Erasing the Mexicans
by Guest Contributor Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, originally published at Write.Live.Repeat
This photo shows my mother on her wedding day. That’s her, in the middle. Her sister “Sis” is on the left, her sister Janis on the right.
Notice how the sisters exchange a strange look across my nervous, uncertain mom (who was 24 at the time). Knowing my aunts, and the family narrative, I have a feeling I know what that smirk was about. It was a smirk of superiority, for my mother had chosen to marry a short Cuban man who spoke little English – while the sisters themselves had both already married conservative white men.
At holiday gatherings, my mother’s family – which self-identified as “anglo” – often made derogatory comments about “Mexicans,” that being the only group they could readily find to lump my father (and his children) into.
When I was in my teens, my mother’s paternal aunt Gladys researched the Conant family tree (my mother’s maiden name is Conant) and discovered, among other things, that my mom’s father’s grandmother’s maiden name was Marquez, and that she hailed from Anton Chico, New Mexico. Her family, Gladys assured us all, could trace its roots directly to Spain in the 1500s, with a land-grant from the King. She was, in other words, royalty. “She was from the Northern part of Spain,” I often heard my grandmother (who married into the Conant family) say, following up with “they’re blonde-headed up that way.”
Well, this week I began researching our family tree myself, for a memoir I’m working on. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Barbarita Marquez (listed as “Marcus” on her death certificate in California, ha!) was not exactly as Spanish as the Conants have wanted us all to believe.
Thanks to the wonders of the Internet (and the amazing site ancestry.com) I have indeed traced her family to Spain, to a wealthy young man who came to Santa Fe and married a woman from the San Ildefonso (San Yldefonso on the marriage license) pueblo. That means his wife was Native American. From that point forward, the family tree merges many times with families from Mexico City, Chiapas, and Zacatecas, as well as with “Spanish” families from Northern New Mexico. In other words, my mother’s father was Mexican, whether he liked it or not. To my great delight, I’ve learned this week that I am descended from the best-known “Spanish” clans in New Mexico; I am a Baca, a Duran, a Roybal, an Aragon, a Griego and a Gallego.
I always knew that grandpa Conant grew up speaking Spanish, and I watched him many a summer afternoon as he interacted with the patrons of his small trading post, entirely in Spanish. The family always joked that this was so that he could “protect himself against the Mexicans,” and they often griped that back in the old days the public school teachers in Valencia County only spoke Spanish, so any child wishing for an education had to do likewise. The family often joked about grandpa’s brother Ken who, they said, “was so dark he could pass for Mexican,” and who, as an adult, worked as a CIA operative in Mexico because “he spoke Spanish like a Mexican.”
I now know that it was more than that. My grandfather and his brother were Mexican. It’s just that we live in a patriarchal society, and so their grandfather’s English last name (Conant) is the one they got – enabling the entire future Conant family to deny they had ever been Mexican. Sad, but true.
I, for one, am delighted by this news. It means that I can finally say with confidence that I am Mexican-American. I have always felt that I was, given the family traditions I was raised with on my mom’s side (her “anglo” family ate red chile and biscochitos at Christmas and attended “fiestas” at the local Catholic church, where the services were often given in Spanish, and there were many words my fair-skinned, blue-eyed mother only knew in Spanish.)
Whenever I’d give talks or readings around the country, people would ask me about my Hispanic heritage, and I always felt obligated only to mention my Cuban father, because everyone (including the US census) thought of my mother as “white, non-Hispanic,” but now I know the truth. She is every bit as Hispanic as my dad. She physically resembles her Irish mother more than her darker Mexican-Anglo dad, but her sisters are quite dark. I always though my aunts resembled the Hispanic women in New Mexico much more than the “anglos,” but God forbid you tell them so. Now I know the truth.
I believe that the Conants did what many “anglo” families have done in the Southwest, erasing the Mexicans. (Many Hispanic families in New Mexico do this, too, by the way.)
While my original memoir was going to be about my relationship with my troubled mother when I was a teenager, I am shifting focus now. I think I’d rather write about how the Conants erased their Mexican heritage, and link this to a general pattern of families doing this in the Southwest. It is crucial, given the drumbeat of hatred against Mexicans in the US at this time, to remind Americans that most of us with roots in the West are Mexican, whether we admit it or not.
I liken the Conant erasure of our Mexican ancestors to the tendency in white Southern families to erase their African and Native American ancestors.
I’ve submitted a proposal to do an in-depth magazine piece about the Conant’s Mexican line for Albuquerque magazine. I will then submit that as a book proposal for “Erasing the Mexicans.”
How about it, guys? Do any of you have similar stories?
Proudly Chicana (and a whole mess of other things) at last,
Alisa
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Buster wrote:
This is a great piece of writing and I look forward to it turning into an article and a book, eventually. (Keep us posted!)
I especially like how you wove the photo into the story and hope that the future incarnations of this writing project do the same. It really adds a layer to the whole story.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 11:10 am ¶
Monie wrote:
Hi Alisa,
I really enjoyed reading your piece. I find it so interesting that so many groups of people around the world want to identify with Whiteness so much.
I have a few friends who are Mexican-American and I’ve heard them talk about the Southerner vs. Northerner thing amongst Mexicans. Apparently being a Southerner, which means more Indian and darker, is a bad thing to many.
Growing up in New York City I’ve seen this play out in the Dominican community as well.
I’ve also heard stories of this sort of light vs. dark thing between Asians and South Asians. And of course amongst African Americans, although it doesn’t happen as much any more, there has historically been a light vs. dark cultural battle.
It amazes me that so many groups of people are and have been so desperate to identify with the people who have oppressed them.
I look forward to reading your book, although I hope that you still include parts about your relationship with your mom, I really enjoy mother-daughter stories.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 11:17 am ¶
Tablesaw wrote:
“She was from the Northern part of Spain,” I often heard my grandmother (who married into the Conant family) say, following up with “they’re blonde-headed up that way.”
Or, as my own grandmother was once heard to describe the region: “No Moors.”
My father’s family proudly has always proudly identified as Mexican, but many of us have wondered about the extent to which my grandmother may have conveniently omitted black and indigenous ancestors in her geneology (”Spanish, with very little intermarrying”). Hopefully I’ll have time soon to take another look at her work as you did for your family.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 11:32 am ¶
UGLY PUNK GURL! wrote:
Congrats on reclaiming your identity and your heritage.
