Opinion

Hispanic? Don’t deny our Native American heritage

Tony Castaneda, Lipan Apache, performs in a Northern Traditional dance as American Indians in Texas hold a Pow Wow at the Alzafar Shrine Auditorium on Feb. 1, 2014. Tony Castaneda, Lipan Apache, performs in a Northern Traditional dance as American Indians in Texas hold a Pow Wow at the Alzafar Shrine Auditorium on Feb. 1, 2014. Photo: Tom Reel / San Antonio Express-News Photo: Tom Reel / San Antonio Express-News Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Hispanic? Don’t deny our Native American heritage 1 / 1 Back to Gallery

A recent Express-News op-ed written by Washington Post Writers Group columnist Esther Cepeda ran with the banner headline, “Hispanics blending into Melting Pot.”

Melting pot is such a ridiculous metaphor. She probably meant a huge salad bowl. She writes that people, “scoff or just get angry at the notion that someday Hispanics will melt into the American pot just like the Germans, Irish, and Italians before them. But like it or not, that day is undoubtedly coming.”

I scoffed immediately because Cepeda is buying into that notion that we are Hispanic. As long as we continue to abide by colonial definitions to describe us, we will never come to know our true heritage.

And we are not Mexican! Mexican is a nationality, not a race. In fact, the entire concept of race is a 17th century invention to classify and define people. It is symbolically paper genocide of our ethnicity and who we are when people define us in pseudo-anthropological terms.

If the government were to do a DNA test on a majority of Hispanics, they’d find out that most of us are Native Americans.

While the infamous “Trail of Tears” invoked by President Andrew Jackson may have been used to eradicate the Cherokees and other Indians from the eastern seaboard, the white settlers of Texas committed genocide with a stroke of a pen by calling us “Mexican.”

We are a beautiful mixture of Lipan Apache, Coahuiltecan and Comanche who lived in this region.

We are the sons and daughters of the original people who founded these lands and lived in harmony for centuries before the massive invasion of white immigrants from the United States.

The first Texas settlers were the first Mexicans. They took an oath to Mexico to become citizens before being offered the acres of land. They thus became our first Mexican-Americans. And these first Mexican-Americans were booted out because they wanted to secede from Mexico and used the old “state’s rights” adage as a smoke screen to introduce slavery.

I marvel at the revelers who celebrate “A Night in Old San Antonio” and the “Battle of Flowers” parade because they don’t have any inkling what they are celebrating. They hide behind the mythology of freedom and conquest.

Celebrating what? The out-right robbery of land from the rightful owners.

So now that the history lesson is over, we can now address the notion that a wall should be built to keep the Mexicans out. In fact, we are Native American and have a birthright to roam these lands.

Even xenophobe Donald Trump is as wrong as many Jamestown generation Americans who imply that many of us have just arrived.

We have lived in harmony with this land since before Christopher Columbus first arrived from the Old World. Christopher Columbus didn’t discover this land. We discovered him to our detriment.

I always smile when I hear Woody Guthrie’s song, “This Land is Your Land,” because it truly is my land — even before the coming of Sam Houston and his band of property-thieving mercenaries.

Leo Pacheco is a direct descendant of the Canary Islanders who founded San Antonio. His family lineage merged with the Mission Native Americans. He is an adjunct professor of public administration at San Antonio College, and the former Bexar County Democratic Chairman.