new spain
8 states are on land that was Mexican (History Channel video)
Know your history: The Mayans and the Aztecs developed advanced civilizations and eight U.S. states sit on land that used to be Mexico.
Yanga: African slave who rebelled in Spanish ‘Mexico’ (video)
Gaspar Yanga was stolen from West Africa to work as a slave on a Spanish plantation in colonial “Mexico.” But not for long.
Don’t call me a ‘Mexican,’ America! Also, I’m not a ‘Latino’
It’s a phenomenon older than the United Estates of America. We’ve named it Looking Down On More Recent Immigrants Syndrome:
- In 1751, Founding Father Benjamin Franklin, a North American colonial with British roots, disparaged “stupid” and “swarthy” recently-arrvied German immigrants, who, he wrote, were too dumb to learn English, and did we mention they were “swarthy”?
- Discrimination against Irish Catholic immigrants by their English Protestant predecessors was one of the reasons 200 fresh-off-the-boat Irish United States Army draftees switched sides and fought for Mexico in the Mexican-American War of the 1840s. These deserters/heroes formed the famed Saint Patrick’s Battalion (Los San Patricios.)
- Hoity-toity German and Sephardic Jews who immigrated to the U.S.A. in the 18th and 19th Centuries were ashamed of the Hebrew homies who arrived later from Eastern Europe; the assimilated Jews banded together to “Americanize” the Russian and Polish immigrants in the 1880s.
Last week three latter-day Looking Down Syndrome sightings lit up our screen, INSISTENT MESSAGES from people who want you to know THEY ARE DEFINITELY NOT THOSE OTHER PEOPLE OVER THERE — those Mexicans and/or Latinos.
Mas…Don’t call me a ‘Mexican,’ America! Also, I’m not a ‘Latino’
The California Mission lost to history: Santa Zipporah de la Culpa
Founded on Passover 1799 by a youthful colony of Spanish Jews fleeing the persecution of their parents, at its height the mission comprised a thriving community of several hundred souls along the Los Angeles River, near present-day Boyle Heights.
Often overshadowed by its overachieving Catholic neighbors in San Gabriel and San Fernando, Mission Santa Zipporah was founded by the storied ‘Father’ Shmuel, the Jewish missionary sometimes known by his nickname, “Father Sarah.”
Mas…The California Mission lost to history: Santa Zipporah de la Culpa