During the Vietnam War, one of Valente Valenzuela’s grim tasks in the Army was collecting body parts from the battlefield, and then taking them to the dump. The young soldier experienced unimaginable horrors during his tour of duty. Once, to save his own life, he was forced to decapitate a violent terror suspect.
Valenzuela describes this ordeal as well as the one that would alter the course of his and his brother’s life decades after the war in Vietnam ended in a new documentary, “American Exile,” which explores the plight of deported veterans and their families.
In 2009, Valenzuela and his brother Manuel, a Marine Corps veteran who also saw combat in Vietnam, received notices that the U.S. government was moving to deport them. (Continue reading here…)