San Jose resident Charley Trujillo tells the little-known story
of young Mexican-American men who fought in Vietnam in a new
documentary airing on PBS’s award-winning P.O.V. series. Soldados:
Chicanos in Vietnam, by Trujillo and Sonya Rhee, airs Tuesday.
San Jose resident Charley Trujillo tells the little-known story of young Mexican-American men who fought in Vietnam in a new documentary airing on PBS’s award-winning P.O.V. series. Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam, by Trujillo and Sonya Rhee, airs Tuesday.
Named after Trujillo’s award-winning book, this documentary sheds light on a group of veterans from the small agricultural town of Corcoran, Calif., who suffered the physical and emotional scars of war, but returned to a country that viewed them as second-class citizens. It is particularly timely now as we see a new generation of Hispanics fighting in Iraq.
The PBS award-winning P.O.V. series will look at the Mexican-American experience with two new documentaries.
“Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam” recounts the experience of a generation of Chicano boys, whose first journey outside the cotton fields of their California hometowns was to the war-ripped rice paddies of Vietnam.
“The Sixth Section” discovers a surprising story of the global workplace: low-paid Mexican migrants in upstate New York pooling their “dollar power” to bring dramatic changes to their impoverished hometown.
Trujillo and Rhee’s “Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam” and Alex Rivera and Bernardo Ruiz’s “The Sixth Section” air Tuesday at 10 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., respectively, on PBS.
Both films are part of P.O.V.’s new initiative, the Diverse Voices Project, which is made possible through major funding by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The DVP films were granted production and completion funds and selected from more than 180 submissions to bring emerging and diverse voices to American television.
Charley Trujillo, who wrote the 1991 American Book Award winner on which the film Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam is based, is our guide to the war and post-war experiences of five Chicano soldados from Corcoran, Calif. Corcoran sits in the lush San Joaquin Valley amid rich cotton fields and had long been a destination for Mexican migrants seeking work.
For Larry Holguin, Miguel Gastelo, Frank Delgado, Jose Barrera and Trujillo himself this wasn’t ancient history. They all grew up working in the fields alongside their parents and siblings, and shared a life and values not much different from that of their forebears.
This meant fighting for their country, as their fathers had done in World War II and the Korean War. The five boys from Corcoran (two of whom volunteered for duty) could hardly guess just how profoundly the insulated life they knew in Corcoran would be changed by their experience in Southeast Asia.
Soldados shows that in a war that both exposed and exacerbated America’s racial conflicts, Chicanos in the ranks found themselves uniquely caught in the middle – between whites and blacks, whose clashes dominated the era, and between U.S. society’s contradictory views of them as loyal citizens and as alien migrants.
At the same time, they experienced all the horrors of a war that tore two nations apart. All the Corcoran men were wounded – Trujillo lost his right eye – and most were decorated for valor. One, Jose Barrera, died in battle – a story related movingly by his mother.
Those who returned came back with a profound awareness of America’s unresolved racial divisions, as well as with unresolved feelings about their own participation in a war many regarded as itself an expression of American racism.
The veterans and family members in Soldados describe the symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder that they share: fits of rage, insomnia, flashbacks, isolation and emotional numbness.
Original, multiethnic songs in Spanish and English underscore the documentary. “Vietnam Jungle Blues,” written and performed by Jerry Sauceda, tells the story of the five soldados from Corcoran profiled in the film. “Soldado Razo,” by Ramon Ayala, is about a soldier leaving his home to fight a war for his mother and country, while “Son in Vietnam,” performed by Gloria Velasquez, was written for her brother who was killed in the war. The documentary also features Vietnamese folk songs.
After more than 30 years, the veterans and their families now understand how they were changed by the war. Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam is moving testimony to an important but little-remarked chapter of America’s Vietnam experience.
Charley Trujillo, the co-director/producer, was born in Hanford, Calif., and was raised in Corcoran until he was 18 years old. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Silao Guanajuato, Mexico, to the United States in 1908. His maternal family has been in Texas before it became part of the U.S. in 1848. His father is a World War II veteran.
Two weeks after graduating from high school, Trujillo enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served in Germany as an infantryman in 1969. From there he volunteered for Vietnam. He served there as a sergeant in the infantry, earning both a Purple Heart and Bronze Star Medal. He received his B.A. from the University of California at Berkeley, and his M.A. from San Jose State University.
He has taught college courses in ethnic and Chicano studies, and the Vietnam War, and is the publisher of Chusma House Publications, one of the country’s few independent Chicano publishing houses. His book Soldados: Chicanos in Vietnam won the 1991 National Book Award. He is also the author of the novel Dogs from Illusion. He lives in San Jose, California.
P.O.V. Interactive (www.pbs.org/pov) P.O.V.’s award-winning web department creates a web site for every P.O.V. presentation. Our web sites extend the life of P.O.V. films through community-based and educational applications, focusing on involving viewers in activities, information and feedback on the issues.
In addition, pbs.org/pov houses our unique Talking Back feature, filmmaker interviews and viewer resources, and information on the P.O.V. archives as well as a myriad of special sites for previous P.O.V. broadcasts. P.O.V. also produces special sites for hire, specializing in working closely with independent filmmakers on integrating their content with their interactive goals.
