During the Vietnam era, cities across America gave their sons to the war effort. Guadalupe, a small town of only 2,500 citizens in 1970, gave an extraordinary amount for a city of its size. The significance of that contribution changed the town and its residents forever.
For decades, Guadalupe’s veterans kept their pain inside, suffering alone, but they eventually began seeking to share their stories and someone to tell them right. They found that in one of the city’s own, author and teacher Michael R. Ornelas.
Orenelas, who now lives in Southern California, chronicled their stories in The Sons of Guadalupe: Voices of the Vietnam Generation and Their Journey Home, a book that talks not only of growing up in Guadalupe and how that shaped the lives of a generation, but also how Vietnam changed the future of the town.
“I wanted people to know their lives before Vietnam,” Ornelas said. “These were complicated men. Most of them grew up poor, entered an abusive school system, and then shipped off to Vietnam.”
Among other stories—such as accounts of historical abuse to come out of the local school system—Ornelas chronicles the Guadalupe prior to Vietnam: a lively, tight-knit community, a blend of Mexican, Filipino, Chinese, and Japanese cultures. The book recounts the tales with raw emotion from the veterans themselves, their memories of friends and family, their thoughts on the school abuses, and then the men who left in alarming numbers for Vietnam.
Rudy Razo is one of those veterans. A tall man with a shaved head, Fu Manchu mustache, and tattoos, he would be an imposing presence if he weren’t such a friendly, outgoing guy. His tough exterior does little to protect him when he thinks about his time in Vietnam, the suffering he’s experienced, and what his friends and family have gone through in dealing with their own memories of Vietnam.
Emotion floods his face as he tries to talk about the Guadalupe he grew up in. He remembers a place full of ethnic diversity, where you could hear many different languages, music filled the streets, and the Royal Theater was advertising the latest release. Then Vietnam happened.
“The town during that time was so full of life and laughter and aspiration and energy—it just got taken away,” he said. “You see an entire generation just swooped up. It created a void. The town and our families, nothing was the same.”
The most astonishing thing to Razo was the number of men who left to serve their country. There were about 218 who went off to Vietnam. Most of them were drafted, though some of them had to go because of family pressure, either because their fathers served in World War II or because a sense of obligation urged them to go behind a brother who was drafted. Razo remembered living in a neighborhood called Treasure Park. On his street, Birch Street, there were 15 houses on either side. From those 30 homes, 16 men went off to war. Razo says each of their names with emphasis, his voice tight with emotion. He called Birch Street the saddest street in town.
For a while, none of the men talked about the changes that had happened. In fact, after the war, many of them didn’t talk with each other at all.
“I’d just never see them again,” Razo said. “Everybody was fighting their own demons from that time forward.”
Ultimately, a few years ago, Razo thought it was time for everyone to come together. The various stories needed to be told. He approached Ornelas in 2005 with a book idea—he couldn’t write it himself because he was too close to it. It was too emotional. Ornelas took a six-month sabbatical and started the book in January 2006.
“Once I took it on, it took on a momentum of its own,” Ornelas said. “It’s a great story that kept getting better and full of surprises.”
Ornelas was surprised he was able to locate 218 veterans. Then he researched the early history of Guadalupe and its ethnic history, which revealed a different level to the story of the veterans, one that gave a more complete picture of the challenges they’ve faced and how they’ve become the men they are today.
“Once I started, the more I wrote and learned, the more committed I became. One of the biggest challenges was to get the men to speak about Vietnam. The vast majority had never spoken of Vietnam to their friends or family,” Ornelas said.
He’s still not sure why some of the vets agreed to speak, while many others didn’t—though he suspects it’s because he’s an “insider,” having grown up in Guadalupe himself. He also thinks their openness had a lot to do with Razo’s encouragement to them to open up and share their stories.
Razo said the book is an important validation of the events that took place and their historical significance to the town.
“I want people to know these men and their contributions. I want them to know Guadalupe,” he said. “I never want this to happen to another town again. I want to tell the world there are genuine heroes walking around them, and they look like anybody else.”
Arts Editor Shelly Cone knows she walks with heroes. Contact her at scone@santa mariasun.com.
This article appears in Apr 2-9, 2009.