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"My wish would be to travel in a time machine during Taos' Spanish Colonial period when everyone would stop fighting so that they could trade. The valley of Taos was filled with diverse people," novelist, retired librarian, sculptor and santero Orlando Romero said at a Cinco de Mayo talk last week at the Laboratory. Photo by Leroy N. Sanchez, Public Affairs

Speaker: Spanish ancestors are French, Jewish, Irish

Historian Romero helps Lab celebrate Cinco de Mayo

"Of all the Europeans that settled in America, the Spanish were the least racial, because Spain had long been [invaded] by many peoples," said Orlando Romero, novelist, retired librarian, sculptor and santero. Romero spoke last week as part of Los Alamos' Cinco de Mayo celebration in the Physics Building Auditorium at Technical Area 3.

Romero's presentation "Multiculturalism, Colonial Style: Did your great-great-great-great grandpa really look like that?" provided a historical and genealogical look at our ancestors beyond stereotypes to help individuals gain a greater understanding of the connections between New Mexicans to Spain, France, Ireland, Africa and Native America during the Spanish Colonial period.

"Most of us have always believed that contemporary America is a 'melting pot,' but New Mexico documents reveal something more, something I prefer to call a salad bowl of dynamic ethnic, racial and cultural relations," Romero said.

Romero referred to the military muster rolls the Spanish government kept for every town or village in the colonies, documenting the racial background of all the inhabitants. The muster rolls described a palette of color such as a man's age, height, hair color, eye color, complexion and distinguishing marks, he said.

Romero mentioned that he travels to Spain extensively and was thrilled when he saw more "little people" like himself, referring to the fact that during the Colonial period men were 5'6" at most, although with better nutrition people are becoming much taller, he said.

"The great tragedy of the Pueblo Revolt during the colonial period is that valuable documents were burned and destroyed. The remaining documents also deal with the treatment of the Indians, taxation, coffee and are somewhat mundane, but when they are connected they're art. The Spaniards were fantastic record keepers and many documents are still [available]," Romero said.

Romero also pointed out that Spanish people were not dropped off by helicopter from Spain into New Mexico, but instead, they came through Mexico first, traveling primarily up the Camino Real. The result was a intermixing with Native Americans producing Mestizo children, he said.

In Spanish Colonial New Mexico it was acceptable to have intermixing of bloodlines and there were incredible racial mixtures, Romero said. "It was not a hang up to marry anyone they chose, although intermarriage followed class lines," he said, noting that members of Spanish colonial nobility married into what they perceived to be the Native American upper-class. "A caste, not racial, system existed," Romero said.

The Spanish were the first to confront the questions posed by colonization; about what is the proper, just and moral relationship between Europeans, Africans and Native Americans, Romero said.

Romero also provided the audience with examples of diversity. He said "Anglo" men, a number of them French, were either cohabitating or married to local Hispano women. The opening of the Santa Fe Trail, American occupation, the arrival of French trappers and an assorted host of other "Anglos" in the form of Germans, Greeks, Italians, etc., during the years, 1840-1912, leading up to New Mexico's statehood, added to the diverse Hispano population that had been here since the colonial period.

"We are like a salad bowl ... you can't enjoy salad with only lettuce unless you're a rabbit. What is needed are tomatoes, onions and assorted veggies," Romero said.

The talk was sponsored by the Hispanic Diversity Working Group, the Laboratory's Diversity/Affirmative Action Board and the Diversity (DVO) Office.

--Kathryn Ostic

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