Categories
Uncategorized

My Reactions to “The Vietnam War,” a film.     In Two Parts.

My Reactions to The Vietnam War, a film.     In Two Parts.

By Carlos B. Gil

Part I

PBS broadcast The Vietnam War, a documentary by Ken Burns, during the month of September 2017. The 10-part series received a lot of publicity, so I spent numerous hours watching it because the war itself had a strong impact on me. You may have seen it too, or heard about it. I know it affected most Americans of my generation. You may have known someone stirred by it, perhaps more than stirred.

I was a young Foreign Service Officer working for the State Department when we really got involved in Vietnam (“we,” the U.S.), first in Honduras (1963 to 1965), then in Chile (1965 to 1968). I was in my early 30’s and served as an Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer assigned to work in the Binational Center Program organized by the United States Information Agency. This is one reason I did not serve in Vietnam: I was already serving the government. Another is that I already possessed a discharge from the Air Force Reserve; and thirdly, I was married with children.

Some of the young Hondurans I worked with began asking me about the war and why the United States was sending soldiers there. I didn’t have a good answer, even as local newspapers reported our increasing involvement. The Burns film reminded me that the number of our troops rose to about 3,500 the year I finished my duties in Honduras, 1965, and got transferred to Chile. While in Honduras, I tried to obtain information but didn’t get too far. There was no Internet, of course. I remember that our induction training in Washington D.C., in 1963, included “counter insurgency programs” which we were applying in Vietnam but I think it was too early to provide us with a more solid rationale. None of us working for the United States Embassy in Honduras really had a good answer, outside of the pro-forma “communist menace,” that North Vietnam was supposed to have represented. This explanation was satisfactory in the beginning but it began to weaken in my mind. In any case, we didn’t have “canned” answers, and my recently obtained Master’s Degree in Latin American Studies from Georgetown University, helped little.

Burns’s film reminds us that the Cold War became the only way we Americans came to understand our presence in Vietnam. It was America vs. the “communists.” That made it easy, if you didn’t think about it too much. The film emphasized the fact that the Vietnamese people saw it both as a civil war, between the North Vietnam and the South Vietnam, and a colonial war. We represented the colonial power they wanted to get rid of because our soldiers were physically on their land killing their people and destroying their farms and cities. The film reveals this in a horrifying way. It also stresses how our involvement in the war was the result of complex political factors. A war is always a political act. We place our soldiers in harm’s way for political reasons, casting a shadow of ambiguity on patriotism.

I felt the impact of the war more in Chile than in Honduras. One reason was that our involvement in Vietnam became more intense and controversial while I was working in Chile. The bloody Tet Offensive, which served as a watershed event, took place in 1968. That was my final year in that South American country, when the number of our soldiers fighting there rose to 53,000, and I put my growing family on a plane to return home. All hell was breaking loose at home too because of the war.

There is another reason why I write this article. The Cold War, along with the Vietnam War, took on a special meaning for me in Chile because Chile became the locus of a diplomatic tug of war between the United States and forces on the Left, including Communists. The country where my son, Carlos, was born, served like a playing field between “us,” the Americans, and “them,” the Leftists. Moreover, I became personally involved, as I was the only U.S. representative in my district. Please note that I am the first to admit that my role was peripheral and microscopic for the reason that I was just an Assistant Cultural Attache, a minor figure; however, it cast an imprint on me so I’m writing about it for the first time. (End of Part I)

Categories
We Became Mexican American, a book

What Trump’s pardon of Joe Arpaio means for Latinos: “We mean little to President Trump.”

President Trump’s pardoning of Joe Arpaio, the former Sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, represents a slap in the face to the Latinos of the United States, clear and simple. Everything indicates that our president did this with total impunity and without a trace of shame or regret. We, Latinos, mean little to him so he shoved us aside when he cancelled the criminal contempt case against Arpaio, as widely reported. That he did it early in his administration, an exceptional occurrence as many commentators have noted, simply underscores my observation: we mean little or nothing to him. (His ending of the DACA program on September 5, 2017–Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals–illustrates this quite clearly: he didn’t take a lead on it, he passed the fate of these young culturally assimilated Americans on to Congress. No one can call that leadership.

