33 Percent
I – Bifurcation
While this story obviously begins in those metaphorical mists of time, long before my birth, before the birth of my parents, before my grandparents, and on and on, this chapter really only started in the last several years. This chapter might be titled “The Awakening.” Or perhaps better the “Re-Awakening.” Those are the more lyrical options. The more to-the-point, in your face, title might be “I Was Fucking Cheated.”
Ok, enough of the oblique introduction.
My heritage, as I always understood it growing up, was that I’m English/German on my mother’s side and Mexican/Spanish on my father’s side. To the typical American, especially white Americans, I’m very white-passing. My Spanish surname is, more often than you might expect, assumed to be Italian. Even those who recognize it as Spanish will still ask ‘where does your name come from?’ for more specifics.
With ‘white passing privilege’ available to me, it may come as no surprise that I have often tried to take full advantage of it. Let’s face facts. In American society, and much of the world for that matter, given the choice, most people are going to take the path of least resistance when it comes to which race they want to identify. There are two justifications I have for doing so.
The first justification, somewhat outside my control, has to do with the complicated and limited relationship I had with my father and his family as a child. I should note that this connection was further strained by my mother’s relationship with him and his family as well. As you may have guessed, they divorced when I was young and as the story of split families is fairly common today, I need not delve into detail about the consequences here.
But more importantly, when you’re not connected to your own ‘people,’ it becomes very easy to feel like you’ve been left out in the cold, defenseless against a cruelly prejudiced world. As hard as the world is to children from a racial minority, they typically still have family from that same group at their back. So what’s the most logical defense for a white passing kid? I did what I think any reasonable person would do. “I’m not Mexican. My grandfather came from Spain” thereby wiping my abuela out of the picture altogether. And, little did I know, how much more complex the story actually was! More on that later.
The second justification, one that might also be called a rationalization, has to do with the insidious nature of racism in this country. I have only recently come to appreciate just how inescapable its effects are, no matter how ‘white passing’ you might be. These next few words are painful for me to write. Growing up, not just in the US, but in Texas, I absorbed the belief that having any Mexican heritage was an embarrassment and something to be ashamed of. So, in my own head and in the story I told the world, my Mexican heritage was an accident to be overcome. And anyway, what did it matter since I had no connection to ‘those people’ after all, right?
II – Waking Up
Fast forward through high school, college, and most of my adult life. Except for brief flirtations with accepting and/or acknowledging my Mexican heritage, I kept it safely sealed in a box which was itself then wrapped in paper labeled “Spain.” The great irony that I was both consciously and unconsciously doing the long-gone colonial oppressors job for him all these centuries later. Even when I ultimately married a gringo who happened to be fluent in Spanish and had a tremendous affinity for Latin culture, I regularly kept reapplying the ink on that label to ensure the word Spain never faded.
Call it the arrival of middle age. Call it the introspection that comes with leaving behind your youth. Call it the reflection that really starts to take on meaning after you’ve made it through two decades of adulthood. Whatever you want to call it, several years ago, I started to detect the faintest whispers in my ear. Those whispers were saying ‘There’s something you’ve forgotten.’ And ‘There’s something you’re missing.’ And ultimately, “There’s something you lost out on but not all is lost. Yet….”
And then, one evening at a holiday party, I was with my family which now included a young Uruguayan boy who had crashed landed into our lives a number of years before with his own complicated history with his origins and his place in America. After dinner and dessert, a DJ started playing music. Initially, the music was typical wedding reception ilk. But then, perhaps picking up on the representation in the crowd, the music shifted to a more Latin feel. The kid had been dancing with a friend he brought while I stayed at our table. With the first Latin song, the name of which entirely escapes me now, the kid came over grabbed my hand, and said “C’mon. This is in your blood.”
You might say that this was the moment the tape on the wrapper of that box labeled “Spain,” old and dried out, first came loose. I did not, by any means, suddenly rip the rest of the wrapper off. But the seal had been broken. And with that, the questions really started. Even that night, I remember thinking to myself, “Is it? I think it is. I mean I know it is a little…but…how much? How strong is it?” Far stronger than I could have ever dreamed.
