Mexican Americans have faced shocking acts of racist violence. Some are documented in the Voces database, the largest Latino oral history archive in the US

Late in 1945, Frank Macias returned to El Paso, Texas, a hero of the second world war. He had been in the US army’s 554th anti-aircraft artillery battalion, surviving the allied breakthrough of Operation Cobra and the Battle of the Bulge. He had suffered the devastation of seeing his childhood friend die by a direct-hit air bomb. At one point, the California native even helped bring down a Nazi plane. But none of that mattered in some parts. Frank’s sister Isabel, who is also my grandmother, still remembers the dissonance when that autumn they walked past a diner display declaring: “No Dogs or Mexicans Allowed.” They felt betrayed.

Many Mexican Americans believed life would change in Texas. They had put their lives in danger as a deposit on the long-term investment project known as the American dream. But that didn’t happen, explained Maggie Rivas-Rodriguez, the journalism professor who runs the Voces Oral History Project at the University of Texas at Austin.

“That’s what made the 1950s suck [for them], because they came back expecting things were going to be so much better and their people were going to be treated with equality,” she said.

Frank Macias, a veteran, faced racism when he returned home to El Paso, Texas, after the second world war. Photograph: Courtesy of family

In fact, most Mexican Americans’ experience of postwar racism was worse, including in the diverse west and south Texas regions, precisely because they were as patriotic, fully-documented and well-spoken in English as anyone else. And yet most communities returned to strict race-based hierarchies. This is illustrated by a series of shocking acts of postwar violence, which are documented in the Voces database, the largest Latino oral history archive in the US, which began in 1999 and is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.

After 22 people, including children, were murdered by a white supremacist who targeted Mexicans, the lack of understanding and ignorance of the Mexican American experience in the US has been depressingly visible. Thankfully the stories collected by Voces help to contextualize this massacre besides other acts of hate this group has experienced.

It took more than 50 years for a substantive oral scholarship of Mexican Americans from the second world war to begin, as good an example as any of the cultural erasure they have faced in the US.

Of course, that’s one part of a long, oft-repeated story.

Rivas-Rodriguez first thought about the project after writing an article for Dallas Life magazine. Titled Brothers In Arms, it featured Mexican American veterans of the second world war she’d researched through books and interviews. But she still felt frustrated there weren’t enough primary sources available. With the help of two other University of Texas professors, David Montejano and Carlos Veléz-Ibañez, she prepared a framework for capturing video interviews that could be consistently accurate and provided a way for people, including her students and volunteers, to produce a professional journalistic historical document.

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The instructions she developed included consent forms, video tips and, for second world war-era folks, a detailed questionnaire touching on everything including family life, dating and basic training. Rivas-Rodriguez said she interviewed her own parents at the start. “They’re both gone now and I’ll be forever thankful for those interviews,” she said.

The Voces project, which also includes nonfiction books, documents untold stories and expands upon those most of the Mexican American community may have only heard about in passing. That is important. As critical as it is for white Americans to know about this history, lack of access to these stories has also robbed Mexican Americans of the full scope of their heritage.

One story tells of a young army private named Benigno Aguirre, who was nearly beaten to death by 12 white youths in Uvalde, Texas, after local police had encouraged them to “go hunting”. The suspects were sons of rich white lawyers and ranchers who would all get off with probation or fines while Aguirre recovered in the hospital for months.

Another was the infuriating experience of Macario Garcia, who was the first Medal of Honor recipient of Mexican descent, with President Harry Truman personally commending him. Ten days later he was refused service and beaten at a south Texas diner. Several men and women, like Frances Rodriguez Luna, mentioned in interviews how Garcia’s troubles inspired them to fight racism as local activists and civil rights leaders.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harry Truman and Macario Garcia, who was the first Medal of Honor recipient of Mexican descent. Photograph: National Archives and Records Administration

There is also a reference to the awful case of soldier Felix Longoria’s remains being refused by a cemetery in Three Rivers. It led to a huge outcry in 1949 that ended up involving then senator Lyndon Johnson and the reporter Walter Winchell calling them out on the radio (“The big state of Texas looks mighty small tonight”). Longoria eventually received a burial in Arlington national cemetery.

The stories go on.

It’s a cultural tragedy that thousands died without providing a life record. More than 800 oral histories in 20 years is a great achievement but a drop in the ocean for the near-million Mexican American soldiers who fought in the war, the millions who stayed home, and everyone else who’s lived a life of consequence and hardship since. With an estimated 348 veterans of the second world war dying every day, most accounts are now lost to history. This was sadly the case for another great-uncle of mine, Freddy Macias, a Korean war Purple Heart winner and a joyous storyteller who passed away last year.

According to Albert Caramillo, a Stanford history professor, Mexican ethnic erasure has taken place since the aftermath of the Mexican-American war, with the US demanding Mexicans who wanted to become citizens be counted as white. Caramillo also says that because Latinos like Frank were labeled as white in military documents, their numbers were likely undercounted – most official US government figures say about 400,000 fought in the second world war but it was probably closer to a million.

For Rivas-Rodriguez, Mexican Americans’ lack of opportunities, whether to tell their story, get an education, or participate in America’s political system, has been the biggest challenge they have faced since the postwar era. In one example, racist legislators in south Texas, blocked them from gaining political power for years, leading to, at several points, the steering of higher education spending away from Mexican-majority areas. Instead, some districts placed kids in mental wards for speaking Spanish. As Renato Ramirez, a Del Mar College political science professor, said in a recent Voces interview, the state threw them a paltry bone of money to “suck on” in order to not get sued. He is referring to the South Texas Border Initiative, an early 90s program, which came about after the state was sued for discrimination, and promised to improve school systems in south Texas with an expected funding of $10bn in ten years. Unfortunately, and not surprisingly, the state managed to only provide $186m.

Despite these challenges, many were determined to beat the odds. Thousands used the GI Bill to educate themselves. Other veterans started the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (Maldef) to oppose injustice. Agriculture workers fought to gain benefits. According to Rivas-Rodriguez, one soldier who came back from the second world war, Alfred J Hernandez, exemplified this best for her. At first, Hernandez was so furious at the racism he encountered that he wanted to leave the area for a better life in Mexico or up in the north-west. But his wife talked him out of it. “This is where the battle has to be,” the professor said she told him. “‘This is where you’re needed’ and he stayed there and worked on civil rights issues the rest of his life.” He became the first Latino judge in Houston’s history.

Jose Fermoso is a freelance writer covering Silicon Valley and world culture. Tweet to him @fermoso