CHAPTER 1

Ancient Roots and Mestizo Ancestry

MOST PEOPLE TODAY ARE genetically mixed—our blood intertwined through ongoing migrations, our genetic streams run together from unknown sources. The difference for Latinos is that the fusion of races, nationalities, and cultures was so pervasive that it spread across our entire hemisphere, producing a people traditionally known in Central and South America as Mestizos, the offspring of the Indigenous people of the Americas and Europeans, primarily the Spanish.

The mestizaje, as the process was termed, is not a concept commonly embraced by US Latinos. There are advantages, however, to including it as part of the complex Latino identity. What is important to note is that the Mestizo experience is a precursor to the Latino culture and the bedrock of its inherent diversity.¹ (Although México is technically part of North America, in this book it is considered part of Central America, due to cultural and historical antecedents.)

The lineage of many Hispanics comes from Indigenous mothers and Spanish fathers. Mothers traditionally preserve—and transmit—tradition, values, spiritual practices, and customs. Much of the culture, consequently, reflects this Indigenous background. The integration of the Spanish and Native cultures is evident right at the family dinner table. Rice and beans is a primary dish for all Latino subgroups. The Spanish introduced rice, while beans are indigenous, a food of American Indians. Corn tortillas come from Native cultures, but flour for white tortillas comes from Europe. The many varieties of potatoes, chilies, squash, and salsas are from the Americas. The Spanish diet included pork: jamón, chorizo, carnitas, and lechon, which are now Latino favorites.

Whether the term Mestizo is used or not, much of the Latino culture reflects this blended ancestry. Since US Latinos were only identified as a group from the 1980 US census on, and their roots go back more than five hundred years, Mestizo is a more accurate historical reference. Looking at the mixing of culture and races in Spanish history will shed light on why the mestizaje occurred in this hemisphere.

The Spanish Are the Mestizos of Europe

LET’S BEGIN IN 200 BC, when the Romans commenced their seven-hundred-year occupation of Spain. Roman influence is visible today in the aqueducts that stand like centurions across the Spanish plains. The term Latino comes from Latin, the language spoken in the Roman Empire (and painfully studied in the Catholic high school I attended). The major Latin-based languages are Spanish, French, Portuguese, Romanian, and Italian.² Latin also refers to Latin America.³

In the fifth century, after the decline of the Roman Empire, the Visigoths, or modern-day Germans, began invading Spain. German rulers converted to Christianity and maintained much of the legal system and institutions developed by the Romans.⁴ The melding of cultures rather than just the imposing of one over the other was a trademark of Roman occupation and would carry over when the Spanish came to the Western Hemisphere in 1492. (This was very distinct from what happened in North America, as the Anglo-Saxons did not mix their culture with that of the Native people.) This is not to say that Indigenous populations were not systematically oppressed and eliminated, but the melding of cultures also occurred, and is still integral to Latinos today.

Geographically, Spain is the southernmost part of Europe and the crossroads between Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. In the eighth century, the Moors invaded Spain and remained for eight hundred years. (Moors has been used to describe the Muslims in Spain, Europeans of African descent, or Muslims living in Europe.)⁵ During this period the Spanish became the most culturally blended people in Europe. The Jews, Christians, and Moors ushered in a golden age of learning while the rest of Europe grappled with the Dark Ages. More than eight thousand Spanish words are derived from Arabic, and more than a thousand villages with Moorish names dot the Spanish countryside.⁶

In 1469, when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon married, they set out to unify Spain and spread Catholicism as the official religion. Thus began a period in history during which Jews and Muslims were forced to convert or leave the country. Many Jews were subjected to the Inquisition, which purged Spain of so-called infidels. It is estimated that at this time one-third of Spain was Jewish. Thus, the Jewish exodus to the “new world” began, and therefore many Latinos have Jewish ancestry. Thus, similarities of Latinos as an ethnic group to the Jewish community have cultural, historical, and genetic antecedents.⁷

When delving into Latino diversity, it is useful to consider that the Spanish heritage comprises Moorish, Arab, and Jewish lineages. The blood of Romans, Germans, and Celts had already mingled in Spanish veins. Thus, the Spanish were the Mestizos of Europe when Queen Isabella authorized the expedition of Christopher Columbus. Paradoxically, as Spain was becoming a more homogeneous and a united Catholic country, the fusion of cultures was being transported to the new world. Diversity was already integral to the budding Latino soul.

