1,500 Honor Latino Vets of U.S. Wars

SANTA ANA — Those who gathered at Rancho Santiago College on Sunday came with two purposes: to honor the service of past soldiers and to recognize the often overlooked contributions of Latinos to U.S. wartime efforts.

Event organizers say that for too long Latinos have remained invisible in the nation’s history books, even though they have served in the military in numbers greater than their proportion in the population.

On Sunday, about 1,500 people heeded the organizers’ call to pay tribute to Latino military veterans who served in World War II and the Korean War.

Officials of Latino Advocates for Education, a nonprofit group that organized the event, say they were overwhelmed by the turnout, adding that they now hope to make the celebration an annual event.

“We just want to correct history,” said Frederick P. Aguirre, a Fullerton attorney who chaired Sunday’s ceremony. “Our children and the nation need to know how our people fought because of their strong love for this country and for the ideal it represents.”

On Sunday, veterans recounted their experiences when they risked their lives fighting enemies abroad only to return home to racial discrimination and harsh treatment.

Ben Aguayo, an Army paratrooper during the Korean War, found out that his medals for bravery weren’t enough to get him into a small Texas eatery. The owners there had posted bold signs proclaiming that they did not serve “dogs or Mexicans.”

Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove), a speaker at the ceremony, recalled a speech by a former Latino politician who said that “we are Americans when we go to war, [but] when we return home we are Mexicans.”

Sanchez said Latino veterans were real “champions for equal rights in America” because they had sacrificed and risked their lives for the country.

In an address read by one of his aides, state Senate Republican Leader Rob Hurtt of Garden Grove talked about the country’s double standards toward Latinos.

“Imagine the disillusionment, frustration and pain they must have felt having shed their blood, sweat and tears . . . only to be ignored, rebuffed and relegated to second-class citizenry,” Hurtt said.

Replying to Hurtt’s comments, Aguirre said Latinos “don’t have any bitterness” about how they were treated..

After the war, Aguirre said, veterans including his father, Alfred Aguirre, a paratrooper in World War II, returned home “with a renewed conviction in their self-worth.”

Alfred Aguirre, who was forced to attend a segregated “all-Mexican” grammar school in Placentia during his childhood, became the first elected Mexican American councilman in Orange County history when he took office in Placentia in 1958.

Sunday’s event was not all about bearing witness to the past. The crowd gathered in bleachers near the college athletic track burst into applause when the Aztec Skydivers, a team of five parachutists, landed in the middle of the field. Cheerleaders from Santa Ana’s Century High School, the national spirit champions, also won over several fans with their leaps and tumbles.

Later, in the college gymnasium, crowds gathered to watch documentaries and view exhibits depicting Latino contributions in the military. One exhibit was a 20-foot mural entitled “Latino Heroic Choices,” done by eighth-graders at South Junior High School in Anaheim. The mural portrayed Latinos who had served from the Revolutionary War to Desert Storm in Kuwait.

“It took long hours of research to find this material because Latinos were kept out of the history books,” said Linda Martinez Aguirre, a teacher at South Junior High in Anaheim. “We only hope our children don’t have to look so hard.”