New Mexico Republican’s His-panic Attack

All over the press right now is the outrageous statement by Bernadillo County, New Mexico Republican Party chairman Fernando C de Baca that:

The truth is that Hispanics came here as conquerors, African-Americans came here as slaves.

Hispanics consider themselves above blacks. They won’t vote for a black president.

The comments by C de Baca (a common New Mexico variant on the family name “Cabaza de Vaca”) have set off a blogswarm (and media-storm) of reaction leading up to C de Vaca’s resignation as county chair on Thursday.

Two things need to be pointed out.  The BBC article (written by Jon Kelly) quotes C de Vaca (who Kelly misnames as “de Vaca”) in a much longer look at New Mexico’s Latino community’s support for Barack Obama.  The most prominent Latino politician in the country right now is Bill Richardson, the state’s governor.

Secondly, “Hispanic” has a different meaning in New Mexico (and probably the correct one) than in the rest of the U.S.  New Mexico’s “hispanics” — who sometimes call themselves “Spaniards” do not see themselves as Latin-Americans, but as the descendants of the conquistadors — a separate people from the Mexican-Americans, and from the confusing census data category of “Hispanic” which includes anyone of Latin American descent, regardless of “race” or other factors.  Some New Mexico “Hispanics” no doubt will not vote for an African-descended presidential candidate, but then again, at least the older ones won’t vote for a Democratic Party candidate anyway.

And, New Mexico is a strange state, when it comes to ethnic politics.  I know someone who was involved in New Mexico politics, who talks about visiting one of these “hispanic” communities, where he was told there were two “anglos” in town… “but they’re both black.”  Depending on the user, “Anglo” could mean native English speaker or “white.”  Mexican-Americans are often lumped with recent Mexican immigrants as “Mexicans,” though some Mexican-Americans call themselves “Chicanos” — a term of deadly insult to the “Hispanics,” who look down upon the Chicanos as rubes and “Indians.”  And a lot of the native Americans (a sizeable portion of New Mexico’s electorate) speak Spanish, not English, and are sometimes called “Hispanics”… though they have no European ancestry.

The BBC got the story right, though the context wasn’t clear.  Commentators in the U.S. are just spinning their wheels over someone who is — and according to my New Mexico sources, always was — an asshole.