My last name, Villar, is said to come from the root word for village and it is my dad's surname. My mom's last name, before she was married to my dad, is Morales; it's her dad's surname, which means morals. Together they branched off of their family trees and created a family of their own and WE, my mom and dad and my sister and me, became a village of moral people. It's kinda funny when I think about it because I think it suits us well. You see, we're all about FAMILY, have a strong sense of justice and always aim to do what's right.
In Spanish speaking countries, many people are accustomed to use both of your parents' last names, but given the patriarchy, one's father's name traditionally takes lead. So, on my birth certificate, my name is Karla Angela Villar Morales. I was born in Peru.
By contrast, my sister who was born here in the US only had Villar on her birth certificate. She became a Ramos when she got married and with her husband's full support, they're planning on officially changing their family name to VillaRamos. So, together, they become the village of branches or bouquets, which to me denotes of sense of expansion (branching out) and having bundles of pretty things (bouquets of flowers). I think it suits them because they're both into broadening their mindsets and learning to take up space as well as the creative and performing arts. Conveniently, the R in both names ties together without the need for a hyphen and the sound of their new merged name is melodic, which is an added perk since they're both into musicals and like to create NEW things and be a bit unique.
I plan on marrying my beloved at some point and we're exploring what to do about our own surnames. Will we keep our own, accept only one, hyphenate, or create something entirely new. It's not an urgent thing nor is it something we dwell on, but I like that our names together would make us The Villar-Sommers or Los VillaVeranos. Sommer, if you look it up has German and Danish ancestry. It is considered a variant of summer and given to folx who had some association with the season, lived in a sunny place, or had a warm disposition. I wouldn't say Mary has the warmest disposition towards everyone, but if you know her then you know she LOVES the summer. Together we'd be a village of summers, which translates to Veranos. Doesn't that sound spectacular? After all, it was with her that I first realized how much I adore the beach myself. We are definitely beach people!
And you know who else used to be a summer person? My mom. She is also the one who, out of everyone in our family, has branched off the most. She was the first one in our families to come to the US and she came by herself. She's also our #1 green thumb. The point is that our mom is tied in some ways with some personality traits that resemble those of our respective partners. So, although Morales is the name that we lose as we grow our own families, our mom and her story will live with us forever and us, as partners, morphing our names into something new entirely is something she can understand.
You see, my mom grew up a Morales Tapia, Tapia being her mother's maiden surname, which she reclaimed after multiple divorces. My mom and her siblings grew up with surnames that quite literally translated into 'a wall of morals.' Learning about her life and the life of that side of my family is rough because they were journeys full of pain and judgement and barriers of all kinds, which is the opposite of my mom's essence as she's a welcoming, empathetic person who seeks to understand.
Morales. Morals. What a heavy name to carry with you; don't you think? My mom certainly did as she lived in a world that centered morality and equated it to the deprivation of joy and pleasure. Her family tried to instill in her certain standards of behavior and beliefs that were based on dogma (they were very Catholic) that lorded a punitive God over all of them. Fortunately, at a very young age, my mom resisted the indoctrination that the church and her family tried to make stick. The more they tried to make her conform to their ways of thinking, the more she uncovered the lies and deceptions and hypocrisy and turned away. She sought to find her own way to the truth and she eventually did.
My mom, Martha, named after her dad, noticed that her family, particularly the Tapia side, put on certain airs to present a certain way that elevated their social standing. They'd deemed themselves morally superior to others and played the part well. But my mom saw right through it; she saw them build the walls of secrecy that sowed division and envy. She witnessed the subjugation and abuse that repeated generation after generation and made a conscious effort to stop the cycle of the petty moralizing the broke her family apart. She grew disdainful of any and all systems that tried to tell her some people are better than others and stayed humble unlike much of her family.
For as much as she loved her parents, each in their own right, was not a great example of a conscious mature human being. And together, they definitely DID NOT teach her what a happy marriage or a healthy partnership was all about. But since it was what my mom most wanted, she took the lessons learned and proceeded to help herself heal so she had, at least, a shot at making it real.
She wanted to realize this dream with my dad, a man that her family did not approve of. He was too much of a "Loco Cholo" - loco means crazy and cholo is a derogatory but also reclaimed term to describe a person of indigenous heritage. You see, my dad was not the right pedigree, did not have the education or money her family thought was important. He was also darker than my mom and bore facial features that made clear he had Inka blood, which many people in Peru claim to be proud of until it shows up on our faces or in our melanin. It's something I find to be really fucked up and something nobody ever talks about.
My sister looks more like my dad and people can more easily see that she's Latinx. My mom, like me, is light-skinned and here in the states, we're often confused for being Asian. Unlike many in my family who are lighter/whiter and seek to emphasize it, I struggle with my whiteness as I associate it with my colonizing ancestry that cheated me from my indigenous heritage. I've missed out on the passing down of wisdom and sacred knowledge from my indigenous ancestors because throughout the generations many felt the need to minimize it or hide it as much as they could to make gains in life. I consider myself a Brown person, but I'm aware of my privilege as some who can pass in different contexts. To many, I become more palatable, acceptable, or redeemable simply for being white-presenting or being white-aligned and I can't unknow that I benefit from colorism and the ingrained bigotry against my own people; histories that may not belong to me but remain a part of me.
My mother loved my dad very much and never cared about the disapproval from her family; she wasn't after their approval and was willing to leave them all behind if they kept on with their racist ways. She wanted to move forward as a couple and in the name of love and did everything she could to make it so. Fortunately for her, my dad's family was more accepting and welcomed her with open arms. For that reason, I was left behind in the care of my paternal family when we were separated for three years ( a story for another time).
Unlike my mom, who has 8 siblings, some of whom are half-siblings and shared time and space with them only sporadically throughout her childhood, my dad was one of 12 siblings whom he had grown up with in one home. Most of them lived together into adulthood in the same place and to this day the Villar family remains close even though many have moved on to build their own lives and start their own families. My mom doesn't have that with her siblings and it causes her pain, but she's learned to accept it and finds joy in watching my sister and I being as close as we are. For all those reasons, my mom proudly proclaims the Villar name as her own without any resentment at all. She gets that the Villar family is truly a village and it's been that way since she met them and joined them to make and us.
Of course, the majority of the Villar Huiza family, which is my dad's side, and all their branches of offspring remain in Peru. Here in the USA, it's my sister and me who carry on the Villar Huiza legacy along with three cousins. Our female cousin married and took her husband's name and our two male cousins, her brothers, are the only ones that will pass on the Villar name as is the custom. My sister and I, being who we are, want a choice in the matter. As people who were born female at birth, the expectation is for us to lose our surnames too but given our family pride, we resist giving it up. And as a queer person who never imagined I'd ever get legally married and now that I have been, it's become more important to me than ever before to find ways to keep our village of Villars going strong.
I definitely won't be bearing children, but I'll likely foster and adopt and whether or not I ever have a child who chooses to carry our name, I will pass down the stories of our Villar-Morales branch and teach them that they too are a part of that village and part of the legacy that began with two people with morals who came together in LOVE, opened up their hearts and co-created lots of JOY in this lifetime.