Why is Arpaio an issue?

Everyone in Arizona knows that as sheriff of Arizona’s most important county, Joe Arpaio brazenly went out of his way to tear every shred of dignity from the Latin Americans, mostly Mexican, he accused of entering the country illegally, men, women and children. It seems he enjoyed doing it, according to reports. It is apparent that like his protector in the White House, he considers all migrants, who cross the border without permission, as sub-humans and criminals. According to The New Yorker, up to 2009 only, his department cost the State of Arizona more than forty three million dollars for settling lawsuits that alleged mistreatment of the lowly migrants, and even their wrongful deaths. He mocked them by putting them in gaudy colored uniforms, fed them two meals a day that cost less than fifty cents each, and even marched them publicly in chain gangs, women too. His deliberate scare-‘em Gestapo tactics generated more than twenty two hundred court cases, exceeding the worst raids of undocumented workers in the 1950s, some of which I witnessed.

All this is against the moral standards we Americans have always considered fitting and proper, but Mr. Trump turned a blind eye, insisted Arpaio was a “good man”, and pardoned him.

Clearly, the Trump administration is anti-Mexican, anti-Latino, and anti-immigrant. And, the 30% of Americans who continue to support him are too, apparently.

Should we worry about this?

Should we, Latinos of the United States, who don’t have to worry about getting picked up and deported care about this? Of course, we should, if for no other reason than the fact that the hapless deportees look like our ancestors, they look like us. They speak as our descendants spoke, they eat what they ate, they worship as they did. They are as we were. In addition, you and I know that most of them crossed the border to find work, keep their heads down, and send a few pennies back home.

To call them “criminals” is repulsive and immoral. They may have broken a law to get into the U.S. but that does not give any American official license to diminish their humanity. Arpaio swaggers about it according to reports. His tactics, his demeanor, and his penchant for publicity remind us of the black-booted Nazis persecuting Jews in the 1940s (he would have made a good Sturmmann or Storm Trooper).

What can we do?

We can speak up. We can make known our contempt to our friends personally, and through Facebook, Twitter and other social media. We can ask our pastors to help raise awareness in our communities.

We can ask our community organizations to help spread the word about Trump’s anti-immigration stance. There are groups like CHIRLA (Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles), and the NCLR (National Council for La Raza).

Get their address and send them a note with $5 or $10. You surely must know a DACA youngster (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, also known as “The Dreamers”), the ones who were brought to the U.S. from Mexico without documentation; they are being persecuted by Mr. Trump and his ilk (all this sounds so Nazi like). Talk to the young Dreamer; ask how you can support their cause. To have them deported is immeasurably immoral, a stain on America!

Most importantly, YOU CAN REGISTER TO VOTE. NEXT TIME MAKE SURE YOU GO OUT AND VOTE! OUR ONLY LINE OF DEFENSE IS POLITICAL! We can vote. Let us stand up against Mr. Trump and the Joe Arpaio’s who support him.

¡Si se puede!

Categories
Uncategorized

HERE IS A STUNNING AND HISTORIC REBUKE OF OUR PRESIDENT

Today the editors of The New York Times published a spectacular rebuke of President Donald J. Trump that I believe has no historical precedent and you should know about it, if only for that reason. You may read the full editorial in the attachment below but here are the highlights:

  • “With each day, President Trump offers fresh proof that he is failing the office that Americans entrusted to him…This, in essence, is where we are now: a nation led by a prince of discord who seems divorced from decency and common sense.[my emphasis]”
  • As only one example of his “failing the office” he holds, the editors properly called his penchant for twittering as “twitter bursts of anti-historical nonsense.” I would say twitters that betray his infantile mind. The latest one cites General John Pershing stopping Islamic terrorists in the Philippines a hundred years ago by killing them with “bullets dipped in pig’s blood,” suggesting our soldiers should imitate him. Only an undeveloped intellect, a man who is still a child, would make such a claim publicly—and he is our president!
  • As a measure of our national “despair,” the editors write, “we find “ourselves strangely comforted” by his inability to carry out his half-baked ideas, like “destroying the Affordable Care Act [Obamacare],” or fully implementing his “demonstrably cruel deportation policy,” and, I would add, building his border wall, and scuttling plans against global warming.
  • “Here is yet another oddity,” the editors remind us (and I am glad they did because otherwise it would fly past us without our giving it a second thought). As Americans we are proud of our democratic civilian society, free of military dictators, yet Mr. Trump appointed three military men as top aides (John Kelly, the new White House chief of staff; H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser; and Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense). Why does he willy-nilly violate our important political tradition by having three generals help run our country? The answer is, “to stop Mr. Trump from going completely off the rails.” (God succor us, right?).
  • In my young-man-hood, I proudly served in the State Department helping to press for our nation’s interests diplomatically, but under Mr. Trump the State Department “has been robbed of expertise and traditional diplomacy [and it] has been marginalized,” which many of us consider a gigantic mistake.
  • Lastly, the editors find comfort with “signs that our democratic system is working to contain Mr. Trump” but what are we to think or make of the Americans (a small minority) who blindly support him? “The deeper question…is..[a] moral [one]…will they continue to follow a standard-bearer who is alienating most of the country by embracing extremists” including white supremacists? What’s the answer?
  • In closing, the editors refer to Mr. Trump’s statements about Charlottsville: “He chose to summon not America’s better angels, but its demons.” I agree.

Again I say: how low we have come! How can we regain what we’ve lost!?

Categories
Uncategorized

Donald Trump’s Administration is “On The Rocks”

In just the fifth month of Donald Trump’s presidency his administration is beginning to go under, like a ship striking rocks underwater. He is the captain and he is both angry and confused.

This slow motion catastrophe is an amazing thing to witness.

  • He insisted his real estate business experience was more than sufficient to command the White House and the nation, but disorder rules the day;
  • He thought he could apply intimidation to national and international politics, but he’s only propagated confusion;
  • He didn’t have the right kind of team to help him refine his political agenda in order to drive it forward, so he’s had to rely on family members and old business buddies whose decisions are breaking the rulebook and alienating American citizens;
  • Not endowed with careful reasoning and unable to take advice, he’s stepped over the line of right and wrong repeatedly, and
  • His uncontrolled ego articulated in the form of thoughtless statements poured mostly into his Twitter account will now be used against him.

As a result of these and other flaws, his presidency is sinking because Mr. Trump now stands on the brink of being charged for a variety of illegal acts including criminal charges. One of them is obstructing justice because he asked James Comey, the former FBI director, to disregard evidence that his advisors were getting involved with Russian agents, “that this Russia thing…is a made up story,” he stated on television. This is an example of Trump’s careless thinking and offhand speaking with perilous consequences.

Other blunders and transgressions are being investigated.

What’s also amazing is that more than 60 million Americans voted for Mr. Trump which means that they failed to see he was unfit to run the ship of state properly.

Categories
Uncategorized

Trump is between a rock and a hard place.

This is a short political note:

If you’ve been watching the news you’ll agree with me that President Trump is between a rock and a hard place. During the presidential campaign last year I shared my view with many of you that he would become the most inept and inappropriate person to ever serve in the White House. Unfortunately, my prediction was right on.

  • He is only in his 4th month in office and the word “impeachment” is beginning to swirl in the air.
  • And, a special attorney has already been named to investigate him (see his photo).
  • And, for starters, the investigation is about his connections with the Russians and those of the people working for him.
  • And, it seems that the entanglements of Trump’s people with our sworn enemies are only beginning to come to the surface.