The Prophesy and the Promise

AS IN MANY CULTURES still connected to their ancestry, there is a Mestizo creation story. Creation myths speak to a group’s essence and foreshadow the special contribution they will make. The US story, for instance, includes the resilience of the immigrant spirit, the settling of the West, and the emergence of a new nation. The fight for independence and freedom frames our national identity.

The Mestizo creation story begins with a painful birth. When Hernán Cortés set foot on the expansive land that is now México, Tenochtitlan, which today is Mexico City, was larger than any city in Europe, with more inhabitants than London or Seville. The conquistadores found a radiant island metropolis laced with canals, opulent marketplaces, exquisite palaces, and mountains of gold and silver.⁸ Starting in northern México, maneuvering across the tiny isthmus to South America, over the high Andes, and into Peru, Indigenous people built magnificent cities, and spectacular temples rose to the sky like the great condor. The conquistadores traversed these lands and made them their own.

It took only fourteen years for the armies of the Spanish conquerors—mounted on horses, protected with steel breast plates and armor, and using firearms as formidable weapons—to reach across Central and South America. Francisco Pizarro marched into Peru, and the great Inca Empire fell in 1532. The extent, speed, and permanence of this military adventure was as devastating as the great plagues and diseases the foreigners brought.⁹

Unlike the Anglo-Saxons to the north, who were fleeing religious persecution, the Spaniards were overwhelmingly Catholic and united in the belief of the “one true faith.” The Church issued an edict declaring that Indians and Black people had souls and should not be enslaved. To be sure, the Spanish oppressed the Indigenous people, but they wrapped their mission around a holy grain. The Spanish would baptize the Indians and bring them into the “everlasting faith.”

Life for the Indigenous people conquered by the Spanish, however, was not otherwise guided by a Christian conversion experience. An oppressive cloak was thrown over them. They lost their land, wealth, and gold. Dominance and colonization resulted in desecration, particularly of the Indigenous women. Their gods were stripped and their temples were in ruins. The Indigenous immune systems could not repel the invaders—85 percent died from diseases.¹⁰ The rest were shackled in mines, sweating in fincas (farms) and haciendas, or building the missions where the Spanish lived.

The Indigenous people were losing their will to live, and they contemplated racial suicide. “If it is true that our gods don’t exist and have abandoned us, then let us die.”¹¹ Though this desolation began in México, this is not a story about the Spanish conquest of México but of the plight of the Indigenous people across the Americas. During this time, the Indians needed a spiritual infusion, a reason to live and to hope for the future. They needed un milagro—a miracle.

El Milagro at Tepeyac

ON A COOL DECEMBER sunrise in 1531, an Indigenous elder wrapped in a traditional tilma (poncho) and wearing a straw hat was walking in the foothills of what is now Mexico City. Juan Diego, on his way to church, suddenly hears celestial music and wonders, Am I dreaming? Am I in heaven? Looking up, he sees a radiant brown woman with distinct Indian features arrayed as the Madonna. Stars circle her mantle and a crescent moon lies at her feet. An angel lifts the folds of her azure dress. The mesquite bushes, thistles, and nopal cactus sparkle like fine turquoise.

“Where are you going, the smallest of my children?” she sings in the Nahuatl Indian language. “I am the perfect and perpetual Virgin Mary, mother of the true God, through whom everything lives. I am your merciful mother, yours and all the people who live united in this land and all the other people of different ancestries. I want very much to have a church built for me. Here I will hear their weeping and heal all their sorrows and hardships and suffering.”¹² She acknowledges that the different races have clashed, but despite the horrendous upheaval this has cost, they now inhabit this land together.

The radiant lady asks Juan Diego to go talk to Bishop Juan de Zumárraga about building her church. Well, that is like asking a peasant to speak to a king; to the Spanish, the bishop is the most important man in México. Juan Diego goes to the bishop’s house and waits patiently. The bishop finally listens but does not believe him.