I think it is sad that there is also self-hatred amongst Mexicans, like there is amongst Indians and Pakistani’s…
your essay reminds me a lot of what’s going on with South Asian Muslims.
with South Asian Muslims, a lot of Indian Muslims and Pakistanis are always desperate to distance themselves from a “pagan” (read: Hindu) heritage and try to make claims that they are Arab, with roots tracing back to the Middle East, when in fact, that’s not the case.
We are SOUTH ASIAN, we are not Arab or Middle Eastern, and we share our heritage with Hindus, and people need to get over it and accept that. I wish that South Asian Muslims would stop feeling so ashamed for being South Asian. There is always a feeling of pro-Arab superiority complex amongst South Asian Muslims, which I find really annoying.
not any different from what you described as Mexicans trying to claim themselves as Spanish…
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 11:33 am ¶
Lisa J wrote:
What a wonderful story. I would have loved to have seen your aunties faces when you dropped some truth on the family about how “anglo” they really are. People can be so crazy, we all started out in the same place and we ALL have so many different ethnic strands flowing through us that we don’t know about. I remember seeing an interesting documentary a few years ago where students who thought they were just white, black and one Native American and so many of them found out after taking a detailed DNA analysis that they had many things in their background from all over the world. I have heard many stories about black people passing into white society and forgetting their black ancestry. I’m sure sometimes people blend in with another group not even meaning to erase their history. For instance, the first African-American female astronaut ( I think her last name was Jamison) discovered on Henry Louis Gates documentary about racial history and found out she was one-quarter or 1-eighth Chinese and never knew. I wonder if her ancestors purposely tried to erase their Chinese forebearer or if they just gradually blended in with the rest of the black community. So fascinating.
Thank you for sharing your interesting story and I can’t wait to see other stories about erasing the Mexicans, or the blacks, Native Americans, etc and becoming “white”
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 11:42 am ¶
Elton wrote:
I think whiteness was invented as a way for certain colonialists to provide a retcon backstory for why they came out dominant in so many places in the world.
Thank you for proving that “whites” are not simply descended from the gods with no history or culture whatsoever. Yes, white people are just as interesting, diverse, and human as the rest of us!
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 12:26 pm ¶
Erica wrote:
On my mother’s side, I grew up learning that she was half French-Canadian, half English-American (via the Mayflower). When I actually researched the family tree for myself, it’s true that those two branches reached back the longest; however, they merged with all sorts of other nationalities, including a lot of Irish and Scottish, as they meandered through Massachusetts, Vermont, and New York. Grandma never bragged about being 5/8 Irish, since being the direct descendant of a British clockmaker in Boston around 1750 had far more import.
That tendency to fixate on one famous ancestor, or one ethnicity, is sad. I can understand the appeal of being able to identify simply as ONE particular ethnicity , but it erases so many people (particularly women, whose maiden name [and parents] are often missing from my family tree) who, when combined, turned into the person that I am today.
Congratulations on embracing the entirety of what you learn; I wish more people in the past had done so. I am looking forward to reading more
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 12:26 pm ¶
Monica wrote:
My grandmother was from San Antonio. She’d swear she wasn’t Mexican, but Spanish and French. It was a big deal to her. She didn’t particularly like Mexicans.
She was fair-skinned, but her emphasis on her European heritage as opposed to her maiden surname always puzzled me.
She married a black man. To me, her disdain for Mexicans always had the same feel as when she divided the skin tones and hair textures of her grandchildren into good and bad. She never liked blacks much either (she considered her family different somehow) even though the vast majority of her grandchildren ended up defining ourselves as black.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 12:54 pm ¶
Heather wrote:
An interesting twist in my life has been the denial of any whiteness in my family. Both sides of my family come from Hawaii (originally from Japan). We have Portuguese ancestry, but we almost never talk about it or acknowledge it. I grew up believing I was only Japanese and Hawaiian. In my family, we were proud of being Japanese-Hawaiians. We were not proud of our European ancestry…
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 1:22 pm ¶
bradski wrote:
Lisa J,
I saw the same articles and TV shows as you. The reality is that MAJORITY of all African-Americans are mixed-race. DNA analysis continues to show this.
For instance, on the Prof. Henry Louis Gates’ “African-American Lives,” virtually everyone profiled had non-African ancestry found in their DNA profiles. Don Cheadle has strong African features but was found to have approximately 22% European ancestry.
I don’t think the astronaut Dr. Mae Jemison’s family deliberately hid her Chinese ancestry. Why would she? Given the history of African-American society, mixed ancestry was common. Right?
Gates’ special, for example, examined the belief that many African-Americans have Native American ancestry. DNA analysis, however, has shown that not to be true. Tina Turner believed that she had Native ancestry but found out it was actually white ancestry.
Gates explained that statistically, there were few blacks and Natives living closely for large scale interraction to account for the belief in widespread Native American ancestry. This is especially true because of forced expulsion (Trail of Tears) of many Native Americans from the American south.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 1:30 pm ¶
geo wrote:
wonderful idea! sounds intriguing. i’d love to read it when it’s completed.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 1:50 pm ¶
LTP wrote:
We have recently learned of similar past in our family history, lots of strange secrets and lots of weird covers. As it turns out, my (late) grandmother was Mexican, from an affair her young and unwed “aunt” had.
She was adopted by her actual aunt, who she knew as her mother, abused terribly all through her childhood and repeatedly told she was never wanted. Around where she lived they called her “the mexican” as a joke about her dark skin and hair, but would never imply she was *actually* Mexican. She had blue-eyed, blonde haired parents, brother, grandparents, etc etc.
As she got older and began to question this she was told she was “black irish” (irish and spanish) somewhere far back in her family tree, hundreds of years, and that would explain everything, and she should never question it again. Every child since her, down her family tree, was born with black hair and black eyes and olive skin (often our hair and eyes changed later, though).
There’s similar mystery around some Chinese heritage as well. My mother, as a child, found a photo of a Chinese man dressed in traditional robes among her father’s things. On it her father had written “grandpa”. She wrote to her dad, very excited and asked if she was part Chinese. Her father only wrote back, “There is nothing in our family you should be ashamed of” and never spoke of it again. He refused to answer any further questions.
