Lessons Learned from My Forefathers

Lessons Learned from My Forefathers

The readings for this paper have further indulged my personal knowledge on the origin of my heritage. I remember as a young adult heeding warnings instilled in me by my parents and both sets of grandparents, against the Anglo or as my forefathers called them the "gringo."

As I made my own way through life I never fully trusted the gringo; always to this day, being suspicious of and questioning their kindness.

Even though, by all accounts, both my parents had decent upbringings, each of my parents derived from parents who were land owners, my father's family faring well in urban areas and my mother's family more agriculturally based on both sides of the Rio Grand River or as it is known in Mexico, El Rio Bravo. These suspicions against the gringo still facet my being.

Growing up I was told that the gringos ran off the Mexican Texans who would not fight to defend their land and those who were foolish to trust the gringos would be found dead, victims of so called accidents, resulting with their heirs loosing the land that was rightly theirs to inherit. Not trusting the gringo did not mean fearing them; I was never taught to fear the gringo, I was taught to stand up as their equal.

For the first time in my life, I have before me, written proof of what was told to me of my heritage by my parents and grandparents. The gringos truly did take advantage, rape and pillage that which belonged to the Mexican American and American Mexican, like those whom were my forefathers, those same forefathers whose blood runs in my veins.

The lessons I was taught to heed the gringo was brought on by memories recorded in my ancestors minds. Memories of injustices and events that were so horrific in nature that they were handed down for each generation to remember, never to be forgotten and lost in time. As the proverb states: "to the victor the spoils." As a victim of the victors I was never taught out of any school history book the loser's side of the story.

The very first day of class, the professor held up the text book "Mexican Americans/American Mexicans From Conquistadors to Chicanos"1 and the very title peeked my interest. I had never heard the term: American Mexicans as opposed to Mexican Americans; I was to learn that the two are not synonymous.

Two historical events are most important in creating Mexican Americans and/or American Mexicans: "The first was the Aztec conquest by Cortez, which initiated the process whereby Indians and Spaniards fused biologically and culturally to create the Mexican. The second was the military defeat of Mexico by the United States, which politically realigned the present day Southwest and made Mexican Americans of the resident Mexican."2

With the ending of the Mexican war in February 1848 and a later