"We are Americans when we go to war, and when we return, we are Mexicans"
About this Quote
A single sentence, and Chavez turns patriotism into an accusation. The line pivots on a brutal switch: "Americans" at the point of service, "Mexicans" the moment the uniform comes off. Its power is in the grammar of conditional belonging. Citizenship, he implies, isn’t a stable status in the national imagination; it’s a role assigned when convenient and revoked when costly.
Dennis Chavez knew exactly where to press. As a New Mexican senator and one of the first Hispanic U.S. senators, he spoke from inside the machinery of American power while naming how that machinery sorted people by usefulness. The historical context is the long record of Mexican American military participation - from World War I through World War II and Korea - alongside segregation, lynchings, "No Mexicans" signs, and the routine suspicion that Spanish-speaking Americans were perpetually foreign. Communities that sent sons to fight returned to schools, jobs, and neighborhoods structured to remind them they were guests.
The subtext isn’t just about racism; it’s about the transactional logic of nationalism. War is the great laundering machine: it scrubs difference into "we" because unity is operationally necessary. Peace restores the peacetime hierarchy. Chavez’s phrasing also needles the myth that military service automatically purchases full belonging. If heroism can’t outrun a surname, then the promise of equal citizenship is revealed as performance - applauded on the battlefield, questioned at the border of everyday life.
Dennis Chavez knew exactly where to press. As a New Mexican senator and one of the first Hispanic U.S. senators, he spoke from inside the machinery of American power while naming how that machinery sorted people by usefulness. The historical context is the long record of Mexican American military participation - from World War I through World War II and Korea - alongside segregation, lynchings, "No Mexicans" signs, and the routine suspicion that Spanish-speaking Americans were perpetually foreign. Communities that sent sons to fight returned to schools, jobs, and neighborhoods structured to remind them they were guests.
The subtext isn’t just about racism; it’s about the transactional logic of nationalism. War is the great laundering machine: it scrubs difference into "we" because unity is operationally necessary. Peace restores the peacetime hierarchy. Chavez’s phrasing also needles the myth that military service automatically purchases full belonging. If heroism can’t outrun a surname, then the promise of equal citizenship is revealed as performance - applauded on the battlefield, questioned at the border of everyday life.
Quote Details
| Topic | Equality |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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