My Whole Life, I Embraced My Latina Identity. Then I Took A DNA Test That Changed Everything.

Friday morning began in the Los Angeles International Airport. I was preparing to board my flight to go visit my father in Seattle. This would also be the first time that my partner of three years would meet my dad. I was nervous and excited, but both feelings would be replaced by something entirely different just moments later.

I heard a chime on my phone and looked down to see an email from Ancestry.com. My fingers flew to open the email. I had been waiting two painfully long months for the results of my DNA test. While on my mother’s side I knew I was thoroughly European, I felt there was something missing from my paternal genealogy. I had been waiting for this test only a few months, but this was a mystery I’d wanted to solve my whole life.

As with many families in the Southern U.S. with ancestry originating in the slave trade, I was eager to see where my ancestors had migrated from on the West Coast of Africa. While there were many unknowns that I was eager to uncover through my DNA, one thing I was certain of; I was Puerto Rican. My name was Cuba Jimenez , after all.

I opened my results right as pre-boarding was called, scanning the percentage breakdowns below the multicolored world map. Cameroonian. Congolese. A lot more than I was expecting of them. British. Scottish. A lot more of that, too. My partner was the first to call it out. “There’s no Spanish. No Taino.”

I didn’t realize what she was saying. I checked the map again. None of those fun little migratory circles even touched Spain or the Caribbean.

I had my grandfather’s birth certificate. There was no doubt that Luis Jimenez-Cruz was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. A military man who was assassinated in Panama during the Martyr’s Day riots and buried