III - Awareness
Beyond that evening, there was not, over the next several years, any particularly dramatic moment in which I can say I really started questioning or searching or trying to recover this forgotten part of my identity. For the most part, it was just being more receptive and attentive to the whispers in my ear. And it was that openness that led to my first realization, which I mentioned at the beginning: “I was fucking cheated.”
It was a complicated realization. Who cheated me? If I really wanted it back, could I get restitution?
First, the Who. In no particular order: my father and his family; my mother; a racist, prejudiced society; me. By being cut off from my father and that side of my family (and yes, I wielded my own knife in that amputation), I was literally severed from half my heritage. The random and disparate attempts at regaining some connection over the years never got very far. I recognize now that while I may have contributed, I was by no means responsible for the actions of adults. I was, after all, just a kid.
Our racist and bigoted country sat in the gallery and cheered on the surgeons who cut my heart in half. They were more than happy to applaud as each blood vessel, nerve, and sinew of my father’s side was removed, leaving just the white half. They reassured me that I’d be much better off without that dirty, diseased half gone. But, lest I feel any regrets, I was periodically reminded that I still wasn’t quite good enough as anyone who didn’t need the surgery in the first place. So, work doubly hard to show your gratitude for being so white! Learn French, not Spanish. Become a New Englander, not a Texan. And when you read or learn about the “Other” be sure you discuss it as Insider lest anyone think you might be able to relate.
As I’ve said, I participated in all of this, proving I’d learned the lesson that the ‘good’ part of me is what I needed to nurture and care for and by doing so, I’d be whole. By leaving Texas for Connecticut to go to college, I physically turned my back on my past and my heritage. I happily left it all behind. Well, except for half my heart stored in that box wrapped in paper with "Spain" written on it. Over the years, I would still have moments that would surprise me. Watching the movie “Stand and Deliver” and hearing “The Aztecs and Mayans understood the concept of zero before the Greeks and Romans. You have math in your blood.” Listening to an economics professor in a Latin American economic development class describe how dazzled the Spaniards were upon seeing Tenochtitlan lit up at night when most of Europe was barely out of the Dark Ages. But as quickly and unexpectedly as these flickers of recognition flared up, they just as quickly died out.
So what happens when a flicker of recognition comes from outside you in the form of a statement: “This is in your blood”? Well you can start questioning everything. And then you can start demanding answers. And then? Then you get angry because it feels like, ‘Well, it’s too late.’ Until it isn’t.
IV – The Email
Several summers ago, I was at work when I opened an email from a unknown and peculiar address. As I read it, I very clearly thought to myself, ‘This is like something out of a movie.’ Staring at the screen, I read:
“Is this Justin Navarro whose father is Raymundo Navarro? If it is, this is your sister.”
The shock, after years (decades!), of hearing from my sister was every metaphor you can think of: a thunderbolt; an earthquake; the planet tilting on its axis.
After catching my breath, I wrote back. “Yes, you have the right one. How did you find me?!” As we would later come to find out, the Navarro bloodline is incredibly strong. She responded, “I saw your profile picture and knew it had to be you.” And then she sent me a picture of herself and I knew exactly what she’d seen. We shared a lot of features. That weekend, we talked on the phone and, as you might guess, had a lot to catch up on. Later that evening she texted me that she’d been in touch with our most favorite aunt, that she’d told her that she’d found me, and that they were going to have lunch the very next day. It was all moving so fast but now I wanted it all to happen even faster!
I don’t know how to explain the moment, if you haven’t experienced something like it, when my sister started a video call with me from the restaurant and I saw my aunt after all those years. At first, there was only vague recognition. But then she started speaking. In an instant, I was a kid again. Hearing and instantly recognizing her voice across all those years and all the life I’d lived at that point without her and half my family in it almost brought me to tears on the spot. And so, when she asked “When are we going to see you?” my response, without even thinking twice about it was, “Soon…Very soon!”
