My Obsession with Genealogy
When I first heard an anecdote about one of my maternal great-grandmothers, a great mystery suddenly dissolved before me. During the 1940s, she was in college in California; as the war broke out, she was deported back to Mexico because of her German ancestry. That simple fact was the essential clue that helped me answer questions that had long plagued me.
I researched the lives of other ancestors. Soon, I gained disquieting insights about myself and the life I lived: I carried the blood of both slave owners and slaves; colonizers and the colonized. Some of my ancestors supported the Union, and others the Confederacy; my German-born two-times-great-grandfather, predictably, sided with his country during the First World War. Did that mean that I was in some way implicated in what entailed from that world conflict? I was proud of some of my ancestors who were able to climb out of poverty and give their families a good life, and felt disdain for those who had used vile and immoral means to make their fortunes.
How did my ancestors navigate the world’s historical events through which they lived? The next question may have a childish ring to it, yet we all ask it: Why was I born? Self-centered curiosity soon gave way to thinking about my place in society. How is it that my ancestors, hailing from all over the Americas and Europe, converged in San Pedro Garza Garcia, which used to be a rural town and is now the second-largest city in Mexico? Like Russian nesting dolls, my questions grew from the personal to the general. Why am I white? Why am I socioeconomically fortunate? I spent the next year trying to fill the missing links connecting my self-understanding to my place in the world. Every time I found a new clue from my ancestors’ parentage, a rush of dopamine went through my head. I would spend hours on end rummaging through Ancestry.com’s records, reading census information, and looking over extraneous information uploaded by other descendants. Such searches led to more knowledge — until one day, I reached a dead end.
When I told my family about my hobby, they thought I was wasting my time. They argued that our lives are dictated by our actions, not the actions of our forefathers. In some ways, they were right: being able to trace one’s ancestry is a first-world invention, one that requires time and leisure, and which can become a labyrinth with no exit. I worried that I would emerge none the wiser in the end.
It is a cliché that knowledge of history is necessary so that we are not condemned to repeat past failures. However, knowing one’s past can undoubtedly help us understand our position in the world, and that understanding is essential for navigating difficult conversations relating to race, class, and gender. Overall, knowing my family history gave me a deeper understanding of myself and of my inherent privilege.
I have always had dichotomies in my identity, and my family tree has helped me understand them to a greater degree. With this newly found understanding, my passion for ancestry and genetics broadened. I began to read about the science of genotyping, and the correlation between our biological selves and our experiences in society. I began to gain a deeper understanding of Mexico’s history and my place in it through a study of the genetic composition of its inhabitants. More importantly, the reason that drives my search is now clear: to learn more about history, genetics, and society, and to make my descendants proud should they ever come across my name.
