they don't seem to go up the officer's ranks very much. Only 3% of Latinos in the Marine Corps are officers.

The numbers show that Latinos are over-represented in direct combat positions. The Department of Defense statistics show Latinos made up 17.7% of the lowest ranks positions in all branches of the armed forces; while they, and other minorities, are almost non existent in the elite military positions in part due to the educational admissions criteria.