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168 | 8 Hispanic Values, Military Values Gender, Culture, and the Militarization of Latina/o Youth Gina M. Pérez As the media consistently reminds us, we find ourselves at a critical and potentially dangerous time. A defining feature of this dangerous location , I would argue, is what conservative historian Andrew Bacevich (2005, 2) refers to as the new American militarism, which he defines as “a romanticized view of soldiers, a tendency to see military power as the truest measure of national greatness, and outsized expectations regarding the efficacy of force. To a degree without precedence in U.S. history, Americans have come to define the nation’s strength and well-being in terms of military preparedness , military action, and the fostering of (or nostalgia for) military ideal.” This chapter focuses on how Latina/o youth and Latin American immigrants are located within this new American militarism and how understandings of citizenship and belonging are shaped in this context. For many Latinas/ os, enlisting in the military is both a literal and figurative move “beyond el barrio,” although, as I will demonstrate below, advertising agencies, Latina/o civic organizations, military officials, and Latina/o families themselves frequently invoke and advance varied notions of “barrio life” in their discussions of Latina/o (or “Hispanic”) culture, gender roles, and kin relations. This anthology’s emphasis on the shifting meanings of citizenship, the wide range of lived experiences of Latinas/os, and their attempts to lay claim to belonging in both local and transnational contexts, offers a special opportunity to consider not only the limits, barriers, and exclusions im/migrants, communities of color, and other marginalized groups face today, but also to reflect on the creative strategies communities employ to navigate this dangerous time. Here I focus on how an examination of the military recruitment of Latinas/ os and their participation in Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps programs (JRTOC) reveals a great deal about citizenship and belonging for marginalized communities throughout the United States. Hispanic Values, Military Values | 169 Recent media, popular, and policy attention to Latinas/os as the new majority minority has fueled two interrelated and seemingly contradictory responses: attention from military recruiters eager to meet recruiting goals; and vicious nativist backlash that defines Latinas/os as not only outside the nation, but also as, following anthropologist Leo Chávez’s (2008) argument, “the Latino threat.” This nativist backlash takes many forms, including the rise of the Minuteman Project, an organized citizen militia aimed at controlling illegal immigration across the U.S.-Mexico border; as well as new legislative attempts to control immigrant labor, settlement, and reproduction through a proposed guest worker program, the construction of the seven-hundred-mile wall along the U.S.-Mexican border, and a well-funded assault on “birthright citizenship” and the Fourteenth Amendment (Chávez 2008, 92). Thus, while military recruiters seek to include U.S. Latinas/os and Latin American immigrants in the responsibilities and privileges of U.S. citizenship, policy makers, conservative policy analysts, and citizen groups vigorously resist and seek to exclude and regulate Latin American immigrant incorporation in the United States. These tensions and contradictions are not lost on Latina/o youth, who candidly discuss both their decisions to participate in their high schools’ JROTC programs, as well as their concerns about the marginal economic, political, and social position of Latinas/os in the United States. In what follows I explore these moments of Latina/o inclusion and exclusion in order to map out the political economic context in which Latina/o youth are increasingly implicated in a militarized world. By focusing on Latina/o youth participation in JROTC programs in American public high schools, as well as the ways the U.S. military employs notions of gender, culture , and family in its attempts to recruit young Latinas/os into its ranks, this analysis helps to illuminate what anthropologist Arlene Dávila (2008, 18) describes as “the politics and exclusions that are increasingly involved in the contemporary production, circulation, and consumption of Latinidad.” The U.S. military is an especially important institution to examine regarding these moments of inclusion and exclusion, not only because it symbolizes a vision of citizenship that rests on sacrifice, honor, and patriotism, but also because it is a invaluable vehicle for economic mobility for many workingclass families. Attention to the material conditions in which Latina/o youth and their families make decisions about their relationships to the military reveals a great deal about the price Latinas/os...

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