Possible Spanish emigration to Guatemala?

Question

Hey there! I was researching about my fourth-grandfather, Julian Arevalo's hometown, Asuncion Mita (located in Jutiapa, Guatemala), in the spanish Wikipedia (Asunción Mita - Wikipedia, la enciclopedia libre), it says: "Before the arrival of the Spanish, it was habited by the Pipils, who had as neighbors the Poqomames in the current municipality of Santa Catarina Mita and part of El Salvador, the Chꞌortiꞌes in the Chiquimula area and the Xinkas in the area of Santa Rosa. It was the capital of the so-called "Kingdom of Mita."

And then I realized that Arevalo is a Spanish surname, is my family descended from the Spanish?

I would really appreciate any help on this, since I have been researching Julian for a long time, and I haven´t found his family.

Any help would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Answer 1

Not necesarily. I don't know much about Guatemala but in Spanish Colonial era, native and african servants in Spanish households always took "Christian" names when (forcibly or not) baptized into the Catholic faith. Sometimes they took the last name of the household they were raised in when released from forced service or slavery, as most of them did not use family names in their original culture. 

Children born out of wedlock of mixed heritage were very common too, and many times they used their Spanish father's last name and were recognized legally. 

You need to get sources closer to the time Julián was born, maybe a census record to establish if he was born to Spanish parents or not. During the Colonial era, church records of not-Spanish (full European) people were often kept in separate books from the rest or if not the race was noted in the baptism record. You have here several church books to look into!

Comments

Good comment Cristina.
Another twist is that sometimes people adopted a different surname to hide their religion. This is a story told to me by a Brazilian with surname "Costa". He said that Jewish people often took surnames like Costa and Silva, and other trees.

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Good point.

Both Spain and Portugal had Inquisition courts and enforced their laws with different amounts of force up to the early XIX century, producing an ebb and flow of new christians and jews across the changing borders, according to the political/religious situation.  Many people adapted or changed their names to disguise their origins.

Natives were also in the crosshairs if they didn't want to convert.