It’s frustrating when you want to know more about your heritage to run into racism as a roadblock, only hearing that you can’t look any further because we “don’t have that” and we “shouldn’t worry”.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 1:51 pm ¶
Angelica wrote:
Wow, this is a great piece. I’m so happy that you’re happy with finding out that you’re Mexican. I am first generation US born, both my parents from Mexico, Jalisco to be exact. I love my heritage and background, and there’s been many times where I wish I could say I was Mexican, but according to my mother, I am not. But that’s a whole citizenship argument in itself. I get scared that my children will not be able to experience the amazing culture and traditions I was able to, or that they won’t speak Spanish, or that they’ll try to erase the Mexican in them. Looking forward to reading more on this, and now off I go to look at ancestry.com.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 1:55 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
Thank you for writing this. Its a story with which so many people can relate, if not through family experiences then through cultural ones.
@ Monie:
“It amazes me that so many groups of people are and have been so desperate to identify with the people who have oppressed them.”
I know! Me too! And it saddens me too. But you know, its hard not to when we’re still be told we’re inferior in some way or another.
Among South Asians in general there is a strong desire of and preference for light skin. I’ve only been to Pakistan a few times but each time the commercials, ads, and billboards for skin bleaching cremes amaze me. Especially because the basic story of all these is that a wonderful and successful destiny awaits you if you use these creams.
@UPG:
THANK YOU!! I have noticed this trend so much among South Asian Muslims. To the point of South Asian Muslims being disgusted, yes, actually disgusted, by South Asian culture. And this is especially interesting considering the amount of racism South Asians face from many Arabs (a reflection of the social hierarchies in the Muslim world). Regardless of where South Asian Muslims originated (some did descend from Arabs and Persians) culturally we are South Asian.
I think South Asian Muslims (as well as other non-Arab Muslims) are being told that we are inferior Muslims and to be more “authentic” Muslims we need to actually become more Arab. Unfortunately certain elements in the Arab world (cough…Saudi Arabia…cough) are exporting their culture as religion and convincing the rest of us we are inferior. Funny…this seems to take us back to Monie’s quote.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 2:08 pm ¶
Mirza wrote:
Hi Alisa, I stumbled upon your page recently and really enjoyed this post. I come from the Balkans in Europe where issues involving heritage and religion has been the main cause of most of the wars that erupted there.
Through growing up down there I learned that various ethnic tribes intermixed for centuries but somehow, ions later, some people still deny who they are and vice versa. All this does is fuel hatred and cause more separation.
I salute you with your discovery and wish you great success with your memoir.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 2:12 pm ¶
Rob Schmidt wrote:
Doesn’t “Erasing the Mexicans” ultimately mean “Erasing the Mexican Indians”? I trust you’ll explore this point in depth.
I’d like to learn what percentage of Latinos have a significant amount of “Native blood.” Many if not most of them, I suspect. And the key corollary question: What percentage of Latinos admit or deny their Native heritage.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 2:53 pm ¶
Gem wrote:
This was wonderfully written and I enjoyed all the details of the story.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 3:23 pm ¶
Maria_Elena18 wrote:
My grandmother’s brother’s wife (my great aunt) did this. (Incidentally her sister married my grandmother’s other brother.)
She swore her family came directly from Spain, (with only a brief stopover in Puerto Rico) and, I was told, would occasionally slip in a lisp here and then when she spoke Spanish. She then totally brainwashed her children (and grandchildren) to, when asked, say they are “Spanish” . Once, she even called to me by the Anglo version of my name. The tween me politely corrected her.
She and my great-Uncle have since passed.
Their children have totally alienated the rest of my family with their “you’re so beneath us” (and generally indifferent) attitude, that we only see them once a year for Christmas, and this year we have decided it’s best not even to do that. Those underlying silent sentiments have become too stressful and the resentment has come to a head.
The most galling part is that they play the “who’s whiter and therefore better” game with everyone; even their cousins who still live in Puerto Rico. Let me say this again: they think they are “whiter” than their cousins who are their cousins on both sides. ::Headdesk::
Oy.
But then last Christmas something happened that really illuminated how deeply they were affected by my great Aunts’ racism (and my great-Uncle’s passive allowance of it). Her grandson (who is half-Irish) married an Anglo girl and they have a toddler. I said something about how bright and sweet and adorable she was, and one of them said something disparaging/apologetic about the fact that her blond hair was curly and not straight.
(deep breath)
When is enough enough?
I think if I ever researched our family, I wouldn’t tell them who their ancestors really are. I mean, we’re Puerto Rican, get real, (and they are so misguided – as if Spain is so homogeneous!) They would pretend to be delighted, but really, they wouldn’t be. And I wouldn’t want something so special to be wasted by being somewhat vindictive, I suppose.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 5:12 pm ¶
m wrote:
I think such things happen, or have happened, quite frequently. Most of us who identify ourselves as one ethnicity really have other ethnicities somewhere in our family tree. But most people are either ignorant of the full history of their family tree or are willfully ignoring it because it’s always easier to identify yourself as a part of the dominant group. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if even “white” americans who have lived in this country for many generations have plenty of non-white ancestry. It’s just that certain phenotype tend to disappear within a few generations so most people never know they have black/asian/native american/etc ancestry.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 5:26 pm ¶
m wrote:
ps
I’m Chinese-American but I know full well that no chinese person is truly “100% ethnically chinese”. The majority of Chinese people consider themselves to be of the Han ethnic group (the dominant group), which is the group I THINK I’m a part of, but there were so many “foreign invaders” who got assimilated into the Chinese population throughout history that it’s literally impossible for the “han ethnic group” to be “pure”. That said, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that all humanity really came from one source and we are all simply a part of the human race. Human beings are one of the most genetically homogeneous species on earth. To the best of my knowledge, only extremely inbred lab rats are more genetically homogeneous than us, the humans.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 5:33 pm ¶
Jamerican Muslimah wrote:
Great article Alisa! I think many African-American suffer from the opposite effect as your family. So many of us are claiming other heritages in order to distance ourselves from being Black. Irish, Native American, French, Creole, etc. Everything is good except plain ole Black. True, there is no denying that Black Americans are mixed but the intention behind the claim is what concerns me.
Sobia said “I think South Asian Muslims (as well as other non-Arab Muslims) are being told that we are inferior Muslims and to be more “authentic” Muslims we need to actually become more Arab. Unfortunately certain elements in the Arab world (cough…Saudi Arabia…cough) are exporting their culture as religion and convincing the rest of us we are inferior.”
