Opinion: Texas Mass Shooting echoes historic white racism among some Hispanics

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A girl runs as other shoppers leave with their hands raised after police respond to a gunman who shot and killed eight people and injured at least seven others at the Allen Premium Outlets mall north of Dallas. Reuters

Mexicans are no strangers to shootings, nor are they accustomed to racism toward other Mexicans, especially those with indigenous backgrounds.

Prior to 1519, the ruling Aztec Empire waged war on neighboring tribes and killed any captured men. They were so dominant that they could simply notify a tribe before a planned attack and that tribe could simply hand over a certain number of men to sacrifice to avoid battle.

The Aztecs were superior in weaponry and attitude towards inferior tribes. After killing male enemies, they enslaved their wives and children. This is what the Spaniards found when they arrived in 1519.

With guns, horses and steel, the Spaniards changed everything. Some of what they did figuratively buried millions of people, Indians, forever.

From the moment they conquered the Aztecs, the Spaniards created a racial infrastructure that is basically still in effect although no longer rooted in law.

The Spaniards imposed a system of racial classification that would have humiliated Adolf Hitler and the most racist of Americans.

First came the people born in Spain, the Peninsulares. Their children born in the western hemisphere were Creoles. People born to a Spanish father and an Indian woman were considered mixed or mixed race. From fourth to 15th there were variations from some white, some native, some black and mixed with white or Indian down to the lowest racial group in all of the Americas – people who were purely Indian.

Today, the Mexican demographic percentages are 10% Pure White, 60% Mixed, and 30% Pure Indian. Mexico has the largest indigenous population of any country in the Western Hemisphere.

Which brings us to the deadly May 6 shooting in Allen, Texas by Mexican-American Mauricio Garcia.

When police announced the dead shooter was wearing white supremacist and neo-Nazi insignia on his black clothing, Donald Trump Jr. and other conservative commentators said the shooter couldn’t be a neo-Nazi because he wasn’t white.

But a person of Mexican ancestry can be totally white, from an entirely Spanish family. In fact, many Mexican Americans tell the Census Bureau that they are white. And they may think they’re white, even though the real story is different.

For example, I knew my indigenous origin, but I thought for a long time that my Spanish ancestors came from Contreras, a town in northern Spain. But I was completely surprised by a DNA test.

Turns out I’m 48.9% indigenous, both Mexican and Peruvian. But the other half is quite mixed: Eastern Europeans (Jews) 12.5%, British Isles 9.6%, Germans 9.5%, Italians 8.10%, French 6.4%, Greeks 1, 8% and finally Spaniards 1.8%.

Racial identity is complex and labels like white, black and Hispanic are too simple.

So a neo-Nazi white supremacist can easily have a Hispanic name and still open a mall in Texas.

Raoul Lowery Contreras is a Navy veteran, political consultant, prolific author, and host of the Contreras Report on YouTube and ROKU.

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