I can hear the church bells from Our Lady of Sorrows church from my apartment. It is just a block from where I live, in a predominantly immigrant neighborhood of Queens, NYC where Mexican storefronts and Dominican storefronts compete with each other. In this neighborhood and across the United States, the ongoing Iraq war and ending it is a top issue for Latinos because it is our sons, daughters, sisters, brothers and neighbors being sent to the front lines and returning, not as they left, but in boxes.

On Thursday, he came back. The police cars with flashing lights guided Sgt. Alex R. Jimenez’s coffin past the laundry, the travel agency and the minimart to 104-35 37th Drive in Corona. The procession paused in front of the bouquet of yellow and white flowers.

“You’re home, you’re home,” his friends and relatives cried as they surrounded the car holding his coffin, holding each other up for support.

It had been more than a year since Sergeant Jimenez, 25, was reported missing after an ambush on his two-Humvee convoy in an area south of Baghdad known as the triangle of death. He was one of three members of the same Army unit — Company D, Fourth Battalion, 31st Infantry, Second Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, based at Fort Drum in upstate New York — captured in the attack. Four Americans in the same unit and one Iraqi interpreter were killed.

The story that doesn’t get told, is how in this sadness, in a crowded 74th Street Roosevelt Avenue subway station, where people change to get to the 7 train that takes riders to Jimenez’s Corona neighborhood, the U.S Military has recruitment officers nearly everyday, luring young people to join their ranks with promises of educational opportunities and even a chance to get themselves and their families legal status.

The recruiters certainly do not mention Jimenez or the other Latino young people who bought into these promises or even went in with good intentions of defending a country they felt some ownership of.

Via / NYT