Marine Cpl. Humberto A. Sánchez is being remembered as a hero and someone who was proud of his Mexican roots. Sánchez was one of the 13 military service members killed last week in Afghanistan outside of Kabul’s airport.
“My son was 100 percent Mexican, but he loved his country, the United States,” his mother Coral Briseño told Noticias Telemundo. “He was proud to be American but, at the same time, he was proud to be Mexican.”
According to Briseño, her 22-year-old son had Mexico’s flag tattooed on his chest and the words “Made in Mexico” on his ribs. Sánchez, who was from Logansport, Indiana, provided security for the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan and was assigned to help with the evacuation at the airport.
His mother said that when President Joe Biden visited some of the parents who lost their sons and daughters in the attack, she told him to “Bring all the soldiers back, because I don’t want anyone else to go through what I’m going through right now.”
According to NBC News, Sánchez was one of six Latine service members killed. Another was 25-year-old Sgt. Johanny Rosario of Lawrence, Massachusetts.
“My sister, she lost her life for the United States,” her brother, Erick Rosario, told NBC’s Boston affiliate. “She’s going to be home soon.”
Capt. Austin Keeley, Rosario’s officer in charge before she went to Afghanistan tweeted that she was “fiercely proud of her heritage as a Dominican-American and wholly devoted to her mother, brothers, sister, and niece.”
“So that’s who we lost,” he wrote. “A proud Dominican-American. A daughter, sister, girlfriend, and auntie. A student and a teacher. A caretaker. A United States Marine.”
