VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos | Threads in the American Tapestry | Episode 2

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-Think about what you were taught about U.S. history, and I bet it doesn't include the contributions Latinos made to this country.

And growing up in Jackson Heights, New York, my history books certainly didn't.

Did you know that Latino people were here before the 50 states were even a twinkle in the Founding Fathers' eyes?

-There's been Latinos in this country for 500 years, you know, before it was even formed as a country.

-We were here long before the British colonies existed.

-And throughout the battles for independence and territorial expansion, we played a pivotal part.

-And Latinos have participated in every single conflict that the United States has ever had.

-And let's not forget who was in the Southwest or Puerto Rico before they were even part of the U.S.A. -They're building the infrastructure for the rise of cities like Phoenix, for the rise of cities like Los Angeles.

-Let's make this clear.

Latino people are African, indigenous, and Spanish by blood.

And "Latino" means you're from Latin America, while "Hispanic" means from Spain or Spanish-speaking.

-We are in many ways both the conquered and the conquering.

-But because of our shared history, we're covering both.

Now, in the case of my family, we're a mix of Spanish, indigenous, and African.

And if you know me, you know that I'm passionate about my culture and my roots.

So that's why I've handpicked some fascinating stories about how Latinos helped birth this nation and contributed all along the way.

Without us Latinos, the United States would be a very different place.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ This program was made possible in part by... -To bring the history in this series to life, the following program includes images generated by A.I.

tools.

To learn more about the process of developing these images, visit pbs.org/historia.

-You know, there's a special energy that comes from the diverse cultures that make this city great, including Latinos of every variety.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that the first nonnative New Yorker was a Latino hermano from the Dominican Republic.

♪♪♪ -Juan Rodriguez happens to be the first non-Native American, the first black person, and the first Latino person to have resided in the metro area.

Why Latino?

Because he came from Santo Domingo and Santo Domingo was a Spanish culture society.

In Santo Domingo, in La Española, at the time, the majority of the population was already formed by black people, the ancestral society to what is today the Dominican Republic, and that many, many of them were engaged in this trading with non-Spaniards.

Juan Rodriguez was recruited by a Dutch merchant ship that was fur trading with the Native Americans of the area, and as part of that crew, he arrived in 1613 in what is today the New York area.

-"The lands were as pleasant with grass and flowers and godly trees and very sweet smells came from them."

-Juan Rodriguez would soon thrive in the Manhattan estuary, establishing himself as a savvy trader.

-After two months or so, the Dutch captain decided to return to the Netherlands.

Juan Rodriguez adamantly refused to go.

And the argument was, "I am a free man.

I don't want to go to the Netherlands," and, "If you force me to go to the Netherlands on your ship, at the first chance, I am going to jump overboard."

That's what the Dutch documents of the sailors say.

-Now, you don't last very long in New York if you don't have a hustle.

And Rodriguez, he had it.

And it was only with the help of the local Lenape people that he thrived as a fur trader.

But when the original Dutch company that he worked for came back, they found that through his business savvy, he'd taken over the whole market.

And let's just say that they weren't too thrilled.

-In 1614, the captain that had brought him over returns.

They find Juan Rodriguez living among the Native Americans of the area.

He had this astonishing ability for survival.

A man from the Caribbean in the early 17th century to be able to survive a winter in what nowadays is New York City.

Rodriguez is working for a competitor company and crew that has arrived before.

Confrontation develops.

People get hurt.

The Dutch sailors return to try to settle their dispute before the Dutch authorities in the Netherlands.

Juan Rodriguez is the beginning of the story of Latino presence and Latino contribution to what this society has been until what it is today.

-Our conception of the past, of who existed in the past, and who stills exist today can really impact modern lives for modern living people.

-People tend to forget that Latinos were here long before the United States existed.

-We are able to appreciate the contributions of indigenous ancestors, of African ancestors, of European ancestors, and everything that came after that with a much broader and critical lens than when we consider only one part of our history as being important.

-Indigenous people were here before Latinos, and we don't always talk about that.

And so it's a complicated story.

-We are in many ways both the conquered and the conquering.

And we share with our native indigenous brothers and sisters our genetic background, as well as the Spanish colonial period.

♪♪♪ -And it's true -- We didn't come to America because we are America.

When the people started flooding in from all over the world, Latinos were already here.

The Dutch, German, Scottish, and British all put down roots in what would become the 13 Colonies, and Latinos have fought in every single U.S. war since day one.

When the British Crown levied more and more taxes, the colonists decided enough was enough.

