"The American Dream"

What follows is a very different story of the “American Dream.” I contemplate what this dream is exactly, the complexities and contradictions of this concept and I wonder whose dream we are talking about.

It’s unbelievable that we are going on 4 ½ years since the war started and hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, senselessly! U.S. military fatalities are nearing 4,000.

One of the first U.S. soldiers to die was not even an American citizen. In the first few hours of the war, Marine Lance Corporal Jose Antonio Gutierrez died.

Gutierrez, just 22 years old, was an orphan from Guatemala who survived on the streets until he made his escape on freight trains and eventually entered the US illegally from Mexico at the age of 14. His mother had died when he was three and his father when he was eight. He was forced to abandon school and work a series of odd jobs so that he and his sister could survive. Once in the US, he slept on park benches and ate at shelters until a social worker was placed Gutierrez into a foster home. His fourth placement with a foster family finally worked out and in 2000, he came to live with Nora and Marcelo Mosquera (themselves immigrants from Costa Rica and Ecuador).

He attended high school and then played soccer for Harbor College where he studied architecture. He sometimes joked to his family that someday “people will know my name.” He never forgot his sister in Guatemala, calling her and sending her money.

He had a strong faith in God. In a poem he wrote in 2000, “Letter to God,” that was read at his funeral, Gutierrez wrote in Spanish, “Thank you for permitting me to live another year, thank you for what I have, for the type of person I am, for my dreams that don’t die… May the firearms be silent and the teachings of love flourish.” Gutierrez also loved America and talked about giving something back by enlisting in the Army. A few months after Sept. 11, he surprised everyone by announcing he'd joined the Marines.

Jose Antonio Gutierrez overcame much adversity and pain throughout this life and ultimately died for a country he loved and hoped to give back to, but that was not even his. Gutierrez was finally granted his American citizenship posthumously.

His life story has been made into an award winning documentary called, The Short Life of Jose Antonio Gutierrez.

Note: A recent study on the war dead and where they come from suggests that the notion of “rich man’s war, poor man’s fight” has become a little truer over time. Among the Americans killed in the Iraq war, 34% have come from communities reporting the lowest levels of family income, 50% from middle income communities and only 17% from the highest income level.