Thank you, Thank you! So true. The worst part is when you try to challenge other Muslims on the way in which people (Saudis and others) are seeking to “Arabize” us and they believe you are challenging the religion.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 6:21 pm ¶
Abagond wrote:
Great piece. Thanks for sharing it.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 10:11 pm ¶
NancyP wrote:
Sorry, no. There have been population bottlenecks in the human past, but nothing as severe as that of cheetahs, which are the most genetically homogeneous among the natural-bred species.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 10:51 pm ¶
Vandia wrote:
I promise I will buy it when you make it into a book. What an interesting story!
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 11:27 pm ¶
Luisa wrote:
Alisa:
If you decide to look into this more I wonder if you’ve read two books, Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black and White Roots of Mexican Americans by Martha Menchaca and Captives and Cousins by James Brooks (this is specifically on NM)
You may find your family’s story has many historical parallels. As with all racial/ethnic groups “Mexican” is a social construction, but the reasons/times/places/ways its been constructed say a lot about the society and people involved.
Posted 19 Dec 2008 at 11:48 pm ¶
Afro-chan wrote:
What a thoughtful piece. While living in Mexico I noticed many of my classmates looked down on the “indigenas”. Calling someone indio or india was a BIG insult. At the same time they always popped up with some indigenous craft or artifact to showcase to the foreign students. *Strange*
I also noticed the same thing in the Dominican Republic. My host family kept telling me stop calling myself negra or morena because I am india. Yeah…right. I have met so many people who think like that. It is just like “Vejigantes” by Francisco Arrivi.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 12:26 am ¶
Xiphactinus audax wrote:
“Human beings are one of the most genetically homogeneous species on earth. To the best of my knowledge, only extremely inbred lab rats are more genetically homogeneous than us, the humans.”
Also cheetahs.
I’ve heard (though I don’t know if it’s true) that the average chimp troop has more genetic diversity than our entire species…
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 1:11 am ¶
Lauren O wrote:
Lovely story! I love the bit about the “Anglo” family eating biscochitos and such.
It does remind me a bit of my own experience. I am part Latina, but look (and identify as) white; my mother’s father married a Brazilian while in Brazil for an engineering project. My father’s parents have made comments like, “When I think of Brazilians, I just think of little pgymies running around in the jungle.” It would be such delicious irony if that side of the family turned out to have Latin@ roots instead of what they consider a “proud” tradition of slave ownership.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 1:18 am ¶
Hokayshenao wrote:
I was drawn to the part about knowing that the grandfather grew up speaking spanish. I notice many aspects about my family like the way they are Eurocentric. I am a bit darker than my cousins and aunts, so, they speak to me in a diferent tone. It is mostly english with some french words, but I know when they are yelling at me. On paper I am Hispanic, but I still consider myself Italian for many reasons I hope to write about someday.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 1:35 am ¶
Shannon wrote:
Alisa,
Thanks for sharing your story and including the pictures. I’m sure that wherever you choose to go with your story (or the way it chooses you) it will be wonderful.
@ Heather:
My father’s side of the family is the same. There is no denying the Anglo in both my grandmother and grandfather on my father’s side, but they deny it.
My father’s complexion is very, very light (he was born with blond hair) and mine is the color of President Elect Obama. They claim that it is a mixture of Native American and black almost exclusively… besides the rape of my grandmother’s mother, which produced her.
I think that is why it is with my family… the mixing with Anglos was not mutual, it was forced, thereby they deny it’s existence. My father used to be very prejudiced against white people when I was a child (he’s since mellowed) but I found that curious because most people thought that he was white himself.
My mother’s side of the family is majority black and Native American… which is the racial makeup of most American born black people of the diaspora, I would believe.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 1:51 am ¶
Natalie wrote:
I have almost the same story– my mother’s family, who always called their family name ’spanish’, tho she was dark and her mom came from a town on the choctaw rez in oklahoma. many women in our family used their ‘exotic’ good looks while erasing their ethic identity to charm rich dudes and escape their grinding poverty. it was a decision I do not fault them for, exactly; they did what they had to do to survive. And our stories aren’t so uncommon.
It’s a mixed bag. There is some pain, there, to lose the stories of my grandmothers when we stopped speaking their language and left their culture. I didn’t grow up with a family legacy of college education, just heavy alcoholism.
On the other hand, cause I’ve got medium dark skin with green eyes, people like to guess my ethnic background. Sometimes this ambiguity can be a privilege to me.
Either way, despite my grandma’s efforts, I’m not ashamed to talk about my heritage. Hell, parts of it would come out on their own anyway…. the amount of chiles used in our family cooking would kill the average anglo-german gringo. ..
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 2:14 am ¶
Rchoud wrote:
It’s so sad that while non-whites aspire to achieve some level of “whiteness” either through cultural or family connections, whites are made to feel ashamed of any non-white ancestry (like in Europe where having Jewish or Gypsy ancestry makes you not authentically white). Some whites in the US also come to feel ashamed of any past African-American and/or Native American ancestry. I heard that John McCain has African-American relatives whose family reunions he never visits nor acknowledges. This was in the news during the election campaign.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 3:01 am ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Wow. “Erasure” is certainly the right word for this concept. I loved reading everyone’s stories. I’d like to share the way my husband’s family and my own have done their own erasing. Here’s the stuff from the spouse’s family:
1. My father-in-law’s first wife made HIM change HIS name from Garcia to Garo, to make the family name more “Italian.” He changed it back after their divorce.
2. My father-in-law’s brothers and sister did not like his second wife (my husband’s mom), according to her, because she was “too dark.” And by “too dark,” they mean one shade darker than him, and with a slightly wider nose. I couldn’t tell any real difference between the two of them, seriously.
3. my FIL and siblings are still color-struck, and I suspect they passed it on to many of their kids. He insists they’re mostly “Spanish,” and I think at least 75% of the second generation (my husband’s sisters, a lot of his cousins) married Anglos. I have yet to meet one who married another Latino or anyone of Asian or African ancestry, other than my husband. It’s definitely a white, all right, brown, stick around, black, get back situation.
4. For most of his childhood, my husband thought they were Italian. Then he heard his mother talk about the island being crowded. At which point he said, “So we’re really Sicilian?” And then his older sister told him about Puerto Rico.
The family doesn’t so much deny being Puerto Rican, as they downplay what that means, and emphasize calling themselves “white Latinos,” as if such a thing exists this side of Cameron Diaz. And my husband’s family? Tan skin, black hair, brown eyes, almost universally… except the 3rd generation, who are almost all only 1/2 PR and 1/2 northern/western European.
