Emilie,

Thanks for sharing your thoughts and reflections since childhood 
about Mexican history.

I have frequently wondered more or less about the same things myself, 
but more so since I started my pursuit of genealogy.  I'm sure you'll 
agree that in this sense genealogy is much more than a simple hobby.

If everyone was at least partially aware of their own genealogical 
roots we would surely have a most tolerant and peaceful world.  As 
Mexicans, most of us are the product of the clash of two opposing 
worlds and cultures.  As difficult as it is to admit the painful 
facts of our ancestral history, we have to come to terms with both 
sides of our nature, and reconcile our inner self with the past.

I believe we should trascend the feelings of guilt or remorse as much 
as we should trascend the feelings of revenge or vindictiveness.  
Whenever we instruct those that come after us and cite or expose an 
episode of our history, we should never forget that greater calling 
we have as reconcilers, as peacemakers.  The pursuit of genealogy is 
always a uniting not a dividing force!

Victor

--- In ranchos@yahoogroups.com, "Emilie Garcia" <auntyemfaustus@h...> 
wrote:
> Joseph,
> 
> I guess I have been feeling guilty about what the Conquest did to 
Mexico and South America since I was in school.  When I was little, 
in grammar school, they started to teach us about the history of 
Mexico and the Southwest, (something my father, not my mother, was 
aware of)  and when I found out what the Spaniards had done, I went 
to my father and told him that I hated every drop of Spanish blood in 
me because I thought it was terrible that the Spaniards had reduced 
the Aztecs' beautiful pyramids to rubble and built Catholic 
cathedrals on top of them.   
> 
> He told me that I shouldn't feel that way since we were Mestizos 
and the blood of both ran in our veins.  He said the Indians were 
very cruel people whose religion condoned human sacrifice.  (I think 
he even told me that women were treated very poorly by the Indians, 
whereas the Spaniards put women on a pedestal--I think he inferred 
that had the Indians won, I would be making corn tortillas in a hut 
there instead of living free here). He himself was an atheist, and he 
hated priests, but he never told me why.  He was very torn about his 
feelings for Mexico.  He had loved his childhood there, but he had 
hated the oligarchy there.  He blamed them for having to leave Mexico 
at that time.  The fighting between the Federales and the 
Revolucionarios was the worst there in that place.
> 
> You know, today we had a visit from one of our friends who has a 
young son 16 years old who has been watching the "How the West Was 
Won" series on TV.  His son's reaction was the same as mine when he 
saw what the Indians had suffered under the white man and his 
manifest destiny.  He was very upset by the revelation.  I think at 
an early age we either develop a social consciousness or we do not.  
Some cheer the white man's conquests and others feel bad about the 
sacrificing of the indigent people, their customs, their religions, 
their language, their history etc.  It is this pillaging and 
subjugation that makes it impossible to trace our Indian ancestors.  
Our Indio ancestors had traditions, oral histories that are now lost.
> 
> Emilie Garcia
> Port Orchard, WA.
>