If you’ve spent any time in New Mexico, you’ve probably encountered someone with a Spanish surname who doesn’t speak any Spanish and, if you ask them about their background, they might simply say they’re Hispanic, without mentioning any specific connection to a Spanish-speaking country.
I am one of those people. Growing up in Albuquerque, I never felt the need to explain my maternal family’s ethnicity beyond “Hispanic,” and I was rarely asked to do so.
The first time I questioned my identity was when I was 18 and filling out a college application. I expected the usual steps: check “White” for race and “Hispanic/Latino” for ethnicity. But this application required me to provide specific details about my background. The options were Cuban, Mexican/Chicano, Puerto Rican, Latino, and “Other.”
I had to text my mom to find out which boxes to check.
“Spanish origin. From Spain that is,” she wrote.
I can assure you that this is not the case at all: After a short and confusing phone call with her, I checked the “Other” and “Mexican/Chicano” boxes, without fully understanding what that meant for us.
It wasn’t until I left the state that I realized this widespread misunderstanding and disconnection from my Hispanic roots is a uniquely New Mexican experience.
As a freshman in college, I attended a predominantly white university on the East Coast. I benefit from white privilege — I inherited my English father’s German last name and many of my physical features — and have never experienced the racism that Hispanic and Latinx communities often face.
I found myself having to explain my identity more often when I lived outside of New Mexico, which prompted me to do some research on my state’s history and my ancestry.
To sum up the complicated history, Spanish colonization included the areas now known as Mexico and New Mexico, where the Spaniards interbred with the indigenous people. Their mixed descendants, and the “stereotypical” image of Hispanic or Latino people, were known as mestizos, according to the Journal of Linguistic Geography.
Parts of this region became known as Mexico, which at the time included what is now New Mexico. The mixed race people who lived in what is now New Mexico were Mexican. When the United States occupied New Mexico in the 1800s, residents were given the choice of moving south to Mexico or staying where they were, according to the University of Houston.
My ancestors stayed in Belen, a town just south of Albuquerque where I spent a lot of my childhood, and those who stayed were pressured to conform to white, non-Hispanic, or Anglo, society, and they began to engage with Europe and to identify strictly as Spanish.
Yet, because their language was despised and they could be punished for speaking Spanish, they stopped teaching their children Spanish.
My grandmother is the last person in my immediate family who can speak Spanish fluently.
Now I understand why my mother identifies as Spanish. The term “Hispanic” encompasses all people who speak Spanish, including Spain. I’m comfortable identifying as “Latina,” an umbrella term for people from all of Latin America but not Spaniards. But I still felt uncomfortable because I don’t speak Spanish.
A few months into my research, a white colleague called me a “Latina with no evidence.”
It’s not my fault that my grandparents never passed Latin on to my mother, or that they felt the need to let their language and identity die with them in the first place. They were forced to assimilate, to throw away all “evidence” of their Latinxness, and now I am experiencing the effects of that.
I shared my knowledge with my peers, did some more research, and learned that “Chicano” is a term used to describe people of Mexican descent born in the U.S. History books show that people from New Mexico who identify as Hispanic, or Hispano, or Nuevo Mexicano, played a major role in the Chicano movement of the 1960s.
Although I now feel that my identity is best defined by the word “Chicana,” many in my family still identify as simply Hispanic.
However, a few months ago, I was talking to my uncle, and he told me that his biggest regret in life was that he never became fluent in Spanish because of assimilation.
This was the first time in my adult life that I felt connected to my identity through a family member who was interested in preserving our culture and understanding our history. He told me things I had never heard my family say aloud, and it gave me hope for the validation and preservation of our identity.
“You’re Mexican-American,” he said. “Don’t forget that.”
