Who Were the First Residents of Los Angeles?

In our never-ending attempt to fight ignorance and stupidity everywhere it shows its ugly head, we will examine the question of the racial makeup of the Californios, the original Mexican settlers in California. Later on, we will look at the racial makeup of the first settlers of LA, along the same lines.

First of all, let us demolish a particularly obnoxious form of Chicano nationalist crap: the Aztlan lie, perpetuated by radical racist Chicano nationalist idiots likethis, this and this. According to this mountain of leftwing ultranationalist racist manure, Mexicans, otherwise known as Aztecs, are the true owners of a place called Aztlan, encompassing much of the southwestern United States.

These folks are upset because we fought a nasty war in which we invaded Mexico and stole part of their country. However, most of the Mexicans in California at the time (the 7,000 Californios) hated Mexico so much that they welcomed the Americans who started this immoral war. After all, the Californios had waged their own unsuccessful secessionist war not long before, a war savagely put down by the Mexican government.

However, the Aztlan BS lies on a steaming heap of lies of its own. For the Mexicans themselves stole “Aztlan” from the very Native Americans who they claim to represent! Holy hypocrisies, Batman! Yes, the Native Americans, not the Native Mexicans, were the original owners of this land.

I have worked extensively with Native Californians and their opinion of Mexicans and Mexico is not extremely high. I am sure they would be furious with the notion that this land really belongs to Mexico. They are still smarting over being taken over by the Americans.

So let us see now. Spain conquered Anahuac (the stupid name Chicano nationalists give to their fake country) in the 1500’s. Spain also conquered “Aztlan” right around this time, though they pretty much left “Aztlan” alone. In 1821, Mexico won its independence from Spain in an anti-colonial war.

Mexico then assumed imperialist domination over the Native Californians, herding them into missions which frankly resulted in the genocide (in terms of destruction of a people) of many Native California tribes, especially those on the coast.

The Indians were captured by force by these “charming Mexicans”, herded into missions against their will (a process that had really reached its peak under Colonized Mexico), where they were worked very hard and mixed in with so many other tribes that their languages and cultures were wiped out in the attempt at Catholic conversion. Running away from the mission was punished by whippings, beatings and imprisonments.

The death rate was high in the missions, mostly due to diseases. There were repeated Indian uprisings at these missions against their wonderful Mexican overlords. These usually ended unsuccessfully, but in a few cases, some priests were killed. Leaders of uprisings were typically executed by priests.

The Indians on the coast of California were particularly devastated by missionization. In many cases, we have few or no records of some of these languages since they disappeared as early as the early 1800’s.

So in all their endless bitching about White invaders coming from Europe and genociding the Indians (largely true to some extent) Mexicans themselves, both colonized and independent, invaded “Aztlan”, stole the land from Native Americans, and committed a variety of crimes against the natives.

So, Aztlan doesn’t really belong to Mexico – it belongs to Native Americans. But since they have been integrated into the US peacefully, it goes by default to the US.

As if the notion of Aztlan were not lunatic enough, not to mention the BS calledAnahuac . Anahuac is the name given to the Valley of Mexico, where Mexico City is now located, by the arriving Aztecs.

The conflation of the Aztec Mexico City place-name of Anahuac by Chicano nationalists into the name for the whole continent of the Americas is extremely ethnocentric and is likely to fly well with few, if any, other (non-Aztec) Native Americans. Further, it is a frankly racist notion in and of itself. Chicano nationalists, being partly of Mexican Indian blood, claim Aztlan in the US for (partly) Mexican Indians, of all people!

Outrageous or what? And on what do they base this claim of sovereignty of (part) Mexican Indians over Native Americans?

Because, supposedly, according to some crazy Aztec myths, the Aztecs came from a land far to the north before they settled down by Mexico City. However, this is actually a misreading or deliberate propagandistic distortion of those myths, which actually refer to Aztlan as a land to East of Mexico, across a great sea, an island, to be precise.

