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| A day of remembrance and reflection |
As another Veterans Day approaches, the words of journalist Carlos Sanchez, written in 1989, still resonate. In his Washington Post article, “Another Unknown Soldier,” Sanchez wrote: “It has fallen to the Mexican Americans of the war generation to teach Longoria’s story; too often it has fallen to chance.”
I came across Sanchez’s article in 1991, my third-year teaching community college in upscale Santa Monica. I’d heard of Felix Longoria, but I’d never pursued the story, not until Sanchez reporting fell into my hands. At the time, I was teaching a course in Chicano Literature, the first time it had been taught in the English department. I was the first tenured Chicano faculty member in the department, so I lobbied for the class.
At the time, I had just published my novel Pepe Rios, the story of a young man’s struggles through the early days of the Mexican Revolution, and I was finishing a novel about Chicanos in Vietnam, Shifting Loyalties. In 1988 Joe Rodriguez had published his Vietnam novel, Oddsplayer, and, in 1990, Charley Trujillo had just published Soldados, which would go to win the prestigious 1991 National Book Award.
The earliest literature I’d read about “Chicanos and Vietnam” was a poem, “Another Death in Vietnam,” by Omar Salinas, in his book, Crazy Gypsy (1970). Barely two-and-a-half-years home from the war, and having lost many friends, I was deeply affected by Salinas’ lines: “another sacrifice for America – a Mexican/ the sacrifice is not over.”
Just about that time, my father handed me a book by Raul Morin, Among the Valiant (1963), stories of Chicanos who had won the Medal of Honor in WWII and Korea. I knew Chicanos had won more Medals of Honor than any other ethnic group in WWII, so it made sense to me that in the final pages of his book, Morin, a WWII veteran, had written, “These Chicanos were different from the Mexican Americans that we had known before we left the States and went overseas…. Where we had been held in contempt by others who disliked us because of our constant Spanish chatter or our lax in military discipline, we were now admired, respected, and approved by all those around us including most of our commanding officers.”
I assigned Soldados to my students, and Charley Trujillo was gracious enough to come by and speak to my class, a real eye-opener for college students, most who knew nothing about Vietnam, and really, very little about war, at all. They’d lived in a world of relative peace.
I’ll always remember one female Vietnamese American student saying shyly, “I didn’t know Chicanos had fought in Vietnam.” Her comment shocked me. In the military and in Vietnam, I’d seen more Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and African Americans than I’d ever seen in any one place, for sure not on any college campus. If she didn’t know Mexicans had served in Vietnam, this child of Vietnamese refugees, how many other Americans didn’t know, or didn’t care? As Sanchez inferred in his article about Felix Longoria, it was our responsibility to teach Longoria’s story, as well as the stories of other Mexicans who sacrificed so much for this country.
At the time, the early 90s, I confess, I was hesitant to teach books about war in my class, especially Vietnam, fearing students, like young Latinos and Latinas, susceptible to military recruiters on campus, might romanticize war, forego college, and join the military. Yet, one can’t separate history from literature. There would be no Chicano Studies, as we know it, without war, from the Mexican Revolution to World Wars 1, II, Korea, and Vietnam, the catalyst for the Chicano Movement. So, Felix Zepeda Longoria’s story, and the stories of all Chicano veterans, had to be told and passed down to future generations of Americans, to teach them the Mexican community is woven into the fabric of this country.
On June 15, 1945, Pvt. Felix Z. Longoria, “…after volunteering to flush out retreating Japanese in the Philippines,” was killed, barely two months before Truman announced the end of the war. It took three years for Pvt. Longoria’s remains to come home to Three Rivers, Texas, a small town between Corpus Christi and San Antonio. When Longoria’s distraught wife, Beatrice, went to make arrangement at the local funeral home, the owner-director, Tom Kennedy, denied her request. He said, “The whites wouldn’t like it.”
Beatrice’s sister, Sara, and later, Dr. Hector Garcia, a Corpus Christi physician, and a veteran, tried to intercede. Kennedy told them the same thing, that they should find another place for the viewing because the whites would not like it in the town’s mortuary, and he feared their retribution.