NOW: Here’s the thing in my own family- as much as my husband’s family has run away from the realities of being Puerto Rican and of mixed ancestry (Spanish, African, Sephardic Jew (my MIL’s maiden name was Guzman), and Native), that’s how hard my FATHER’S family has denied a healthy amount of white ancestry.
My greatgrandfather came from Bermuda to the Philly area and proceeded to have 10 kids (I think), so it’s a fairly big clan. One of his daughters wrote a “history” in the 1970s that is part wishful thinking and part cover up. Supposedly, my GGrandad was so “light” because he was the illegitimate son of a “Spanish prince” and a freed African-Bermudan slave.
RIIIIGGGHHHT. In Bermuda, in the 1880s.
Meanwhile, a little googling will tell you that the white people w/ our last name (who no longer exist in Bermuda, but there are white people w/ our last name still in England) are listed as OWNING several African slaves, and the family built wooden sailing ships, which went out of fashion by the turn of the century when metal took over. My Ggranddad? Was a trained woodworker, doing cabinetry. Compatible skills much?
In my father’s family’s case, “Spanish” is code for “white,” but between Jim Crow, northern racism, and desire to assimilate, it was less shameful to deny the English heritage, even when it was pretty obvious.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 3:42 am ¶
Vox wrote:
Reading this story, I couldn’t help but smile a little, because it sounds like both of my grandmothers. My paternal grandmother is Filipina and my maternal grandmother was all kinds of mixed, but neither would admit to being anything but Spanish and Portuguese (paternal grandmother) or German and “maybe some French” (maternal grandmother).
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 7:14 am ¶
Vanessa, Michigan wrote:
Mexican is not a race it is only a nationality….not different from being American.
Plus…not all Mexican’s are dark. .. so just b/c someone is dark and claims not be Mexican it is wrong to think that well since you are dark you must have some Mexican in you. Plus…many Mexicans do have Spanish heritage in them….that is why they have Spanish last names, speak Spanish, and honestly have similar culture as spainaired. I mean TEXAS used to be part of Mexico and many white people and black people in TEXAS run the gamut in skin color, hair texture and other stuff that you guys are using to identify only Mexican people. and it is possible to be European and Mexican, African and Mexican, and Asian and Mexican.
Just wanted to say you can be a white Mexican….just as much as one can be black Mexican….Asian Mexican….and native American Mexican.
People needs to know the difference between race and nationality.
Also, just b/c someone choose not to emphasis or celebrate a certain aspect of culture doesn’t make them a sellout or anything. Maybe they just don’t relate to it and thus choose not to be fake about it. Speaking in general.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 11:41 am ¶
Rchoud wrote:
@35
Your quote “Also, just b/c someone choose not to emphasis or celebrate a certain aspect of culture doesn’t make them a sellout or anything. Maybe they just don’t relate to it and thus choose not to be fake about it” is interesting and is true to a certain extent. It reminds me of what Jessica Alba once said about her part Mexican heritage that she feels she can’t claim to be Latino because she didn’t experience the culture growing up.
In that sense it’s understandable when someone does not know much or identify with ancestry from a totally different culture because they were never exposed to it or lived it. The problem though is when people start actively denying or ignoring that aspect of their heritage because they feel “ashamed” of it. If Alba was to get visbily offended whenever people asked her about her Latino ancestry or make snide remarks about it people would be upset by this. I think that’s what people should be able to differentiate, the act of denying part of ancestry verses just acknowledging it even without identifying with it.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 1:19 pm ¶
EH wrote:
@Vanessa
I think there’s a difference between not emphasizing or celebrating a certain aspect of your culture and outright denying/omitting/whitewashing/covering up one’s own ethnicity/race/nationality/family history in an attempt to assimilate, distance themselves from cultures they feel are beneath them, or both.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 1:57 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
Vanessa-Michigan – pretty much every regular on this site is WELL aware of the difference between ethnicity and nationality, and race is generally considered to be a social reality but a constructed nonbiological one, variable by time and place and social contract.
The article is not questioning ANY of the above. What it IS doing is pointing out ranking by color, the “white”washing of heritage because European lineage is preferred, and the obliteration and negation of the voices and experiences of those non-European lineages in order to preserve the European-descent fairy tale.
Did you really read differently?
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 2:15 pm ¶
Lyonside wrote:
P.S. “American” isn’t a nationality – U.S. citizens colloquially use it to mean a citizen of the U.S. (myself included), but American can refer to anyone from 2 continents.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 2:18 pm ¶
Ashley wrote:
Rchoud wrote:
It reminds me of what Jessica Alba once said about her part Mexican heritage that she feels she can’t claim to be Latino because she didn’t experience the culture growing up…If Alba was to get visbily offended whenever people asked her about her Latino ancestry or make snide remarks about it people would be upset by this.
I love to get on my soapbox about Jessica Alba! I think you’re more benevolent towards her than I could ever be.
-She’s often said she’s not really Latina because she doesn’t speak Spanish. I can understand not wanting to seem like a poser, but not speaking the language hasn’t stopped Greek- or Polish- or Russian-Americans from celebrating their heritage.
-She likes to say that Cameron Diaz is more Latina than her, but no one considers Diaz Latina because she’s blonde. There’s always something in her tone (”But Diaz has a Cuban father and my name’s Italian!” poutwhinepout) that makes her seem defensive, like she feels she’s being “accused” of being Latina. I think Alba’s a little snotty anyway, so maybe that’s just her natural tone shining through!
-In the same breath where she states she’s not really Latina, she’ll make some stupid comment about how her Mexican cousins have lots of kids “because Mexicans like to spread their seeds” around.
Maybe she’s changed her tune in recent times, but I doubt it.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 5:39 pm ¶
Msday wrote:
“Great article Alisa! I think many African-American suffer from the opposite effect as your family. So many of us are claiming other heritages in order to distance ourselves from being Black. Irish, Native American, French, Creole, etc. Everything is good except plain ole Black. True, there is no denying that Black Americans are mixed but the intention behind the claim is what concerns me.”
How do you judge someones intentions for not wanting to be “plain old black?” What if it is just a matter of not hiding the “white” people in the family tree. Have you ever notice how odd some so called black Americans look when placed in the middle of a group of West Africans? Why are people applauded only when they acknowledge dark roots but criticized for doing the same with non white ancestry?Anyway….
Alisa, this was a wonderful article and congratulations for being able to find the missing links in your family tree.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 6:41 pm ¶
Alex wrote:
@Vanessa, Michigan: Well said!!