Clearly, this story is just that, a crazy myth with no basis in reality. Yet Raza propagandists have either ignorantly or malevolently twisted this myth of an island across a sea into a myth of a “homeland to the north”.

This silliness rests on still more nonsense, mostly that all (part) Mexican Indians are actually Aztecs! In fact, the Aztecs were simply one large tribe (at this point a large collection of tribes who can no longer be considered one people) who had conquered, in Genghis Khan viciousness, many of the surrounding tribes.

They were hated by almost all tribes that were familiar with them as basically a Mexican version of Nazis, they were savage, vicious, cruel and brutal, they practiced horrible human sacrifices, and they either tried to Final-Solution or actually Final-Solutioned many other tribes. In short, they were a bunch of bastards, and their principal pastime was Final-Solutioning surrounding “Mexicas”.

Somehow, radical Chicano nationalists have decided that all Chicanos are really Aztecs! How the Hell do they know? Check out this page: there are 289 living Indian languages in Mexico. Granted, 28 of those languages are varieties of Aztec. But that makes 28 different tribes of Aztecs.

That’s 261 separate non-Aztec tribes if you will. Add in another (at least) five non-Aztec tongues that have gone extinct since Cortes landed in 1519 to get 265.

Out of 289 separate tribes, how do these idiots assume that all Mexicans are really members of the 28 Aztec groupings amongst the 289? Based on what evidence?! It’s as stupid as saying that all Native Americans are really Navajos.

Now, maybe the Aztecs really did have a homeland to the north and maybe they did not. Linguists and historians are unsure about this, and this “highly advanced tribe” called Aztecs, had not yet figured out, by the late date of 1519, a coherent way of writing stuff down, when Europeans, Middle Easterners and Asians had been doing so for centuries.

This same tribe of super-people had also not figured out bronze age metallurgy, which many cultures around the world had accomplished centuries or millenia before.

According to legend, Aztecs came from somewhere to the north around the year 830. Various suggestions for this Aztec homeland have been put forward, all the way from Wisconsin to the middle of Mexico.

The idiot Chicano nationalist claim to Aztlan is based on a misreading of the homeland of all of the Uto-Aztecan people (the Aztec tongues are all part of a large language family called Uto-Aztecan, which contains many non-Aztec tongues). But Uto-Aztecan is a huge language family that may be 5,000 years old. The homeland of the Uto-Aztecans was probably in southern Arizona.

But that does not mean that that is where the homeland of the Aztecs was, anymore than saying the homeland of the Germans (Germany) is the same as the homeland of the Indo-Europeans (Southern Ukraine). Somewhere around southern Arizona about 5,000 years ago, the proto-Uto-Aztecan split into Northern and Southern groupings.

But after that, there were a variety of splits inside of Southern Uto-Aztecan. As you can see, this theory just gets dumber and dumber. Proto-Aztecan itself did not even come into being until 600 AD, before which where was no such thing as the Aztecs.

Furthermore, the builders of Tenochtitlan built the city between 2100 and 1400 years ago. In 600 AD, it was destroyed. It appears that the builders of Tenochtitlan, then, were not even Aztecs, but instead were some other group.

Since the beginnings of the Aztec languages coincide with the appearance of a new group, described as Aztecan, and the destruction of the Tenochtitlan civilization, it appears that the Aztecs were not the builders of those pyramids but the destroyers of them!

And so what if Aztecs used to live in Arizona or wherever centuries before 1519?

We now accept that virtually no Indian tribe in the US was always in the spot where they were contacted, from the time of settlement from Asia to contact. We have been able to plot many migrations of Indian tribes pre-contact. It’s clear that they moved around, conquered, enslaved and genocided each other, practiced cannibalism on their enemies, (and were victims of all the above) and did all the things that tribes normally do.

Point is, giving “Aztecs” a bunch of Native American land in the Southwest because they “used to live there centuries ago but left” makes about as much sense as the Zionism that these La Raza morons despise so much, often to outrageously anti-Semitic degrees (see here for a sample, or, really, most anything on La Voz de Aztlan).

