By Erin Brady
Cirilo Primo Arteaga's parents came to the U.S. in 1918, fleeing the violence that followed the Mexican Revolution. His parents instilled in him a deep sense of patriotism for their adopted country. He also learned an appreciation for Mexican culture that he carried with him all of his life.
"I've been blessed," he said, "because I can celebrate Cinco de Mayo and Mexican Independence Day as well as the Fourth of July."
By Voces Staff
During the 13-day Cuban missile crisis in 1962, Jesse Montenegro was in the 15th Air Force HQ Missile Division at March Air Force Base in Riverside, California.
He remembers that the crisis -- from Oct. 14 to Oct. 28 -- had a bigger effect on him and his family than the Vietnam War did.
By Danny Frank
If Angel Montenegro could live his life over again, he would not change a thing.
Since childhood, the Army veteran has made a habit of making the best of his opportunities.
By Mary Gould
When Ramon Lugo reminisces about his life, he speaks of hard work on farm fields as a child and on battlefields as a young man.
Once the Lugo children got old enough, they worked in the fields, picking cotton, carrots and cantaloupe during the summers in their hometown, Glendale, Arizona.
“I guess you’d call it child labor now. It was rough,” he said.
The family lived in the barrio on the other side of the railroad tracks from Anglos. "The tracks were like a divider: 'You guys belong there,' " he said.
By Kassandra Balli
By Jordan D. Schraeder
Working at Dodson’s Grocery in 1943, Raul “Roy” Portales dreamed of sailing the high seas. That year, the San Antonio native found a way to make that dream a reality: enlistment in the U.S. Navy. After three years of stocking and delivering groceries, Portales’ enlistment in the Navy on July 7, 1943, offered a change of scenery.
By Mikael DeSanto
Laredo, Texas, native Ernesto Sanchez didn’t always want to join the military, even when there was a war in Korea. He was a college student -- hoping to get an officer's commission in the ROTC -- and didn’t want to leave his family. That changed when he saw that communists were advancing through Korea. He said to himself, “Well, someone has to stop them.” He decided to step up.
By Julia Bunch
Frank Martinez, a Colorado native, was a family man and a college student in the mid-1960s. Surely, he wouldn’t be sent to Vietnam.
But then he got the letter from the Army.
“I didn’t think I would get drafted because I had a daughter,” Martinez said. “I told this other Hispanic guy I knew, Joe Castro, ‘There’s no way they’re going to draft you. You’ve got a little boy!’ But then we both got drafted.”
Martinez and Castro used their friendship to prepare for the war.
By Alex Cannon
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Juan Provencio knew what he had to do. As the war overseas had worsened, his father, Manuel, an immigrant from Mexico, had told his sons: "All of you men must be ready to go and help your country. You were born here, and you have been given many privileges that many don’t get. It is up to you now."
By Gabriela Chabolla
One of 14 children born to parents who worked on a sugar plantation in Guayama, Puerto Rico, Pedro Ramos Santana built his life around hard work and accountability.
His father worked in the field, while his mother tended to the house of a woman named Nena Sabater. Ramos and his nine brothers and four sisters learned the value of hard work at an early age.
“(My parents) told me that a man’s worth is determined by two things,” said Ramos in Spanish, “his integrity and his word. I walked this world with this doctrine.”