My mother’s side of the family has the dramatic, DNA. Because they hale from Puerto Rico. Scientists that study such things, as world wide DNA migrations, like to study the Puerto Ricans. Why? Many people crossed paths on this small island, over the past 500 years, to produce me, my brother, and my many cousins. That means many stories are to be told of the intriguing facets of the Santiago-Bracero family.
The first question is this: how do we actually spell my great-grandmother’s last name? Her full name was Braulia Bracero y Hernandez. That name is using the traditional Spanish protocol, which is to take bother parent’s last family or surnames. The reason I ask the question is that I have seen it spelled both Bracero or Brasero. Is this a misspelling on the side of people who do not speak a word of Spanish. The words do mean two different things. Ergo, their spelling cannot be interchanged. And, in the New World, except for a few places, they are pronounced the same way.
What do the two words mean?
A bracero is a man who works with his hands. During WW2, in 1942, the United States and Mexico put together a program, called The Bracero Program, to allow Mexican workers into the United States. Many jobs in farming, and unskilled labor were left wanting because the American men went off to war. This program ended in 1964.
I have never met, or known of, anyone from Mexico, who had this as a family name.
The second word, brasero, means brazier. In Spain, the word is pronounced differently as the Spaniards pronounce a ‘c’ as we pronounce a ‘th’. Therefore, in Spain one can tell the difference in the two words by the way they are pronounced. Ergo, if I say, brathero, I mean this guy.
If I say, brasero, I mean this thing.
Since I have seen my mother’s name spelled both ways, it leads to confusion. Does the family name come from an ancestor who worked with his hands? Well it does take a bracero to make a brasero. But it doesn’t answer the question a researcher wants an answer to, that is, what did my ancestor do to warrant that name? Alas, I shall not know.
The next question up for answering, now that you know the Spanish surname protocol, is how did my maternal grandfather end up using his mother’s name, and not his father’s?
Here’s the story. My maternal grandfather is what we would refer to as a natural child. Meaning, his parents were not married. His father was the dude in the photo. Filipe Santiago y Irizarri. Irizarri is a Basque name. Whomever the first Irizarri is who came to Puerto Rico, he left many descendants on the small island, as the name is associated with the island.
My great grandmother was a beautiful woman. So it makes sense the guys would be buzzing around. My grandfather, her son, was named Rafael Santiago y Bracero. Rafael did not work with his hands. He built an organization instead. However, as the story goes, he became angry with his father, Felipe, and he dropped the Santiago name, to take his mother’s name alone. He may have been one of the first guys in PR to use only his mother’s name. Personally, I love the tradition of both parent’s family names, because it makes tracing the lineage much easier.
The use of the two different spellings makes guessing how this name became attached problematic. Here’s my theory. Someone immigrated to Puerto Rico who was an iron worker, that made things, like braziers. Isn’t that a nice and tidy explanation? I’ll explain my theory more later.
The Santiago name comes from Spain. Since Felipe had a northern Spanish name, and a Basque name, we can say, with little doubt, he was of Northern European stock. He had a wife, and a mistress. How much they overlapped, I cannot know until I can date the births of all of his children. (I am in touch with one of his other descendants, i.e., the wife side.)
As for his line of work, he was a man who grew things, a farmer, and made things. At one time he was a sailor. I was told he fought in the Spanish-American war. But I cannot verify that, except for this uniform he wears.
Between the two women Felipe cared for, he produced 15 children. He was a rather handsome dude, so I can see why the women fell for him. He had to make a good living in order to afford a wife and a mistress. How much money he made is a number we can never know. It was not enough to make my grandfather keep the surname, Santiago. Indeed, I was not aware of this broad background until I sat down years back, to interview my aunts. My super religious grandfather began to make sense to me when I discovered he was a part of a second family. Back in the day, unless you were a part of a second family of a titled noble, or a very wealthy man, being the result of a guy’s extra family was something one whispered about. Even in our modern world, we think father’s need to be married to the mothers of their children.
My grandfather had 8 children, with two wives. His first wife, my grandmother, died of TB on St. Nicholas Day, in 1929. He married his second wife just weeks later. TB was a raging pandemic back in the day. My grandmother, Elvira Vasquez Ramos, was a woman of 40 when the disease claimed her. Her six daughters aged in range from 16 months to 14 years old.
My maternal grandmother, Elvira Vasquez Ramos
TB was a scourge to my paternal family as well. My paternal grandmother’s immediate family all died off before she reached the age of 25. Between 1911 to 1916, her sister, mother, brother and then father, succumbed to the disease. Grandma was an out door type of gal, so she stayed healthy.
