[Bloquez l'empire!] recrutement latinos aux Etats unis

[Bloquez l'empire]

he Nation, New York
> >>
> >>
> >>The Nation, NY..
> >>
> >>The War for Latinos
> >>
> >>by ROBERTO LOVATO
> >>
> >>[from the October 3, 2005 issue]
> >>
> >>Jessica Sanchez poses an urgent threat to the US military. For a
> >>Pentagon stretched by stagnating enlistments and an Administration
> >>bent on waging a "global war on terror," the question of whether this
> >>four-foot-eleven Mexican-born legal resident and others like her will
> >>decide to join the military has enormous geopolitical implications.
> >>
> >>The Pentagon is spending hundreds of millions of dollars to find out
> >>whatever it can about Sanchez and other young Latinos: what they
> >>wear, where they hang out, what kinds of groups they form, what they
> >>read, what they watch on TV, their grades, their dreams. Members of
> >>the military's numerous and well-funded recruiting commands use
> >>sophisticated Geographic Information Systems maps, souped-up
> >>recruiting Hummers and other resources to establish strategic
> >>positions in the minds, pocketbooks and neighborhoods of young
> >>Latinos like Sanchez.
> >>
> >>Recruiters are devising new and often unexpected ways to penetrate
> >>daily Latino life. "I went to a birthday celebration at Chuck E.
> >>Cheese's," says Sanchez, a 25-year-old single mom from San Marcos,
> >>California, just outside San Diego. "We were watching a puppet show
> >>when all of a sudden a military song is playing in the background. I
> >>thought that was weird but kept watching. A couple of minutes later,
> >>all of us were looking at pictures on a TV screen of people in the
> >>Army giving food and supplies to kids in Iraq. My friends and I
> >>thought that was really weird--and got out."
> >>
> >>The bad news for Pentagon planners is not just Sanchez's negative
> >>reaction to the puppet show, or even her eventual decision not to
> >>join the Navy. It's that she and other Latinos who are rejecting the
> >>military's overtures are turning around and organizing a grassroots
> >>movement against recruitment in their community.
> >>
> >> From the northernmost corner of Washington State to the southernmost
> >>beaches of south Florida, veteran Latino counterrecruiters and
> >>younger activistas are facing off against thousands of military
> >>recruiters in a battle that will determine whether Latino youth
> >>continue echoing the "Yo soy el Army" and other Pentagon PR slogans
> >>or instead adopt the "Yo estoy en contra del Army" slogan taken up by
> >>Sanchez. The counterrecruitment movement, spearheaded by scores of
> >>Latinos in Chicago, El Paso, Tucson and other cities, suburbs and
> >>rural communities, is largely occurring beneath the radar of the
> >>mostly white antiwar movement, despite its potential to alter the
> >>course of Iraq and future US wars.
> >>
> >>"Latinos are very important to the national security of the United
> >>States," says Larry Korb, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for
> >>Manpower, Reserve Affairs, Installations and Logistics in the Reagan
> >>Administration Defense Department, where he administered about 70
> >>percent of the largest line items in the federal budget. "A decrease
> >>in Latino enlistment numbers would make things very difficult for the
> >>armed forces, because they are the fastest-growing [minority] group
> >>in the country and they have a very distinguished record of service
> >>in the military. If I were Donald Rumsfeld, I would be very worried
> >>about the possibility of decreasing Latino numbers. I'd be thinking
> >>about how to make do with smaller numbers of troops or with further
> >>lowering standards for aptitude, age, education and other factors."
> >>
> >>The centrality of Latinos to the military enterprise can be seen in
> >>statements by Pentagon officials like John McLaurin, Deputy Assistant
> >>Secretary of the Army for Human Resources, who stated that in order
> >>to meet recruitment goals, Latino enlistments must grow to 22 percent
> >>by the year 2025, when one in four Americans will be Latino. Two
> >>factors add to the urgency. One is that while Latinos make up only 13
> >>percent of the active-duty forces, they also make up a fast-growing
> >>16 percent of the 17- to 21-year-old population. In the eyes of
> >>Pentagon planners, this rapidly growing, relatively poor population
> >>is prime recruiting material. Latinos already in the military are
> >>concentrated in the low ranks of the Marines and the Army, serving in
> >>the high-casualty, high-risk jobs of front-line troops urgently
> >>needed in Iraq. The second factor driving the Latinization of the
> >>Pentagon's recruitment strategy is the decrease in African-American
> >>and women recruits. Since 2000 the percentage of African-American
> >>recruits has dropped from 23.5 percent to less than 14 percent,
> >>thanks to the widespread disaffection with the Iraq War--and good
> >>organizing--among parents and students in the black community.