It’s annoying to see Mexicans once again lumped in one category and used as a “race” as opposed to “white” or “anglos”. Mexicans
are diverse and are of different races. Mexicans come in all different shades.
@Lyonside: There IS such a thing as white Latinos. You mockingly say “emphasize calling themselves “white Latinos,” as if such a thing exists”. Ever heard of Argentina and Uruguay? There are many families of Northern European descent in Latin America, who consider themselves latinos but are white. Don’t perpetuate the stereotype that latinos can only be dark skinned. Latinos are a race.
What’s really annoying to me is that the term “Mexican” in this article is used to provide contrast to those of European ancestry. In the US, Mexican means being dark and in many cases of “Indian” blood.
As a latina writer, Ms Valdes should know better and avoid such a broad and WRONG definition when referring to race. Mexicans are not a RACE.
Her article is quite interesting and the subject is something that is worth exploring. However, if she’s going to talk about races, please do it properly. She needs to explore more the race factor: white vs. “Indians”. (e.g. Mexican Indians). Her family didn’t want to be Mexican because that meant being Indian and therefore dark skinned. Right?
I would suggest to Ms Valdes to explore how people in Mexico try to erase how “Indian” they are. That’s the situation she needs to explore because many old Spanish families carried that prejudice over to the US. In reality, the article should be about erasing the “Indian” and not the Mexican.
In the US, you don’t want to be Mexican (i.e., dark skinned) and in Mexico you don’t want to be “Indio”. Different words, same sad meaning: You don’t want to be dark skinned because it’s bad. Please use this article to educate people about discrimination against Mexican Indians.
I’m curious to know why Ms. Valdes is using Mexican as a race category. In the US, latinos are lumped in one big category no matter what race they are. Ms. Valdes seems to be continuing to do so by using Mexicans as a race (as opposed to whites, and anglos.)
I would suggest not to mix both ethnicity and nationality to denote race.
Ms. Valdes uses “Mexican” and “Anglo” to denote contrast. One is a nationality, the other one is an ethnicity. Why is she using the term “Mexican” so broadly? How is she defining being Mexican? She needs to clarify that. Otherwise, she’s just using the stereotyped image of a Mexican being dark skinned. That is the definition used by most Americans. Please don’t use that term to refer to race. There is no such a thing as a Mexican race. What do you mean by your maternal grandfather being Mexican-anglo? I think using both terms are wrong if you want to indicate he was of mixed ancestry. Do you want to say that he was white and of Indian descent? (in this term referring to Native Mexicans) One is a nationality (therefore can mean someone of ANY race who happens to be born in Mexico) and the other one, “Anglo” refers to an ethnicity.
I believe that Rob Schmidt nailed it when he wrote: “Doesn’t “Erasing the Mexicans” ultimately mean “Erasing the Mexican Indians”? I trust you’ll explore this point in depth.”
Sorry for the long comment.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 8:41 pm ¶
Alex wrote:
Edit: In the second paragraph I meant to say that Latinos are *NOT* a race.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 8:42 pm ¶
Rchoud wrote:
@Ashley
Thanks for providing more details about Alba’s comments regarding Latino heritage. I was actually unaware of all this and so now I may have to take back using her as an example in my earlier post! She does come off sounding offended about being considered part latina!
@Alex
I understand your frustration with non-Mexicans (usually Americans) wrongly assuming Mexicans are one particular race. It’s usually said in a derogatory fashion too like being Mexican is code word for being dark and therefore undesirable for this country. As a Muslim I can relate because there’s been many times when I became upset at people ignorantly assuming that Muslims were only of one particular race which was brown skinned. It’s even worse when people are not only ignorant about this but refuse to change their views whenever you show them evidence that being Mexican or Muslim means being more diverse than that.
I didn’t however get the impression that Alisa herself was using Mexican as a racial term, just that she was showing how members of her own family used it that way as well as mainstream American society.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 11:24 pm ¶
Rchoud wrote:
@Ashley
BTW regarding Cameron Diaz (and Christina Aguilera) I’ve read in various celebrity forums that Americans generally believe that their blond haired blue eyed look came from their “white” side of the family. As if being a blonde Latina was impossible! Talk about being frustrated. Europeans are not the only people in possession of these traits, which so many people find to be so desirable unfortunately at the exclusion of other traits.
Posted 20 Dec 2008 at 11:28 pm ¶
Vanessa, Michigan wrote:
Lyonside wrote:
P.S. “American” isn’t a nationality – U.S. citizens colloquially use it to mean a citizen of the U.S. (myself included), but American can refer to anyone from 2 continents.
——————–
Have you ever called a canadian an american or someone from mexico an American?
I have never heard, read, seen someone from Mexico and Canada be called American..Ever.
Everybody knows that when you refer to a person as American….that person is a citizen of the united states of America.
Posted 21 Dec 2008 at 12:00 am ¶
Vanessa, Michigan wrote:
Alex…I agree with everything you said but you said it more eloquently.
I think the Arthur should discuss the difference between having indian culture and white culture.
Not Mexican culture and white culture b/c frankly like I said before you can be white and Mexican at the same time.
Posted 21 Dec 2008 at 12:03 am ¶
Vanessa, Michigan wrote:
People were mention Jessica Alba and Cameron Diaz.
I get where Jessica Alba was coming from…her family has been here for 3 generations but they act like she is a recent immigrant her that her family just recently came to this country.
The media rarely mentions that fact that there are many latin people who have been in this nation for 100 years and so and only act like almost all of them are immigrants and especially entered this country illegal. she herself has said that she was never raised in household that promoted the Latin culture yet b/c she is “dark” and “looks like the stereotypical Latino the the U.S. media portray all the time ” people automatically assume that she should be fluent in Spanish, have a hot fiery temper, and do and know all things about Latin culture when she clearly doesn’t know.
It’s like a friend of mine said how people would come up to her all the time and speak Spanish and get annoyed when she says she doesn’t speak Spanish and act like she is a sellout or don’t believe her when she says she isn’t Latin but Indian ( native india).
But, no one asks Cameron Diaz about her latin culture or type cast her to play the latin character in any films or expect her to know anything about the latin culture.
Same with Black Latinos…they are considered only black and the media ignores their latin culture and don’t acknowledge that many blacks in the U.S. have a strong Latin background. Look at Christian Milian, Zoe Zaldena, or Carleton from fresh prince of bel air ( can’t think of the actors name right now)…they are only known as black actors and very few people would mention or even know that they are actually of latin descent.