Now that we have demolished a few of these La Raza ethnic nationalist dung piles, let us move on to one of another of their cherished myths – that the original Californios were Mexican Indians.

Shall we start with a fascinating tidbit about the very first residents of Los Angeles ? Los Angeles was founded by a group of settlers from a place called New Spain on September 4, 1781, soon after the US Declaration of Independence. Here is a map of New Spain. Does New Spain (its jarring yet powerful flag is here) mean the same thing as “Mexico”, not to mention “Aztec”? Of course not.

It included the entire Western US, a good part of the Midwest, all of Florida, Louisiana, the Gulf Coast, (yes) Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Trinidad, Cayman Islands, the Mariana Islands and even the Philippines.

The best evidence is that the original settlers to LA came overland from Mexico. For a long time the Spanish government had been trying to get Spaniards to go to California, but hardly any of them wanted to go.

The first settlers were regarded by a local priest as “the dregs”, similar to the first settlers of Australia. It seems they were escaping something. Quite a few were criminals or fugitives. 2/3 of them were Mestizo or Mulatto. So much for “Aztlan”! Some even came from the Philippines (via Mexico). Do Blacks, Mulattos and Filipinos all get to carve out a chunk of “Aztlan” for themselves?

Here is the actual rundown, incredibly, from a Chicano nationalist website:

Jose de Lara, 50, a Spaniard from Spain (evil White man), with an Indian wife and three (1/2 White, 1/2 Indian) mestizo children

Basilio Rosas, 68, an Indian from Durango, Mexico, with a mulattress wife and six (1/2 Indian, 1/4 Black, 1/4 White) children

Antonio Mesa, 38, a Negro from Sinaloa, Mexico, with a mulattress wife and five mulatto (3/4 Black, 1/4 White) children

Antonio F. Felix Villavicencio, 30, a Spaniard (evil White man) from Chihuahua, Mexico, born in Mexico with an Indian wife and one (1/2 White, 1/2 Indian) mestizo child

Jose Vanegas, 28, an Indian from Jalisco, Mexico, [Los Angeles’ first ‘alcalde’ or mayor], with an Indian wife and one pure Indian child

Alejandro Rosas, 25, an Indian from Sinaloa, Mexico, with an Indian wife

Pablo Rodriguez, 25, an Indian from Sinaloa, Mexico,, with an Indian wife and a pure Indian child

Manuel Camero, 30, a mulatto from Nayarit, Mexico, with a mulattress wife

Luis Quintero, 55, a Negro from Jalisco, Mexico, with a mulattress wife and five (3/4 Black, 1/4 White) mulatto children

Jose Moreno, 22, a mulatto from Sinaloa, Mexico, with a mulattress wife

Jose Rosas , 67, an Indian from Durango, Mexico and his mulattress wife and six (1/2 Indian, 1/4 White, 1/4 Black) or Coyota children

*A Filipino, Antonio Rodriguez, from Manila, Philippines, and his 11 yr old daughter were among the original group that set out to settle Los Angeles. They got sick in Baja California of smallpox and stayed there until they got better. When he got to Alta California, it was discovered that he was a good gunsmith and he was ordered to Santa Barbara Presidio to be an armorer.

There were:
14 mulattoes
12 Indians
9 Spanish-Negro-Indians
8 Negro-Indian Zambos
5 Spanish-Indian mestizos
2 Whites
2 Blacks

34 were at least partly Indian
33 were at least partly Black
29 were at least partly White

The Indians were clearly Mexican Indians; many early settlers to Los Angeles came from poverty-stricken Sinaloa in Mexico. Sinaloans, pre-contact, were not Aztecs.

Look at the above – one could hardly find a more mixed group of people. It’s Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition 200 years in the past. Does that look like a bunch of Aztecs from “Anahuac” to you? Of course not.

Idiots.

