Roots and Reality

In Mexican American genealogy research, a subtle issue of identity frequently emerges. At a recent book conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center, for example, a man approached the table of Familia, an Orange County-based genealogy group, which helps Mexican Americans trace their ancestry in the Southwest of the United States and in Mexico.

A Familia member asked the man if he wanted to find out about his ancestors’ origins.

“I already know,” the man replied as he walked away. “My last name is Castillo, so my ancestors are from Castillo, Spain.”

Well, probably not, Mario Grajeda, president of Familia, would have tried to explain if he’d had a chance. Nearly all “Spanish” people who were among the earliest settlers of the Southwest came from Mexico, not Spain. The Spaniards traveled first to Mexico and lived some 400 years there before moving north to Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California.

But for some Mexican Americans, the romance of tracing one’s roots to Spain seems more appealing.

Some prefer to think of the founders of Los Angeles as the tall, fair-skinned Spanish conquistadores often romanticized in history, rather than pioneers from a distinct, centuries-old Mexican culture that blended, yes, Spanish bloodlines as well as those of Indians, Africans and Asians.

“Until we came around, there wasn’t anyone researching Mexico, and that is sad,” said Grajeda, whose 2-year-old organization stores its materials in a small corner of a cultural center at Golden West College in Huntington Beach. “I think we do a big disservice to genealogy by bypassing Mexico because that’s where the mixture of the races came to be.”

It’s important to research Mexico to find out about one’s ancestors’ experiences there, Grajeda said, rather than searching primarily for roots to a more “prestigious” European origin.

“We try to encourage our members not to embellish the concept of being descendants of conquistadores,” Grajeda added. “Granted, some people are . . . but we want to put things into perspective, we want our history to be accurate. . . . If Alex Haley was able to popularize genealogy for everyone by tracing his roots to Africa, we should not disavow our indigenous and other roots . . . there’s a lot of richness there.”

An Emphasis on

Spanish Heritage

Groups tracing genealogy of Mexican Americans--or Hispanics, as those who identify more with their Spanish heritage prefer to be called--had been more active in Texas and New Mexico until the last decade when a few groups began to emerge in California, mostly with a heavy emphasis on searching for Spanish roots.

Even now, genealogy groups here--including some of the older ones, such as Los Californianos and Los Puebladores de Los Angeles--largely emphasize their Spanish heritage and tracing families’ histories without going much further back than the time they arrived in California.

Of the handful of other Hispanic genealogy groups in California with varying focuses, Familia has become arguably the most active, with about 120 members finding their ancestors and histories, regular meetings featuring speakers, a bimonthly newsletter, a research trip to Mexico that has reunited members with long-lost relatives, presentations at high schools and hopes for a genealogical journal and Web site.

“[Familia] has the rare combination of really smart, active leadership, a motivated membership that gets together, networks, passes information and microfilm techniques,” said Alex King--a former board member of Los Californianos--who has been researching his family for years as a member of various groups in the area.

“They are taking an informed, modern approach to [genealogy] where many organizations are literally burdened in some fashion by this baggage of identity, how they define themselves and, therefore, what they will not open their minds to,” King said. “That’s what’s great about this organization . . . they revel in everything.”

Spanish or Mexican. European or mixed blood.

The question of identity--which sometimes resurfaces in genealogy--faced by the man at the convention center is actually a deeper question that has confronted Mexican Americans since the settling of the Southwest.

The identity conflict has roots in the different histories of each state and the different takes on Spanish and Mexican history. For instance, members of genealogy groups--and the population in general--in northern New Mexico and southern Colorado refer to themselves as Spanish Americans.

“A lot of people in our chapter will not accept that they are Mexican American. They call themselves Hispanics,” said Wilfred Martinez, president of Genealogical Society of Hispanic America, based in Pueblo, Colo.

History and facts are open to debate, but among other things, Hispanics in that area point to their more direct lines to Spaniards who settled northern New Mexico directly from Spain and their isolation from other Mexican influences.

Identity Issue

Exposes Rivalries

“This Spanish American identity really exposes some of the rivalries within the larger Mexican American community in the Southwest,” said John Nieto-Phillips, assistant professor of history at New Mexico State University, whose dissertation at UCLA was titled “No Other Blood: History, Language and Spanish American Identity in New Mexico.”

“Clearly, there are racial overtones to that identity,” he said. “But those were not the principal reasons people would identify as Spanish Americans. At the turn of the century, it was a way of recasting their identity in the eyes of Congress to give them a European identity.”

