Alberto Lopez was born in Jalisco in 1986. His parents took him and his younger brother and sister with them to Houston, Texas, where the children went to grade school.
Beto had been a rather typical romantic-minded youngster as he entered high school. His mother worked, with questionable papers, as a maid at a popular motor inn, and his father for another illegal jalisciense who maintained a four-man gardening crew. His parents wanted their children’s educations to win them better and more secure jobs. Yet by the time Beto approached high school gradation in 2004, his curiosity had been piqued by the handsome display in a Sharpstown mall recruiting office. A crisply uniformed sergeant who stepped out for a deft chat mentioned the Army’s present “guarantee” of swift U.S. citizenship to young Mexican “warriors” who signed up to seek revenge for the sneak attack that had killed 3,000 innocent office workers in the 9/11 “Twin Towers” attack. Neither the parents nor their children understood that young males such as Beto were viewed by recruiters as disposable occupants of a beefed-up quota count.
The 9/11 patriotic fever remained aflame in great swaths of the United Stares. And Houston was the home of the nation’s president, George W. Bush – the man who declared “The War on Terror.” The Lopez family didn’t have a deep understanding what that meant beyond the concept of “war against terror.” And they were oddly proud to be living in the same city where the president had his civilian home, as did his ex-president father.
Soon, Beto achieved his cherished ambition. And as has happened to millions of rookie enlistees throughout history, it turned out to be not an iota like anything he could have imagined. Neither past nor recent experience prepared him for military training, or for an alarmed Washington’s hurriedly put-together armed force.
Beto, unlike many of his fellow “wet-backs,” had oddly taken to English – the brief work of a bright Mexican high school girl friend. Beto was growing up fast. His training soon turned him into a side machine gunner on a Humvee. That was a view of a new world that seemed to render him nearly mute.
He often wrote and called home, amazingly even to relatives in Mexico. Some friends began sending him U.S. and Mexican books and magazines. Effects of his reading, noticeably improved his writing.
But most of his “American” military companions were products of torn apart homes, reared often by absentee, single, working parents. They knew more about the populations of video games and reality TV shows than they did about their parents. The gringo generation he was thrown into did not fit the “Great Generation,” of WWII repute, that his family had recently heard so much about. Generally the most he hoped for regarding his companions was that they would, perhaps accidentally, avoid mass murders.
He was shocked that his fellows saw the invasion of Iraq as another encounter in an endless war. Yet that was what their commanders and the president seemed to imply. Beto was appalled: He had no desire to be part of an endless war, which his buddies – who often called him “wet-back” and “spick-a-rooney” – said was inevitable.
Beto was also appalled by the question hovering over the troops’ heads: Would this generation of Americans fight? Meaning: Were they brave?
Yes, if their equipment didn’t “screw everything up.” Beto had heard stories of how, early in the Iraq invasion, enlisted men were given hard-used, roofless Humvees. The troops had to make those vehicles battlefield ready with heir own money in their own chop-shop.
It worked, but the slack thought behind this lack of adequate battle-ready equipment for troops made him jittery. But he became too busy to dwell on that. Only the immediate mattered, and that goal was more than he imagined his platoon could effectively accomplish. To cover his fear, he learned to fake calmness. He was lucky: His platoon commander, Lieutenant Robert Blake, seemed, most of the time, calm by nature. He wasn’t a “yeller” as many platoon leaders were. He was college educated, and Beto believed that accounted for his demeanor. Beto’s immediate “commander,” Sergeant Morris, even though a “lifer,” was often doubtful about many of his superiors.
Once in Iraq, the worse thing for these young soldiers was an ubiquitous and deadly threat: IED’s (Improvised Explosive Devices), hidden along key (usually dirt-road) travel arteries. The loss of close friends in his squad, in his platoon, in his company, in fire fights, ambushes and by IEDs were crushing. That species of sadness never left him. Now he was posted behind one of the platoon’s heavy (50 Cal.) machine guns mounted on a three-foot-high metal post in the Humvee’s bed. He was conscientious, even fastidious, in keeping his machine gun and his other weapons cleaned and in good repair. And he had been blown out of the Humvee three times, but never seriously wounded.
So by the time Beto got leave adequate for a visit in Mexico, he had been exposed to a lot tough stuff. Stuff he didn’t talk about to his family or to almost anyone else. He’d seen friends torn apart by AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-fired grenades and, of course, IEDs.
Worse, the last time he was in Mexico, doctors were talking frankly about veteran’s new “brain disease”, Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy: C.E.T. This is the abnormal form of a protein that accumulates and ends up destroying areas regulating impulse control, judgement, memory and emotions. Memory lapses secretly worried symptom-marked Beto Lopez, but he gave it little attention.
This is the first of a two-part series.