Juan Diego returns to the hill at Tepeyac to find the Madonna waiting. He laments, “Forgive me, but send a nobleman who would be held in high esteem. I am not important, and you are sending me to a place I do not belong.” Insisting that he is the one she has chosen, she asks him to return. Dutifully, after many difficulties, Juan Diego prostrates before the bishop, who asks for a sign to prove the story is true. Juan Diego returns and recounts this to the Madonna, who says she will give him a sign.

The next morning, she appears as if floating on a cloud. “My dearest and youngest of my sons,” she says. “Let nothing trouble you or in any way disturb your countenance, your heart. For I am here—your mother—your foundation of life. You are in the cool of my shadow. I am your source of contentment. You are cradled in my arms. Is there anything else for you to need? Now, go to the top of the hill, cut the flowers growing there, and bring them to me.”¹³

The hill is stony, full of thistles, thorns, and mesquite. It is December, the time of frost and brown grasses. Yet exquisite flowers bloom, sparkling with morning dew. Gathering them in his tilma, he brings them to the Madonna who arranges the flowers and sends him to the bishop, saying, “Trust in me. Am I not your merciful mother?”

It is still twilight at the bishop’s house. The servants ignore Juan Diego. And so, he waits for a long, long time, patient and steadfast, his head lowered, as silent as stone. The sweet fragrance inspires their curiosity. Looking inside his tilma, they see exotic flowers that do not grow on the cactus hillside. Amazed, they hurry to find the bishop.

Prostrating before the bishop, Juan Diego opens his tilma. Beautiful crimson Castilian roses that grow only in Spain tumble to the floor. The bishop falls to his knees, making the sign of the cross and praising heaven. For there, embedded in the simple tilma worn by all the Indians across the southern continent, is the brown-faced image of the Holy Mother of Creation, known today as Our Lady of Guadalupe. She is not a Spaniard; she is a Mestiza. Her image is preserved five hundred years later in the church that was built at Tepeyac—one of the most venerated and visited religious shrines in the entire world.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE is perhaps the most influential and prophetic spiritual voice of the Americas and a revered religious symbol of Indigenous people. Since the conquest of our hemisphere, her iconic image can be found on wall hangings, paintings, key chains, jackets, baseball caps, and T-shirts. She was named empress of the Americas and patroness of the Western Hemisphere by a papal proclamation in 1998.¹⁴

The significance of her apparition in December 1531, even if understood as a myth, must be seen in the context of the times and in the message she brought to the Indian people. At this time, México was a huge landmass that extended north to the Colorado Rockies and across to the Pacific Northwest. Furthermore, the Spanish conquest commenced in México but quickly engulfed the entire Southern Hemisphere. The legend of Guadalupe, therefore, is pertinent to the Indian holocaust occurring across these lands. Appearing just twelve short years after the Spanish set foot in México, she says she hears weeping and sorrows and wants to alleviate suffering.

For the Indigenous people who worshiped the sun, there was great symbolism in her image. The sunrays circling her meant she came from their god. Her name in Nahuatl, the indigenous language of the Aztec people, is Tlecuautlapcupeuh, which means “the one who comes from the region of light on the wings of an eagle.”¹⁵ The eagle represents vision and the future. Her hands are in the Indigenous style of offering—she was bringing hope, protection, and acceptance at a time of desolation. The eyes are cast down in quiet composure, a stance many Indians would take to survive.

Her exquisite mantle was turquoise, a color sacred to the Indigenous people. On her dress were gold flowers in the cross shape of Nahuatl glyphs symbolizing the four sacred directions and indicating a new life was coming.¹⁶ The Maya, Aztec, and Inca were great astronomers who looked to the sky for guidance and divination of the future. Her mantle was sprinkled with sparkling silver stars.

Juan Diego was not a lofty Spanish official but a humble Indian. As the story is told over and over, the Indigenous people recognize that by choosing one of their own and by speaking in their language, the Madonna affirms their worth and goodness. She looks like a Mestiza, like many children after the conquest. The Indigenous people embrace her: “She is one of us.” As a conquered people, they were losing pride in their great civilizations and being made ashamed of their ancestry. She was restoring their dignity and belief in themselves.

