Families: More Mexican Americans are using the Internet to explore their roots across the border.

By JENNIFER MENA
TIMES STAFF WRITER

ROMITA, Mexico -- Behind the colonial church where her father was baptized nearly a century ago, Teresa Maldonado Parker on Tuesday celebrated her first
Mexican Christmas.

Under streams of colorful banners on Auza Street in this small agricultural community, dozens of neighborhood children and distant cousins lit candles and sparklers
and rocked baby Jesus in blankets on Christmas Eve. They shared sweets and punch. There were no gifts, no trees, no Santa Claus. The festivities were about Jesus,
and about a family united.

These merrymakers were once just names on Maldonado Parker's family tree. From her Orange County home, she had traveled this holiday to meet them and cap a
genealogical journey that has consumed her for nearly two years. Thousands of Mexican Americans such as Maldonado Parker are searching for their personal
histories, crossing an emotional border that once separated them from Mexico. With the Internet and local genealogical groups making research easier than ever, they
are trying to reclaim a past shelved for decades. In the process, they are learning as much as they can about roots their families long tried to distance themselves from
in the name of assimilation.

Maldonado Parker's father, Agustin, rarely talked about Romita. He told his daughter the family should focus on their lives in the United States, not dwell on the past.

She didn't question her father's silence on the subject of his family. But in recent years, the 54-year-old became fascinated with Mexican culture and customs, and
took part in a Mexican heritage event in her hometown of Santa Ana. She began to wonder about her own family tree--although her father had never even told her
the name of her grandparents.

"I wanted to walk where my parents walked. I wanted to know the place where they came from," she said. "This is like uncovering stones, the stones of your life.
You have to know where you came from to know where you are going. And all this time, I have not known."

On her holiday trip, she is discovering much she never knew. At the Christmas dinner of tamales and sweet bread, she raised a glass of sidra, the traditional sparkling
holiday wine, and told two dozen distant cousins: "Now, you are not just names, you are people I know. You are family."

Many Latinos say genealogical research changes their perspective and, in some cases, redirects their lives.

American-born Maldonado Parker is considering applying for dual nationality and retiring in Mexico.

Touring her family's farmland where her father lived until he moved to the United States at 6, she imagined him a small boy romping through the blankets of crops,
playing with the chickens and cows, and picking a ripe papaya off a tree.

"A lot of Mexican parents didn't want to talk about Mexico, to tell their children where they come from," said Maldonado Parker, who works as an assistant at the
Orange County district attorney's office. "They wanted to forget, to run away from the negative stereotypes. I did too."

She began her investigation by reaching distant cousins in California, who provided the first clues about Romita. Both of her parents came from the town of 8,000 in
central Guanajuato state, home of Mexican President Vicente Fox.

The major turning point came when she met Mimi Lozano, creator of a Southern California Latino genealogical organization. Somos Primos (We Are Cousins) is a
nonprofit group that helps people create family trees. The group hit the Internet two years ago and now attracts 3,000 followers from as far away as the Philippines.

"There is an increasing interest in genealogy among Latinos," Lozano said. "The Internet has made it easier for everyone to find their ancestors. Too many people
have shrugged it aside for too long. If you are in a country that is against what you are, you do that. You assimilate to get along."

When Mexican Americans do get into genealogy, many focus on Spanish rather than Mexican roots, experts said.

"Our oldest members do not like to think of themselves as from Mexico," said Maurice Bandy, president of Los Californianos, one of the oldest genealogical groups
that admits only those who can trace their families to California before the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe. "They think their people came from Spain to California. . . . It
can't be, but that's what they say."

Older Mexican Americans may have historical reasons for thinking that way, said Howard Shore, an instructor of U.S. history at Clackamas Community College in
Oregon City, Ore.

"There was a lot of marginalization," said Shore, who used to teach genealogy classes at Roosevelt High School in Los Angeles' Boyle Heights. "Some people just
wanted to turn their back on where they come from, often because of the poverty."

For younger generations, getting in touch with the difficult lives of family in Mexico can bring its own satisfaction.

Witness Peter Cole Soberanes. Among the many relatives he found in Mexico was a toothless cousin in Culiacan who lives on a dirt floor. Although he speaks no
Spanish, Cole Soberanes now makes donations to relatives in need.

"You start to look around, and I think about those relatives and then I see my friends here buying second homes and boats," said Cole Soberanes, an Oakland
financial planner. "It makes you wonder how the world got to be the way it is."

After Maldonado Parker found her grandparents' names on a computer screen, she wanted to find more names, more history.

Like thousands of Mexican Americans before her, she began trolling for more records online. The Web site she used, http://www.familysearch.org, is run by the
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Salt Lake City. Officials said the Web site has grown exponentially since its creation in 1999. In summer 2000, the site
was used by an average of 100,000 people a day; last summer, the number of daily users jumped to 160,000 people.

After searching the Internet, she connected with some cousins who provided more information but had yet to make the trip down south.

One distant cousin in Perris, Calif., is eagerly awaiting photos of the trip. Now a retired credit investigator, 67-year-old Connie Juarez wonders whether she will ever
go because finances are tight.

"I've always wanted to go but somehow I just didn't. Sometimes now, as I'm in my later years, I wonder what it was like, the place where my grandparents came
from," she said.

For Maldonado Parker, discovering the names of her grandparents and great-grandparents was an emotional experience. She planned for months to meet Lupe
Fernandez, her first cousin once removed, but she died just months before Maldonado Parker came to Romita.

Fernandez's daughter, Karina Munoz, said the presence of their newfound relative was helping them to get past their most difficult Christmas. Fernandez's sisters said
they might even visit Orange County because they know she would have wanted them to forge a relationship with family north of the border. In turn, Maldonado
Parker hopes her son can grow close to his newfound family.

Besides visiting relatives in Romita, Maldonado Parker busied herself collecting church records, including her parents' baptismal documents. They would be sufficient
proof for her to gain dual national status in Mexico.

If she becomes a dual national under the law that took effect in 1998, she could own her own home in Mexico, receive better treatment under investment and
inheritance laws, and access other Mexican government services and jobs.

"People have always said I'm from Mexico, and yet I grew up in the United States," she said. "It's always been confusing. Now I feel like I understand how I am
from both. I know my place in history."

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