So the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776, thus declaring the U.S. independent of the British Crown, and soon after that, the war for American independence would begin -- a war that could not have been won without the help of our Latino people -- our soldiers and -- let's not forget -- our reales.

And because of those sacrifices, we Latinos are the sons and daughters of the American Revolution.

♪♪♪ -History is usually patriotic propaganda, right?

-Right, right, right.

-History is written by the one who won.

-The victors.

Yeah, yeah.

-The victors.

Right.

♪♪♪ -Here we are at the monument of the Unknown Soldier.

Both of us know that there were 10,000 unknown Latino patriots that fought in the American Revolution, and there were a total of 80,000 troops, so we were 1 in 8, which is a huge contribution.

And yet you don't ever hear about it anywhere.

That's a huge number.

-When the American Revolution began, George Washington had never really commanded an army because the Continental Congress didn't have an army.

It was all militias or mercenaries.

A lot of them were merchants, farmers.

And so they needed to get paid to sustain their livelihood.

And as a result, when the Continental Congress didn't have enough money, these people didn't want to fight.

There were a lot of mutinies.

And Washington, in fact, had to execute some of the leaders of the mutiny in order to maintain discipline.

-You don't have a large base of finances that can be used to buy musketry or artillery or food to keep your armies going.

This is why the support from Spain and France and other nations was decisive in winning the American Revolution.

Without that support, we don't win.

-Did you know that our Latino ancestors saved the day?

That's right.

Latinos tipped the scale in the American Revolution against the British.

And, of course, you've heard of Paul Revere, right?

"One if by land, two if by sea."

But have you ever heard of Bernardo de Gálvez?

-Bernardo de Gálvez was español.

He served in the Spanish military.

The Spanish Crown sent Bernardo de Gálvez with a mandate, which was, "Assist the 13 Colonies clandestinely with materials, with men, and more importantly, gunpowder."

And he did so by getting rid of the British along the Mississippi River.

[ Gunshots ] -As a young soldier in Spanish territory, Bernardo de Gálvez participated in a brutal campaign against local Apache people.

So by the time the American Revolution began, he was already experienced in the ways of war.

Do you know what you need to fight a war?

Dinero.

Plata.

Chavo.

That's right.

And lots of it.

So when George Washington was running low on cash to pay his army, he turned to his Latino amigos for help.

The Cuban, Spanish, and Mexican people delivered the needed money, making it possible for Washington's troops to keep fighting.

-A lot of people donated wedding rings, gold and silver, churches with chalices, and deliver it so that they pay the militias.

De Gálvez raises this multicultural army, as well as his navy, comprised of españoles, Native Americans, manumitted slaves, free slaves, what we'd now consider cubanos, puertorriqueños, mexicanos, ecuatorianos.

This multicultural army fought battles along the Gulf Coast against all those established forts, which were Baton Rouge, Mobile Bay, and then eventually Pensacola Harbor and the taking of Fort George.

[ Cannon fires ] -Look, I know Latinos can be really stubborn because once we get something into our heads, it's hard to let go.

Now, the British had a notoriously impenetrable stronghold at Fort George.

Their cannon firepower was so great that no one could get close.

But de Gálvez said, "I'm gonna take it."

-So when de Gálvez brought his fleet to the mouth of the bay, a lot of the captains from the other ships refused to sail into the harbor because it was essentially a suicide mission.

And so one of the captains even threatened to have him arrested and sent back to Spain.

So he climbed aboard his ship and by himself sailed into that harbor.

But the British were so surprised by the act that they couldn't lower their cannons in time to blow his ship apart.

-De Gálvez and reinforcements successfully captured Fort George, and he became known for his catchphrase "Yo solo," or "I alone," because he attacked when others would not.

And thanks to de Gálvez, the British were driven out of the South.

And Bernardo de Gálvez was in good company.

-Francisco Saavedra raised a lot of money.

He raised over half a million dollars in one day.

-Cubans supported the American independence movement, donating millions of dollars.

And that was critical for American success.

-And that was considered the end of the American Revolution.

-So the contributions of people from the Caribbean and Latin America to the American Revolution were quite decisive.

-Latinos have continued to fight for this country all the time and all around the world.

But when many of them get back home, they get hassled for speaking Spanish.

But there was one of our Founding Fathers who understood the importance of our language.

-Thomas Jefferson, our former president, felt that it was very important for Americans to learn Spanish.

He spoke Spanish.

There are letters from him to his family expressing to them the importance of learning Spanish, because he told them, "The history of America right now is more than half of it written in Spanish."