Our Lady of Guadalupe symbolizes the integration of the indigenous faith with the Catholic Church; this would be the spiritual fount from which the cultural mixing would flow. The place where she wanted her church was a site sacred to the Indigenous people. Unlike Protestant religions, which do not have a litany of saints or a strong devotion to the mother of Jesus, the Catholic Church had a strong dedication to Mary. In fact, Columbus’s largest ship was named the Santa María (Holy Mary).

This followed the traditions of the Nahuatl, Mayan, Inca, and Aztec religions, which honored the female aspects of God. As a result of Guadalupe’s apparition, the Church began incorporating Native symbolism and rituals. The power of this integration is evident—8 million Indians were baptized into the Catholic faith in the next seven years.¹⁷

On December 12, the feast day of Guadalupe, Catholic churches across the hemisphere are littered with red roses. For the Aztec, flowers symbolize truth, beauty, authenticity, and divinity. Guadalupe’s message told the Indigenous people that, as perennial as the flowers, they would survive. Why? Because the black sash she wore was the Aztec symbol of a pregnant woman.¹⁸ The Catholic Church always referred to Mary, the mother of Jesus, as a virgin. To the Indians, their spiritual mother was of the earth, the giver of life, and had children. This was a message tailor-made for them.

But who was the child she was carrying? To understand this, we must take a short detour. Rest assured that the inception of the Mestizo people began on that small rocky hill at Tepeyac. Everything that has emerged since the apparition—the culture, the leadership traditions, the prominence of today’s Mestizo and Latino people—rests on the black sash of Our Lady of Guadalupe, first known almost five hundred years ago.

La Madonna in Las Americas

ACROSS CENTRAL AND LATIN American countries, there are special Madonnas who are revered as protectors and patron saints and form part of national identities. Because the Spanish conquest began in México, Our Lady of Guadalupe was the first of these. Many Madonnas are racially mixed, representing the cultural integration that would occur. Another characteristic is that they appear to oppressed and colonized people, not to the Church clergy, the rich, or those of high Spanish birth.

In Cuba, for instance, the Virgin of Charity appeared to two Indians and a Black slave and became the symbol of people’s triumph over oppression. She is a Black Madonna, embraced by African slaves brought to Cuba as early as 1531. The slaves beseeched her for their emancipation.¹⁹

The patroness and protector of Brazil is Our Lady of Aparecida (the one who appeared). Her statue was found by three humble fishermen, and many miracles have been attributed to her. She is a Black Madonna and was called on for protection during the hundred years it took for people to win independence from Portugal. Our Lady of Aparecida stood as an icon of the emerging Brazilian identity, giving people hope, strength, and solace.²⁰

Just as Guadalupe personified the Indigenous ancestry of México, so do the Cuban and Brazilian Madonnas reflect the Afro-Cuban and Afro-Iberian heritage of these countries. All three represent the mixed racial heritage that would become a defining characteristic of Central and South America. Likewise, these Madonnas embodied cultural and religious integration. They gave hope to colonized people and were embraced as symbols of emancipation and liberation.

The characteristics embodied by these Madonnas are still evident in the expansive diversity, spirituality, social activism, and hopeful spirit of US Hispanics. The marches of César Chávez and the United Farm Workers drew people from many cultural backgrounds and were always led by a huge tapestry of Our Lady of Guadalupe, symbolizing this integration.

The Mothers of the Mestizo Race

I NEVER MET MY MATERNAL grandfather. As a child, it never occurred to me to ask why my mother’s last name was the same as mi abuela’s—my grandmother’s. My abuela had long raven braids that hung to her waist, and she had my mother when she was a very young girl. Often they seemed more like hermanas (sisters) than mother and daughter. No one ever mentioned my mother’s father. These ancestral roots withered away and remain in the family closet, which shut tight when my parents died. Recently, I was sharing this story with a Hispanic leader who said, “My wife just figured out the same thing, but it was never talked about.”