When looking over my DNA, I can see that many of the interesting parts came from my maternal side. Whether it was great grandmother Braulia, or grandmother Elvira, the remnants of the indigenous Puerto Ricans, a Nigerian, a Mexican, a Jew, and a North African, are all apparent. Felipe? He be white. Translation? Generally Northern European. You can add German to the Galician-Basque mix. But that white boy fell in love with Braulia because, well, beauty.
The possible background stories are intriguing. Like how did that Mexican get into the picture? A Mexican genealogy specialist clued me in: work. Ever since the Spanish showed up to claim pieces of real estate in the New World, they needed extra workers to help them build infrastructures. Like governors’ mansions, and churches, and so forth. So someone went to work and someone got themselves a wife, contributing the piece of DNA to my makeup. Was he a man working with his hands? Such is that theory I have.
How the North African and the Jewish individual got mixed up with me, I can only guess. During the age of discovery, all sorts of dudes, and some women, went wandering around this Earth. The traffic between the Old World and the New World was intense. The location of Puerto Rico invites visions of pirates. Surely someone in my DNA was a pirate, either criminal, or state sanctioned. Or perhaps both. I mean there is not much difference in the two. Killing for your own gain, or killing for your queen for hers, and your gain, that is a thin line.
Life on a small island means everyone, to some degree, is related. Think of my great grandfather, Felipe. Producing 15 children can mean having at least, 30 grandchildren, and 60 great grandchildren. And so forth.
The family name Santiago, is spread out across Mexico, Central America and South America. The name comes from Saint James, who is the patron saint of Spain. It’s a complex story how that came to be. There is a myth about Santiago, yes the apostle and brother of Jesus, on how he came to Spain and was buried there. The city, Santiago de Compostela, is in Galicia, which is northern Spain. Which makes the name, Santiago, a location name. When the Spanish created cities throughout the New World, they named 12 towns after the patron saint in various compositions. Perhaps the most famous is Santiago de Chile, which is a large city of over 6 million people. Cuba, Argentina, Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico, Venezuela, Uruguay, and Nicaragua all have towns or cities named Santiago. In addition to that, the Philippines also have a Santiago.
When the Santiagos arrived in Puerto Rico I don’t know. Sometime in the 18th century is my guess. I don’t think the Braceros arrived. They were already there. They are heavily indigenous. Methinks Braulia is 50% indigenous. And my grandmother, Elvira, also is also heavily indigenous. Where the Nigerian comes in, we cannot know. But it was long, long ago, for that is a tiny piece of me, that 2%. It could be from the slave trade, or it could be one of those pirates.
When I gaze at that DNA, and the photos left to me, the storyteller brain kicks in. I cannot know these people directly, as there are no diaries or letters available. So my mind conjures. And now I have a project running alongside the novel I’m working on. It’s a book of short stories, historically based on the time and locations of my ancestors.
I have too much fun.
My mother’s name was Cesiah. It is pronounced, seseeah. An exotic name! My aunts were named with much drama. Those names are, from eldest, to the baby, Abda, Hilda, Drucila, Rebecca, Cesiah (mom) and Noemi. My half-aunt was named Albra, and her brother, Rafael, after his father. My tia Noemi is still living.
If my mom was still among us, she would want me to say this: Spanish speaking countries are not alike. There is no such thing as a LatinX or general Latino or Latina. She detested those terms, because they are modern words that attempt to lump all Spanish speaking people together. Aside from the language, and it is spoken differently depending on the location, they are not all alike. Please learn that so Mom won’t haunt you. Because if there was anything that would make her angry, it was when Americans thought she was from Mexico. Speaking English with a Spanish accent = Mexico. Plus, too many Americans didn’t know that as a Puerto Rican, she was born an American citizen.
The Americas to our south had several different civilized cultures before the Spanish and Portuguese invaded. Aztec, Inca, Moche, Olmec, Toltec, and Maya, to name the most known. These early civilizations influenced the Spaniards as much as the Spaniards influenced them. It is why the Spanish speaking, and Portuguese speaking people are different from one another. In Puerto Rico, there are the Caribbean Indians scattered throughout the islands and the main coastline. They would interact, not only with those who settled on the islands, like Puerto Rico and Cuba, but with the seafaring men as well. Thus the variation of the DNA we find in that part of the world.
Have you discovered your family through the science of DNA? Find the truth about who you came from. It took thousands to make you, millions really. Go ahead and pick out of few you would like to know. Study their eras, and see if they resonate with you. Because they are inside you, in varying portions. Listen, and hear, who speaks the loudest…
So let us review: A bracero is a guy who works with his hands. A brasero is a brazier.