-When your lived identity doesn't match the history that you're taught in school, I think that makes you not appreciate how complex and beautiful your origins really are.

-For our young people who are bilingual or Spanish-speaking, the idea that your culture has contributed an enormous amount of blood to the formation of this country means to you that you don't have to ask permission to do something in this country.

You can do whatever you want because it has been paid for with a lot of bloodshed by your people.

♪♪♪ -Fresh off winning the War of Independence, the U.S. was full of vim and vigor and wanted more.

More land, more resources, more so much more.

But there was an inconvenient fact -- Most of the land they set their sights on was already owned by Mexico and myriad indigenous tribes.

That's when you need a silver bullet, a powerful marketing concept to explain why you have the right to land that someone else already owns.

And it took two words -- "Manifest Destiny," the media campaign that said it was the God-given right of the U.S. to take all the land they wanted under the guise of spreading democracy and good old-fashioned capitalism.

Now, the U.S. wanted a huge chunk of land -- Texas, California, Colorado, Nevada, almost the entire Southwest, and nothing was gonna stop them from taking it.

You know, everybody likes to talk about Mexicans crossing the border, but they forget it was really the U.S. of A. that crossed the border when they expanded into Mexico.

[ Horse whinnies ] -Manifest Destiny was the argument that the young United States was destined by Providence to expand from sea to shining sea.

-This meant expanding into lands that were already settled by indigenous peoples, and so to expand into those lands meant to declare them as unsettled despite the rich history in these areas.

One of the most famous paintings depicting Manifest Destiny is John Gast's painting of "American Progress" in 1872.

You have to supply a narrative in which that takeover is justified.

-Now, let's talk about this painting.

You notice the Native Americans fleeing the angelic America and the imposing settlers?

Or how Gast portrays the American way as bringing light, technology, knowledge, and civility to the dark, barbaric West.

Tell me what you really think of indigenous people without telling me.

This painting was created years after the end of the campaign westward, and it was done to glorify the conquest of the lands from the Mississippi, all the way to the Pacific.

But before the settlers could claim the Western territories, they'd have to fight Mexico for Tejas, or Texas, as we know it today.

♪♪♪ -Anglo-American planters began moving their slaves to Texas, which was part of Mexico at the time, to grow cotton there.

75% of people of African ancestry in Spanish America were free.

In the United States, it was not 75%.

It was 4%.

-What led to the Texas War of Independence and eventually the U.S. invasion of Mexico -- It all boils down to slavery.

The wealthiest Anglo colonial settlers were slave owners.

-For the new settlers, slavery was not just big business -- It was the foundation of their entire way of life.

It was a basis for their economy.

It provided the labor for just about every one of their industries, and without it, the society would collapse.

-At the same time, enslaved African-Americans are fleeing to Mexico and finding sanctuary.

There are American Congressmen who want to sue Mexico for stealing what they called "our property."

What they meant was enslaved people from Louisiana, Florida, Texas finding freedom in Mexico.

-So I met with historian David Montejano to learn more.

-Texas Mexicans were seen as sympathetic to slaves.

Everywhere that Mexicans were found in a neighborhood, they had to be expelled in order to make slavery safe.

-The Texas Latinos here were considered abolitionist against white Southerners' commerce.

-So you had several expulsions... -Mm-hmm.

Latinos.

-...of communities in Central Texas and East Texas.

-Yeah.

That's a wild statement.

Mexico abolished slavery in 1829.

That's why in 1835, Presidente Antonio López de Santa Anna marched troops to Texas to uphold the ban.

-Anglo Texans were infuriated with a Mexican government who demanded that, in fact, slavery cease in 1835.

-President Santa Anna is coming to Texas to enforce the prohibition on slavery.

-People say, "Remember the Alamo," but do they really know what happened there?

Here's what I learned.

Mexican president Antonio López de Santa Anna arrived at the Alamo, hoping to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict, but someone inside the Alamo fired a cannon at Santa Anna's forces, kicking off a 13-day battle that would claim the lives of Anglos and Tejanos alike.

[ Explosion, screaming ] [ Gunfire ] ♪♪♪ -A month later, the Texas forces surprise the Mexican army.

Santa Anna's captured.

He's held prisoner and forced to declare Texas to be independent.

Mexico refuses to recognize that independence.

-There is a lot of irony there, that the reason why they revolted was because they wanted to keep slavery, and they did it in the name of freedom.

-After Texas becomes an independent republic, it petitions to become part of the United States.

-Oh, I didn't know that.

