I discovered Lisa Gonzalez’s blog on Substack recently. It is called “Eleanor’s Squad.” I read this post, which originally appeared on November 11, Memorial Day, as a tribute to members of her family and other people of Hispanic origin who served our country with their heart and soul.

The big surprise in reading her post was learning that about 20% of our population is Hispanic. Most have citizenship, some don’t. ICE is arresting people because they have brown skin. Many are citizens and must suffer days of detention before they are released. Very likely, some are unjustly deported. No way that Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem will deport 20%. Not to mention the many other Americans who do not have white skins,

Gonzalez writes:

“For those that will fight for it… freedom has a flavor the protected shall never know.”
— Tim Craft, U.S. Marine Corps

I was born on the Fourth of July — fireworks overhead, and a tornado tearing through the edges of town. Maybe that’s why I carry the American spirit of both celebration and storm. And although I was born on the day this nation celebrates its freedom, my uncles and my cousin taught me what the word freedom really costs.

Four men—two Army soldiers, two Marines—each the sons or grandsons of a Puerto Rican foundry worker who came home every night with grease on his hands and pride in his posture. My grandfather never finished high school, but he was proud of his country and raised sons who served—earning medals, scars, and degrees without anyone handing them a thing. They served in Vietnam, in Germany, in Bosnia, in Iraq. They carried radios, rifles, and the weight of a flag that didn’t always claim them back.

One of them was shot up in the jungles of Vietnam and learned he had a newborn niece—me—from a telegram delivered as he was being flown to a hospital. He still carries the shrapnel, and the leukemia that came later from Agent Orange. The medals came too, but no medal will ever heal what he saw. They are proof that he bled when his country asked him to.

And yet, every one of them could be stopped for being brown or speaking Spanish and asked to prove their citizenship. That’s what it means to be a veteran of both war and bigotry: to have risked your life for a nation that still questions whether you belong in it.

And while their loyalty has never been in question on the battlefield, it’s still doubted in the streets and at the ballot box. That’s not only insulting—it’s mathematically absurd.

For the first time in American history, one in five people living in the United States identify as Latino. According to a 2024 study by the University of California, Los Angeles and California Lutheran University, our population has passed 68 million—two million more than just a year before. Latino labor now includes more than thirty-five million workers, growing more than seven times faster than the non-Latino labor force.

Together, our labor produces a $4.1 trillion GDP—large enough to rank as the world’s fifth-largest economy, larger than India’s. And yet, men like my uncles—who bled for this country—can still be told to “show their papers.”

What kind of nation demands proof from the very people who sustain it? What kind of nation questions the citizenship of those who keep it alive? What kind of patriotism forgets the hands that built the bridges fought its wars, and believed in its promise long after it stopped believing in them?

Economist Matthew Fienup, executive director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University, put it plainly: “Time and time again, we find that hard work, self-sufficiency, optimism, and perseverance are the characteristics that underlie the strength and resilience of U.S. Latinos.”

Because resilience is in our DNA.

What we have can’t be taught.

My family didn’t inherit America; they helped make it. And now the numbers finally tell the stories they always knew—and Stephen Miller wants you to forget: that Latino service, labor, and love of country are not exceptions—they are the backbone of the republic.

For at least three decades, the U.S. Census published the most popular surnames in America. The last list, released in 2010, showed us the truth they’re trying to bury:
Garcia. Rodriguez. Martinez. Hernandez. Lopez. Gonzalez.

Thirty percent of the nation’s top twenty surnames trace back to families who crossed oceans, borders, and language lines to build this country. And that’s just from 2010—because, for some reason, they decided not to publish the most popular surnames from 2020. That’s how truth gets contained so the lies are easier to spread (see author’s note).

And that last surname—Gonzalez—is ours.
It’s the name sewn onto uniforms and stitched into birth certificates; the name called out on roll calls and whispered in hospital rooms. It’s the name that’s been saluted, misspelled, profiled, and still carried with pride.

They’ve never needed to prove their loyalty. They’ve already lived the truth of a Marine’s words I once saw hanging on my uncle’s wall: “For those that will fight for it…freedom has a flavor the protected shall never know.”

That’s what my family understands—what so many Latino families understand—that freedom isn’t a speech; it’s a promise you keep even when the country doesn’t keep it for you.

They’ve paid for that promise in ways the record books don’t list. As boys, they learned what doors were for—sometimes to open, sometimes to close. White families smiled until the invitations reached their daughters; then the air shifted, polite and poisonous. They learned early that courtesy was armor, and excellence the stealthy weapon that left those who tried to thwart their progress in the dust.

Decades later, after wars and degrees and decorations, they have worked twice as hard to be called qualified. Men who have led troops into fire get reduced to talking points while those who cosplay as soldiers that never saw battle call themselves patriots and wrap themselves in excuses instead of service. They call veterans like my uncles DEI hires, as if discipline, intellect, and courage were diversity quotas. Their ignorance speaks volumes about who’s truly afraid of real merit.

And yet my family will keep showing up, still believing in a country that too often forgets them. Their endurance is not compliance; it’s faith in the possibility that the nation will one day live up to the flag they salute.

The uncle who came home from Vietnam carrying shrapnel and a telegram that said he had a niece was eventually blessed with a beautiful granddaughter—two firecrackers born decades apart who share the same birthday—they all share granddaughters joined by the same Spanish name, carrying the same pride and promise of what this country was meant to be.

They are proof that our story doesn’t end with propaganda, lies, or hatred. The promise lives on in the next generation—in children who instinctively understand that freedom and fairness mean the same thing. Now they carry our family name into classrooms and playgrounds where they will learn what it means to be both proud and careful. They may not know the weight of the history yet, but they feel its rhythm—the music of stubborn belonging that refuses to be silenced.

On Veterans Day, we hang flags and post photos, but the real observance happens in the quiet—in the lives still shaped by service and by the contradictions it exposes. It lives in the way my uncles still stand a little straighter when they hear the anthem, even as the country they defended still asks them to prove they belong. It lives in the children and grandchildren who bear their names and inherit both the pride and the vigilance that freedom demands.

Freedom isn’t fireworks; it’s endurance—the decision to keep showing up, to keep believing, to keep building the country that was promised. So on this Veterans Day, I honor them all: the men and women who valiantly served and fought the wars abroad, the children and grandchildren who carry their names forward, and the families who love this nation enough to tell the truth.
Freedom’s flavor runs in our blood now—salt, sweat, and faith—and with every July Fourth candle we blow out, we’re still making good on the promise they fought to defend.

Author’s Note

On November 11, 2025, while finalizing this piece, I personally watched two official U.S. Census Bureau pages vanish in real time—the main genealogy index for the 2010 “Frequently Occurring Surnames” report and its linked sub-page, as well as those for 2000, and 1990. One moment they were live; but after refreshing, they both returned a 404 error. As of this writing, the surname dataset no longer appears in the Census archive, and the 2020 update has never been released.

Before the links went dark, I saved the files and screenshots that show what those pages contained: the 2010 table listing Garcia, Rodriguez, Martinez, Hernandez, Lopez, and Gonzalez among America’s twenty most common surnames—each more than 90 percent Hispanic in origin.

Below is my downloaded copy of that list, saved before the disappearance. Here is the link that used to list them:

Original URL (now 404): https://www.census.gov/topics/population/genealogy/data/2010_surnames.html

Some truths deserve a backup—and screenshots.