Keep an eye on the newspapers!

P.S. Robert Mueller, the Special Counsel appointed to investigate Mr. Trump (see the photo), represents in my mind the kind of dedicated official that our government relies on to do its job, despite the ineptitude of the politicians at the top, in a crisis and when there is none. I worked for the feds and I came to know folks like him. The ones I knew impressed me a lot because they always tried to do their job right. It’s one of the reasons why I don’t “buy” the Republican chant that raises suspicion on our government. I’m glad people like him are there and I hope the wrong-headed incapacity of Trump’s confederates doesn’t scare them away.

May 19, 2017

Categories
Uncategorized

MEXICAN CARDINAL CONDEMNS TRUMP’S BORDER WALL AS IMMORAL AND BIGOTED

The head of the Mexican Catholic Church condemned President Trump’s proposed border wall in the harshest words I’ve seen so far. He also blasted any Mexican company willing to help build the wall, and he also threw a strong jab at Mexican government officials for not speaking more forcefully on the matter.

A March 26, 2017 article in a leading Mexico City daily printed the hard-hitting words of Norberto Rivera Carrera, Cardinal and Archbishop of Mexico, condemning President Trump’s wall project as “immoral” and “bigoted.” He said that “Trump’s wall can only nurture discrimination and serve to subjugate millions of people.”

The article in El Universal referred, first, to President Trump allotting 2 billion dollars to build the wall, and, second, to Mexican contractors announcing their interest in bidding for it. Archbishop Rivera condemned the move by Mexican entrepreneurs in no uncertain terms: “It would be immoral for any [Mexican] company intending to invest in the wall of that zealot Trump, but more than anything else, the shareholders and owners ought to be considered traitors of the nation.” These are strong words indeed!

El Universal quoted from an editorial entitled “The Betrayal of the Nation,” printed in a church weekly by the name of Desde la Fe, issued on the same date.

The Cardinal added that the companies justifying their actions as “job producing” was nothing more than bogus; what they want, he stated, is to profit from the “shameful wall.” He lamented businessmen in Mexico who would collaborate in such a bigoted enterprise. “Taking part in a project that affronts human dignity is to shoot yourself in the foot.”

He also lambasted the government’s pussy-footing about it by parroting that the United States may do whatever it wants on its side of the border. But, “it is the usual short-sighted people who cannot see that the wall represents a threat that can only weaken the relations between the two countries and endanger peace.”

Referring to President Trump’s drive to deport undocumented workers from the United States, the church leader considered it “showing off the power to terrorize, by deporting people who have not committed a crime or faulted a regulation, according to law.”

Regarding the wall, he also declared that it “represents a monument to intimidation and silencing, it symbolizes xenophobic hate that seeks to drown out the voices of ill paid and ill-treated workers, of families who lack protection and of people who are violated.”

The idea of a wall represents “a departure from the noblest desires of mankind[; it is a retreat] which has brought much shedding of blood; it is a prelude to the destruction of democratic values and social rights.” He also added, “The wall represents the power of a country that is considered good, [yet endowed] with a manifest destiny to overwhelm a nation that it considers perverted and corrupt: Mexico.”

–Carlos B. Gil

Categories
We Became Mexican American, a book

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 1, 2016

VOTED “BEST BIOGRAPHY”

AUTHOR TELLS OF THE HARD RESOLVE

HIS MEXICAN IMMIGRANT FAMILY NEEDED

TO SETTLE AND THRIVE IN AMERICA

 KENMORE, WA.  We Became Mexican American narrates the story of a family emigrating from Mexico to the United States in the 1920s. Author and family member, Carlos B. Gil, tells how his folks settled against all odds to pursue the American Dream in southern California. This award-winning book offers you the following:

      It reviews what the Latino immigration experience represented for the author’s family,

            It explores the cultural shock of arriving in the U.S. for the first time,

                        including the difficulties of raising children in a new culture,

            It unveils the cultural conflicts inside the family as the children began growing up in America,

            It describes living in a Mexican barrio near Los Angeles, California, and it

            It discusses the personal process of slowly becoming Mexican American. 

