June 4, 1999
BY THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Some Hispanic veterans of America's wars say they're still fighting - for respect.
``It seems like we are the first ones in, first to spill blood, and are the last ones out,'' said Cipriano Alvarado of Detroit, who served in the Army during the Korean War.
Hispanics have won 38 Medals of Honor since the Civil War, but many maintain they haven't received the recognition due them.
``Hispanic Americans have a history of serving with distinction and have a documented propensity for the military,'' U.S. Army Col. Hector E. Topete, a West Point graduate who spent a year researching Hispanics in the military, told The Detroit News for a story last Monday.
Topete's report, The Underrepresentation of Hispanic Americans in the U.S. Army Officer Corps, was released this month.
Some 3.8 percent of the officers in the Army are Hispanics, compared with a Hispanic population in the United States of 11.4 percent, his report shows.
``Several Army commands have begun initiating and implementing programs that will help remedy this underrepresentation,'' Topete said.
A 10-year study released this year by the Hispanic civil rights group, the National Council of La Raza, also found that Hispanics were underrepresented in the Department of Defense work-force.
``Latinos are underrepresented throughout the Department of Defense, and overrepresented in some of the combat situations,'' said Norman Heitzman, senior policy analyst with La Raza in Washington, D.C.
For example, Hispanics made up 30.2 percent of infantry, gun crews and specialists in the 1997 peacekeeping mission in Bosnia, he said.
State Rep. Valde Garcia, R-St. Johns, who served in the Army from 1981-90 and is a major in the reserves, doesn't see racism in the military.
``There is no glass ceiling. There is no overt racism. You are judged on your ability to do the job,'' Garcia said. ``In the Army, we were all the same color - green. We were all soldiers, all there to do our duty.''
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