Posted 21 Dec 2008 at 12:15 am ¶
by wrote:
I am so glad that you wrote this post. I am from NM and was always troubled when my friends with Spanish surnames went out of their way to claim that they were “Spanish” not “Mexican”. These young women always lauded those members of their family with light skin, eyes and hair as the most beautiful. I always thought they themselves were strikingly beautiful with their shiny black hair, eyes and cafe-con- leche complexions.
I am one of the few native southwesterners who can pretty definitively say that I have no Mexican blood (my Dad is from Taiwan and my Mom from Vermont). However, I identify strongly with the brand of Mexican culture we have here is NM. When I went to collage in Texas, I literally felt sick about the overt and covert racism there against Mexicans, even in liberal Austin. Of course, people didn’t perceive as or treat me like a Latina there, but I certainly noticed discrimination against others and took it pretty personally.
I look forward to your book- I think it is really important for people to start coming to terms with and discussing racism against Mexicans, even in the southwest.
Posted 21 Dec 2008 at 6:04 pm ¶
allheavens wrote:
I am getting ready for the big “issue” in my family as my two grandsons grow older.
My son who is Black married to a woman who is half Latino and half white. My daughter-in-law’s mother and two aunts all married white men and none speak Spanish. Also, they don’t identify as Latino even though their father and mother consider themselves to be Latino and were both born in Mexico.
One grandson is brown-skinned, dark curly hair, dark eyes and one is very fair, reddish brown straight hair, hazel eyes. You look at my oldest grandson and think Black or Black Latino (depends on what part of the country you were raised), you look at my youngest grandson and think white.
I want them to know and be proud of all their heritages but I think I am in for a fight with my daughter-in-law and my son.
My son in no uncertain terms has stated that they are Black, period and my daughter-in-law wants them to identify as white (which I find ridiculous because my eldest grandson does not remotely look white). Also she married a Black man, what was she thinking?
I think these kids are going to have a difficult enough time without being in a tug-of-war for their collective cultural souls.
I am walking a tightrope because I am just their grandmother but I would like them to be proud of their multiracial heritage without the schizophrenia of racial identification. Hey, I can dream can’t I?
Posted 21 Dec 2008 at 9:01 pm ¶
Gothic Guera wrote:
I have a lot of stories , It’S weird I found a happy middle were I am both Mexican and American (I have dual citizenship and speak Spanish fluently. My mother was actually disowned by her family for marriying my dad,(my grandfather hatred Americans so did my mom) several of the Mexican American disliked her because of my father. While the Mexican in Mexico admired her. I mentioned before a lot of people where quick to discredit my mother, t for marrying an American and my family for being to0 white and not white enough. I had moments where Mexican American boys(I can’t recall any girls) called my names and said I wasn’t “Mexican”. A lot of the girl I told wondered how my parents meet. Keep in mind a lot of Mexico (people who were born and live in Mexico)dislike Mexican Americans and I rarely herd that distinction being made here. @Natalie “Sometimes this ambiguity can be a privilege to me.” me too I like messing with people head who ask what race I am. (So far some people I’m Argentine or Chilean and some people think I’m Jewish!)
Posted 21 Dec 2008 at 9:47 pm ¶
Sobia wrote:
@ Vanessa, Michigan:
“Everybody knows that when you refer to a person as American….that person is a citizen of the united states of America.”
Just because people say something doesn’t make it accurate. Technically, Canadians, Mexicans and South AMERICANS are also Americans. People of the US have just usurped the term and made it their own, not allowing the rest of us any rights to it. I’ve heard some people in Canada refer to people from the US as Unites Statesians – which would be more accurate
Posted 21 Dec 2008 at 10:40 pm ¶
Juan Carlos wrote:
I just have to say that your mom was beautiful Alisa
Posted 23 Dec 2008 at 12:22 am ¶
Aliza Hausman wrote:
Hi, Alisa. So cool to find you on this blog! I’ve read all your books and mentioned them on my own blog.
My mother told me grand tales of Turkish, French and Spanish ancestry growing up. Most of them were false according to my grandmother who I interviewed later. But my grandmother did seem to emphasize that her grandmother was Spanish, directly from Spain, she completely de-emphasize that we also had Puerto Rican ancestry and obviously, African ancestry.
But then I come from a family that puts down “white, Hispanic” even when they’re dark-skinned. They don’t want to see themselves as anything but white even if they’re brown.
It seems to me that this is all a throwback to colonialism and hating our Native American and African ancestors because it was cooler and safer politically and socially to tout being white and Spanish.
Hopefully, we’re moving away from that into a time when people can proudly claim all parts of their identity.
Posted 23 Dec 2008 at 2:46 pm ¶
Shayna wrote:
Excellent article. I am a Jew and my great-grandparents on both sides were from Eastern Europe (more specifically Belarus). In many Ashkenazic Jewish families, this Belorussian or Eastern European nationalistic part is left out of most or all discussions.
When my mother asked her grandfather many years ago if he could help her with Russian language homework if she in fact took Russian as a foreign language, he threatened to disown her if she ever spoke Russian around him. The Jews spoke Yiddish and on citizenship paper, they were not Russian, but Jewish. Jews have forever been improperly clumped together as a race or a nationality, when it is in fact a religion and culture. I would love to learn more about the shtetl and country my family came from, but because no records exist outside of the Jewish community (which was terminated during the late 19th center/early 20th century), it’s not possible.
Posted 24 Dec 2008 at 7:14 pm ¶
Angana wrote:
thanks for sharing this story. i would love to read your book.
i am mixed heritage chinese, white and also…
i looked on ancestry.com and discovered my grandmother’s grandfather was born in mexico, this is according to his answer to a 1920 census. they were living in new mexico around many other people with spanish surnames (it was a census of the neighborhood) and i think most of them said they were born in new mexico. my grandmother told her children and grandchildren she was spanish and native american (although she identified as white and with white culture). there were stories about her mother’s parents being traveling musicians from spain. there was never mention of mexican ancestry and only later did i found out the fact that her mother spoke spanish but did not want to pass it on to her so that she could fit in. later she also said her mother was born in mexico too but her daughter (my aunt) said she never heard of that and now that my grandmother is older and losing her memory, that was seen as “doubtful” by some (not to me). of her native heritage my grandmother said, something like if you had indian relatives, “you weren’t supposed to remember such things.” She said she had native american heritage but we don’t know any specifics about our native ancestry. I wonder if our native heritage is indigena of mexico, given that mix she claims: spanish and native american, that is the mestiza mix of most mexicanos (the mestiza mix being: spanish and native mexican, and the often left out: african roots is also part of the mexican mestizaje/mix). or we may have both native mexican and native U.S. heritage. It’s hard to find out now. What I want to know more about is how did these stories get erased?
