Discovering My Hispanic Identity Through Genealogy

Growing up in Southern California, with its sizable and diverse Hispanic population, it's perhaps surprising that my ethnic identity was something that anyone would question. Yet because my family lived in a relatively sheltered, predominantly white suburb of Los Angeles, my heritage was something of a conundrum.

I'll never forget my first day of Spanish class in the seventh grade when the white, non-Hispanic teacher, taking roll call, saw my last name was ‘Perez.’  She looked up from her list and with an excited smile, asked “Hablas español?” I stared back at her blankly when one of my white, non-Hispanic classmates chimed in, “No, he doesn’t speak Spanish.” The classmate in question, who I had known since the fourth grade, grew up with a Spanish-speaking housekeeper (and incidentally, he went on to become a founding member of the Grammy award-winning rock group, Linkin Park). I remember feeling slightly ashamed that I had no idea how to respond. My teacher seemed perplexed at my lack of comprehension, but my parents never spoke Spanish, so I had no idea why it was expected that I would.

Recounting what had happened at home later that evening, my mom, who had grown up in New Mexico, explained that her parents had wanted their children to speak English exclusively, to avoid the kind of stigma and discrimination that they had faced as Spanish speakers. My father, who had grown up in Colorado, faced similar pressure to assimilate. The explanation made sense, and I didn’t question my grandparents’ choices, or whether they had lost anything in their attempt to fit in.

Years later, when it came time to fill out college applications, I learned to check the appropriate demographic boxes for race as ‘White’ and ethnicity as ‘Hispanic/Latino.’ But I had no real sense of connection to that part of my identity. People I met would sometimes ask, “Where did your family come from?” “Well, all of my grandparents were born here, in the United States,” I would reply. I had never even been to Mexico, or anywhere else in Latin America. Some of the more insistent inquirers would press on, “Ok but where did your great-grandparents come from?” At the time, I had no idea and couldn’t offer any further explanation. It was clear, at least in their minds, that a Hispanic American was likely an immigrant from some other place.

After college, I joined the Peace Corps as a municipal development volunteer in a small town in northern Honduras. The locals I worked with pronounced my name correctly, “PEH-rhez” rather than the way my family had always said it, “pur-EZ.” But they were amused by the fact that I said I was Latino. “Pero sos gringo,” they would reply, with a laugh (“But you’re gringo”). Even though they didn’t recognize me as one of them, it was in that small town that I learned to speak Spanish with fluency and begin to connect with my Hispanic heritage. During much of my career, I lived and worked in Honduras and other Latin American countries and developed an appreciation for the region’s culture, history and diversity.

My mom eventually got into genealogy and began creating our family tree on Ancestry.com. In 2017, she gifted me a DNA test kit and I was shocked at the results. I had equivalent amounts of Indigenous and European ancestry: 47% Indigenous Americas, and 47% Spain, Basque, Portugal and Northern Africa. I was intrigued, but too busy at the time to focus on doing any follow-up research. Then in 2020 I was living in New York City when the pandemic hit. With extra time on my hands, I decided to open my mom’s research files, log into Ancestry and begin exploring our family history.

I was amazed to discover that a great deal of genealogical research had already been uncovered and published, much of it by the New Mexico Genealogical Society, Hispanic Genealogy Research Center of New Mexico and independent researchers and academics. I learned that the progenitor of my mom’s family in New Mexico, Juan Montes Vigil, had arrived in the Spanish colony of New Spain from Asturias, Spain in 1611. Genealogists have traced this branch of the Vigil family back to King Alfonso IX of Spain, King Henry II of England and other monarchs of Europe. As I gathered more information, I was fascinated to learn that I was descended from six of the Conquistadors who took part in the siege and capture of the city of Tenochtitlan under Hernán Cortés in 1521, one member of the Coronado expedition, one member of the La Salle expedition, and 55 of the colonists who founded the Kingdom of New Mexico under Captain General Don Juan de Oñate from 1598-1600. On the indigenous side, I also found out that I had ancestry from Navajo, Apache, Tewa, Mexica and other Native American groups.

As I learned about my own identity and history, I discovered why my family never had much of an affinity for México and always called ourselves Spanish. The Republic of México achieved its independence from Spain in 1821. At that time, my family had already been living under the Spanish Crown for over 200 years. Then in 1848, New Mexico was ceded to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War. The Spanish side of my family has lived in New Mexico for over 425 years, only 27 of which were when it was part of México. On the indigenous side, they have been there for thousands of years. As many Hispanic people with deep roots in the Southwest frequently say, our families never crossed the border, the border crossed us.

I continue to research Hispanic genealogy and my own family history, deepening my appreciation for the complexity of Hispanic identity. I have published four articles in the quarterly publication of the New Mexico Genealogical Society and worked with a professor at UC Berkeley to transcribe a 17th century manuscript from the Spanish Archives of New Mexico detailing the recruitment of colonists for New Mexico by my 8x-great-grandfather Juan Páez Hurtado (see my publications list on this blog). Now when people ask me, “Where did your family come from?” I have plenty to say on the topic. My only question is: “Do you want the short version or the long version?”