Writings and meditations by Chema Hernández Gil – organizer, foiled engineer, and media activist based in San Francisco.
On this day 250 years ago, the first wave of colonists settled in what is now San Francisco. Most were the Sonoran families of the Novohispanic frontier garrison deployed to establish the Presidio.
Helping my mom trace our family tree has taught me that this process is as much about the lives of individual people as it is about getting glimpses into their times. It is about finding vital records and trying to understand the historical context of the people they represent. This is why I got this little, battered copper coin.
I’ve previously written about my family’s San Francisco, in Guanajuato state. It’s a town called San Francisco del Rincón, founded in the early 17th century as a república de indios, an “Indian republic.” This is the San Pancho my dad was born in and grew up in, the one I remember as a kid, and where I spent a bit of time as an adult.
That San Pancho was the hometown of María Isabel, my grandma. My paternal grandfather, José Isabel, only arrived there in the 1930s. He hailed from San Felipe “Torres Mochas” (San Felipe of the Unfinished Church Towers), a smaller town farther north in Guanajuato state, outside of the Bajío lowlands. I don’t remember visiting San Felipe growing up and my grandfather did not talk about it much. It was mostly my dad and his siblings who mentioned it, usually when complaining about how mean my great-grandmother Nemesia was.