"I'm Not Gonna Die in This Damn Place": Manliness, Identity, and Survival of the Mexican American Vietnam Prisoners of War by Juan David Coronado (review)

Juan David Coronado is a postdoctoral scholar at Michigan State University as well as a native Texan who is on the board of the Southwest Oral History Association. He has compiled six chapters that give an overview of race relations in the United States—especially the Southwest—prior to, during, and after the Vietnam War with a focus on the POWs during that conflict who were Mexican Americans. Early on, Coronado points out that there were 629 POWs in Vietnam. Of these, 572 were pilots or aircraft personnel. The other 57 were infantry from the Army or Marines. Only sixteen POWs were African American and just ten were Mexican American. The aviators had to have a college degree; consequently, Coronado uses quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King and Chicano activist Rodolfo "Corky" González to skew these low numbers as a reflection of racial, social, and economic oppression in the United States since ethnic minorities lacked the resources to earn a baccalaureate degree, which supposedly would have produced more minority pilots. Because the pilots were officers rather than enlisted men, Coronado argues that their stories became "the official story" of the POWs even though he distinguishes between the aviator prisoners in North Vietnam at the Hanoi Hilton and the jungle prisoners in South Vietnam, who were ground troops imprisoned in a much harsher environment with rampant tropical diseases, torture, and malnutrition.

According to his thesis, because the Mexican Americans were from the American Southwest, they were already inured to privation. In fact, "There, the men battled poverty, hunger, and discrimination, and in doing so gained the survival skills necessary to cope with their captivity in Vietnam" (23). Coronado highlights that these soldiers came from military traditions because there grandfathers and fathers had fought in the Spanish-American War in Cuba, the Mexican Revolution, and World War I; consequently, their machismo compelled them to enlist for duty in the war against Communism. Nevertheless, he mentions that many of these volunteers signed up to avoid being drafted since they would have more choice in their military affiliation as well as their assignment within the military. On another note, he surmises that "The shift in gender roles that occurred during World War II for women, and the rising conflict against Communism caused a stir in American society . . . for the return to manly ideals of the nineteenth century when women once again returned to the home and the men to the workforce" (47). Given the limited options for work as a Mexican American in the Southwest, the military seemed the perfect place to be a breadwinner along these manly ideals.

Two of the ten Mexican POWs allegedly violated the Military Code of Conduct by collaborating with the Viet Cong through a group called the Peace Committee, which criticized the American intervention and received special favors such as extra rations or beer. However, Coronado alleges that "Race also played a role in the rise and consequently in the persecution of the Peace Committee" (95). The Viet Cong used psychological indoctrination such as showing how their skin color was similar to that of the Mexican Americans to elicit empathy, that they were fighting discrimination just like these Latinos against an American oppressor, as well as by showing them news clips of the unpopularity of the war in the United States. These two POWSs died when one committed suicide and the other was killed while robbing a store in Detroit.

At the same time, Coronado distinguishes between the Mexican American generation of previous wars and the rise of the Chicano generation just prior to Vietnam. The former showed pride in being American and fulfilling a patriotic duty, while racial and social unrest during the 1960s aligned militant Chicano groups with radical Black Power movements. Most of the POWs had trouble adapting to the new...