US Marine Denied Military Honors

Mexico denies Ga. Marine military funeral salute

By SUSAN FERRIS
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 07/01/04

SAN MIGUEL DE ALLENDE, MEXICO — The bullets fired would have been blanks. But Mexico's defense department still regarded the wish for a U.S. Marine's burial with full military honors to be beyond the bounds of the countrys constitution.

Lance Cpl. Juan Lopez, a Mexican-born U.S. Marine from Dalton, Ga., was killed in Iraq in an ambush on June 21.

His wife and his parents insisted on a full Marine military burial in his hometown in Mexico, about 45 miles from this tourist city in the state of Guanajuato. But the family's wishes have run into nationalistic sensibilities and arguments of sovereignty that contrast with the borderless life that Lopez led up to his death at 22.

Mexico's National Defense Secretariat on Wednesday denied a permit so that a team of U.S. Marines could fire weapons into the air at Lopez's funeral in Mexico as part of the traditional farewell salute to a fallen Marine. Officials at the Secretariat contended that the salute would violate the Mexican constitution by permitting foreign soldiers to bear weapons on Mexican soil, according to officials at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.

Lopez emigrated to Georgia when he was 15, and was a U.S. citizen when he was killed. But he maintained strong ties to his hometown of San Luis de la Paz, where he was married in his Marine dress uniform last December to a Mexican woman he met in Dalton.

"It's wrong. If there were any way to rectify this, we would," said Lopez's cousin, Octavio Lopez Torres, commenting on the Defense Secretariat's decision. Lopez Torres, a teacher in San Luis de la Paz, said he doesn't agree with the war but he feels that his cousin earned and deserves the full U.S. military honors the family requested.

The cousin said the family decided to bury Lopez in Mexico so that his mother and extended family here could visit his grave more easily. Were he buried in the United States, it would be harder for them to travel there.

The U.S. Marine Corps made a decision to scale back the ceremony after being informed that a group of Marines could not be sent with weapons to fire. Lopez's funeral will include six Marine body bearers and a buglar, said Lance Cpl. Curt Gwilliam, the Marine attache at the U.S. Embassy.

"The family requested full military honors and the Marine Corps was doing all in its power to do that," Gwilliam said.

A spokesman at Mexico's National Defense Secretariat, Gen. Mijael Aguilar, said he had no knowledge of a petition to allow U.S. Marines to bear weapons at Lopez's funeral.

Instead of flying Lopez's body to Mexico on a military flight from Dover Air Force Base, as planned, his body will be flown to his country of origin by a commercial jet liner later this week. His funeral is expected to take place Saturday or Sunday.

Lopez's funeral will probably be the first time a U.S. Marine killed in Iraq will be laid to rest in Mexico. Last

year, in the first days of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, a Guatemalan-born U.S. Marine was killed. Lance Cpl. Jose Antonio Gutierrez was buried in Guatemala City at the request of his sister, his closest living survivor.

Lopez, who was attached to the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment at Camp Pendleton, Calif., was killed along with three other Marines in Ramadi, Iraq, when the group was ambushed on a street.

This was Lopez's second tour in Iraq. He served in the first part of the war last year, then returned in June of 2003 to the United States and Mexico to visit family. His mother lives in Mexico, his father in Dalton. He married his wife, Sandra Torres, in a civil ceremony in Dalton in November 2003, then the pair traveled to Mexico to marry in a Catholic Church in San Luis de la Paz. Lopez proudly wore his U.S. Marine uniform, his cousin remembered.

Lopez was shipped back to Iraq in February. He had planned to leave the Marine Corps in another year or

so. At some point, Lopez Torres said, his cousin planned to return to Mexico to live at least part time.

Lopez loved the United States, too, Lopez Torres said. He had become a legal resident of the United States, joining his father in Dalton, when he was 15.

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