This is an article written by my nephew
Joel Apodaca
The ethnic group I will be focusing on will be the Spanish
people that came to America
from Mexico. The reason is that, after speaking to my
parents, I found out that both sides of my family have ties back to Spain. Another person I went to about my family’s
background was my aunt Rose Apodaca on my dad’s side. She has been really the only one all of
pretty much all of my family to delve into the research of the Apodaca line and
where we come from, so I will be talking more specifically about my dad’s side
of the family. She will be mentioned
later as I go into detail about my family background. With all the information I have gathered, I
will discuss my ethnic history how religion has affected my immediate family.
By introducing my family history, this will allow me to
explain my ethnic background and heritage.
My family and I were born in the state of California, and so were my paternal
grandparents. But as for my paternal great-grandfather's and his parents they were born in New Mexico.
What I found interesting is that my great-grandfather wasn’t actually an
Apodaca, his last name was Lucero and his mother’s name was Leonarda Apodaca,
my second great-grandmother. So her kids got her maiden name Apodaca instead of
Lucero. New Mexico
is really the focal point of where my paternal family line starts in America and the Lucero line is what ties me to
the Spanish group that came to America. Many generations back, my paternal ancestors
who were of Spanish descent made their way from Chihuahua,
Mexico and migrated north
into New Mexico. Interestingly enough I even have some Pueblo
Indian in me because of the intermarriage that went on. This is all according to my aunt’s research.
My aunt Rose Apodaca let me borrow a book about the Lucero
line, it is called New mexico’s
Crypto-Jews by Ori Z. Soltes what this book reveals is that these Luceros
were here in New Mexico ever sine the 1600’s.
The part of the book that mentions Lucero in this passage. “On May 4, 1662, Francisco Gomez Robledo was
arrested is Santa Fe…after
his arrest, his brother law Pedro Lucero de Godoy was designated to assist the
attachment of his property” (pg.140).
Francisco was charge on accounts of Judaizing, which was a serious
charge in that time due to the Spanish Inquisition that was going on. This would be an example of issues and
struggles that my ancestors as an ethnic group were facing. And to be honest,
my parents and grandparents didn’t really have any issues of racial
discrimination thing like that. Even
though my dad and his family were one of the very few Hispanic families living
in Downey, California in the sixties at the time, my
dad never experienced bullying from the larger white community. They were poorer than most of the white community,
but that would be really the only issue they had to face. But I disgress, Francisco was acquitted
because they found, out these accusations were just based on hear-say and not
actual evidence. The book, Kiva, Cross and Crown by John L. Kessel,
actually records the same incident but goes more in depth about his trial and
what happened after he was acquitted.
This passage from that book talks about his trial: “Gomez Robledo fared
better before the inquisitors than any others…bodlily examination by physcians
showed that Don Francisco had no ‘little tail’ as one of his brother was
alleged to have, nor could the scars on his penis be positively indentified as
an attempt at circumcision” (pg. 191).
My families relationship to religion doesn’t just start at
home, it started all the way back 400 years ago when the Lucero’s first came to
America. The first example I gave you was when
Francisco Robledo was tried under the Inquisition in defense pleaded loyalty to
Our Lady of Rosary and reverence of La Conquistadora (a statue of the Virgin
Mary brought to New Mexico
by Francisco’s father). This leads to my next example from the book New Crypto-Jews. During the Pueblo Revolt of 1680 , the
Indians burned the church where La Conquistadora was at, “but that didn’t stop
Josepha Grivjalva Sambrano, niece of Francisco Gomez-Robledo, from entering the
church and saving La Conquistadora” (pg.141).
My aunt say Josepha is my tenth or so great grandmother. There was made an engraving on the front door
of the St. Francis Catherdral in Santa
Fe, New Mexico that
depicts this scene of Josepha. My
ancestor’s religion of that time was Catholicism. It was fought pretty hard for in that time
and they were able to hold on to their religion for hundred of years. My
grandmother Dolores Baldenegro Apodaca was a Catholic who loved the Lord, with that you
can say that the religion survived and made its way all the way down to our
generations. I believe religion gave
these Spanish New Mexican’s a solid communal identity to hold onto, one that they
knew their children, and their children’s children will fight to hold on
to. I believe it meant more to them than
their homeland of Mexico
or their race. Because future
generations will have different places of dwelling, but the one thing that
every generation would have in common was religion. Josepha went to great
lengths to preserve that identity and even her uncle Francisco Robledo pleaded
such loyalty to La Conquistadora.
As for my relationship to religion, it started in my own
home.
I was born and raised a
Protestant.
My parents always told me
this is what we believe in and there was a God and His son Jesus Christ came to
earth to die for our sins.
And I
believed what they were saying and everything, but it wasn’t until I was
seventeen that a sudden realization came that hit me like a ton of bricks.
No one had to tell me but I realized I didn’t
know God.
Yes I said I believed in Him
and spoke about him but He never was personal to me.
So I sought God in prayer and asked that I
may have a living relationship with Him, and at seventeen that’s when I truly
“met God” as I like to say, and now I live this Christian life because that is
the path I choose myself to walk.
My
father had a similar experience as I did when he was sixteen.
Though my grandparents believed in God and
were Catholics, they never really taught their kids in the ways of Catholicism
as my dad and mom did Protestantism in their family.
In my opinion after thinking about how my
ancestors viewed their religion and how my family and I view religion and God,
I believed it changed.
My ancestors
viewed it as an identity of communal culture, and were devoted to traditions
and La Conquistadora, whereas now my family and I view it as a relationship with
God Himself where we walk with Him day to day and our devotion isn’t to
traditions but to a person, Jesus Christ.
It is very interesting to have been able to look into my
ethnic history, how religion affected my Spanish ancestors when they came from Mexico into America, and to have talked about
how my ancestor’s religion compares now to my own relationship to religion and
how things have changed. Many of these
historical records and documents are easily lost in translations as they are
passed down through time and it makes me very grateful to my aunt Rose for
having done this research and finding all these things. One thing that really surprised me out of
this whole thing was that out of hundreds of years that my family line has been
around, my Apodaca name goes back to my third great grandparents. And that I should really have the last name Lucero
if it wasn’t for my great-great grandmother refusing to take it for her son
Benjamin Apodaca. Another thing I
thought was surprising was that I have Native American blood as Spanish blood
in me, which is very cool.
