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Citizens by Blood

What Mexican Americans Fought For in World War I

During World War I, thousands of men of Mexican heritage—U.S.-born citizens, sons of immigrants, and Mexican nationals—answered America’s call. They fought in France for democracy while their families confronted segregation, exclusion, and racial terror under the system known as “Juan Crow.” Their service exposed a profound contradiction: they were asked to defend freedoms abroad that they did not fully possess at home.

Citizens by Blood recovers these overlooked soldiers and the mothers, wives, and children who carried the cost of war. At its center is Private José de la Luz Sáenz, whose remarkable wartime diary records both the realities of the Western Front and a fierce conviction that military service should strengthen Mexican Americans’ claim to equal citizenship.

The story follows veterans home, where their struggle continued. Decorated soldiers turned wartime sacrifice into organized demands for civil rights, helping create the League of United Latin American Citizens. By restoring Mexican American doughboys to the national story, this book asks an urgent question: Is American belonging determined by ancestry, or by the people who build, defend, and transform the nation? These soldiers answered with their lives. They became citizens by blood.