FACT SHEET: LATINOS AND THE VIETNAM WAR
By Frederick P. and Linda M. Aguirre
November 7, 2000
Latinos have died and heroically served in our nation’s military, but have not been accorded the appropriate acknowledgment in our history books or by the media. As this year is the 25th year of the end of the war in Vietnam, my wife, Linda Martinez Aguirre and I decided to conduct our own research.
On July 3, 2000, we contacted the Department of the Army and spoke to Dr. William Donnelly, Chief of the U.S. Army Center for Military History, Department of the Army, Washington D.C. He stated that the Department of Army did not have an accurate number of Latinos who served and/or died in the Vietnam War because the Department did not keep records of “Hispanics” during that period. It only kept statistics on “Whites” (which included Hispanics), “Blacks” or “Asians.”
In Vietnam Reconsidered, a book published by Harper & Row in 1984 and edited by Pulitzer Prize winning reporter Harrison Salisbury, Ruben Treviso wrote: “One out of every two Hispanics who went to Vietnam served in a combat unit.” “One out of every five Hispanics who went to Vietnam was killed in action.”
The Latino Experience in U.S. History, a book published for elementary schools by Globe Fearon in 1994 and written by several University professors stated: “Latinos fighting in Vietnam had a 19 percent casualty rate compared to a 12 percent rate for U.S. soldiers as a whole.”
Hispanics in America’s Defense, a book published in 1989 by the U.S. Department of Defense, states: “In 1969, a study was released which examined Hispanics participation in the war by analyzing casualty figures from two periods: one from January 1961 to February 1967, and the other from December 1967 to March 1969. The study revealed that for the two periods, 8,016 men from the States of Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas had been killed. Of the number, over 19 percent had Hispanic surnames.”
My wife read each of the 58,202 names that are inscribed on the “Wall.” The names are published in the 763 page book entitled: Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Directory of Names published in 1991 by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc., Washington, D.C. She found that 3,741 names were Spanish surnames. Therefore, 6.4% of our country’s total casualties were Latinos. The figure is higher, we are certain, because we missed Latinos who have non-Spanish surnames, but who are clearly Latino.
For example Anthony Quinn, Jim Plunkett, Joe Kapp. Therefore, the accurate number of Latino casualties during the Vietnam War was approximately 7% of the total deaths. At that time Latinos represented approximately 5% of the total population in the U.S. Furthermore, we found that Latino casualties were from every one of our 50 states.
We also consulted the National Archives and Records Administration. Their website is www.nara.gov/nara.electronic/cahrviet.html. According to those statistics, 5,572 soldiers from California died during the Vietnam War. Listed are their full names, home city, date of birth, date of death and if by hostile action. Of those 5,572 names, 823 are Spanish surnamed. Therefore 15% of the California casualties were Latino. At that time, Latinos represented approximately 7% of California’s population.
From Texas, 23% of the casualties were Latino. Jose Maria Herrera, a doctoral candidate at Purdue University, wrote in his 1998 Master’s Thesis in the History Department of the University of Texas at El Paso, that “of the 3,405 Texans killed in the Vietnam War, 784 were Latinos.” Furthermore, in New Mexico, Herrera found that “while Hispanics made up 27 percent of that state’s population, they accounted for 44 percent of the deaths.”
On April 22, 2000, Elaine Woo wrote in a Los Angeles Times article: “Latinos answered the call to combat in Vietnam in unprecedented numbers and paid a heavy price: One in two Latinos who went to Vietnam served in a combat unit, 1 in 3 were wounded in action, 1 in 5 we killed in action.”