RE: [ranchos] Luna & Herrera

I live in Southern California. San Bernardino-Riverside Inland Empire. In short I came back from Teocaltiche, Jalisco with a book written by a local historian. My husbands uncle by marriage noticed the book and his mother Arambula--how Arab can it get-- was from there. My father's uncle married a Luna from Nochistlan. The circle gets tighter, as a friend of mine is a Luna cousin to my second cousins. My husbands' cousins' family is from Juchipilia(sic), Santoya. My niece a Rodriguez like me attended UCLA and during a retreat asked her friend a Rodriguez(Luna) to kill time where his family was from, he said Barstow, my niece said, no relatives Rodriguez in Barstow,{wrong} so where were they born...Needles, Ca...oops my dad was born there..so off to the phone to call the elders and yes, they are first cousins 3X's removed...sharing the same ggg=grandparents. I laugh at my New Mexico friends who claim puro Espanol..no the Indians you mentioned as co-conspirators were made honorary Espanoles and given land grants in New Mexico. Spanish people do not share the same ethnic history or language. They have several provinces. Political boundaries are not ethnic or cultural groups. We are all USA Americans but we are different culturally.

It is important to recognize that all mankind comes form Mesopotamia. All mankind regardless of country has genes that are light and dark. Dark is the root. So if you listened, (which I did not, don't care, like my men dark), to our relatives interested in getting lighter or staying lighter you had to marry someone with those characteristics until the recessive gene of light became more likely to determine the 1percent of the DNA that constitutes eye, hair and skin color. As this group is realizing the provinces we are from will yield alot of Jewish heritage. Jews before the Diaspora were middle-eastern. Those that went to the western European cities like Germany intermarried and broadened like us the color spectrum. The Sephardi went to the New World or Egypt and kept the more dominant dark characteristics. The heritage we have from the provinces this group is searching begins immediately with the settlement of colonists from Spain in the mid 1550's. The Indian group you identify was sent further north. They were not going to be given the wealth the Spaniards wanted for themselves in mining. The Mayans were brought from the Yucatan as slaves to mine. So another example of Indians not being indignous. Also becaue of the Castas marriage was illegal just like Asians and blacks could not legally marry so-called whites in the USA. You could shack up and have kids, until the late 1880's but not marry. But remember we are researching a cultural snapshot in time..we are all including Indians from the same roots of the biblical tribes form Mesopotamia.. modern day Baghdad, Iraq.