Native son

The new name Samuel Octavio Castillo informally adopted five years ago is hard to pronounce at first sight for anyone unfamiliar with Nahuatl, the native- American language indigenous to central Mexico.

Tecpaocelotl (tech-paw-oh-seh-lote) is a combination of two words in Nahuatl, tecpatland ocelotl. The name is a symbolic gesture to his ancestral Indians of Mexico.

Castillo, 20, more often goes by the shortened Ocelotl.

His interest in his native side, as he calls it, dates back to his childhood when he learned bits and pieces from his mom and dad.

Castillo delved into the indigenous cultures of Mexico as a member of Alianza de Indigena, an Anaheim-based organization dedicated to preserving the culture of people descended from the native Indians of Mexico and the United States.

He works in database management and plays flutes and rattle for the Manzo Medicine Band, a trio that combines soft rock and indigenous music.

His is a journey of self-discovery:

Tecpatl, it means flint. That means people who are considered tecpatl, they're kind of harsh. They tell you the truth but they're kind of harsh.

Ocelotlis jaguar, a kind of careful-type thing.

So it kind of goes with me. I'm someone who will tell you the truth but is kind of careful about it.

My parents named me Samuel Octavio Castillo, after my father, except for the Octavio part. Octavio is after the Mexican writer Octavio Paz. My father never had a middle name. My mom gave me a middle name so people won't call me junior.

My mom, she was pretty interested in history. I remember as a kid when she would tell me bedtime stories about history. Her stories always started with Mexican independence - Hidalgo telling the mestizo, the native people, that they should rise up against Spain and become their own nation.

She would tell me about Mexican independence, Benito Juarez, the French-Mexican War. Just stuff like that.

Ever since I was a little kid. Ever since I can remember.

My parents are both from Mexico. They're from Jalisco. My mother is from San Nicolas de Acuņa. That's the town I claim because I've been there more than my dad's hometown, which is Aguacate.

My grandpa from San Nicolas, his name was Manuel Solorio Manzo. I guess Manzo is the only clue to my indigenous past. The weird part about it is we're trying to figure out where in the world he got that last name because that tribe's in New Mexico. He's native but he's mixed. We looked through all his documents to find out what he is. Practically all his documents say puro raza indigena, you know, pure native.

I was like, Mom, do you know there's a tribe named the Manzo? Oh, yeah? Yeah, but you're not going to believe where they're from. They're from New Mexico.

The only thing that would explain it would be, I think, it was during the 1600s or 1700s the Spanish would take a lot of natives from the Southwest to Jalisco to be sold as slaves.

Me trying to figure out this whole family tree happened just last year, but I've been interested since 2000. It's been more than just trying to choose an identity. It's trying to find out who you really are.

The first time I heard my mom say we had native blood was fourth grade. I think after that it was my grandpa. The funny part was only me and my mom heard him say that he was native.

I think that was where it all started, as a kid, trying to build on that identity.

All these other terms that are out there, like the word Hispanic. I don't really like that term because it kind of neglects that native side. Hispanic means Spanish descent. But what about the native side? You can't neglect that because that native side on these lands has always been here.

The Spaniards have only been here for 500 years or less. To me, Hispanic is kind of racist, because it's seen as something superior instead of putting them equal or putting the native side more because they've been here longer. It's something I had an issue with.

I've never really called myself Latino or Hispanic. Latino, it's a weird word. It means Latin. And last time I checked, Latin was in Europe. I don't remember Mexicans coming from Latin Europe.

I haven't really found a word for it. Or at least a word that kind of embraces my native side. Chicano kind of only relates to Mexican-Americans who don't want to use Mexican-American.

It's just one of those weird things. To categorize it as one thing, it's like what about the other part?

I embrace more my native side because I know more about it in the family tree.

My parents are cool with it. The only problem I have is with my grandma, the one who married my native grandpa, and my uncle. My grandma, she's like, I don't know, she'll put down natives a lot. She'll be like, oh, that's the Indian way, kind of like an insult. Like, they stay where they are because they want to not work.

That mentality is still there, but if you educate people, it goes away slowly.

My parents have been open-minded. I've seen other parents, you say anything about native and they're like, No! In high school, me and my friends were embracing our native side and stuff, and this one guy we used to kick it with, he started liking the stuff we were doing and his father found out and he got upset. It just depends who you are. It just depends how you're raised.

To me what you reflect on yourself is what other people see. If you reflect it and people accept it, that's a lot better than just going to the government and fill out all this paperwork to change your name. People are still going to call you by your own name. So the best way is to just say what your name is.

I felt like if I didn't do that, then I guess it wouldn't show any embracing. I felt that was the best way to do it. People start asking you what does that mean or what is that and you start educating people about that. It makes people think.

Some people, I don't know if the parents don't teach them or what, but they don't know much. I want to help educate them more on that. It's not much that I know, compared to everything out there, but at least I learned something. It gives people an identity.

You need to know your past before you know your future. You could live your whole life not knowing. You'd probably have questions like, where did I come from, where am I going, why am I doing this.

If you give people parts of their identity they want to know more, they get interested. That's what I like.

c/s