In some ways, the question of whether to embrace a Spanish identity over Mexican blood lines is a remnant of the regimen de casta, the caste system used by the Spanish government during colonial Mexico in which pure-blood Spaniards were at the top, and black and indigenous peoples were at the bottom, Nieto-Phillips said.

The caste is demonstrated in the documents--such as birth, marriage and death certificates--that Familia members commonly find in their research, which describe people by their bloodlines. At the top was Espanol (full-blood Spanish), then came other categories, such as mestizo (the offspring of an Espanol with an Indian), mulato (Espanol and African), Morisco (Espanol and Chinese), lobo, coyote, gibaro--more than 30 classifications and a few other miscellaneous designations that filled out the “lower” designations.

Cal State Northridge Chicano studies professor Rodolfo Acuna says the caste system was influential in Mexico, and its significance is still evident in some parts--such as Chihuahua--where many residents say their blood lines are less mixed.

The two oldest Latino historical and genealogical groups in Los Angeles face the question of identity even today--how much to identify with a pure European ancestry and how much to recognize the indigenous, black and Asian roots that are part of the city’s origins.

“It’s been a real problem with us,” said Maurice Bandy, president of Los Californianos, which admits into the organization only those who can trace their roots in California to before the Treaty of Guadalupe in 1848. “In the older generation, some will say, ‘My ancestors came directly from Spain.’ Well, they didn’t. . . . The younger folks will say, ‘Wait a minute, they came from Mexico.’

“The organization is gradually changing, but there are people in the group who still think an Indian is not a respectable ancestor,” Bandy said. “But I also think there are people in the group who say, ‘They are my ancestors, and they are damned well respectable.’ . . . We don’t speak with a unified voice.”

Los Puebladores, which specializes in tracing the descendants of the 11 commonly recognized founding families of Los Angeles, has faced similar conflicts.

“Basically, our organization is more Spanish,” said Robert Smith, president of Los Puebladores. “Most of my family lines came through [explorer Hernando] Cortes.”

Some say the older members in both groups grew up with prejudice and, therefore, adopted as much of their Spanish heritage as they could.

“My grandmother’s aunt, if you told her she was Mexican, you would probably get shot,” Smith said.

Genealogy Now

His Passion

Grajeda, 44, who works in the maintenance department at Golden West College, is giving a presentation on the Spanish presidios in Mexico during a meeting at Cal State Northridge. He studied history for two years at Golden West; genealogy has become his passion.

“He should be a professor,” jokes Al Garcia, 73, a Familia member who has traced his Garcia lineage to 1788 in the Mexican state of Zacatecas.

During breaks, about 40 members pass around new information. Newly traced Rodriguezes, Lopezes. Charts that take people back 50 more years, some in the 1600s, others further back. In villages in Chihuahua. Zacatecas. Michoacan.

Some of the most involved members, like Sylvia and Aaron Magdaleno, have indexed documents and purchased census lists and books that can help members do research.

“They are like walking encyclopedias,” Rita Brown says of the Magdalenos. “You tell them a surname, and they know where it’s from.”

The research that begins to paint intimate family histories comes from microfilmed documents that the Mormon Church, which has vast genealogical resources, found in Mexican churches and civil institutions.

Familia hopes one day to open its own headquarters for the public, as a complete resource center of Mexican lineage.

For now, Familia urges its members to be open-minded about where research leads them.

“We have had so many people trace their ancestry,” Grajeda said. “They have five mulatto lines, 20 Indian lines, and maybe two Spanish lines, but, boy, they’re tracing that Spanish line.”

At one point or another the members will find they have common relatives--or other connections.

“Here in L.A. we found out that my family was on the opposite side of her family in the revolution,” Grajeda says about Brown.

Her family, the Terrazas, were one of the wealthiest families in Mexico during the early 1900s, owning some 20 million acres of land and numerous haciendas. Her great-great-grandfather, Luis Terrazas Jr., was jailed for opposing Pancho Villa when he marched into Chihuahua City. He survived a hanging attempt and escaped to the U.S.

Grajeda’s great-grandfather was Nicholas Fernandez, one of Villa’s key generals.

Such history is why Mexico should not be overlooked in genealogy, Grajeda says. Like other Americans who try to trace their connection to heroes of the American Civil War, Mexican Americans should also try to discover their families’ participation in history on both sides of the border.

“It’s not so much that we are trying to go back to Mexico and recapture everything that is Mexican about us,” Grajeda said. “When trying to identify yourself, you have to understand the experiences that your family underwent.”

Jose Cardenas can be reached at jose.cardenas@latimes.com.