> >>
> >>And some preliminary indicators show that the Pentagon's efforts are
> >>paying off. Latino enlistment increased from 10.4 percent of new
> >>recruits in 2000 to 13 percent in 2004. According to University of
> >>Maryland military sociologist David Segal, however, the jury is still
> >>out on whether the Latino enlistment campaign will solve the Defense
> >>Department's recruitment problem in the mid to long term. A drop in
> >>Latino numbers could, Segal says, "plunge the military into an even
> >>deeper crisis. They will have to learn how to better recruit whites."
> >>He adds that "when antiwar efforts focus on recruitment, they're
> >>denying recruiters major access they desperately need."
> >>
> >>The Bush adventure in Iraq has done much to foster anti-recruitment
> >>sentiment and create the "Latino unity" activists have dreamed of for
> >>decades. Beyond the anonymous, individualistic rejection of the war
> >>measured in recent polls of Latinos, a more vocal and active
> >>rejection of war and recruitment is taking hold on the ground,
> >>tapping into several currents of Latino political tradition. Vietnam
> >>veteran and University of San Diego professor Jorge Mariscal is among
> >>those working feverishly to cut Pentagon strings they feel yank young
> >>Latinos further and further into imperial entanglements. "We are
> >>trying to show the historical continuity of Latino protest against
> >>the exploitation of other Latinos in US wars of aggression," says
> >>Mariscal, considered by many to be the dean of Latino
> >>counterrecruitment efforts.
> >>
> >>On August 29, 2004, Mariscal's organization, the Project on Youth and
> >>Non-Military Opportunities (YANO), and dozens of other Latino groups
> >>launched a campaign to educate Latino parents and students about
> >>military recruitment in schools. A main focus was simply informing
> >>people that the No Child Left Behind Act, which allows recruiters
> >>access to student contact information, also contains an opt-out
> >>provision. The organizers chose to launch the campaign on August 29
> >>because it was the anniversary of the Chicano Moratorium of 1970--the
> >>largest, most radical Latino antiwar, antirecruitment mobilization in
> >>US history.  The campaign draws strength from the antimilitaristic
> >>traditions of US-born Latinos (especially Mexican-Americans and
> >>Puerto Ricans) as well as from the anti-militarismo traditions of
> >>more recent Latin American immigrants from such countries as El
> >>Salvador and the Dominican Republic.
> >>
> >>While the war for young Latino hearts rages in all corners of the
> >>country, the strategic theater of battle for Latino bodies remains
> >>the Southwest, especially Southern California. A 2001 study by the US
> >>Army Recruiting Command (USAREC), for example, defined Los Angeles,
> >>the rest of Southern California, Phoenix and Sacramento as its top
> >>markets for Latino recruits.  But California has also become the de
> >>facto heart of the nascent movement among US Latinos. Animating it is
> >>Fernando Suarez del Solar, a former student activist in Mexico who
> >>now lives in Escondido, California. Del Solar traces his struggle
> >>against the military to the moment he witnessed Mexican military
> >>personnel "push their bayonets into young men--and women" during a
> >>1972 protest in the Zocalo, the central square of Mexico City. "That
> >>was my first encounter with militarismo."
> >>
> >>Three decades later Del Solar took another, sharper turn against
> >>militarismo after his son, Jesus, a marine, died in Iraq in 2003.
> >>Since then, his denunciation of the "lies and half-truths" recruiters
> >>use on kids like Jesus has been unceasing. Because he can't shake
> >>images of how his then-13-year-old boy was first "seduced" by the
> >>trinkets, posters and ideas given to him by recruiters at a mall in
> >>National City, Del Solar works to educate other parents and students
> >>about recruitment and war.
