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Where does history end and present begins?

My students at the History 101 college class I teach always struggle with the idea that all history is always present, that is, the past is continuously changing and studying history reveals as much about ourselves than about those who preceded us.

We, Hispanics (at least we Hispanics of a certain age) carry our history all the time with us. Of course, we are not the only people doing that, but I feel we are becoming increasingly disconnected from our own historical roots in the globalizing vortex of the 21st century.

That’s why it is refreshing to find examples of people who, from different ways of life, still proclaim the need to develop an exquisite dialogue between the past and the present, always in the context of searching for a personal and communal identity.

And it is not by chance that the two examples I found are from southern Colorado, a place where the centuries-old traditions of Native Americans and Hispanics are still very much alive.

Last week I have the opportunity of attending a conference at the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. The conference was about the history and the current situation of Hispanic families, descendants from Jewish families who arrive to the Southwest centuries ago.

To explain that history, presenters at the conference began not in Spain during the Middle Ages, as I expected, but with the arrival of Jewish families to the Iberian Peninsula around 3,000 years ago.

Then, the speakers reviewed a long series of events, including the fall of Rome, the invasions of the Visigoths, the arrival of Muslim armies in Spain, the journeys to America, the Inquisition, and other social and cultural issues, connecting all those three millennia of history with the current situation of Latino families in the Southwest.

Many of the ancestors of those families came to America 500 years ago, and many of them were forced to hide their true identity and beliefs. Five centuries later, their descendants are still looking for their identity and their place in history. For them, history is present, not past.

The second example is a column by Ed Quillen, published by The Denver Post on Sunday, March 13, 2011. Quillen speaks against HB1252, a bill now in the Colorado legislature to give the authority to the Secretary of State to review the immigration status of any voter “believed to be a non-citizen.”

To explain why he opposes such a bill, Quillen says he will probably become suspected of being a non-citizen because he lives in a city with a Spanish name (Pueblo) and in an area that was previously part of Mexico (until the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848.)

For Quillen, and for many others, Hispanics or not, history is part of the present. His best argument against a current bill is something that happened more than a century and half ago.

I would like to know if our history will remain part of our future, or if we will forget our own historical roots.

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