-The Texas Anglo settlers made it very clear they wanted land not for small farms, but for plantations, for great ranches.

They want expansion.

And what expansion means in the 1830s is the expansion of slavery, because it's the most profitable economic system on the planet.

There's no other system that's even close in terms of the profits that are generated from slavery.

-In 1845, Texas entered the United States' union as a slave state.

[ Cannon firing ] -And then after that was the Mexican-American War, which was basically an excuse of a stronger country, the United States, to take the lands of a weaker neighbor, Mexico.

♪♪♪ -President Polk knew that it would not be a popular war.

He needed a justification.

-The U.S. is trying to provoke Mexico into a shooting war.

-He sent his troops down to the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas by the Nueces River.

-Mexico never recognized the Texas boundary of the Rio Grande, but, rather, the Nueces River.

When American troops went into the Nueces Strip, they, in fact, were going into disputed territory.

-Which was seen as a provocation by Mexico.

Mexico then fired upon those troops, but it was all that President Polk needed.

-"Mexico has passed the boundary of the United States, has invaded our territory, and shed American blood upon the American soil.

She has proclaimed that hostilities have commenced and that the two nations are now at war."

[ Cannon firing ] -During the Mexican-American War, a lot of Americans were conscious that this was an illegal and immoral war of aggression, and they wrote about it.

-"We beseech our countrymen to leave off this horrid conflict, abandon their murderous plans, and forsake the way of blood.

Our country may yet be saved.

Let the press, let the pulpit, let the church, let the people at large unite at once, and let petitions flood the halls of Congress by the millions, asking for the instant recall of our forces from Mexico.

This may not save us, but it is our only hope."

-In Mexico, they call it the War of North American Aggression, which is more accurate.

[ Cannon firing ] -The war lasted almost two years, and by its end, the U.S. had defeated Mexico and seized their capital, Mexico City.

And with their backs against the wall, Mexico was forced to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

The U.S. took possession of Mexican territory in California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming.

That's a lot of land.

And the Mexicans living on that land were subject to a whole new set of rules.

-The treaty was signed in the Zócalo -- the central place for the Aztec Empire.

The treaty came as the aftermath of American troops inhabiting Mexico City itself.

-The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo secured that the Mexicans living in the United States would have their property rights respected, and had the right to become American citizens.

Since at the time whiteness was a requirement of American citizenship, the United States government declared Mexicans whites as a group.

-But they weren't culturally accepted as white.

Culturally, they didn't have that citizenship.

They were told, "You weren't white.

Therefore, you cannot be a citizen."

And these things have real material consequences.

At this point in history, if you weren't white, you couldn't own property.

To divest somebody of their citizenship meant to divest them of their property.

So those Mexicans that presented as more indigenous, as brown, they weren't allowed to be citizens.

So right away, their land was stripped from them.

-The signing of the treaty was supposed to grant citizenship to Mexican Americans and protect their land claims, but for many, it was the beginning of the end, because they would soon lose their property, their livelihoods, and for some, their lives.

-There's a tremendous amount of land lost.

And so the impact on those Mexicans who are left in Texas in what becomes New Mexico Territory or Arizona Territory is generally devastating.

This treaty served as a force to take people's lands away from them and get those lands in the hands of large Anglo ranchers.

-But Latinos were not going to let people take what was rightfully theirs.

So that's when the Texas Rangers stepped in, making sure the interests of the Anglos would be protected.

-The reputation of the Texas Rangers, of course, has been of two kinds -- the mythical Ranger and the real Ranger.

The mythical Ranger is this individual who bears no harm against the innocent.

But the real Ranger, in fact, killed innocents left and right.

-How are these executions perpetrated?

-It's not like we have to document them because the Rangers would take pictures... -Wow.

-...with the folks that they had executed.

You have to imagine the brutality here.

You could find a postcard of Rangers on horseback, a dead Tejano at the feet of the horse with the rope still around the neck, the Texas Rangers posing next to the bodies.

We're talking about postcards that were then sold throughout the country.

-The Texas Rangers were an interesting warrior group.

They learned all of their tactics from the Comanches.

The Comanches themselves were probably the finest warriors and the finest cavalry of the Southwest.

-The Texas Rangers observed the Comanches' skilled combat techniques, watching how they shot guns and arrows from under their horses.

Then the Rangers adopted that practice, but used their guns instead to terrorize and kill the locals.

-The Texas Rangers were also used to go into Mexico to capture escaped African slaves and to bring them back into Texas.

