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Just thought I would make a comment about
identity from a different perspective.
My uncle Tomás, who never set
foot in the US and of course, did not speak a word of English, told me the
following:
"We are Tlaxcalans. We are not Mexicans
although one of our greatgrandmothers was an Aztec." He used to say that in our
family dona Cecilia was the only Mexican. As I said before, She was a
Mexica (Aztec or Mexican).
He chafed everytime someone from the
area in Coahuila my family settled in said "we are Mexicans". He used
to say that that moniker (or gentilicio as it is properly called) became popular
around the 1930 with a push from the Mexican government to unite the
nation. Apparently before that people still were having problems feeling
themselves Mexican. Once a group of officials from the Mexican government
told the people at a meeting of agricultores "You are all Mexicans."
My uncle and the others promptly responded angrily "Lo serán
ustedes!"
His contention was that we knew what we were, and that
wasn't Mexican.
Uncle Tomás was born in 1904 and has
been dead for many years. As for being Tlaxcalan, I take that now with a
grain of salt. Uncle Tomás used to say that his family line was
Indian, native to the Americas although Dona Cecilia was really
Aztec. We believed that for over 300 years. Well, we just had
the results back from DNA testing and that famous Indian line isn't
really
Indian at all. It turned out to be more closely
related to the Europeans from Nortwest Europe and more closely realted to the
Vikings than other Europeans. This is what someone I consulted with
regarding the results sent to me: "The set of results you sent me belongs to a haplogroup
named I1a. That haplogroup is only seen among men whose paternal lines are of
European descent."
I had the results checked twice by different companies and
they came back the same so I bowed to reality.
My cousins are having a hard time
accepting what they now know they are. The ones with the degrees are the ones
having the biggest problems accepting reality.
Uncle Tomás was white looking and
married and Indian woman whose family came from Nieves, Zacatecas. As you
can imagine their kids are pure capirotada as far as looks go. Some look
like Indians painted white, others look like Spanish painted dark and yet others
look like what they are: mestizos. Same story with his brothers and sisters and
their kids' kids. Some have blue eyes, others green or brown but none with
black eyes.
Because we are so mixed we look like
everybody and anybody when we travel abroad. I also have a problem with
nationalities and ethnic groups: I have been taken as being any nationality
except Mexican. People get angry at me because I don't speak
their language.
My family has not figured out yet what to
call itself in the US yet and now we have to contend with another finding.
Maybe we'll just settle on what the Spanish priests used to call the
majority of Mexicans: naturales del pais (which one?.
Elvira
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, January 12, 2006 12:55
PM
Subject: [ranchos] Re: double
surnames
Erlinda:
The whole Chicano vs. Mexican-American vs.
Latin@ vs. Hispanic debate
is a very contentious one in the United
States. I think that all of
those terms are very politically laden
such that there is no single
one that everyone would agree with.
There is an interesting episode
where the renowned author Sandra Cisneros
balked at being featured in
Hispanic magazine because of such a
disagreement. She agreed only
after the magazine agreed to show her
on the cover in a profile shot
with a fake tatoo reading "LATINA" across
her arm.
There is an interesting article on this:
http://www.hispanicmagazine.com/2000/dec/Features/latino.html
I
suppose that if you want to designate descendancy from peoples of
Mexico,
Mexican or Mexican-American would be the most precise. I
will leave
my commentary at that lest I get myself in trouble.
Interesting thing
though, I have run across documents where the
indigenous peoples of the
area around Colotlan and Totatiche would
refer to the indigenous
colonizers from the south (Tlaxcaltecs,
Otomis and Huastecs) as
"mexicanos" designating that they spoke the
Mexican language (i.e.
nahuatl) and they did not consider themselves
as such, since they spoke a
different (Tepehuan) language. One of
these references appears in an
interview with one of the last
tepehuan speakers in Azqueltan, Jalisco in
1912!
I think that the term Mexican to designate all of the
ethinicities of
Mexico was probably not adopted until after
independence. I imagine
that those of pure Spanish descent would not
consider themselved
Mexican before that, especially when the term
specifically refered to
the nahuatl-speakers of central
Mexico.
--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, "Erlinda Castanon-Long"
<longsjourney@y...> wrote:
>
> I want to thank everyone
for the input on double surnames and y
versus
> de... I had
forgotten that I use a double surname too! I felt I
> didn't want
to give up my Hispanic maiden name so just hyphenated
it
> with my
married name. That makes me Castanon-Long, I guess in
Latin
>
America that would make me Castanon y Long ... I found at the
family
> reunion that most of my female cousins from my generation did the
> same. Many of us did not marry Hispanic but would have kept our
> maiden name regardless. Just like someone said, it's a matter of
> family pride..
>
> One more question.. which is
'politically' correct to designate our
> nationality of origin if we or
our ancestors were from Mexico...
> Hispanic, Latino, Mexican-American
or American-Mexican? I find I
> really upset some people when I
call myself Hispanic. I'm told that
> excludes my Indio blood... People
ask me what my nationality is
> because I'm just brown enough to not be
Anglo but have light green
> eyes, my sister get's the same thing and
she has blue eyes and
> freckles. I still laugh when told I don't look
like a Mexican...
what
> does a Mexican look like!!!!
>
> Linda in Everett
>
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