For thousands of years, North and South America were populated exclusively by at least 50 million brown-skinned people.
The Indigenous people of the Americas absorbed the shock of the European invasion of their lands. The invaders caused the deaths of millions of the original settlers. Millions more blended with Europeans and enslaved Africans. They were mestizos.
Today, an estimated 250 million mestizos live in the Americas. In countries such as Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, they make up the majority of the population.
Spanish colonialists and mestizo Mexicans were in what is now the United States at least 100 years before the first Northern Europeans touched land. By the mid-1500s, Spanish, not English, was being spoken.
Thousands of United States cities, towns, and places have Spanish names: El Paso, Albuquerque, San Diego, Los Angeles, San Franciso, and Sierra Nevada. Obviously, this is a historical legacy.
So, when we Latinos—particularly Mexicans—are not “alien.”
And the surge of non-white people in the United States is a natural phenomenon. Humans have been migrating for millions of years.
Fences, laws, or any draconian measures can do no more than pause this movement. Time will show this to be true.
Ricardo Chavira Chicano 