The Texas Rangers identified one or two Mexican guerrillas from a particular area.

They would go into a village and wipe everybody out.

They were guilty of atrocities of rape against Mexican women, against young males.

Anyone over 18 was assassinated.

-There's lots of lynchings of Latinos and Latinos being shot and burned alive that are not documented.

-The range runs from 300 to 1,000 within a two-, three-year period.

"We were sent to provoke a fight, but it was essential that Mexico should commence it.

The occupation and annexation were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory, out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union.

Even if annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which the subsequent war was forced on Mexico cannot.

-So on the one hand, you can say that the U.S. in the short term is a victor, but in long term, the Texas War of Independence is a catastrophe.

You had a number of people, especially in the anti-slavery movement, who said, "Don't do this.

Don't invade Mexico to reintroduce slavery because it's so profitable, what you're going to do is, you're gonna end up placing the country so much on the side of slavery that the only outcome is going to be a bloody civil war."

♪♪♪ -Southerners expect that the Mason-Dixon Line will be extended all the way to the Pacific Ocean and New Mexico, Arizona, Southern California would all become slave territory.

The Southerners want to expand slavery.

The Northerners do not desire that.

There's a conflict here over what to do with this land acquired from Mexico.

♪♪♪ [ Cannon firing ] -The War of North American Aggression, aka the Mexican-American War, was over by 1848, but in the U.S., it had fanned the flames of conflict between abolitionists and proponents of slavery.

And those tensions set the stage for the Civil War.

And guess who was there?

Us Latinos.

[ Cannon fires ] And our half-español brother, Admiral David Farragut, whose exploits read like something out of a movie.

-David Farragut is part of this long tradition of sailors in the Spanish, Caribbean, Mexican world.

He's a person who apprentices to be a seaman, to be a sailor.

He becomes a captain of a ship.

During the American Civil War, he is rising in the hierarchy of the United States Navy.

Not only was he the first Latinx officer who was a rear admiral in the United States Navy -- That position was actually created for him.

♪♪♪ During the American Civil War, he physically puts himself in harm's way in a way that most admirals in the 19th century do not do.

-And thanks to him, we all know the catchphrase "damn the torpedoes!

Full speed ahead!"

[ Explosions ] -At that time, torpedoes were actually like mines that were laid in the harbors.

At Mobile Bay, he saw that, and he said, "Damn the torpedoes!

Full speed ahead!

Let's go in there and do battle."

[ Explosions ] -It captures this courageous man's fighting spirit, because if you're familiar with naval history, most men who work below the deck despise their officers.

But David Farragut, he's not just an officer who separates himself from the men below the deck.

He's highly respected by the common sailor.

Many of our ancestors worked below the decks, but without that work below the decks, the ship doesn't move.

The cannons don't fire, the battles don't get won.

-In the fall of 1864, Farragut's Navy defeated the Southerners, taking control of Mobile Bay and cutting off Southern access to a vital trade port.

This was instrumental in creating a blockade of Southern ports and turning the tide of the Civil War.

[ Cannons firing, gunfire ] -There were Latinos who fought for the Union.

There were Latinos who fought for the Confederacy.

[ Gunfire ] -Mexicans fighting for the Confederacy is also part of something else.

Even though they themselves were highly oppressed, you are willing to die for the ideal of a group in order to belong.

That is citizenship.

-And it wasn't only men going to fight for the United States.

On the front lines of the American Civil War, Latin women showed up to serve their country.

Loreta Velásquez was a Cuban woman who refused to stay home when her husband went off to fight in the Civil War, so she bought a commission and disguised herself as a man, taking on the fake identity of Lieutenant Harry T. Buford.

Ooh, what a name!

-There's so many great stories of Latinas in history that we've overlooked.

-Lola Sánchez is one of these iconic Latinos who ended up, in a sense, fighting for the Confederate side for family reasons.

Her people were from Cuba and they moved to what's now Palatka, Florida -- more or less, Central Florida.

Her father was accused by the Union Army of being a spy.

-After attempts to free her father proved futile, Lola and her sisters devised a plan.

They would host the Union soldiers for dinner.

A little hospitality, cubano-style.

-She was fluent in a number of different languages, and she was very charismatic, very outgoing.

This enabled her to gain the trust of Union officers.

-And that's how she overheard valuable information about the attack the Union had planned the following morning.

-She turned around and gave that information to help them capture Union supplies.

-And her father was later released from Union custody.

-It wasn't that she had a passion or a life in supporting slavery.

It was because her family had been negatively impacted by the North.

