Half Hispanics don't exist Famy

[kamcho_papio]

On another note ,my sister lives in New Mexico and her ex-husband was "Spanish". She said his family and many of the others in the Taos area consider themselves descendants of the conquistadors and therefore they are Spanish ,not Mexican. Calling them Mexican or even hinting at it was an insult.(?) She said her ex was bullied as a child by the Mexicans since he was Spanish. I am not from the southeast,so I don't know the culture of the history of why this feud would still be going on when both have been there for generations.

I lived in the area a few years but researched this fairly thoroughly. As I understand it, the idea of being descended from conquistadors is unlikely: it was a male operation, with men, men and men. They needed women from somewhere, and in many cases they were Indian women (and there goes the 'Spanish' thing), or part of the later generations who settled with the intent of farming and establishing colonies. However, since the Spanish settlements are quite old, they settled into their own cultural patterns ("Spanish" food of the SW bears very little resemblance to Spanish food from Spain, for example. But because they were there for a long time (and often owned property, businesses, were highly esteemed in the communities, etc) the Mexicans-from-Mexico were both a cultural and economic contrast. Many of the Mexicans were landless, often migrants, etc. Not all, but many. So basically it was a "we were here first" sort of thing, as well as a landowner-worker hierarchy. On top of it, the Anglo expansion into the SW caused other problems: Anglos tended to be unable to sort out the nuances of the colonial descendants.

Someone explained the social hierarchy to me like this:

Descendents of Spanish colonials

White people/Anglo

Native Americans

Third or more generation Mexicans

Other people

First or second generation Mexicans or Central Americans

Obviously, this is just another person's explanation (and not how he and his family operated) but there are some real economic and power situations where this can be seen. There are some descendants who are of nothing but Spanish heritage although most are of mixed ancestries, but like with many examples of assimilation, the real story includes access to wealth and capital, etc.

[marmalade]

Well, I guess it's dependent upon where you live in the country and the type of Hispanics/Latinos which are predominate there. I'm from New Jersey, so we have a higher percentage of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. I assume the percentage may not be as high in the West Coast where people of Latin American descent are probably in the majority. If the definition I was told is one that is commonly agreed upon by the Spanish-speaking community, I could understand someone of non-Hispanic descent taking offense to being called Hispanic...as if everyone who speaks Spanish comes from only one place. Likewise, I know people of Hispanic descent who get equally insulted when someone mistakenly refers to their food, culture, language, or traditions as being "Mexican"...as if that is the only spanish-speaking culture.

True that the Latin-Americans on the West Coast are probably 95% Mexican, Central or South American in origin and that may have an influence on how they perceive themselves, since many of them are 3rd generation or less - immigrating due to the military coups that cropped up (with CIA influence/help), especially during the Reagan years.

I also think the poster who mentioned political activism is onto something since the majority of Latinos I know are, as I mentioned before, from either work (at an at-risk school) or my own schooling in education, which attracts VERY liberal, alturistic activist types (y'all have outed me). :mrgreen: They get VERY offended at the term "Hispanic" to identify them racially, culturally or ethnically. OTOH, my next door neighbor just calls himself an old Mexican, despite looking like a medium-skinned Anglo. For the record, only one of my three sisters got the Mexican dark skin, but her features are very dainty; my other two sisters are lily white. The one dark sister looks like the mailman's kid next to the rest of us. NONE of us look Italian at all. I look about as British as they come; pasty white with gray-blue eyes, and my brother varies only in that he got green eyes.

The Mexican side of the family is pretty much a rainbow of shades. I think the fact that the sister who denies her heritage is pale makes her susceptible to feelings of superiority. Too bad that my niece (born to two lily white parents - Dutch father) turned out somewhere in between white and mestizo to ruin her facade. SHE actually looks Jewish; from Lord knows where she got the stereotypically thick, curly hair. Genetics are a wonderful thing!