Later that day, trying to process everything that happened, I realized that the fact that my aunt, now well into her 70s, was still alive and wanted to see me was like a bibliophile, an historian, an archaeologist, and Egyptologist all finding out that the Library at Alexandria hadn’t burned down with everything inside lost. All of a sudden, the door to my past, to my heritage, to something I thought I’d lost forever was flung wide open.
Two months later, for the first time in ages, I was on a plane eagerly going back to Texas.
V - Tamales
My trip to Texas was extraordinary on so many levels. I was meeting some relatives for the first time as well as re-uniting with some I hadn’t see in such a very long time. I can honestly say that at no point was I ever actually nervous. Inpatient to see people and spend time, yes. But I never got anxious about how any of these encounters would actually unfold.
Probably one of the single most surprising things to happen was walking back into my grandmother’s house. I had been blown away when I found out it was not only still in the family’s possession but that my aunt was now living there. This house loomed large in my childhood memory and I couldn’t wait to see it again. So imagine my shock, upon entering, to discover that, no, those ceilings really are that high and the house is just as big and ‘complicated’ as I’d remembered!
I had already asked my aunt, “Please make tamales. I remember them so well and have never had any as good as Grandma’s!” And sure enough, there they were. I leaned over to my nephew, who had never had tamales in the first place, and said “I’m warning you now. After you have these, none you have in any restaurant will ever measure up!” Lots of ink has been used to explain the importance of food in culture. After one bite, I didn’t need any academic treatise to tell me I’d come home.
On the plane ride down, I had written down all the questions I had. Some of them were questions I’d always wondered about but assumed I’d never get answers to them as I never thought I’d be reconnected with my family again. Many of these were the the kind you start to wonder about after you become an adult. Those ‘What the hell was that [event] about?!’ and ‘Was [family lore] really true….?’ types of questions.
But then there were other questions based purely on the ‘What on earth did I miss by being absent all these years?!’ and ‘What things do I not even know I don’t know?’ I was eager, to be honest, for the chisme! And boy did I get it. Details about when marriages happened (or didn’t). The answer to where my famously ferocious temper came from (¡Gracias Abuela!). The unknown detail that my grandfather had come to the US via Mexico, and not directly from Spain as I’d been led to believe (more on that later). And then….“Grandma was Indian, right? Cayetana isn’t Spanish.”
Wait, what?
VI – Stepping on the Mexican Flag
When I got back to Connecticut, I was on cloud nine but I also had a million new questions. I started talking to my aunt on a regular basis and bit by bit I started putting more and more pieces together. Well truth be told, I was discovering the pieces but really had no idea how any of them fit together. The most interesting part of the story concerned my grandfather’s origins.
I mentioned during one conversation that I was starting to try and piece together the family tree on Ancestry.com and needed any information I could get like arrival dates in the US and parents’ names. My aunt told me the story she heard from my grandfather about how exactly he ended up in Mexico. When he was a kid, still in Spain, one of his uncles ran a bar and kept a gun there for defense. The details are unclear but at some point, he accidentally shot a man and so the family spirited him out of the country. But then, in a total twist to the story, she then told me that one of my uncles had actually travelled to Mexico and found one of his father’s sisters who was still alive. I immediately asked, “Wait…a sister? Why….? How did he have any relatives in Mexico?” My aunt’s response was, “You figure that out, you tell me!”
So while that information prompted more questions, there was one new detail that my aunt shared that stunned me. “Mother never became a citizen and when my father did, she was so angry! She told him, ‘You’re stepping on the Mexican flag!’” “She never gave up her Mexican citizenship? After living her whole life in the US?” “Nope – just kept renewing her green card.”
(Side story: while amusing, it’s also frighteningly accurate in some ways. She also told her kids, “You don’t have a country since you’re not Mexican and you’re not white.”)
It should come as no surprise that these new details served as lighter fluid to the little embers of pride I was starting to feel about my heritage. It was almost as if I could feel my spine straightening a little more. While I still had lots of regret regarding lost time and opportunities, I also started to realize something more important. It wasn’t too late. I could still unburden myself and claim my birthright.