This is really the thing that motivated her to become, in a sense, a spy for the Confederate States of America.

I don't judge her harshly for that.

The record is clear that Latinx peoples were not a monolith during the American Civil War.

-When people talk about the Civil War, we envision the East Coast, but if the Confederates had gotten their way, they'd have taken slavery all the way to the beaches of California.

That's why the Battle of Glorieta Pass mattered.

-The battle was very important.

It's known as the Gettysburg of the West.

It's not as big a battle as Gettysburg, but it was critical.

If the Confederacy was successful enough, that is, if they could hold down the Southwest and capture the United States' gold supply in San Francisco, then perhaps they'd be able to induce the British Empire and the French to join the Confederacy.

If that had happened, that would have been a catastrophe.

-The Union forces were outnumbered in the three-day battle, and that's where Manuel Chaves came in to stop the Confederacy.

-Manuel Chaves was very important in terms of the protection of the goldfields in California and the silver mines in New Mexico.

Historically, he's good and evil.

He was of Spanish heritage and did a lot of battles against the Native Americans.

[ Hoofbeats ] -Chaves led troops down the mesa, where they surprised the tail end of the Confederate forces, destroying their supply wagons.

[ Bell rings ] -New Mexico is also in danger of turning towards the Confederacy, so José Manuel Gallegos and his Mexican American allies step up to the plate and say, "We're going in the direction of liberty."

[ Bell ringing ] José Manuel Gallegos grew up in Mexico.

He became a priest.

He mainly ministered to Pueblo Indians in what became New Mexico.

He was anti-slavery.

After the end of the Mexican-American War, he rises very quickly to political leadership.

He's the first Hispanic who's elected to a territorial legislature in U.S. history.

The speeches he gave against slavery were so eloquent and so powerful.

He said, "As Mexican people, we are an anti-slavery people.

We believe in liberty.

The Anglos talk about it.

We live it."

-Gallegos' message was so powerful that the Confederates kidnapped him when they took Santa Fe, New Mexico.

And fortunately for him, he was so popular that the Confederates couldn't kill him for fear of serious backlash.

-And this tradition of anti-slavery activism, really, among Mexicans, is what saves the American Southwest from the Confederacy during the Civil War.

-The Southerners would soon retreat to Texas, abandoning their hopes of conquering the Southwest.

And for the Confederates, this is how the West was not won.

Slavery was officially outlawed in 1865, but the ruling that outlawed slavery did not apply to the system of peonage.

Latin Americans, Native Americans, and formerly enslaved black Americans soon found themselves trapped in debt slavery.

-Peonage is a system like indentured servitude.

It's a system that's actually recognized in the old common law.

It's this idea that you have to continue working for someone until you pay off a debt.

-The peon owns his or her own body.

They can't be sold.

The families are not broken up.

Can they be forced to remain on the land, working generation after generation?

Unfortunately, yes.

-On paper, it's abolished in 1867.

But in reality, many Latinx workers and many black workers and Native workers are still subjected to different forms of peonage, especially in the American South.

Most people don't even know that peonage was involved in the building of railroads and dams and roads in major parts of the United States.

One typical example of peonage is, a railroad company goes to a small town in Mexico and puts out recruiting notices and says, "Hey, we have great work for you to do in Santa Fe or in Albuquerque," but then you show up at a railroad station one day for passage north, and they say, "Well, yeah, but you have to pay us the money in advance for your ticket.

If you don't have any money, that's okay.

We'll put it on a ledger sheet."

Oh, by the way, you have to eat between here and Albuquerque.

So by the time you even get to the United States, you owe a lot of money.

And the debts are piling up and piling up.

That's another insidious form of peonage, which continues to be very pervasive.

And by the 1920s, the anti-peonage campaign is one of the main campaigns of the earliest iteration of the NAACP -- the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ [ Brakes screech ] -After the Civil War, you have this powerful young country spreading from coast to coast, all under one flag.

Factories were being built and goods were in high demand, especially in the West, where towns and cities were springing up overnight.

But the U.S. had major supply chain issues -- how to get those goods from point A to point B.

And the best way to transport goods at the time was by train.

But there wasn't enough labor in the country to build the network of railways we needed, connecting east to west, north to south.

So guess who came in to build the thousands of miles of railway tracks.

Mexican and Mexican American laborers, known as traqueros, who represented almost 60% of the entire workforce.

And thanks to the work of the traqueros, the transcontinental railroad changed the landscape of this country and commerce forever.