> >>
> >>Bemoaning the "lack of leadership among Latinos at the national
> >>level," Del Solar and others in the Latino counterrecruitment
> >>movement complain that national advocacy groups like the League of
> >>United Latin American Citizens and the National Council of La Raza
> >>are not only silent but complicit in finding fresh Latino bodies to
> >>feed the war machine. LULAC and NCLR do accept sponsorships from and
> >>provide forums for Pentagon promotion at some of their national
> >>conferences and local events. In their determination to meet what
> >>recruiting handbooks call "influencers," Marine, Army and other
> >>Defense Department personnel can be seen at LULAC and NCLR events
> >>either glad-handing or manning the recruitment Hummers, chin-up
> >>challenges, inflatable obstacle courses and other props in front of
> >>their trinket-stuffed information booths. To fill the void, Del
> >>Solar's organization, Guerrero Azteca, and Mariscal's group, YANO,
> >>have joined forces. They plan to convene a national meeting of Latino
> >>counterrecruitment organizations and leaders to connect the numerous
> >>efforts springing up across the country.
> >>
> >>But the forces of counterrecruitment face an armada of military
> >>recruitment organizations backed by the best civilian, corporate and
> >>community alliances our tax dollars can buy. Continuing the Latino
> >>recruitment focus that started with the Clinton Administration's
> >>Hispanic Access Initiative, the Pentagon has invested hundreds of
> >>millions of dollars to turn poor Latino neighborhoods and decrepit,
> >>Latino-heavy schools into soldier factories. Last year alone USAREC
> >>deployed five brigades, forty-one battalions, 5,648 recruiters and
> >>1,690 recruiting stations. The military won't reveal what share of
> >>its recruitment resources is being targeted at Latinos, but it's
> >>clearly substantial. For Hispanic Heritage month, the Army is
> >>highlighting Hispanic soldiers in a massive ad campaign and a
> >>Congressional Medal of Honor tour of high schools across the country.
> >>
> >>In Puerto Rico counterrecruiters have fanned out to all 200 of the
> >>island's high schools to deliver the antimilitaristic and opt-out
> >>messages to thousands of students there. "We are picketing
> >>recruitment offices and asking Puerto Rico's Department of Education
> >>to give us 'equal time' or 'equal access' so that we can go to the
> >>schools to talk to the students against military recruitment," says
> >>Jorge Colon, spokesperson for the Coalición Ciudadana en Contra del
> >>Militarismo (Citizen's Coalition Against Militarism), a broad-based
> >>network of labor, parent, teacher, student and other groups. Like
> >>Mariscal, Colon and other Puerto Ricans link current
> >>counterrecruitment efforts to antimilitaristic traditions; much of
> >>the energy and momentum of the successful movement to rid the island
> >>of Vieques of bombing and other military exercises has been
> >>transferred to the counterrecruitment effort.
> >>
> >>In the northernmost corner of Washington State, Rosalinda Guillen is
> >>also drawing on tradition to combat what she sees as deception in the
> >>farmlands of Skagit and Whatcom counties, where recruiters are
> >>seeking to harvest new recruits among the Oaxacan and Chiapanecan
> >>Indians and Mexican, Salvadoran and Nicaraguan immigrants working the
> >>fields. Guillen, a former leader in the United Farm Workers, returned
> >>to her hometown to fight for Latino rights, including the right of
> >>youth to decline military service. "Recruiters are going into high
> >>schools. They're going after our young people and new immigrants,"
> >>says Guillen, whose organization translates opt-out materials, does
> >>educational work and plans larger strategy to fight Latino recruitment.
> >>
> >>Like many Latinos I spoke with, Guillen has one message for the
> >>larger progressive community, especially those fighting the war and
> >>recruitment: "White-led social justice programs and organizations
> >>need to do something. They need to make broader strokes to make sure
> >>they include Latinos, and they're not right now. All they need to do
> >>is help bring the resources and we can do the work like we always have."
> >>
> >>Ends