The first time Pam Haley met Alex Mondragon, she asked him what tribe he belonged to.
Slightly take aback, the Lake Highlands freshman politely informed Haley that he was Hispanic, not Native American, but Haley wasn’t convinced. She later discussed it with her son, one of Mondragon’s football teammates, who insisted that his friend was from Mexico and that his mother spoke Spanish.
“I told him, ‘I don’t care if she speaks Chinese. He’s Indian,’” Haley recalls.
Originally from Oklahoma, Haley grew up around Native Americans and was convinced that Mondragon’s features were similar. It continued to nag at her until this year, his senior year, when Haley approached him with the prospect of finding out once and for all.
Haley, a health aide at Lake Highlands High School, had searched the Internet to find Genelex, a DNA testing company based in Seattle, Wash., that offers a test to prove ancestral origins for Native American rights. Mondragon’s grandfather had owned land on either side of the Rio Grande, and the family traveled back and forth at a time when it wasn’t necessary to have documentation to cross the border. But his grandfather died while the family was in Mexico and his grandmother was pregnant with Mondragon’s father, her 12th child. He was born there and never crossed the Rio Grande until Mondragon was a young child and the family immigrated to the United States. His father and mother established painting and housecleaning companies, but over the years, Mondragon’s father has been deported twice.
“You kind of feel like you live in a shadow your entire life,” Mondragon says of his family’s illegal status. “You know you’re not going to have a driver’s license, and every move you make, you have to think about what the consequences are. You have to be careful about it.”
Mondragon decided he wanted to undergo the testing. He brought his parents in and translated Haley’s explanation that if it turned out their son was Native American, it could mean citizenship status for their family, even college scholarships for their children. They agreed to let their son be tested, and Haley raised the $395 needed for the test from parents who have known Mondragon since his elementary days.
When the Genelex kit was delivered, the high school health clinic filled up with football players who had come to watch nurse Sharon Simpson swab their friend’s cheeks.
“We had our very own CSI moment,” Haley says. “It was quite exciting.”
For six weeks they waited for the results, until one Friday when Mondragon rushed into the clinic grasping an envelope.
“I was so nervous. I’ve talked about this since he was in the ninth grade,” Haley says. “I said, ‘Alex, if this doesn’t work out, I know I’ve gotten your hopes up, but we had to try.’”
It turned out that Haley had fretted over nothing. The test results and accompanying certificate showed that Mondragon was 55 percent Native American. Haley shrieked with joy, and Mondragon couldn’t believe his eyes. He was even more shocked when his high school counselor began calling Texas universities, and one of them indicated that the test results were good enough to warrant a full tuition scholarship.
“I’m still waiting to wake up from a dream,” he says. “You really don’t believe this is true. It’s like walking down a street and a lottery ticket falling in your hand, and then winning the lottery.”
Mondragon, an honors student, had already planned to attend college, but he figured he would major in something generic, like business, and earn enough hours to join a police academy. His dream since childhood has been to join a SWAT team, and it still is – but that dream is expanding.
“I really want to go into political science,” Mondragon divulges. “I never really thought I could say I’m a U.S. citizen, but I could run for governor now that this has happened. I could really shoot for that.”
Though Haley is thrilled for Mondragon, she doesn’t feel that her work is finished yet. Now she’s helping him and his family find copies of their birth certificates and trace their ancestry to find out their tribal heritage. It’s no easy task, especially with 591 tribes, but pinpointing the family’s ancestors could mean a status change in the view of Immigration and Naturalization Services, plus it might even lead to some landholdings on this side of the Rio Grande.
For his family to find out that they’re Native American changes everything, Mondragon says.
“You would think that it’s not that big of a deal, but coming from a family that’s been here illegally, it really changes a lot,” he says. “You think a door closes by being illegal, but finding out you’re Native American, a big door opens.”