We Became Mexican American was awarded “BEST BIOGRAPHY” in two book competitions in the United States in 2013. And, in 2015 it won an “HONORABLE MENTION in Biography/Autobiography” at the 2015 Book Festival in Amsterdam (The Netherlands). The 2013 honors came from The 15th Annual International Latino Book Award ceremony held at the Cervantes Institute in New York City, May 30, 2013: 1) Best Biography in English and 2) Best Latino Focused Work. On March 8th his book also won Best Biography at the 2012-2013 cycle of the Los Angeles Book Festival for independent authors and publishers. As a result, his book “sits” at “The Table of Honor,” digitally speaking, which you can visit at: http://tableofhonor.com/?product_cat=biographyautobiography ).

For more information see http://www.facebook.com/WeBecameMexicanAmerican.

To obtain your own copy, go to:

barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, or special ordering through your neighborhood bookstore.

For review copies or ordering multiple copies go to:

http://diversitycentral.com/diversity_store/books.php,

or send an email to orders@diversitycentral.com

The author is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington.

We Became Mexican American: How Our Immigrant Family Survived to Pursue the American Dream

was published in 2012 and revised in 2015.

Trade Paperback; $18.99; 422 pages; ISBN 978-0-9899519-1-3

Trade Hardback; $26.99; 422 pages; ISBN 978-0-9899519-06

E-book, $3.99: ISBN 978-0-9899519-2-0

Categories
We Became Mexican American, a book

READER’S REACTIONS TO “We Became Mexican American”

Gil writes with a cinematic eye for detail, delivering intricate word pictures of the people, places and activities….Vivid, highly informative and entertaining, Gil’s book shines and should be a staple on the bookshelves of history teachers and their students.  (Blue Ink Review, October 2012)

As a lifelong educator in a variety of capacities I find this author’s provocative, endearing life story a special must read for all members of the American School System, regardless of their niche or expertise in the field of education.”  (Leo Valenzuela, October 2012)

Gil plays the role of storyteller and mass organizer in this textbook-thick account of how his family crossed both land and social boundaries to improve their living conditions and be together….[I]t’s an interesting, well-written account of an adaptable, immigrant family. [It p]rovides a unique perspective into the complex cultural struggles immigrant families face and the circumstances that bring them here.  Kirkus Book Reviews (November 2012)

It’s almost poetic. This has to be used in the classrooms for generations to come. You bring everything together in ten different ways: economics, social mobility, immigration, politics, etc. You bring it all together; you offer the big picture. (Phillip Boucher, November 2012)

[It is a] rich, textured portrait….  [This work] shows how the hard work and determination of these Mexican immigrants led to greater economic success and higher social status with each generation. Black-and-white photographs inserted throughout the text vividly express this change of fortune.  (Clarion Reviews December 2012)

Your book is not only inspirational, it is thought provoking and educational. I love history and your book personalizes historical events. As an immigrant myself, I can connect with your family. (Ignacio Marquez, April 2013)

I loved your book! All my daughters want to read it, and my mom. There were lots of things I could relate to. (Molly Montoya, April 2013)

Your honesty was brutal but told in a loving way. I, we are so proud of your book and talk about it all the time. (Rebecca Cruz, May 2013)

Quite an accomplishment. Something I wish I had done for my own family. I learned a lot…about the Mexican American experience, including its regional variations. The book also brought me…to reassess my own [Swedish] family’s experience which in some ways parallels your family’s. Chuck Bergquist, May 2013)

Reading about my great great grandpa Basilio Alvarez in his book brought me to tears. What a journey this book is taking me on…¡Gracias! (Vera Delgado, November 2014)