The Spanish commonly used Indigenous women as concubines or as common-law wives. The Anglo settlers did not procreate on a mass scale with the Indigenous people. Western European concepts of racial separation and superiority, as well as religious beliefs, prevented this. But, as noted, the Spanish were already the Mestizos of Europe, with Roman, African, Arab, Anglo, and Celtic blood. From the Sierra Nevada to the tip of Tierra del Fuego, the mixing of Indigenous people with the Spanish conquistadores was so widespread that today Mestizos, or mixed-race people, are the majority population in Central and South America and the antecedents of many of today’s Hispanics.

There was also intermarriage, as was the case with my great-grandparents Dolores and Manuel Bordas, but this was not the common practice.

The progeny of these forced unions were ashamed of their Indigenous selves—for integral to any conquest is the denigration and subjugation of the culture of the conquered. Their Spanish fathers often did not recognize them as legitimate offspring, which denied the very talents and attributes they inherited from their European ancestors. This trauma carved a deep psychological scar. The resolution of the internal battle between their Indigenous selves and their Spanish heritage would take generations to mend.²¹ (The emergence of the complex Latino identity is discussed in chapter 6.)

Just as roses unfold in their time, so too did Indian grandmothers transform the pain of the conquest through loving and nurturing their Mestizo children. The anchor and salvation of the Mestizos were the Indigenous culture, values, and hope passed on by their mothers and grandmothers. They could taste it in the tortillas, the black beans, and fried plantains they ate. Year after year they were told to hope for the future. Hard work and faith would bring a better life.

The flourishing of the Mestizo people would be a miracle, one prophesied by Our Lady of Guadalupe. The black belt foretold a nativity, a new race of mixed-blood people, the proud descendants of many nations. During the conquest, thousands of Indian women had been desecrated. Many felt ashamed and in great pain. Yet here was the mother of God saying, “I am pregnant, and I am holy.” This was a great benediction to the Indian women who carried the seed of the oppressor. It gave them a sense of destiny, of divine intervention, and most of all of esperanza, or hope, for their children.

Yet Our Lady of Guadalupe’s message was also for all of us who live in these times, because she said, “I am truly your merciful mother, yours and all the inhabitants of this land.”²² She appears as a woman of mixed race, the face of the future, who speaks of universal acceptance and portrays humanity as brothers and sisters. Guadalupe is not just the mother of Indigenous Mestizos but also the mother of diversity—of the European and other immigrants who are part of this land. Perhaps because of this, people of all ages, races, and nationalities have embraced her message and honor her today.

The Birth of la Raza

IT WOULD TAKE GENERATIONS, but the Mestizos from South and Central America and the continental United States would evolve into today’s Hispanics and Latinos. They are connected by their heritage and ancestry as a mixed-race people, the Spanish language, a common spiritual tradition, colonization, and the struggle to free themselves from discrimination. Latino hybrids are the survivors of the conquest and racial conflict but also represent resolution, forgiveness, and cultural reconciliation. These traits, as we shall see, are present in Latino leadership today.

Latin Americans and Hispanic Americans today do not celebrate Columbus Day as the date of the “discovery” of America. After all, our Indigenous ancestors were already here! Latinos across the hemisphere celebrate the encounter of cultures and the birth of a new race on October 12—El Día de la Raza. The term la Raza can be best translated as “the new Latino people of the new world.” A more inclusive definition of la Raza is a new family composed of the original inhabitants of the Americas and all the immigrants from throughout the world who since the time of Columbus have come to the new world in search of a new creation.²³

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. To move toward this multicultural vision, we must first understand and resolve a number of additional historical dynamics. We will circle back to the concept of la Raza in our final section.

Now we will make a historical leap to the continental United States, where a different experience was brewing, one that would mold the modern-day US Latino experience. The Spanish penetration into what is now the US Southwest encompassed an area that was once half of territorial México. The United States forcibly acquired these lands in 1848 and subsequently began invading Central and South America. These acquisitions were sanctioned by a belief in Manifest Destiny and sealed the fate of US Latinos until the dawn of civil rights in the twentieth century. The next chapter outlines the growing cultural, social, political, and economic influence of Latinos today, despite these historical traumas, which is positioning Latinos to lead and transform the American mainstream.