According to the article, Advertising patriotism: The “Yo Soy El Army” campaign and the politics of visibility for Latina/o youth by Irene Garza, the Pentagon began targeting the Latino community for recruitment to the United States Armed Forces because even before the 2000 Census, which revealed Latinos surpassing African Americans as the largest racial minority group, “the Pentagon had been tracking the explosive growth of the US Latina/o population, as well as the large disparity between their demographic dominance and their representation within the military” (Garza, 252). Latinos have been attracting military recruitment because of rapid demographic development, making Latinos “the fastest growing pool of military-age people in the United States” (Garza, 245). The decline of African American involvement has also opened doors to promoting Latinos joining the army, in order to fill…show more content… Belinda Rincón, wrote the article Media, militarism and mythologies of the state: The Latino soldier in World War II films where she begins by discussing Ken Burns 15-hour documentary, The War, which describes the experience of soldiers during World War II, but leaves out the point of view of 500,000 Latinos who served in the war efforts as an afterthought (Rincón, 283). Ken Burns did not believe that the Latin American war time perspective ‘fit in’ with the overall experience of World War II that he was crafting as the main narrative for his documentary. “The controversy over Burns’ documentary points to a longer history of the representation of Latino soldiers in popular film and the social and political consequences of making these soldiers invisible or visible on screen” (Rincón, 284). In visual films, popular culture and in schools, Latin American history and its people are perceived a certain way or
