Historic Laredo

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Godines served on the high tech
U.S.S. Rehobeth, the sister ship of the
U.S.S. Pueblo. “You could smell death
at night,” he said of his time in the
waters off the coast of North Vietnam.
DR. REYNALDO GODINES
time. I flew from San Diego by commercial airline
to Guam and then to Subic Bay. Even the
airlines were enjoying the economic boon of
wartime prosperity,” Godines continued.
“Mundo went to the First Naval Infantry. The
government was short of Marines and soldiers—they
were dying too fast. Mundo was
part of the firepower and he survived some of
the worst hand-to-hand battles of the war. He
saw it all—suicidal waves of Chinese and North
Vietnamese soldiers doped and armed coming
at you day and night. Mundo was a survivor,”
Godines said.
“I was a little luckier. I was at the lowest level
of service, a deck ape on a tanker ship fueling
American ships on the coast of Vietnam. This
position was the first instance in which I experienced
discrimination. It was assumed by my
name that I was working at an assignment commensurate
with my abilities. When I passed a
test for advancement and it was noted that I had
two semesters of college behind me, I became a
petty officer,” he recounted.
Godines was assigned to the U.S.S. Rehobeth,
a high tech spy ship off the coast of North
Vietnam. “You could smell death at night,” he
recalled. “In the distance you saw what you first
believed to be lightning, but it was the land
mass and mountains backlit by the explosions of
air strikes. The Rehobeth was the sister ship of
the U.S.S. Pueblo. When the Pueblo was captured,
we had to leave North Vietnam immediately.
The captors of the Pueblo now had our
number, too,” he recalled.
Godines returned stateside in October 1968.
“Mundo came along in December 1968, and in
January of the next year, both of us had enrolled
at Laredo Community College. “In September
1969, I enrolled at the University of Texas. How
we made it on $90 a month that the GI Bill
allowed us is a mystery. Often, it wasn’t enough.
I finished at UT in two years,” he said.
“Mundo transferred to Sam Houston State
and ended up with a Masters in criminology,”
Godines said, and with such feeling for his best
friend that it becomes clear that his life and
Mundo’s had been woven inextricably since
their youth. “Mundo became a federal probation
officer. He was shot through the heart in downtown
Laredo in December 1975 by one of his
parolees,” Godines pauses a moment to feel
what moves through his own heart. “We were
best man at each other’s weddings. Mundo had
gone to the police department, the sheriff’s
department, and the FBI to ask for protection
from the troubled parolee. They could offer no
protection, but there is now a federal law to protect
federal probation officers and law enforcement
officers. Can you imagine surviving
Vietnam and then being taken out of here by a
crazy person? Such a waste,” he said pointedly.
“I remember Mundo all the time. There had
been six of us who came from the neighborhood—me,
Mundo, Roddy Applewhite, Quintin
Vargas, Roberto Rios, and Gilberto Cardenas.
We were in the first accelerated class at L.J.
Christen. There were 24 students in that class,
most of whose parents had not graduated from
high school. Of the six of us who were close
friends, we all went on with our education.
Roddy is a Ph.D., a professor at the University of
Houston. Quintin is Dr. Vargas, an administrator
at St. Edward’s University. Gilberto is Dr.
Cardenas, a professor of economics at UT-Pan
American. Roberto Rios is finishing work on a
Ph.D. in mathematics,” he said.
While at the University of Texas, Godines,
earned a double major in biology and chemistry.
He took part in the Freedom March against the
war in Vietnam. “The Austin City Council and the
University administration did all they could to
keep the march from happening. I think 100,000
marched that day against the war. It wasn’t so
much a matter that I was against the war. It was
that I believed I had earned the right by serving
my country to have a voice, to speak up, to exercise
my constitutional rights. It was that coupled
with how I felt about Vietnam,” Godines said.
“It was a not a good war. It was a war that the
military industrial complex had been planning
for. It was about protecting private interests and
54 ✦ HISTORIC LAREDO