The US army’s first Latino four-star general is set to become the namesake of the country’s largest active-duty armored military base, replacing the Confederate leader after whom the facility was originally named.

In a recent memo to top military brass at the Pentagon, US defense secretary Lloyd Austin said officials had until 1 January 2024 to implement a recommendation to change the name of Texas’s Fort Hood to Fort Cavazos, honoring the late retired general Richard Cavazos.

The base long named after John Bell Hood – who served the Confederacy – is just one of multiple military installations and facilities that the US defense department has been asked to rename by the Naming Commission, created by Congress to remove symbols commemorating Confederate figures.

Eight other military bases whose names were inspired by Confederates who betrayed the United States while waging and losing the US civil war will be renamed as well.

There has been a broad push to remove public symbols of the Confederacy after the 2017 killing of a counter protester during a white supremacist rally opposing the removal of a Confederate Gen Robert E Lee statue in Charlottesville, Virginia. The killings of nine people at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015 also helped spark the push.

Austin’s memo said the bases’ names should “fully reflect the history and the values of the United States and commemorate the best of the republic that we are all sworn to protect”.

The fort destined to be renamed after Cavazos houses about 40,000 soldiers and sits in Bell county, Texas, where Latino residents make up more than a quarter of the population.

Since its permanent establishment in 1950, the fort commemorated the commander of the Confederate army’s Texas brigade during the civil war. But it will now be named after a Mexican American native of Texas who served the US army in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

In Korea, as a first lieutenant, he earned the Distinguished Service Cross – the American military’s second highest citation for valor – for repeatedly returning to a battlefield to personally evacuate soldiers that were wounded while fighting along his side, according to the Naming Commission.

He earned another Distinguished Service Cross in Vietnam, where he had attained the rank of lieutenant colonel, for leading soldiers through an ambush, organizing a counterattack that repulsed their enemies and exposing himself to hostile fire numerous times in the process.

Later, Cavazos – who also taught military science as part of the reserve officers training corps at Texas Tech – became the US army’s first Latino brigadier general in 1973. Among his roles was commanding soldiers based out of the fort slated to be renamed after him.

He became the Army’s first Latino four-star general in 1982 and was put in charge of sustaining, training and deploying all the forces that the Army could deploy at the time.

Cavazos retired in 1984 after a 33-year career in the army, which also saw him accumulate two Legions of Merit, a Silver Star, five Bronze Stars and a Purple Heart, among other medals for service in war and peacetime. He spent his retirement in Texas before his death in 2017 in San Antonio.

“Richard Cavazos’s service demonstrates excellence at every level,” the Naming Commission wrote in a summary of the late four-star general’s career. “His 20th-century service will inspire soldiers as they continue those traditions of excellence into the 21st.”

US House representative Joaquin Castro – a Democrat from San Antonio – pushed for Fort Hood to be renamed after Cavazos and received support from the congressional Hispanic Caucus. When that push began, no US military bases had been named in honor of a Latino service member.

Other name change recommendations include renaming Georgia’s Fort Gordon to Fort Eisenhower after Dwight Eisenhower, who led the army during the second world war and later became president; North Carolina’s Fort Bragg to Fort Liberty; and Virginia’s Fort AP Hill to Fort Walker after Dr Mary Edwards Walker, the surgeon, prisoner of war and women’s voting rights advocate.