¡Saludos Primos!

¡Saludos Primos!

Mi nombre es Luis, born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both of my parents are from Aguililla, Michoacán, tierra caliente, and in the 1970’s, immigrated to Redwood City, which is a well known transnational community. My great grandparents were from Coalcomán, and Tecalitlán. Further back, they were Cotija, Quitupán, possibly Arandas, with some other branches closer to the Michoacán/Guanajuato border (i.e. Zacápu, Puruándiro, Copándaro). Some of my family last names are: Gutiérrez, Vázquez, Castañeda, Villa, Ordás, Negrete; Oseguera, González, Orosco, Baez, Arteaga, Barragan; Elicea (sic), Licea, Valencia, Hernández, Celestino, Guerrero, Ochoa, Sandoval, Morfin, Chávez, Mendoza; and many, many others! (I love discovering new last names!)

I took a 23andMe DNA test several years ago, and was amazed by the results and percentages! Especially how they could tell when was the last time I had a full-blooded ancestor from a given population!

I expected the mestizaje of Spanish and Indigenous, and understood that there would be some Arab, Italian, Sephardi due to Spanish/Roman Empire history, but was amazed to see a significant African ancestry! It was a great eye-opener for me and made lots of sense! The history of African slavery is not well known to Michoacán. Perhaps because it was just added to the mestizaje without much thought…

It wasn’t until I took an AncestryDNA test late last year and started to find vital records of my elders that it sparked a fascination for genealogy research! It’s an addiction finding documents and solving puzzles!

My first goal was to research my Valencia ancestors to see if I could trace them back to Spain, since I figured they were probably from Valencia! I researched back about 6 generations before I hit brick walls with the readily available records on Ancestry and Familysearch. It was then that I reached out for help!

I want to send a special shout out of gratitude to primos Aaron Torres Mendoza and Daniel Serna Valencia, who turned out to be my distant cousins! I found their Family Trees on Ancestry and they were so kind and helpful when I contacted them! They have done amazing, countless hours of research and I am very grateful to them for sharing their work with me! Thanks to them, I was able to complete my first goal of researching the Valencia Piña family (almost?) back to Spain! Como dice Daniel, “los Valencias son un enigma…”

What was super interesting was seeing the other Family branches that the Valencia’s married into, several of them going back to Spain and even some conquistadores and primero pobladores! Wow! It’s unbelievable when you actually see that your blood, your family ancestors were actors in history! It’s also very tumultuous for me personally, because of the horrors of what colonialism has done, and to realize that I am a surviving product of that… My hope is to bring healing to this realization, and this is a whole different topic of interest…

Currently, I am researching my Oseguera paternal family branch leading back to Quitupán, Jalisco and Cotija, Michoacán. I have hit a brick wall and am humbly asking for help from the community of primos. I’m trying to retrace my Oseguera branch to see if/how it leads back to primero poblador, Juan Bautista de Oseguera Coronado y familia!

My folder URL is:
https://www.nuestrosraices.com/nuestrosranchos/en/lgutzelicea

¡Muchísimas gracias por existir, primos!
¡Muchas bendiciones para ustedes y sus familias!