The Vietnam War was a conflict between the communist government of North Vietnam and South Vietnam that occurred from 1955 to 1975. The United States entered the war in an effort to prevent a communist takeover in Vietnam, and was South Vietnam’s primary ally in a conflict exacerbated by the Cold War. The United States sent about 550,000 troops to Vietnam and more than 58,000 Americans were killed in the Vietnam War, with more than 3 million people dying throughout the entire war. Opposition to the war was intense within the United States, with protests occurring regularly throughout the nation. President Richard Nixon signed the Paris Peace Accords in 1973 that ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces. 

During the war, a disproportionate number of Latino American troops were drafted, killed or injured during the war. According to the Library of Congress website, “Disparities in public education, systematic exclusion from higher education, and high unemployment rates among Mexican Americans … contributed to Mexican Americans dying at twice the rate of any other group in Vietnam.” 

There were a number of reasons as to why the Chicano contribution went underappreciated and underestimated in the Vietnam War. Though 10% of the United States was classified as Latino during the war, according to the Daily Chela, Mexican Americans accounted for around 20% of Vietnam deaths of Americans. Many Mexican Americans at the time of the height of the war were high school dropouts or never went to college, rendering them ineligible for deferments. Patriotism also played a role, with many Mexican Americans initially volunteering to serve the United States in the war. 

As noted in a KQED article about the role of Latinos in the Vietnam War, Summers Sandoval, a professor of history and Chicano studies at Pomona College, told KQED that the U.S. military didn’t keep separate data on Latinos, but rather folded them into the white population. The article also cited a study from Cal State Los Angeles that found that Latinos comprised 20% of all United States troops killed during the war in Vietnam.

In a Los Angeles Times article, Vietnam veteran and Mexican American Tomás Sandoval described how initially his community had seen joining the fight as a patriotic mission in order to prove oneself as a Chicano within the country. The article cites a study by the academic Ralph C. Guzman explained that “Twice as many people with Spanish surnames were dying in the war in proportion to their population in the Southwest.” This outsized proportion of death and general opposition to the war ultimately contributed to the formation of the Chicano Moratorium on August 29, 1970, that brought over 20,000 Mexican Americans marching through East Los Angeles to protest the war.