Today, December 8, 1969, I must refuse induction into the Armed Services of the United States. Please understand it is difficult for me to communicate my feelings through writing, but nevertheless I will try to let you see through my window.
In my veins runs the blood of all the people of the world. I am a son of La Raza, the universal children, and cannot be trained and ordered to kill my brother. When the first man was killed, too many had died. For my people, I refuse to respect your induction papers.
It is well known that Mexicans were among the first victims of your empire. The memory of the Mexican-American War is still an open wound in the souls of my people. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is a lie, similar to all the treaties signed by our Indian brothers. The war did not end. It has continued in the minds and hearts of the people of the Southwest. Strife and bloodshed have never stopped between us. This society and its Texas Rangers and Green Berets has never allowed our people to live in peace. The blood is still moist on the land. Too many of my brothers have died fighting for a lie called “American Freedom,” both in our streets and foreign lands.
My people know nothing but racist tyranny and brutal oppression from this society. Your education system has butchered our minds, stung our hearts, and poisoned our souls. You cut out our tongues and castrated our culture, making us strangers in our own land. The sweat of my people watered the fields and their aching bones harvested your food. Today we continue to do your work for you with our hands and backs. Though you occupy the land, you have not conquered us. I am a free man. I choose my own battles. My fight is here.
In the short time you have held the land we have felt the pain of seeing the beautiful lands turn into parking lots and freeways, of seeing the birds disappear, the fish die, and the waters become undrinkable, seeing the sign “Private Property” hung over a fence surrounding the lands once held in common, and having our mountains become but vague shadows behind a veil of choking smog.
Your judges armed with the cold sword called Law, held in the diseased arm of Justice, have frozen life of my brothers in your barbaric prisons, scarring them deeply. A man steals to live and you call him a criminal and lock him up worse than an animal. A solider massacres and pillages a villages, and he’s made a hero, awarded with a medal. I believe that if it is wrong to kill within society, then it must be also wrong to kill outside the society. I am of a peace-loving people.
I see the rabid leaders of this land live in luxury and comfort while they send my poor brothers to kill in a war no one wants to understand. The helpless and innocent have lost on both sides, as has been the case in all wars. My ears hear the scream of the fatherless children; my head hurts with the tears of the mothers moaning for their sons, my soul shrinks from the knowledge of the unspeakable horrors of Song My and the rest to come. For the Vietnamese people, I refuse your induction papers.
I cannot betray the blood of my brothers. We are all branches of the same tree, flowers of the same garden, waves of the same sea. The Vietnamese people are not my enemy, but brothers involved in the same struggle for justice against a common enemy. We are all under the same sky. East and West are one.
My heart is dedicated to seeking justice and peace in this world. My eyes see a new sun, with a far more beautiful horizon where all the trees can see the sky and share the same water from the one river. I cannot fight for the enemy of the spirit of life. For my soul, I refuse to obey your induction orders.
PEACE AND JUSTICE,