Hispanic Heritage Month: Mitchell Gomez

Our Executive Director, Mitchell Gomez, is of mixed (and complex) heritage. His mother's family are European Jews who escaped Russia and Ukraine during the pogroms of the late 1800s and early 1900s. His father's family is comprised of many different groups, with a documented ancestry stretching back to the 1500s in what are now New Mexico and Colorado (where Mitchell still resides). The three groupings that make up the majority of this side of his family are Hispanic settlers, free Natives (mostly from the Pueblo, Hopi and Navajo nations), and Native slaves known as Genízaro. Although he has researched...