Whether we call it Columbus Day, Día de la Raza, or Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I value it all the same.

It’s not a day of rage. It’s a day to remember our ancestors and remind ourselves to look toward the future. They persevered, they adapted, they birthed a new world.

The photo is one of my great great grandmothers on her wedding day. I know very little about her but when u was young I told my mom I hoped I would grow up to look like her because she was so pretty.
She was “full blood” but married a mestizo from a village over the mountain.

Women like her were in a way the most pivotal piece of the history of New Spain.
Very few Spanish women came to the new world, unlike the British colonies. These women - whether by force, by choice, or some combination of the two - are the mothers of our cultures and nations.

In New Mexico, we really didn’t celebrate Columbus Day but rather Día de la Raza.

If you’re Mexican or Mexican adjacent - you’re familiar with Malintzin, or La Malinche. Little is known, but her role was critical in the collapse of the Mexica.

https://daily.jstor.org/who-was-la-malinche/">https://daily.jstor.org/who-was-l...

If you’re hispanoparlante, this is a pretty cool feature length film out of México about her. https://youtu.be/S2P58qu_pZo ">https://youtu.be/S2P58qu_p...