We Will Find and Kill All of You

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Jon Schwarz

Jon Schwarz is editor of MichaelMoore.com and was research producer for 'Capitalism: A Love Story.' He's also contributed to the New Yorker, New York Times, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Saturday Night Live and NPR.

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March 19th, 2013 11:27 AM

We Will Find and Kill All of You

By Jon Schwarz

The first U.S. soldier killed in combat in Iraq, Jose Gutierrez, actually was not a U.S. citizen; he was Guatemalan:

Marine Lance Corporal Jose Gutierrez was shot in the chest as his unit took heavy fire in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr. Everyone believed he was 22. But his true age is part of a story of epic persistence that took him from Guatemala to Los Angeles, from the life of an orphan to the life of a Marine. In 1997, the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service picked up a baby-faced young man. Gutierrez claimed he was only 16 and eligible for asylum. The usually unbending INS believed him and let him stay. It had been a lie, but it was hardly the most extreme thing Gutierrez had done in his life. He had been born in Guatemala in 1974 but his parents died while he was very young during the country's brutal civil war. His sister Engracia, just four years his senior, was his only remaining family and he lived on the streets of the capital, Guatemala City. In 1982, at the age of eight, social workers took him to live at a home for orphaned boys, Casa Alianza, the Latin American arm of the New York-based Covenant House. He spent more than 10 years there, receiving good grades studying technical drawing. Says Casa Alianza executive director Bruce Harris: "The kids who have lived on the street and have survived are real go getters."

After a fight with a teacher at Casa Alianza when he was 16, he ran away, spending another 18 months on the streets where, says Harris, he would get high sniffing glue to try and forget how hungry and lonely he was….

In 1996, he set off on a 2,000 mile journey north, through Mexico on foot and by hitchhking rides and catching freight trains until he reached California.

After Gutierrez was granted asylum he was placed with a foster family and eventually joined the Marines in hopes of being granted U.S. citizenship.

I've tried and failed to locate people who knew Gutierrez in Guatemala and the U.S., so I haven't been able to find out any details about the deaths of Gutierrez's parents beyond what's appeared in the news. But given that they were poor and killed during the early eighties, it's almost certain they were murdered by the Guatemalan dictatorship, then enthusiastically backed by the Reagan administration. This is a news story from December 8, 1982, when Gutierrez was eight; Rios Montt is now being tried by Guatemalan courts for genocide:

In what seems like an invented detail from an unsubtle novel, Gutierrez wasn't killed by Iraqis, but by friendly fire from U.S. soliders.

If you're poor, there is nowhere for you and your family to hide from the United States of America.