CORONADO

I think this project accomplishes what I’d set out to do: To point to the Hispanic role in American history. Of course, Aura’s and Sine’s getting into it has gotten us into other subject matter as well.

Aura thinks we ought to also recognize the role black folk played in American history from the beginning of European colonization. Because they feel as marginalized as any Hispanics.

Feeling marginalized is a numbers game. I suppose the Spanish and the Pilgrims felt a bit edgy when they faced a whole continent of Indians. Of course they got over that pretty quick when they saw that their technology could empower them. And the diseases they didn’t even realize they’d brought upon the Indians didn’t hurt their rise one bit.

But when everybody’s got the same technology and is in decent health, numbers make a difference. So since the days of the thirteen colonies where the Pilgrims ruled, now that their central government and geographical reach has incorporated Latins and Blacks, such minorities have multiplied even faster than the European immigrants. Blame it on the same wide open spaces the Buffalo reveled in, ignorance of birth control, or whatever: The fact is minorities’ numbers have been increasing to the point that, given the right to vote, we can participate in deciding who the honchos are. And, mercifully, descendants of some of the Pilgrims choose to vote with us when somebody not pure white sometimes has an idea better than one of their number. That’s how we’ve made some progress despite still definitely being minorities.

I believe our story can lead to yet more progress: more self respect for ourselves, and even some respect for us on the part of the Pilgrims’ descendants. If the majority can appreciate what we’ve done and understand how their good fortune is partly a product of our work as well as their’s, then maybe we’ll be able to live in a world where nobody again feels compelled to say: “Can’t we all just get along?”

So, here’s to you, Esteban ! Like Coronado, he started his American adventure from the other side of the Atlantic. But that's where the similarity ends. Coronado’s crossing was first class: He arrived in New Spain directly from Old Spain, and even had the good fortune to hob nob with the future governor of New Spain who was on the same ride. Esteban’s crossing was more zigzag and marked by stops along the way at which he provided labor in return for the food and lodging whoever was his owner at any given time offered.

Long after Esteban’s death at the hands of Indians who thought he was an emissary from an enemy tribe, and not even until after the U.S. wrested control of the American southwest from Spain, there was a civil war battle at Picacho Peak in what had become the Arizona territory of the U.S. That war which ultimately freed American slaves might have been a godsend to Esteban’s descendants had they been working the cotton fields of American settlers like later African immigrants got roped into doing. But even though New Spain also allowed slavery, Esteban’s descendants were born free, since whoever he fathered were borne of Indian women along the way through parts unknown and as yet ungoverned by Spain. That was courtesy of the reconnaissance mission he had been dispatched on with a priest the governor of New Spain had appointed to verify what survivors of the Narvaez expedition understood to be Indian tales of golden cities to the north. It took the Coronado expedition to distinguish that dream from reality.

I don't know how the Indians treated his descendants, but I suspect it was with respect since he was very respected by the Indians who presented him with numerous women. It amuses Aura that some of the Pilgrim types like her dad, fleeing inner cities of the eastern U.S.as they deteriorated with the influx of poor folk, headed to the American Dream in the west, an area populated in part by Esteban’s progeny long before the Mayflower docked on the east coast.

Touche, Esteban ! (lyrics)