I think it is about white racism, terror, violence on many levels, genocide, not being able to pass on to your children intimate parts of yourself (like your language, your culture)…so assumedly, they will have a better chance to succeed (and to survive) in a white supremacist society.
But what does that mean about my family and what gets lost in these secrets? I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. It was really interesting talking to my “always thought he was just white dad” about my discovery on ancestry.com and our mixed heritage (and he knew about being native before, but it was just brushed over). It feels good to just talk about it, push on our whiteness, the lie that it is. And i’m sad about what’s been lost or ripped away. but i get excited about finding out where my people came from and not having to keep erasing them.
i am seen as white. i have blue eyes and brown hair. if the goal was to get whiter across the generations, i am the “successful” product. i know much more about what my other grandma, who is from china, thinks about being chinese and she calls herself a “caucasia worshipper”. There is an enormous amount of internalized racism (Caucasians are better than asians) in that and there has to be self hatred too. My grandma does not see it that way at all. She wanted to marry a caucasian man like a movie star and she did it, she feels successful. and don’t picture her like a victim because she is bold, intelligent. Still, those ideas that white people are better than chinese were in place in china (she watched the american films) before she even got to the U.S.! This is not about preferences, these standards of beauty, standards of intelligence with whiteness at the top…this is coercive, widespread, systematic and i can’t even count all the ways it has hurt people in my family, resilient and wonderful as they are.
i’m trying to turn around this whole whiteness myth and ideals in myself and my family.
Thanks for reading, I’ve enjoyed reading people’s stuff too.
Thanks.
Posted 25 Dec 2008 at 5:24 am ¶
Bagelsan wrote:
Lovely post! (And lovely pictures!)
Some of the comments here remind me of the idea of “Casta paintings” which were basically portraits of what all the different racial mixes were thought to look like. They’re old, so obviously pretty racist, and they are an amazingly clear example of prioritizing “white” over all else. They laid out a clear hierarchy of races and skin tones, and were very popular with people in the Americas who wanted to document how *totally* white their family was and how very *Spanish* they were. According to my professor employers would even use these paintings when hiring; “nah, you’re clearly a fill-in-the-blank-mix, which is too low a percentage of Spanish, so this job is too high-ranking for you.” They are fascinating paintings to look at, and are *very* clear examples of the anxiety people felt about the intermarrying and mixing going on historically.
Posted 26 Dec 2008 at 6:41 am ¶
Luis wrote:
@Bagelsan
Those paintings are also the best way to explain why many Latinos of mixed heritage avoid identifying fully as Indigenous or Black. Being in the middle means you’re barred from the top, but also elevated from the bottom. The hierarchy is the source of Hispanic race-identification dating back to Spain after the last Muslim kings left. It’s also a stumbling block between Latinos and American Blacks and Natives, who just aren’t operating on the same system and often are suspicious of each other’s motives when being asked to identify or denying identification.
So yes, please be sure to do some research into the Mexican practice of diminishing Indigenous heritage. There is a lot of complexity there. I’m sure there is plenty to look at among Nuevomexicanos as well.
The section on chile and biscochitas is interesting. I have a friend who is New Mexican going on three centuries, and we talk a lot about her family life. It seems that Hispanic culture pervades the place as a sort of baseline. It’d be interesting to talk about what Hispanic customs have become a part of simply being from New Mexico.
Posted 28 Dec 2008 at 3:22 am ¶
Alana wrote:
Thank you for your story. It sounds eerily like my own family. My mother’s maiden name is Henderson (her father’s English heritage), but my mother’s mother’s maiden name was Sanchez. Her mother’s name was Chavez. My grandmother grew up in LA, but both of her parents were originally from New Mexico, where my family claims to have been for over 500 years now. I also have a great-aunt who claims that she can trace our family back to Spanish royalty, and my family speaks derisively about “Mexicans” — they call themselves “Spanish”. They grew up speaking Spanish before my mother’s generation, and as a child I learned children’s words for body parts and bodily fluids. I have always found myself in an awkward place when I try to explain my Hispanic heritage — yours is the first similar story I’ve heard. Your story has inspired me to take a look for myself at who my ancestors really were. If you do any further work on the topic, please let me know about it. Thanks.
Posted 29 Dec 2008 at 12:57 am ¶
Julia wrote:
Fascinating post; thank you for writing it.
One of the comments puzzles me:
[i]I’d like to learn what percentage of Latinos have a significant amount of “Native blood.” Many if not most of them, I suspect. And the key corollary question: What percentage of Latinos admit or deny their Native heritage.[/i]
I am a frightfully Caucasian person (in spite of my efforts to find more “interesting” ancestry in my family tree), with the exception that I did learn as a child that my grandfather was part Cherokee.
I was ever so delighted to learn this and have always been proud of this fact. All the Caucasian people I know (from various parts of the U.S.) take similar pride in discovering they have Native heritage.
I’m puzzled as to why Caucasians are proud of their Native heritage but Latinos (from what you are saying) do not seem to be?
Posted 04 Jan 2009 at 7:58 pm ¶
Andrea wrote:
Thanks so much for sharing. I’m also on my way of reclaiming my roots and heritage. In my case, I was born and raised in Latinamerica; I am dark and very much Hispanic looking. My reclaiming has a lot to do with overcoming the internalized racism that most of us carry in our countries of origin. I’m keen in finding out where I come from, even if it means, as it’s occurring so far, that it makes people uncomfortable to talk about this or view themselves as anything but anglo. I clearly remember people recognizing their spaniar background as if by doing so, it’ll be a clear message that they are indeed human beings a 100%. There is such a shame imposed onto us through the process of colonization and then with the church coming in to rescue us, the savages. This will be the biggest impediment in my search for my roots as my family’s history has been disguised to appease and accomodate the forces at play. I can’t wait for oct. 12th to be given a different meaning than the one that I grew up with and that it’s still very much in place and that keeps perpetuating our self-hatred and embarrassment for who we are. Anyway, thanks again for sharing your story and re-inspiring me once again to keep on searching and stand proud.
Posted 12 Feb 2009 at 3:26 am ¶