Chicanos stood in the front lines in Vietnam. An unpopular people fighting an unpopular war. Many of these young men saw fighting for their country as an opportunity to escape prejudice and return to a country that would greet them as heroes. Instead, many of them would be left off the historical record completely.

Mesa Professor Michael R. Ornelas has taken the opportunity to call attention to these forgotten soldiers and give an in-depth look at the lives of these men before and after the war in his new book “The Sons of Guadalupe: Voices of the Vietnam Generation and Their Journey Home.”

In 2005, Ornelas, professor of Chicano Studies, was in his hometown of Guadalupe, Calif. attending his mother’s funeral when Rudy Razo, a Vietnam veteran and fellow Guadalupean, approached him with the idea of writing a book documenting the many men of Guadalupe that fought in the Vietnam War, but were left out of historical documentations.

A slighting similar to that of Ken Burns in his 14-hour documentary of World War II, where he completely left out the Chicano involvement.

Ornelas said these men were not concerned with receiving notoriety for their sacrifices. They simply wanted tangible documentation of their presence in Vietnam, as opposed to just a memory in their heads that would disappear with their deaths.

“They don’t want recognition,” said Ornelas. ” They just want it to be on the record.’We were there.'”

An unprecedented percentage of age-eligible men were drafted or recruited from the small agricultural town of Guadalupe. Where the average of age-eligible men drafted into the military was around 33 percent, Guadalupe surrendered an astonishing 90 percent of age-eligible men, approximately 218, 140 of whom were Chicano. An entire community of young men was thrust into the throngs of a physically and psychologically damaging war.

Ornelas, who adamantly opposes war, and even protested in an anti-Vietnam demonstration in college, was hesitant on how to approach the situation, but saw the importance that this project potentially had. He decided to let the book happen organically, letting the material guide him.

“This is not a story about Vietnam, I didn’t want to write about war stories; those are a dime a dozen,” said Ornelas. “It’s a story about their lives before and after the war. It isn’t about battles and heroics, but about these men who went to war and suffered greatly as a result of it.”

The book served as therapy to many of the veterans that were interviewed, who had, until this point, been very closed about their experiences, afraid to transport themselves back to such a disturbing time in their lives.

“For almost all of the men and me, the testimonials in this book are the first time we have spoken of the scars of war, slowly eroding the walls of silence,” said Rudy Razo in the book’s forward.

Ornelas started writing in 2006 and two and a half years later, after an exhaustive scouring of Guadalupe, using mainly word of mouth to track down vets, the book is complete and ready to meet the public eye.

Although one of the books main goals is to address the Chicano vets that were slighted by historians, it also contains the testimonies of men from other ethnic descents, including Filipino and Japanese.

The book consists of a collection of interviews of five of the vets from Guadalupe, their experiences in basic training, their political outlooks prior to the war and their transformation after their return. It also includes aspects of the racial tensions they experienced in the military and the impact of the Vietnam War experience on their present lives.

Ornelas also aspires to show college-aged adults the serious impact that war has on the individual lives of soldiers that are of the same age. He hopes that through the reading of these accounts, they will be empowered and influenced to say no to war.

The possibility of a film documentary is also in the works. Ornelas is working with the California Council for the Humanities as well as Latino Public Broadcasting for funding, and Isaac Artenstein, producer of “A Day Without a Mexican,” to green light the film.

“The Sons of Guadalupe,” will be available to buy on March 16. Pre-ordering is available by sending a donation to:

The Sons of Guadalupe, c/o
2555 North Trails Court
Chula Vista, Ca. 91914-4153
Or by calling (619) 662-0706 or (619) 267-7464.

One hundred percent of the books proceeds will be given to the Sons of Guadalupe Committee, a non-profit organization that aids vets from the Guadalupe community.