Let’s look at something else. Exactly what percentage of Mexicans were living in Alta California, which Mexican invaders, recall, stole from Native Californians? A whopping .1% of the Mexican population was living in “Alta California” in 1846 – only a pitiful 7,000 of the entire Mexican population were Californios, mostly members of 800 families.

White Americans made up 1,300 of the population and Europeans (both evil Whiteys, who La Raza claims has no right to be in Aztlan) were 500. Going by adult males, the Whites and Europeans, who were concentrated from about Monterey to Sacramento, were about equal in population to the Californios.

Here is a photo of a famous Mexican officer who led a war against local California Indians in 1828-1829. He looks about as “Indian” as I do. So much for the “Aztecs” of “Aztlan”.

Also, if the evil White European conquerors were so diabolical and all, why does the Raza not only speak the language of these evil White conquerors, but why also have they adopted much of the culture and religion of these hated genocidal folks? Not only do they speak this “evil language”, they champion it to the point of demanding that it be an official language alongside English.

Along the same lines, see here for an excellent demolition of an apparent radical La Raza professor, Manuel Servin’s, allegation that the Californios,

as the study of California’s settlement shows, were not Spanish, but overwhelmingly mixed-bloods from Indian, Spanish, and also Negro stock.

Attacking the notion that “Hispanic” or “Chicano” (whatever those words mean) culture or people were largely or even partly “Spaniard” is one of the favorite pastimes of the La Raza ethnic nationalists. Why the obsession?

Probably because they hate Whitey and European culture so much, while glorifying Mexican Indian (But only Aztec!) culture so much, that the notion that “Spaniard” forms a large part of “Hispanic”, “Latino” and “Chicano” culture and/or DNA really ticks them off. It’s self-hatred plus denial, pure and simple.

Ralph Vigil does a good job of demolishing this nonsense. First of all, “Spaniard” itself is not any kind of pure White race; instead, for 700 years or so before 1519, Spain had undergone an incredible amount of race mixture.

In the New World, a mestizo born in wedlock was “criollo”, or Spaniard; one born out of wedlock was “Creole”. There was a lack of White women at first, so 1/8 Indian and 1/16 Black still qualified one as “White” or “Spaniard”.

So much for race!

So much for race indeed, even to the present day. A Mexican Indian leaves behind Indian ways and magically transforms into “mestizo”. A Guatemalan Indian drops Indian ways and starts dressing like a mestizo and automagically becomes “Ladino”. Neither without a drop of White Blood.

Back to Vigil:

In order to arrive at a better knowledge of the Hispanic heritage of the borderlands, one should perhaps always keep in mind that this heritage consists of a Spanish, Mexican, and regional Southwestern past, and that an extreme emphasis on any part of the Hispanic heritage, whether it be the “Spanish cult” or the “Mexican-Indian” past, makes for a distortion of borderlands history.

So neither “they were Spaniards” nor the La Raza fetishization of Mexican Indians explains the matter well.

Vigil concludes that the matter, like so many things, is complicated. It does not lend itself to simple explanations or La Raza propaganda soundbites:

In conclusion, the student of the history of the Spanish-speaking people of the Southwest encounters a civilization that in varying proportions has elements of Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and Anglo origin today.

Although these background influences are important for the analysis and evaluation of the formation of the people variously called Mexican, Mexican-American, Spanish, Spanish-American, Chicano, and other names, the difference between that which was Spanish, Mexican, and Southwestern or New Mexican in the colonial period can only be a matter of regional distinction within a similar general culture.

To claim, as Servín does, that Hispanos in New Mexico are not of Spanish stock or language or culture because of some race mixture over the centuries is to miss the importance of miscegenation completely. Vertical mobility existed socially and by the early nineteenth century, all those colonists in New Mexico not obviously Indian were Spaniards.

To claim otherwise is almost the same as stating that Spain ceased to be Spanish because of the Berber invasions, or that “Anglo-Americans” today are Indians because they eat corn, potatoes, and use tobacco.

(Source:  bookofdaystales.com)