Guest commentary: Conscientious objector

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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributo

My brother Sergio, joined the Navy in the summer of 1967, right after he graduated by the skin of teeth from Verdugo Hills High School, located in Sunland-Tujunga. His miserable high school “jail” stint over in that racist hellhole, he bolted as far as he could from home and he ended up on a battle ship off the shores of Vietnam bombing “the gooks”. He had no idea what the hell he was doing, but it was “better than spending another minute in Klansland”, as we Chicanos use to call that God forsaken hillside of the Northeast San Fernando Valley.

My big brother left me behind that year, alone to the deal with the racists, my fears, the assassination of my baseball dreams, the cops and finally the oppressive responsibility of being the oldest son left behind to help my stoic, beaten, and resigned Mexican mother and father and my three younger Pocho siblings that were already beginning to break badly in that suffocating racist stoner nightmare that was Sunland-Tujunga of that era.  A Chicano kid like me with a mind, a sense of independence and dreams did not have a chance in that racist inferno; so in the summer of 1968 I transferred to San Fernando High School, where all my homies and McClay Jr. High school classmate attended.  It was at San Fernando High School that I came to learn firsthand about the deadly toll that the Vietnam War was taking upon the young Chicano and Blacks young men in Pacoima and San Fernando who were fighting and dying in patty fields of Vietnam.  In those days of the late sixties it seemed like every Chicano and Black family had at least one young man fighting in Vietnam.

The hangouts for our car club, Thee Group, was Las Palmas Park or San Fernando Mission Park, we control both parks. It was at either park, mostly on weekends that we would drink, smoke Marijuana, flirt with the girls, play a vicious bloody brand of street football against rival car clubs. It was after these football games, bloodied, tired, and high that we would commiserate with our always defeated rivals about the deadly happenings in that far away land of Vietnam that we knew was in our future. There wasn’t a guy in the gatherings, that number frequently over 75 homies and their girls that could not name one or more brothers, cousins or young male relatives that had been killed in Nam.  The weed and brew temporarily calmed the fears that always crept into our hearts and minds; but then some fool would mention the death and killings in Nam of one of their brothers or a homie and then in cathartic communion we would all begin to talk about the deaths in our families, no one was spared.  To make matters worse, no matter how drunk, high or crazy we got, all of us knew we would be next and on our deadly way to Vietnam.

On November 21, 1968 I celebrated my 18^th birthday with my homies, Thee Group, by kicking the shit out the Chosen Few, one of our many dreaded rivals, in a horrifically brutal football game that I will remember forever because, Tiny, the enforcer of the Chosen Few, all 350 pounds of his fat ass, broke my collar bone by continuously crushing me, assigned to break and destroy” the punk ass quarterback”. Shortly thereafter, broken collar bone and all, I attended the surreal mandatory call for physical examination issued to all young men 18 years of age and older by the US Armed Forces.

We reported to a huge, cold, badly lit, and airless warehouse, where there appeared to me at the time to be over a thousand young men, herded by barking soldiers from one designed line to another.  We spent most of the time in our underwear and standing in fearful silent line as we were questioned, examined and probed by the Army staff.  One of the most vivid recollections that I have of that dreadful day was that most of the white kids had paper work or documents in their hands. We Chicanos and Blacks had nothing but our fear to cling on too. It turn out of course that those documents that the white boys were holding were educational, medical and work related pleas for  deferments from active duty.  At the time none of the Chicano or Black young men knew what the hell a deferment was, let alone how to get it!

In 1967, my hero Muhammad Ali had been stripped of his heavyweight championship for refusing to “take the one step forward that constituted induction into the armed forces”, but I was now taking that momentous step and in my gut, heart and mind I tried to will with all my power to follow in the example set by Ali, I wasn’t man enough, and so I stepped forward.  By the time I left the Army Center that dreadful day I knew that I would not report if I were called up. I would go to jail.

Long before the dreadful day at the induction center I was becoming a radicalized young man, not yet angry but on my way. The scathing racism of Sunland-Tujunga opened my eyes wide open. The death in Vietnam of some many of my homies made me question my role in the war and whether I was ready to die in Vietnam for the white man. The silent and resigned servitude of my father to the whim and proclivities of rich eccentric white men had a lot to do with my radical evolution.  All of the civil rights demonstrations, actions and fights that were taking place through the nation pull on conscience to get involved. I was not oblivious to our civil rights fight at home, as so many of my frightened and lost homies were in those years of drug and alcohol induced hallucinations of wayward innocence.  Death and fear was making us or breaking us as young men.

I had come to terms with conscience and I would go to jail, I would refuse the Army call up when it came and I would refuse on the grounds that Ali had so eloquently proclaimed that, ”the Viet Cong had never called me nigger.“ I would proclaim to be a conscientious objector on the same grounds I had no beef with the people of Vietnam, and of course spend my next 4to 7 years in jail.

In the waning days of the winter of 1969, now a conscientious objector man child, I was ready to serve my jail time and then as God would have it, Providence interceded and I was delivered. The first miracle occurred at the start of the summer when out of nowhere I received my acceptance letter to San Fernando Valley State College and I began my college life not knowing if it would be cut short by jail time; and on December 1, 1969 the Selective Service of the United Stated instituted the Draft Lottery, and, as God would have it, my number was never called up. The Spirit had other plans for me.

— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., is the executive director of The KEYS Leadership Academy@ Café on A in Oxnard.