We were the ‘second’ Americans to visit and settle with our indigenous brothers and sisters (they were the ‘first’ Americans), who for thousands of years had claimed all of the Americas as their home.  This point is made not as a topic of arguable historicity but rather to point out that Latinos have lived in territories within the boundaries of what is now the Continental United States since 1513.  We are not “recent” immigrants.

The relevance of “first Americans” is important in 21^st century America because politicians, historians, economists, political prognosticators and others still characterize all American Latinos as “immigrants”.

Many American Latinos are immigrants from other Latin American countries or Mexico – but many of our ancestral families were here before Jamestown was settled or before the Pilgrims reached Plymouth Rock. Coronado first reached what is my home state, New Mexico, in 1540, with the first known ‘settlements’ in 1598.

While a sizable American Latino population is made up of immigrants, our population also includes 16th century families whose homes were here long before the United States was a nation.