As a University of Texas freshman, Map Pesqueira looked well on his way to achieving his dream of becoming an Army officer.
Pesqueira came out of Lee High School's Northeast School of the Arts last spring with a 3.9 GPA, a National Honor Society induction and an SAT score of 1260.
And he won a coveted three-year Reserve Officers Training Corps scholarship at the University of Texas at Austin.
"I was ecstatic," Pesqueira, 19, said. "One, because I get to start preparing for a military career as an officer in the Army but, two, to also know that part of my higher education is taken care of, and lastly knowing that I had a job guaranteed to me after college, which is something not a lot of college students are able to say."
But the dream may be over.
Pesqueira was born female but began the transition last year to become male, hoping the courts would not uphold President Donald Trump's policy of banning many transgender recruits from joining the service. Now the Pentagon has stripped him of a scholarship worth more than $10,000 a year. It would have taken effect next fall and defrayed part of the roughly $26,000 a year to attend UT.
Pesqueira is using loans to pay this year's tuition and expenses. He has a Go Fund Me account that raised $26,193 in 13 days, near his goal of being able to pay for next year. He's talked with UT officials about the dilemma and has found a friend in U.S. Rep. Joaquín Castro, D-San Antonio.
But the scholarship, in the end, may be out of reach.
"I would say that unless he can find other financial aid, it's going to be very difficult for him to continue at UT Austin," Castro said.
"This is an example of (Trump's) discriminatory policy affecting a great person and a great student, and potentially keeping somebody out of the military who was excited about being in ROTC and was looking forward to serving," he said.
Military part of growing upPesquiera has been fascinated with the armed forces since he was a young girl. Pesqueira grew up close to Fort Sam Houston, where challenge coins, July 4 celebrations and the post's ordered pace of military life impressed him.
Pesqueira's father, a funeral director, spent a lot of time at Fort Sam interacting with veterans and their families. Martin Pesqueira often brought home the unit coins as well as gift shop souvenirs. His grandfather, Marion Ray Cowger, was in the Navy during World War II. A cousin is a Marine staff sergeant and a brother-in-law is an Army officer.
"I distinctly remember there was a day when I was, say, about 11 or 12 in elementary school, and I would go to the military surplus store and get MREs and the Kevlar helmets, and my grandmother would buy them for me and I would come back home and get my little wine cork pop gun and hang out in the back yard and act as if I were a soldier, eating MREs for lunch," Pesqueira recalled.
The chili macaroni and cheese Meal Ready-To-Eat was his favorite.
"Growing up, I automatically thought I was a male," Pesqueira said. "I had the haircut, my parents allowed me to dress in male clothing, I was obsessed with all of the boy toys, getting them from McDonald's, Burger King, Wendy's, fast food places. I never wanted the girl toys and that's who I thought I had been born as, as a male.
"I started to realize that I was born female around, I would say, 8 or 9. From the first memory I have leading up to 8 or 9, I thought I was male."
The realization led to problems, compounded by his surroundings. Coming from a modest family and surrounded by wealthier, Anglo neighbors, he often wore Goodwill clothes and wanted to fit in, wanted to wear girl clothes. He eyed the offerings on display at boutiques in Alamo Heights and looked for fashion accessories in mall shops.
"For quite a while, at the end of my elementary school years and going into eighth grade, that's when I started to try to conform to what people were expecting me to be," Pesqueira said. "And it was tough because I knew that's not what I wanted and it was not who I was."
On ExpressNews.com: Transgender people will be allowed to serve openly in military
Through it all, the military was always on his mind.
In high school, Pesqueira realized that serving openly as a transgender soldier was out of the question. He considered joining as a woman. The other option was hoping the rules would change - and they did, on June 30, 2016, when the Obama administration said it would allow transgender people to serve openly in the armed forces.
The Pentagon the year before had allowed women to apply for combat jobs that had been open only to men. In 2010, Congress repealed the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy barring gays from openly serving.
A series of initiatives were included in the Pentagon's action. They included plans to issue a training handbook for commanders, transgender service members and the troops by that fall, as well as medical guidance so the military health care system could immediately provide "transition-related care" to transgender troops. A person's gender identity would not bar qualified applicants from joining the military, the service academies or ROTC programs.
Trump's election reversed the reforms. In a series of tweets posted on the 69th anniversary of President Harry Truman's historic executive order that desegregated the military, he said the Pentagon "will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military."
On ExpressNews.com: Trump vows to boot transgender troops
In practice, it did not become an outright ban affecting the estimated 11,400 to 15,000 active-duty troops and reservists who were transgender. A policy announced by then-Defense Secretary James Mattis barred transgender people with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria from joining the military unless they had taken no steps to transition for 36 consecutive months.
Gender dysphoria, the medical diagnosis associated with being transgender, is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as "a conflict between a person's physical or assigned gender and the gender with which he/she/they identify" that can lead to discomfort with the person's body or assigned gender roles.
On ExpressNews.com: As high court backs restrictions, transgender man still hopes to come to San Antonio for Air Force basic training
The policy faced a series of court challenges until the Supreme Court, in a 5-4 ruling, upheld it in January.
Undergoing his transitionBy that time, Pesqueira was well on his way to transitioning. He had started calling himself a trans male the year before. In February 2018, he began hormone therapy. In May, he legally changed his name. And last month, Pesqueira had a bilateral mastectomy.
The Trump administration rules have stranded some transgender troops who were in the recruiting pipeline prior to the Supreme Court's decision. They've also ensnared Pesqueira, despite efforts by Lt. Col. Matthew O'Neill, UT's Department of Military Science chair and his military adviser, to grandfather his scholarship under the Obama-era policy.
Pesqueira said O'Neill finally told him earlier this month he couldn't salvage the scholarship.
"I felt like I had been betrayed. Excuse the way I say this, but I felt like I had been screwed over," Pesqueira said.
But losing the scholarship was something he knew could happen. The Pentagon gave him the scholarship knowing he was transgender and would likely begin the change, so he had hoped. Pesqueira drew strength from his sense of optimism. Deep down, he didn't think the high court would approve the policy.
What's next beyond the spring semester isn't clear. Pesqueira is working on a radio-television-film degree, focusing on American studies, which examines the nation's culture and way of life. He's been making his grades but concedes the stress of losing the scholarship has taken its toll.
Though still in ROTC, Pesqueira hasn't been back since his surgery. He had enjoyed 5 a.m. workouts, spending time after classes in the cadet lounge and serving in the color guard. His friends, and heart, are there, but he'll have no choice but move on without the scholarship.
What remains is a dream of getting good news in the future - a change in administrations and a reversal in policy - but above all else the chance for him to join the military when he earns his bachelor's degree.
"When you want something badly enough you're going to do anything to get it and to me doing anything is holding onto hope that something will change and that I'll be able to go in later on. It means a lot to me to be able to be a part of the military and to serve my country and also to help protect it," Pesqueira said.
"America hasn't always had the greatest best track record, but it's changed with time, so the same thing applies here. In my opinion, it's very, very wrong, but I'm hopeful that we'll be able to realize that this is wrong and we'll be able to make it right again."
Sig Christenson covers the military and veterans in San Antonio, Bexar County and the nation. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | sigc@express-news.net | Twitter: @saddamscribe
