In his memoir begun in 1908, the author recalls finding himself-along with his fellow Mexican Confederate soldiers-terrorized by white Confederates. When the americanos
take up arms and threaten to eliminate all the greasers,
he is forced to desert to Mexico to survive. This fascinating autobiography recounts the life of a man born in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1837, before Mexico lost control of the region following the Mexican American War in 1848 and the state achieved U.S. statehood in 1912. One of the first Methodist preachers of Hispanic descent in the United States, the memoirist chronicles his life during turbulent times. An orphaned runaway, he left New Mexico in 1848 on a U.S. Wagon Train, and traveled through Missouri, New York, Washington, D.C. and the Deep South. He experienced firsthand the racism inherent to the time and was an eyewitness to slavery. He was a veteran of the Texas Indian Wars and the Civil War, serving as a bugler in both the U.S. Army and the Confederate Army. And he spent his last 35 years as a Methodist circuit-riding preacher in a time when most Hispanics were Catholics. The preservation and publication of this memoir is almost as fascinating as his life: the handwritten, Spanish-language manuscript-unfinished when he died at 73-was passed down until his grandson translated and transcribed it in the 1960s, and now edited by his great-granddaughters. It includes sample pages from the original, handwritten manuscript; the complete original Spanish manuscript; an epilogue describing the significance of Santiago's later life; the English translation; and photos of Santiago and his family. It is an invaluable aid to understanding the upheavals of the 19th century in North America. An absorbing account of personal survival in a world of fluid and changing borders, it is also an affirmation of ethnic identity in a time when racial and ethnic differences were subject to greater ignorance and often, violence.