[ Train whistle blowing ] -Traqueros built the Southwest, along with their Chinese counterparts, their Irish counterparts.

They're building the infrastructure that makes it possible for the rise of cities like Phoenix, for the rise of cities like Los Angeles.

Without their labor, these cities do not exist.

Mexican railway workers gain in importance and numbers, especially after the U.S. exclusion of Chinese and Chinese American workers.

-We can pay a great deal of attention to the importance of Mexican labor for the construction and creation of much of the Southwest.

♪♪♪ [ Train whistle blowing ] -But when the railroad came to New Mexico, it brought a lot of Anglo ranchers into the territory who thought, "This land sure does look good.

We should make it ours."

And that's just what they did.

-The European migrants coming en masse -- That's the way in which Mexicans in the Southwest became foreigners in their own land.

That also leads us into terrible stereotypes, i.e., that Mexican labor is only good for its brawn and not for its brain.

That mark of cheap has always been associated with Mexican labor itself, and that's part of the stereotype that we've had to live down for the last 150 years.

-Barbed wire doesn't conjure up a lot of positive images for me.

It makes me think of prisons, concentration camps, and of controlling people.

-Previous to the newcomers coming in, you had an open range.

Obviously, many of the landowners depended on that open range to move their cattle or sheep from one watering hole to another.

All of that begins to change with the introduction of the barbed wire, and now a newcomer's coming in, buying up the water sources and then fencing in the property.

♪♪♪ -It was said with barbed wire came hunger.

And that's where these three brothers who called themselves Las Gorras Blancas, or "The White Caps," came in and took matters into their own hands.

-Americans may know them as vigilantes, but for the New Mexican point of view, they were freedom fighters, and these were mostly men who disguised themselves and cut many of the barbed wire fences that were stretched across Mexican land grants by ranchers as well as by the American government.

-Las Gorras Blancas were fighting to retain their land, farming rights, and access to resources.

They weren't out there being racist, like some other white-hooded groups.

-We favor irrigation enterprises, but we'll fight any scheme that tends to monopolize the supply of any water sources to the detriment of residents watered by the same streams.

If the fact that we are law-abiding citizens is questioned, come out to our houses and see the hunger and desolation we are suffering.

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ -Continuing the campaign of Manifest Destiny, the United States went abroad and this time invading the Spanish Caribbean archipelago of Puerto Rico.

We called Puerto Rico La Isla del Encanto, the Isle of Enchantment.

-Puerto Rico was referred to as "the key to the Indies," "the key to the Americas."

Puerto Rico was first occupied by the Spanish Empire in 1493.

-When us Puerto Ricans, when we refer to ourselves, we often talk about us being Boricuas, meaning "from the island of Borikén," which was the name of what is today Puerto Rico before European contact.

-For the United States, Puerto Rico was a force in the region and they needed to protect their interests.

They knew that they wanted to have control over the Panama Canal.

They already had Cuba.

They had the Dominican Republic as a de facto neocolony.

Puerto Rico was militarily important.

So in 1898, Admiral Sampson bombed the capital of San Juan for a couple of hours... [ Explosions ] ...and by December 10, 1898, Puerto Rico had become a US colonial possession.

-In the case of Puerto Rico, we did not choose to become a part of the United States.

We were invaded by the United States in 1898, and we have been a part of the United States, whether we like it or not, for over 100 years.

-It wasn't until the War of 1898, colloquially known as the Spanish-American War, that the United States became an empire.

[ Explosions, gunfire ] There's places where there were parades welcoming the occupying forces.

For many Puerto Ricans, it was just another day.

The occupation of the United States simply meant the occupation of another imperial force.

People needed to wake up, go to their work, and continue their lives as is.

-And while the island nation was of great strategic and economic value to the United States, the people of Puerto Rico had no way to prepare for the ramifications of U.S. colonization.

♪♪♪ -The citizenship that was granted in 1917 and that's still the citizenship that we have, is a second-class citizenship.

That is, Puerto Ricans are not fully protected by the United States Constitution's Bill of Rights.

-Until 1947, there was not one single governor of the island who was Puerto Rican.

The island to this day has had what's called a resident commissioner in Congress, but that person has no right to vote.

That person exists there as nothing more than a witness.

-Imagine having to sit there powerless while your colleagues decide your fate.

It feels profoundly unjust.

-When you think a whole group of people doesn't exist or doesn't contribute or was never part of the story of a nation, then that group of people is not going to be included in your projects for the future.

-Now, the negative effects of colonization impacted Latinos not just on the island but also those that immigrated to the U.S. ♪♪♪ -New York is the place where immigrants land.

