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Chapter 30: The 1960sWar tested a family's faith, opened horizonsBy Carmen DuarteThe Arizona Daily Star The military was one route from poverty for my patriotic cousins. That made the 1960s a time of great stress for la familia. My cousins went off to war early in the Vietnam era and served multiple tours.
Mama was praying to Nuestra Señora de la Victoria (Our Lady of Victory) long before much of the nation had recognized the seriousness of our involvement. My cousin Jaime, one of the cousins Mama helped raise, quit high school in 1970, joined the Army and volunteered for Vietnam. Mama prayed for the Army to say no. She thought the family had already sent enough sons to Southeast Asia. Two of her brother Florentino's sons, Rudy and Floyd Bejarano, had already served their tours by then. Her sister Gumesinda's boys, Lalo and Domingo Vega, went as well. Rudy Bejarano was a Pueblo High graduate who had dreamed of attending a military academy. But he was a poor Hispanic teen with no political ties. Instead, he enrolled at the University of Arizona and joined ROTC. He volunteered for active duty before graduation and served his first tour in Vietnam in 1967. There he found religion. Rudy let out a long sigh and hesitantly recalled the bloody war that he says the United States lost because politicians did not let soldiers do their jobs. And that, he says, cost many American lives. ``The first year I was with the 173rd Airborne Brigade, a U.S. combat infantry unit. I did my job, and I'd like to think that I did a good job in terms of being an infantry platoon leader, a company exec and, for a short time, a company commander. ``I got to Vietnam approximately Oct. 10, 1967, and on Nov. 13 we went into Dak To, near the border with Cambodia and Thailand. We got our ass kicked. ``The 173rd Airborne Brigade had four battalions. The whole brigade is about 3,000 people, actual combat people vs. support people. ``The officer corps - about 60 percent were wounded or killed. The enlisted - troops if you will - probably about 50 percent were killed or wounded.'' Rudy was one of the casualties - hit by shrapnel. ``There was one good-size piece in my leg. The rest were minor.
``The reason I got religion, and to this day I know that was the critical thing in my life, was having been wounded and just lying there, waiting to be evacuated, and one of our own planes, not a jet but an A-5, came over low.'' It dropped a bomb. ``The bomb was a 500-pound bomb, a huge bomb. It landed, see that mueble, right over there,'' he says, pointing to his living room sofa. ``It landed that far from me. I saw it fall. Bang. The huge thump. The ground shook. I thought, `We're gone.' ``But it didn't explode. It gives you religion. It gives you religion.'' That same day, after Rudy had been evacuated, his platoon staged an assault on a target called Hill 875. Most didn't survive. ``It was not my turn to go. That's where I got religion.'' Rudy recovered from the shrapnel wound in his leg and was sent back to the battlefield two weeks later. He also survived front-line duty in the Tet Offensive of 1968 and came home with a Purple Heart, three Bronze Stars and an Air Medal, among other commendations. He and his brother Floyd and his cousins Lalo and Domingo all came home. Rudy found the military to be a good step for a poor kid from the southside. The Army helped him finish college.
He retired from the Army Reserve as a lieutenant colonel and later served two terms as a Tucson city councilman. He and his wife, his high school sweetheart, Esperanza, have a nice home on the westside, north of St. Mary's Hospital, where they have raised four children. Esperanza is a retired school teacher and principal.
Today, Rudy has his own accounting business, and he and Esperanza have a new crusade. They recently renovated Esperanza's family home in Sonoyta, Sonora, and turned it into a school where they go on weekends to teach English to Mexican children. They call their program Esperanza en el Ingles (Hope in English). The real family tragedy in the '60s was the stabbing death of Mama's brother Isidro, Tío Chilo. Tío Chilo would show up at our house on rainy Saturdays and most Sunday mornings to chat with Mama as she cooked breakfast and piled fresh-made tortillas into a stack on a clean dish towel on the kitchen table. We kids would empty the stack almost as fast as she built it. Chilo was a short, stocky man who always wore jeans, a white shirt, a cowboy hat and a big smile. After the hellos, he'd get a tall glass, pour tomato juice, crack a raw egg into the glass, pour in Red Devil hot sauce, sprinkle salt and pepper and stir up the drink. He'd bring the glass to his lips and swallow until the liquid disappeared. Sometimes Daddy would join him with his own glass. Later, I found out this helped some beat a hangover. I tried it when I was much, much older, but it really didn't help me. Tío Chilo was close to Mama. They'd talk about anything and everything. She was his confidante. When he was stabbed to death in 1966 by his stepdaughter, the entire family was numbed. I rarely have seen Mama cry. She cried for Chilo. Mama still prays to Our Lady of Mount Carmel, her attorney for the dead, to intercede on Chilo's behalf and ask God to grant him an entrance to heaven. Tío Chilo's stepdaughter was 16 at the time. Convicted of his death, she served time until she was an adult. Chilo's death and the murder trial with its accusations and defenses, caused a large tear in the fabric of la familia that is still being slowly repaired.
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Ch. 1: Field of death
Ch. 18: The New Deal
Ch. 24: Cotton pickers and copper miners Ch. 27: The family doubles its size
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