Note: This is a retelling of an essay I posted in 2017. I thought it appropriate for today.
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The descendants of immigrants who made history
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When I watch today's news and hear how our government is erasing ethnic studies from our schools, banning books mentioning race, and attacking Mexican immigrants and those from other parts of Latin America, with or without official documents, I can’t help
but take it personally.
Oh, sure, intellectually, I know I am protected from deportation, but when I look in the mirror and see the
olive skin and high cheekbones I've inherited from my Spanish and indigenous
ancestors, I know I'm suspect. Who knows what might happen if I get swept up in an
immigration raid and don’t have the necessary documents to prove my Yankee
status. An ICE agent on a mission might look at me and say, “I don’t wanna hear
it, Pancho.”
It wouldn’t be the first time. Immigration enforcement deported hundreds-to-thousands
of Mexican Americans in the 1930s and again in the 1950s when politicians needed
a scapegoat to blame for their reckless economic decisions. Even though I am a
third-generation American, my children fourth generation, my grandchildren
fifth generation, and the newest edition, my sixth-generation great grandchild, why am I made to feel like a stranger in my own land?
According to archeologists and linguists, my Mexican Indian ancestors
had been traveling from the far reaches of Mexico up to what we know today as
Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana for generations, traces of the Nahuatl language detected
in Shoshone, a root language of many northern indigenous people.
We're talking about thousands of
years before the English landed at present day Massachusetts or the Spaniards marched
into Tenochtitlan. Some paleontologists and geologists claim their findings of particular
stones and minerals along the trail from Cuzco, Peru, through Mexico and up into New Mexico and Colorado are evidence of early migration patterns.
As a literature teacher, I found my calling in storytelling, both
fiction and non-fiction, reaching back into history to listen to the voices of
those who came before us. The Inca, Maya, and Azteca established empires long before the founding of the first colony at Jamestown. San Diego, San Gabriel, and Los Angeles are the oldest settlements on the West Coast, or what the Spanish named Alta
California, and the Chinese called "Gold Mountain."
That’s what started me on a search to talk to the descendants of Californios,
who have a documented history on these lands, and to hear their stories, and, maybe, understand how my ancestors fit into this part of U.S. history before the vultures of culture try to pick its bones clean.
It was a cold November night in 2001, when I met Fred Machado and his
nephew, Ron Mendez, descendants of Manuel Machado y Yanez and his wife Maria
de la Luz Valenzuela, a married couple among the first party of settlers who left Sonora and
reached the San Gabriel Mission in 1781, after several grueling months on a dangerous expedition into, still yet, unexplored lands.
Their future sons Agustin and Ygnacio would eventually establish the family ranch,
Rancho La Ballona, along the shores of the Pacific.
Fred Machado (RIP) lived in Culver City, “part of the old land grant,” he told me,
laughing at the irony of having to have purchased a house on land his family once
owned. He told me the original grant stretched from Playa del Rey east to Baldwin
Hills, across to Palms and Rancho Park to the north and west to Pen Mar and back to Venice
beach, land known as Pwinukipar, or “full of water” to the local Tongva people,
the original inhabitants. During high tides and rainy weather, the water flooded
the land, shifted property lines, and caused headaches for the early
Californios who often disputed property lines.
During my visits, Fred told me one story after another, each more fascinating
than the last. He and Ron covered much of their family’s history, but before I
left, Fred said he had one more story to tell. Barely able to contain his excitement,
he placed a copy of an old map across his dining room table. “Look at this,” he said.
Ron responded, "This [map] has its own story."
“After my cousin Jimmy died," Fred began, "Jimmy's wife found an old tube
container packed away at the back of a closet.”
He described how his cousin’s wife opened the tube and pulled out a
faded, rolled-up cloth--a map of some kind. She knew Fred’s interest in the
family history and called him. It was indeed a map, printed on linen, and it measured
three feet by four feet. In 1868, someone, probably their eldest ancestor at the
time, Agustin Machado, had meticulously drawn, in neat handwritten script, an
outline of the land, Rancho La Ballona, indicating all the boundaries.
He had drawn parallel lines starting at the coast. Fred laughed calling
it, "beachfront property." Jose Agustin had written a family member's
name in each tract, which represented three hundred feet of land. This was the
Machado family inheritance as handed down by Agustin Machado to his children.
As I studied the map, I noticed the lines showed portions of land where Playa Vista
Development, west-side environmentalists, and the remaining Tongva people were
once battling over La Ballona’s Wetlands, the last open sanctuary for wildlife
in the Westside basin.
Fred showed me where his grandfather Ricardo’s ranch house, or as Fred
called it, “the Big House,” his birthplace, had once stood. Fred took out a
wrinkled black and white photograph of the house, surrounded by open fields. He
said, “Today, that’s near the corner of Jefferson and Centinela.”
Fred guessed his cousin Jimmy received the map from their grandfather,
Ricardo, who received it from Jose Agustin. Ricardo Machado, a farmer and real
estate investor in the early 1900s, continued to use the map, making his own
pencil markings and notations. Throughout the years, some of the pencil
markings had faded.
Fred needed to investigate the map further. He took it to a friend who
had a blue light, and under closer observation, he could decipher much of the
handwriting.
“Let me tell you an interesting story about this map,” Fred said. “One
day, I received a call from a young man in Washington D.C. He had been
discharged from the Air Force and was living back East.” Apparently, the young
man had been studying and researching the Machado family history.
Fred invited the young man to visit and stay with his family for a few
days. When he arrived, the young man told Fred he had heard rumors his grandmother was
the daughter of a man named Juan Lugo, a relative of the Machado family, the Lugos one
of the ranch's original founding families. Fred told the young man there were Lugos
in the family, but he had never heard of a Juan Lugo and nothing in the
family's records showed his name.
Fred said, “It could have been a mistake or Juan Lugo was illegitimate.”
In which case, his name probably wouldn’t show up anyplace.
Fred thought the young man might enjoy seeing the map, so he took it out
and spread it on the dining room table. As they looked closely, surveying the
designated plots of land, boundaries and names, their eyes came to rest on a
tiny corner where they saw the almost invisible name written, Juan Lugo. Fred
had never noticed it.
"The kid became unglued, just unglued," Fred said, delightedly.
“No one had ever mentioned a Juan Lugo. And there in my great-grandfather’s
writing was the notation, showing where Juan Lugo had lived on the ranch, close
to where Walgrove Avenue crosses Venice boulevard," today a busy
intersection filled with apartments on one side and Venice High School, Fred's Alma Mater, on the
other.
Fred realized the young man wanted a link to his past, maybe even to a
family connection where none had existed. Fred's eyes gleamed as he finished telling the story, a near
tear-jerker, which showed me that to Fred, and his nephew, Ron, history is not
simply books with facts and dates. History is people and their stories. As
someone once said, history is a breathing, living thing. If teachers approached
it in this way, students might have a better appreciation of our past and the
people who lived it.
Of course, Fred realized the historical value of the map. He told his
cousin’s wife, "Whoa! You're not giving this to me to keep. It's too
important for one person to have."
After verifying the map's authenticity and its place in Los Angeles
history, the family donated the map to Loyola Marymount University, where, Fred
said, scholars are still studying early Southern California history,
particularly the history of early Los Angeles, a history so few people know,
and sadly, a history other people would like to see wiped away, as if our past, as Mexicans, never existed.
