Wendy Barranco

Barely out of high school, nineteen-year-old Specialist Wendy Barranco found herself at the blistering vortex of a war zone.  Trained as a combat medic, Barranco spent eight months working in the hospital operating room (OR) in Tikrit, Iraq from late 2005 to mid-2006, a time of accelerating combat, and mounting Iraqi, U.S. and civilian casualties.  Barranco, who had migrated with her mother from Mexico to Southern California as a youngster, had enlisted in the Army following the attacks of 9/11, in part “to give something back to this country that gave my family and I so much.” 

In Iraq, Barranco absorbed the routine trauma of caring for the war’s wounded and dying, as she also fended off continual sexual harassment from the lead doctor in her OR, and an attempted rape by a male fellow-soldier.  Following her discharge from the service, Barranco became active with Iraq Veterans Against the War, rising to president of the Los Angeles chapter.

In recent years, Barranco deployed her medical knowledge in a range of medical and social justice projects in Los Angeles, and at the U.S.-Mexico border, including helping to staff a medical clinic for migrants in Tijuana, and being arrested with fellow About Face veteran Brittany Ramos DeBarros at a 2018 protest against the U.S. mistreatment of Mexican and Central American migrants.  Concerning the future of veterans’ peace and justice organizations, Barranco says, “We can't use the same linear thinking. You've got to do something radical. And something radical is like, let women lead, period.”