Writer: Katelyn Silva
Roy Benavidez was a celebrated war veteran who earned the Medal of Honor for rescuing eight of his comrades during the Vietnam War and later became a popular motivational speaker. He was also a Mexican American who grew up in Jim Crow-era Texas, saw the military as a pathway out of poverty, and who, after becoming severely injured during his time serving, had to fight to retain his disability benefits when the Reagan administration threatened to cut them.
The full and often incongruous life of Benavidez—a self-proclaimed patriot whose very Americanness and right to American freedoms were questioned by many around him—is the subject of the new book, “The Ballad of Roy Benavidez: The Life and Times of America’s Most Famous Hispanic War Hero,” by William Sturkey, an associate professor in the Department of History in the School of Arts & Sciences.
Though Benavidez successfully lobbied Capitol Hill—helped by a media blitz—to reconsider the cuts to his and thousands of other veterans’ benefits, the injustice left an indelible mark on Sturkey, who grew up just outside of Erie, Pennsylvania, in a community that sent dozens of young men and women into the Middle East during the War on Terror.
“Roy was shot seven times, had 37 puncture wounds from bayonets and shrapnel, and received the Medal of Honor. He was feted at the Pentagon by President Reagan himself, and only two years later, was told that none of that was enough to entitle him to disability benefits,” Sturkey continues. “This great gulf between how we celebrate veterans versus how we actually treat them really resonated with me.”
So did the fact that although Benavidez would grow up to become an American war hero, as a child, he couldn’t enjoy the same freedoms as many other Americans around him; the Jim Crow laws prevented Benavidez from sitting in his local movie theater or going to the restaurants in his neighborhood. Thirty years later, Roy was ordered to fight for freedoms that he “didn’t even enjoy in his own country as a child. His life is one of such stark inequality,” Sturkey says. “As a historian who’s always been interested in marginalized individuals, I was grabbed by Roy’s story in a profound way and knew I had to tell it.”
“In my opinion, Hispanic Americans are still the most underrepresented group in our histories and media, even though they’re north of 20 percent of the population. There are millions of Hispanics who’ve lived here for more than a hundred years and have contributed to this country the whole time, and yet they’ve never received full access to citizenship benefits and belonging,” says Sturkey, who notes that Benavidez was so often praised for overcoming challenges without acknowledging the external forces that created them. “Hispanic Americans are such a huge part of the American story, and their experiences need to be centered more.”
This story is by Katelyn Silva. Read more at OMNIA.