Los Barbudos

So, I want to tell you about my people and about Anthony's people, too, in a way. One of Anthony's greatest challenges as a Spanish teacher is to get his students to understand that, although there are at least 20 countries that speak Spanish, Spain, Mexico, Chile, Peru and Cuba, for example, are all very different even though they speak the same language. In particular, Spain and Mexico have a long and mostly historically non-congenial relationship. The native people to Mexico, as you likely already know, were not treated very well upon the arrival of the Spanish. With Columbus Day coming up here pretty soon it seems like a good time to explain the Spanish phrase "barbudos" and also why Mexicans and other Spanish speakers of the Americas might have mixed emotions about this holiday.

Kurt Vonnegut described the historical moment pretty well in "Breakfast of Champions:"

"1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them."

This is where the "barbudo" connection comes in. You see, native people of the Americas are not known for growing beards (or much facial hair at all). There is some debate about whether this is merely a stereotype, but one thing we know for sure: the Spanish "sea pirates" that came to "rob, cheat, and kill [the locals]" were quite beardy. The word for beard in Spanish is "barba" and a bearded person is called "barbudo." To this day there are Spanish speakers in the Americas that refer to Spaniards as "barbudos..." and not in a, you know, warm and fuzzy kind of way.

Anthony, whose heritage goes back to Galicians from the northwest coast of Spain, is, therefore, "barbudo" in both historical and physiological ways. Many conquistadors of the Americas in the early 16th Century were from this specific region of Spain. Take for example, Nuño Guzmán, Galician and ruler during this time in Mexico of what would later become the region around Jalisco, but at the time was called Nueva Galicia. It is said of Guzmán:

"After the conquest of Nueva Galicia he became Govenor of that province in 1531. Eventually he was jailed in Mexico City for for his cruelty to Indians then he was recalled to Spain where he spent the rest of his life under house arrest."

Consider this representation of him:

Notice who's wearing beards and who's losing (literally) their head!

Now you know. Me, I'm just a beard.