In celebration of Hispanic month in America it needs to be said that as we celebrate many ethnic commemorations throughout each year we must remember that America has always been a melting pot of people who have adopted a way of life that defined freedom as its priority. As Hispanics, meaning those of us with Hispanic origins be they Mexican, Central American, South American, Puerto Rican, Cuban, or Spanish, we came to America seeking the same freedoms that the Pilgrims did as well as the many Europeans who came through Ellis Island during the greatest of immigrations to America. Some came to escape famine and poverty, but still in search of freedom not theirs in Europe and beyond.

My first ancestor came to America circa 1622, landing in the port of Vera Cruz, Mexico, with the annual fleet from Spain. Around forty Spanish galleons usually came into the Vera Cruz harbor around mid-August, taking their turn to deliver goods and passengers coming to the New World. It had been 130 years since America had been discovered by “Cristobal Colon,” or Columbus as he is known in America, when he landed on what he called San Salvador on October 12, 1492.

The “descrubimiento” (discovery) of the Americas set the stage for the beginning of the modern world.

“The age of Columbus is almost without a parallel, presenting perhaps the most striking appearances since the star shone upon Bethlehem. It saw Martin Luther burn the Pope’s bull, and assert a new kind of Independence. It added Erasmus to the broadness of life. Modern art stood confessed in Da Vinci, Michael Angelo, Titian, and Raphael. Copernicus found in the skies a wonderful development without the great telescopic help. The route of the Portuguese by the African cape and the voyage of Columbus opened new worlds to thought and commerce. They made the earth seem to man, north and south, east and west, as man never before had imagined it. It looked as if mercantile endeavor was to be constrained by no bounds. Articles of trade were multiplied amazingly. Each adventure and voyage was not only new and broad, but it was unique for the time and profitable as well. This was the age that brought my first ancestor to America.”

It was only 91 years since the great explorer Hernan Cortez (1531) had conquered the highly innovative Aztec Empire. It was only 82 years since the intrepid Coronado (1540) had explored the vast regions of the American Southwest. It had been only 87 years since Alvar Nunez De Cabeza De Vaca had explored the Texas coast. By 1600, the age of conquest was coming to an end and the period of exploration, settlement, and development was unfolding.

The Spaniards would carry their zeal for new land, precious metals, hardwoods, spices, and salt, into the 19th century. It was not an easy task to explore the regions of the Southwestern United States. It was a time of adventure for the explorers, but it was also a hardship to face the unknown.

It was 1978 during my graduate studies in history that I came across the great historian Carlos E. Castaneda that basically introduced me to Spanish Colonialism and inspired me to pursue my genealogy. I started my search at the Texas Land Office looking for what was known then as the “Porciones” or Spanish Land grants provided early colonizers by the King of Spain. It was there that I first ran across a file in the Richardson library called the Seabury Papers. Since then much has been written about the Seabury papers. Seabury was an attorney that specialized in land grants and did extensive research into lineage for many reasons. Nevertheless, it was there that I discovered the Guerra lineage that belonged to my grandmother on my father’s side.

Captain Antonio Guerra y Canamar was born in 1602, in the mountains of Old Castile (Canamar, 1623). It is assumed from general history that he was like every young man in Spain at the time. Knowing that a new world had been discovered by Columbus and knowing about the explorations of Cabeza De Vaca, Coronado, De Soto, Pineda, and Cortez, Antonio pursued service in the King of Spain’s army that allowed him to literally see the new world. When Antonio came to Mexico circa 1622, he was about twenty years old, and records show he was a Captain in the Spanish Army. He married Luisa Fernandez Del Rio Frio on December 22, 1624, in the Cathedral of Mexico City (Canamar, 1623). Luisa Fernandez Del Rio Frio was a Mestiza of both Indian and Spanish descent. Her lineage could have been Olmec, Aztec, Tlascalan, Haustec, Mixtec, or of any other combination that lived in Mexico City by 1624. By this time most of the Indians were of mixed lineages. The Spaniards had fully integrated with the Aztecs while disease such as smallpox had claimed a great number of them. I soon realized that many of us are the embodiment of what Corky Cortez called “I am Joaquin” in his epic poem.

Mexico City was already a sprawling metropolis by 1622. Hernando Cortez, the conqueror of the Aztecs, had established a hospital in Mexico City, in 1540, to care for the needy. The first University in the Americas was established in Mexico City in 1589. The first library was also built in Mexico City prior to 1600. Captain Antonio Guerra y Canamar arrived in Mexico near the beginning of the European Renaissance.

By 1740, my ancestors had come to what is now Mier, Mexico, and occupied “Porcion 66” on the northern border of the Rio Grande granted by the King of Spain made up of several thousand acres that looked like a triangle touching the Rio Grande. All of the families settled in the famous “Porciones” along the northern border of the Rio Grande came to colonize what is now Texas beginning in the 1730’s. To draw a parallel, the American colonies in the East by the 1730’s were populated and still under English rule. The following is a list of the first families that came to the colony of Mier circa 1730 and for the most part identify the ancestral make up of the Southwest. My ancestors come from “Porciones 66, 67, and 68 as listed.

The First Families to Colonize Mier Circa 1730

Francisco Guerra of “Porcion 66” is a great-grandfather of mine that colonized Mier, Mexico or what we now know as Texas. Sometime later in the late 1600’s two of my ancestors Juan and Vicente Guerra traveled with the explorer Alonzo de Leon into Texas in search of the French explorer La Salle. They found La Salle’s Fort St. Louis on Garcita’s Creek near Matagorda Bay where La Salle and company had been slain by Indians. It was General and later Governor Alonzo de Leon who was the first to see and identify Baffin Bay here in Kleberg County.

The Mexicans, those of Spanish and Aztec lineage, have contributed greatly to the colonization of the American Southwest bringing with them many ethnic foods; names of rivers like the Nueces, Brazos, and Colorado; the structure of city government as we know it today; land and water laws that were established early in their occupation of the Southwest; ranching as we know it today began with the early “vaqueros” of Mexico; architecture that can be seen here in Kingsville; and the first cattle and horses to roam the coastal bend all came from Spain and then Mexico.

The celebration of the Independence of Mexico from Spain on September 16 is more about a people seeking the same freedom from tyranny that the American colonists did in 1776. Today it is a celebration of a people who colonized the American Southwest and became Americans by virtue of Texas Independence from Mexico in 1836 and then becoming a part of the United States in 1845.

Nevertheless, knowing your roots is part of establishing a healthy locus of control versus being marginal in a society made of many folkways, some good and some bad. To that end, the public is invited to a genealogical survey workshop on Spanish Colonialism at the Institute of Rural Development, 915 S 9th, sponsored by speakers Ben Figueroa and Juan Escobar, who are both accomplished genealogists and well versed in Spanish Colonial history. It will be an evening of learning about your past and how to find your ancestors. The workshop will be from 6:30 to 8 pm, Sept. 23, and will conclude with a question and answer period.

For more information call Ben Figueroa at 522-2666.