People from Latin America have been coming to this country in part because they've been driven out of Latin America as a result of U.S. foreign and economic policy.

-New York City became a haven for Puerto Rican activists.

One of them was Afro-Latino Arturo Schomburg, who began a collection that would uplift the African diaspora, helping to lay the foundation of the Harlem Renaissance.

-Arturo Alfonso Schomburg first arrived in the United States in 1891.

Schomburg was really an advocate for Puerto Rican and Cuban independence.

[ Indistinct shouting ] When we think about the Spanish-American War, we cannot simply think of it as a war that was taking place in the Caribbean.

It was being organized from New York City, and Schomburg was at the center of it.

-Now, Latinos aren't exempt from colorism or how it can permeate a culture, leaving those with darker skin, indigenous features, or African heritage feeling like they aren't properly represented.

Fortunately, Arturo took a stand and said, "Yes, I am Afro-Latino and my history is worth celebrating."

♪♪♪ -He's important because he identified as Black.

-Right.

Right.

-So Arturo made common cause with Black Americans, and he built institutions around learning, understanding the history of Black people in the Americas -- not just in the United States, but in Latin America.

Because when you talk to Americans, they assume that the majority of Black people or enslaved Africans landed here.

-Right.

When the truth is, all over Latin America.

-Something like a quarter of enslaved Africans came to the United States.

-Just a quarter.

So... -Just a quarter.

-...three quarters more were all over Central America, South America, Brazil, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela.

Everywhere.

-Everywhere.

-Arturo Schomburg had a teacher actually tell him that Black people didn't have a history worth teaching.

He made it his mission to prove otherwise.

-Arturo Schomburg begins the project of crafting a center for the study of Black culture and Black history, premised on the idea that Black people throughout the world have been dispersed by exploitation, by trauma, by persecution and genocide, and we need to see each other as being related.

-And thanks to Arturo Schomburg, we're better able to honor the history of Afro-Latinos and Black culture.

He's helped to reshape the narrative that defines us.

-They named the library after a Puerto Rican.

-Right, and made his name American, anglicized.

-Arthur.

-Arthur instead of Arturo, which was his real name.

Latinos are a people still pushing for representation.

A friend of mine, she was a dark-skinned Latin woman, sent out two headshots -- one with a Latin name, one with a white name.

The Latina name got nothing.

The white-sounding name was the one that got her jobs.

Maybe that's why I'm John Leguizamo instead of Juan Leguizamo, right?

♪♪♪ The problem with us climbing in this country and succeeding comes from anti-Latino feeling and all that violence.

-You're being told on a daily basis that you're inferior.

-Mm-hmm.

-You know?

That you don't belong here.

-We watched our parents come home every day, working two jobs, insisting that their children go to school, clothing us, feeding us, with respect.

But they're being treated as second-class citizens, even though we fought and died at every war.

So when my dad came home one day and he told my mother that he had asked his foreman for a raise, and the foreman told him, "Go back to Mexico"...

So my mother kissed his forehead, and he stopped crying.

And here you have a man whose ancestors were in Tucson as early as the 1750s.

-We were not supposed to have any political rights.

We were not supposed to be citizens.

We were not supposed to be able to argue with our employers.

The idea was you take it, you accept it.

And we didn't take it.

We didn't accept it.

We fought exploitation.

We fought racism.

We fought indignity.

We joined with African Americans.

We joined with white Americans.

We joined with Jewish Americans.

And that's part of the history that I'd like people to learn.

-Once Latinos get to see their contributions to history, there's a pride to it.

And as a historian, I feel my responsibility is to tell people's stories to others.

-We've been here, we've been working, and without us there is no United States.

-And so therefore, it's all of our responsibility to become educated as to who we really are and to pay attention to what we do and how it contributes on a daily basis to the lives of all people.

-If American society doesn't learn enough about who we are, American society is not gonna appreciate us, and American society is not gonna respect us.

-Far too often, Latinos are omitted from the great American narrative, and that's just one problem with the history that's been fed to us all these years, because it's incomplete, inaccurate, and it leaves out so much.

And that's why I'm on this journey, to make sure that this history is accurate and that people don't forget that Latinos have been contributing to this great country all along the way.

♪♪♪ To order this program on DVD, visit ShopPBS or call 1800PLAYPBS.

Also available with PBS Passport and on Amazon Prime Video.

♪♪♪

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VOCES American Historia: The Untold History of Latinos | Threads in the American Tapestry | Episode 2

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