Dr. Garcia took the story to the newspapers. He sent letters everywhere, even to congress. Longoria’s story attracted national attention, embarrassing many politicians in Texas. The story “horrified” Americans throughout the country. Famed journalist, Walter Winchell stated on national television, “The state of Texas, which looms so large on the map, looks mighty small tonight.”
Mexicans and Americans rallied around the Longoria family. A young senator from Texas, Lyndon Johnson, embarrassed by the situation, stepped in, and though he had no authorization over the Rice Funeral Home in Three Rivers, Texas. lobbied to have Felix Longoria buried, with full military honors, at Arlington National Cemetery, in Virginia.
In his letter to Senator Johnson, Dr. Garcia, wrote that Kennedy’s refusal to honor the Longoria family’s request is “a direct contradiction of those same principles for which this American soldier made the supreme sacrifice in giving his life.” Johnson replied, in part, “I deeply regret to learn that the prejudice of some individuals extends even beyond this life.”
The Texas legislature investigated the incident and concluded no discrimination occurred. Ironically, they “conducted the investigation in a building next door to a barbershop that did not serve Mexican Americans.” At the time, Jim Crow laws were vigorously enforced, even for returning Mexican veterans, some who had seen the worst fighting in Europe and the Pacific, the same men who, after their discharges, would challenge the racist system that still existed throughout the country.
In his article on racism in America, “Saying I’m not Racist,” Steven Hochstadt writes, “Throughout the first half of the 20th century American scientists, philanthropists and political leaders agreed that people of any color but white were inferior and that their lives were not worthless but worth less.” Hochstadt calls this the “racist consensus” and argues, it, “was visible in every public space in America. Every major newspaper, every radio and, later, TV station, every legislative body, every private club, and every classroom taught, repeated, and reinforced the racial rankings that had developed.” Sounds like some of those states would like to take us back to those times.
This was certainly true in Three Rivers, Texas in 1945, and though Pvt. Longoria’s remains rest among the country’s great Americans in Virginia overlooking the Potomac into D.C., Longoria’s sister-in-law, Sara, stated, “This is so sad, that he had to come and rest so many miles away from home because of ignorant people.”
No doubt, it was an honor to be buried at Arlington National Cemetery, but at the same time, wasn’t it a dishonor, a humiliation, and a slap in the face, to be refused burial on your own land, among friends and family, where your people have lived for generations?
Many Texas families, like the Longoria’s, Sanchez wrote, “…traced their family back a century or more to the time Texas still belonged to Mexico, it had an unusual effect. The Mexicans of Texas, though they were U.S. citizens, thought of themselves as Mexicans. Their Anglo neighbors thought so, too.”
Was Felix Longoria’s sacrifice, and the sacrifices of many Mexicans during war, made in vain? Maybe not. It might carry more importance than private Longoria could ever have imagined.
Dr. Garcia said, “It changed the whole situation for our people.” Educators, like Professor Ricardo Romo, UT Austin, stressed, “I think it [the Longoria story] was the catalyst for the development and emergence of the civil-rights movement in the Mexican American community.” Historian, Carl Alsup, said about Mexican Americans returning from WWII, “They returned to a situation in which all the old barriers are still in place.” Yet, he concluded, after the Longoria story broke, “For the first time, the national public took notice of the Mexican American condition.”
Yet, in 2017, when Ken Burns released his much-awaited documentary The Vietnam War, I, and many Chicano veterans, watched, enthusiastically, but by the conclusion I was disillusioned. Latinos, particularly Chicanos, who have served in this country’s wars longer and in greater numbers than any other ethnic group, were non-existent. Just like in Tom Brokaw’s bestselling book, The Greatest Generation, of all the WWII veterans profiled, Mexicans were absent.
Last year, I sat down to watch PBS series, the American Veteran, and again, but for a brief 30 second appearance by a veteran named Ayon, Chicano, Latina and Latino veterans. were absent. Is this absence just another way of saying, “Sorry, we can’t offer you services here. It might offend the whites.”
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