VII – Cinco de Mayo
Given all this new information about both my grandmother and grandfather, I made the decision to take the Ancestry.com DNA test. As anyone who has had any interest in it might know, you provide a saliva sample, mail it in, and then wait 6-8 weeks. I ordered mine in late March and immediately sent it back in.
In the meantime, I watched a few videos on YouTube about the process and other’s revealing their results. One video, from Ancestry.com in particular stood out. “Where is my Native American ancestry?!” Essentially, many families in the US have in their ‘family lore’ that some ‘full blooded [fill-in-the-blank Indian nation] relative is in their family tree.’ There’s rarely a name and inevitably it’s several generations ago. And so this video debunks that saying that statistically speaking, white and black Americans usually have less than 1 percent Native American DNA. Latinos, on the other hand, usually have up to 20%. After reading all this, I thought, ‘Well maybe I’ll have as much as 10%...maybe a little more.’
As fate would have it, I was in Washington, DC for a few days in early May when I got the fateful email. I was sitting in my hotel room on the evening of May 4th. I decided to check my email when I saw it. “Your results are in.” You click a link which takes you to the web site and the page with the breakdown in the left column and a map of the world and other links in the main page.
I was speechless. I stared at the breakdown trying to process what I was seeing. There are 26 total regions that they base their results on but of course only show those for which you personally have any markers. The summary starts with your two highest percentages, and then however many other regions you have markers (12 in my case!). My top two? 33% Native American (Central & Western Mexico) and 23% Scandinavian.
Of course, now you know what stopped me in my tracks. 33% Native American. And of the other regions, there was only 10% from the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal). So there it was. I was a third indigenous and without a doubt most of that had to be the result of my paternal grandmother and grandfather. (In case anyone is wondering, this was confirmed when I learned my mother’s DNA. No Native American AND 10% Iberian Peninsula herself! In addition, I then learned that of the paternal cousins who had their DNA tested, they all got similar and in some cases even higher Native American ancestry.)
What was even more extraordinary is that the numbers mentioned above are the middle of the estimates. So the European breakdown had very large possible ranges. In the case of the second largest, Scandinavia, my DNA could be as high as 34% but also as low as 9%. Compare that to the range for my Native American DNA which was as high as 36% but only as low as 31%. This is true apparently for everyone with Native American DNA because, by virtue of their long isolation, they did not have the same admixture that other parts of the world like Europe experienced.
Now I had actual scientific proof that I had a fair claim on my birthright and in some respects, on a birthright I wasn’t even aware I had.
VIII – “Pero vosotros sois los primeros hijos de México”
On the 5th of May, Cinco de Mayo, I woke up with a whole new identity. In ways I could have never anticipated, the answer to that early question “Is this in your blood?” had been answered and then some. In the six months since I got my ancestry DNA results, I have continued to reconnect with my father’s family. I have started the long slow process of re-learning and, in many cases, learning for the first time about the extraordinarily rich cultural and historical heritage to which I am an heir.
But more importantly, I’ve also started to stand up and be counted as a Mexican American. There is often great debate about whether the times makes a person or if a person makes the times. Given everything that has happened to me and given the 2016 presidential election, I am more convinced than ever that it is both. Had these connections and discoveries not happened when they did, I may have just slowly drifted to the end of my life wondering about that other half of me, long forgotten in a box in the attic. Had this election not unfolded the way it did, these connections and discoveries may not have taken on the urgency and immediacy that they have, compelling me to take a stand.
The quote that is the title of this part comes from this full quote, attributed to Mexican General, Ignacio Zaragoza, speaking to his troops before the Battle of Puebla which is re-enacted, with some artistic license in the exact words, in the movie Cinco de Mayo: La Batalla:
“Nuestros enemigos son los primeros soldados del mundo; pero vosotros sois los primeros hijos de México y os quieren arrebatar vuestra Patria. Soldados: leo en vuestra frente la victoria...fey ...¡Viva la independencia nacional! ¡Viva la Patria!”
To this, I add: "¡Viva el orgullo de ser quien eres!"
