Author gives talk on early Californian settlers
By: Corinne Speckert, The Spartan Daily
Posted: 12/8/08
Thirty people attended a lecture on Wednesday night given by Vladimir Guerrero, author of "The Anza Trail and the Settling of California." He spoke about caste, race and ethnicity in early Spanish-controlled California and Mexico.
Vladimir Guerrero, author of the book "The Anza Trail and the Settling of California," talked about the racial profiling of California and Mexico in the 1600s and 1700s at the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library on Wednesday.
Guerrero, who is originally from Cuba and lived in Spain before immigrating to the U.S., spoke before a crowd of 30 people regarding "castes," the racial terms to which Spanish immigrants were categorized.
These castes, which multiplied every time a Spanish family of another ethnicity married, were used in the 16th and 17th centuries as ranks, he said, with the most civilized group being categorized as "Gente de Razon," the people of reason, for those that rose above their caste.
"I was fascinated by the lecture because he's talking about all the intricacies of how Spanish, then Mexican, culture in California was differentiated by caste," said Gil Villagran, a lecturer at the school of social work. "And how interesting it is that they were so interested in what your ethnicity was and what percent you were of European and Indian and black, where here we're trying to look beyond class."
Guerrero used original material from the 18th and 19th centuries in his readings, and said he became interested in California history from the late author Herbert Eugene Bolton, who wrote the book "Outpost of Empire."
"I thought it was such a fantastic story," he said. "I thought, 'Wow, the public should know this' and the book was out of print and the guy's dead, so I went to the original documents and I reread the journals and sort of retold the stories."
Laura Jimenez, of San Jose, said Guerrero spoke in a way that the average person could understand.
"It was interesting to find out how different races were considered in early Spain and how there were so many," she said. "I think he was very relatable to someone who's a history buff or just interested in it."
Rose Fried, a freshman sociology major, said she learned a lot through this discussion.
"I didn't know a lot about the start of California and how people emigrated from Mexico and how Mexico turned into California," she said.
Guerrero said because California is considered a very liberal state, it's even more important that people understand its history and remain in the forefront of social trends.
"I think it's absolutely essential because California has a history of being the leader in the nation in terms of tolerance," he said. "One of those social trends, which is part of our Constitution, is that everybody is equal under the law, but it has taken us more than 200 years to even come close to living up to that."
Guerrero said that when people were brought to California in 1776 by the Spanish authorities, race wasn't an issue because they were already living in a racial mixture of different castes.
"To them it was so much a part of every day that they didn't have to write it in their constitution; they were just living it," he said. "I think there is a connection between that tolerance and what the Europeans or part-Europeans that came here had: the fact that California has always been a social trendsetter."
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