Again I was blown away by your discussion on why your family would not have been attuned to racism due to the idea of there not being a contradiction to the reality they began life with. Such a tender defense of these people, and I can apply that to my family too. (Abe Pena, February 2014)

It was fantastic! I was so drawn in and fascinated with the stories of his family and all they went through. I’m so glad to have gotten that glimpse into his family’s journey and a better understanding of the lives of some immigrants.  (Mary McLaughlin Sta.Maria, March 2014)

Categories
We Became Mexican American, a book

RECOGNITION GIVEN TO “We Became Mexican American”

2013 BEST BIOGRAPHY, at the 2012-2013 cycle of the Los Angeles Book Festival March 8th for independent authors and publishers.

2013 THE TABLE OF HONOR at http://tableofhonor.com/?product_cat=biographyautobiography for “the best of international book festivals.”

2013 BEST BIOGRAPHY IN ENGLISH at the 15th Annual International Latino Book Award ceremony held at the Cervantes Institute in New York City, May 30th.

2013 BEST LATINO FOCUSED NONFICTION BOOK at the 15th Annual International Latino Book Award ceremony held at the Cervantes Institute in New York City, May 30th.

2015 HONORABLE MENTION IN BIOGRAPHY/AUTOBIOGRAPHY at the 2015 Book Festival in Amsterdam (The Netherlands).

2016 BEST BOOK IN THE CATEGORY OF BIOGRAPHY from Pinnacle Book Achievement Award, National Association of Book Entrepreneurs, Winter.

2017 Featured on the front cover of Book Dealers World (vol. 2 no. 38 Spring) National Association of Book Entrepreneurs.

 

We Became Mexican American was published in 2012 by XLibris and a revised edition in 2014 by The GilDeane Group.

Categories
We Became Mexican American, a book

RECENT TALKS GIVEN BY CARLOS B. GIL

November 15, 2012   Radio Interview on KUOW (Seattle) with Steve Scher re Mexican Immigration (after Mark Bowden’s talk about The Hunt For Bin Laden ) http://www.kuow.org/post/mark-bowden-hunt-bin-laden?sc=emaf

Nov 28, 2012   Talk about We Became Mexican American at the San Fernando Public Library, San Fernando, California.

January 12, 2013   Talk about We Became Mexican American at Third Place Books, Lake Forest Park, Washington.

April 18, 2013   Talk about We Became Mexican American for Professor Jorge Garcia’s Chicano Studies class at the California State University Northridge (CSUN),  Northridge, California.

April 27, 2013   Carlos Gil takes part in a press conference of Latino Authors for the Latino Book & Family Festival, California State University, San Bernardino (CSUSB), San Bernardino, California.

April 30, 2013   Talk about We Became Mexican American at the Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC), University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M62OiJXa6QY

May 1, 2013.   Second talk about We Became Mexican American at the San Fernando Library, San Fernando, California.

September 27, 2013   Talk about We Became Mexican American for the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, Tumwater, WA.

November 15, 2013   Talk about We Became Mexican American at the University of California, Berkeley, Chicano Latino Student Development, Staff Diversity Initiatives.

October 23, 2014   Public lecture titled “A Strong But Difficult Relationship: An Historic Overview of U.S.-Mexican Relations,” Juneau World Affairs Forum. Juneau, Alaska.

April 30, 2015   Talk about We Became Mexican American at the Chicano Studies Research Center of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), Los Angeles, California.

October 4, 2015   Talk about We Became Mexican American at the University Methodist Temple, Seattle, Washington.

May 20, 2016   Talk about We Became Mexican American at the Minimum Security Unit Monroe Correctional Complex, Monroe, Washington.

September 21, 2016   Radio interview on the Warriors for Peace Donna Seebo Internet Radio Show.

January 9, 2017   Talk about Latin American Studies and Its History at the Minimum Security Unit, Monroe, Washington.

April 13, 2017   Talk about We Became Mexican American at the City of Palmdale Library, Palmdale, California.