Ritchie Valens
Birth Name: Richard Steve Valenzuela
Date of Birth: May 13, 1941
Place of Birth: Pacoima, Los Angeles, California, United States
Date of Death: February 3, 1959
Place of Death: Clear Lake, Iowa, U.S.
Ethnicity: Mexican [Spanish, Indigenous], one eighth Chilean
Ritchie Valens was an American singer, songwriter, and guitarist. He was a rock and roll pioneer, and a forefather of the Chicano rock movement. He died in a plane crash with singers The Big Bopper and Buddy Holly, and pilot Roger Peterson. In the film La Bamba (1987), he was played by Lou Diamond Phillips.
Ritchie was the son of Beatrice (later Concepcion) Reyes and Joseph Steven Valenzuela.
Ritchie’s paternal grandfather was named Marciano Valenzuela. Marciano was a Mexican immigrant.
Ritchie’s paternal grandmother was Maria Agripina/Agrippina Ponce (the daughter of Luis Ponce and Maria Antonia “Sara” Lugo). Ritchie’s grandmother Maria was born in California. Luis was Chilean. Ritchie’s great-grandmother Maria Antonia’s ancestors were early Californian settlers from Mexico, who were mestizos. She was the daughter of José Trinidad de Jesús Lugo Fernández and María del Rosario Cipriana de las Llagas Domínguez Féliz.
Ritchie’s maternal grandfather was Francisco “Frank” Lopez Reyes (the son of Luis Reyes López and Josefa López Ocuna). Francisco was born in Nogales, Santa Cruz, Arizona Territory, to Mexican parents. Luis was the son of Dolores Reyes and Josefa López. Ritchie’s great-grandmother Josefa was the daughter of Francisco López and Concepción Ocuna.
Ritchie’s maternal grandmother was Refugia Yanez Lopez (the daughter of Refugio López and Eduviges Yáñez). Refugia was born in Arizona, to Mexican parents. Refugio was the son of Francisco López and Beatriz.
Sources: Genealogies of Ritchie Valens – http://www.geni.com
https://www.wikitree.com
http://freepages.rootsweb.com
Any “African” DNA present in the vast majority of Mexican Mestizos is due to a North African (not black, Sub-Saharan African) genetic component dating to admixture between Spaniards and the Moors. Mexican Mestizo DNA is, on average, 50% European & 15% Eurasian, as this research article points out, with the rest of it being AmerIndian & a small amount of North African due to breeding which occurred between occupying Moors and Spaniards in Spain, mostly during the 9th-12th Centuries, a time when Spain was under Beidane (“White Moor”, or North African) Moorish rule
https://www.nature.com/articles/jhg201267.epdf?sharing_token=gcxUZhADRytvGWK8PMwDS9RgN0jAjWel9jnR3ZoTv0MLBA8nq9-0GAkuRwThmd46wL8wu7oN2hBQwFTtN4Hq2RDyxkz3szlFFK7PhI7JHl23Bfs_cpJruft6yA7xIoQTzVUDpDXGcn58nWzI8USu_VSxLbXWKGIA11gq4rnvMEFnF30K6t3LMsZ467ZOE_Yr3nCzTaB7Rde0ReqX7KwbbJawDFzVoBgxyXFwslDDIlQ%3D&tracking_referrer=copilot.microsoft.com
While some Mestizos from the Costa-Chica regions of Guerrero and Oaxaca have a higher amount of African DNA (this is due to African slaves being imported to certain Mexican coastal areas many centuries ago), it is 8% at most in selected individuals in these regions & the surrounding areas, as the aforementioned research article also points out on pages 5-6, and once again, this is an admixture of North African (NA) & Sub-Saharan African (SSA), so the SSA component would be even lower, at around 4% or less in these select few individuals.
The article acknowledges the fact that a fair amount of Mexicans (including Mestizos) have 0% African ancestry, which would indicate heritage from Basque Country in Spain, which was never under Moorish occupation
If “African” is included, it should be labeled as “North African” as to accurately North African Arab DNA
An addition to my previous comment:
Additional DNA research which further confirms this
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1306223110
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/southern-europeans-more-african-thought-flna6C10184579?utm_source=copilot.com
https://dimygen.com/ancestral-proportions-based-on-22-autosomal-strs-of-an-admixed-population-%28mestizos%29-from-the-peninsula-of-yucatan-mexico.pdf?utm_source=copilot.com
White Moors is an an oxymoron the Moors were and still are black related they’re one of the many colored aka race not only Africans the Sub-Saharians are black but many others outside Africa and from the same continent but from the North, Northern Africans are lighter than them but very dark and faced very different than Europeans in Europe they don’t look Euros, the word Moor comes from the Latin word Maurus which means dark skinned/swarthy, all the Mena peoples from North Africa to Middle East are olive-dark brown skinned some are naturally white colored but still with no European face, with very strong Indian and Mongoloid side they’re mostly Semitic Levantine and Indian with like 40% Asian, that’s why lot of them look Indians and average dark Hispanics and some have little almond shaped eyes, high cheekbones, wide nose and large forehead. In few words they’re Blasians.
They’re not Caucausians not white, not Europeans.
Like Mexicans who despite are ones of the few in Central-South America to have the bigger European heritage together the Argentinians and the Brazilians they’re again as huge majority racially and culturally Indigenous, like the others two mentionated, the white cluster is much higher in Brazil and Argentina even if the Afros and the Pardos are the dominant in Brazil and the indigenous in Argentina.
Your statement is incorrect
The broader e1 genetic marker split into the e1b1b (North African) & e1b1a (Sun-Saharan) ~42,000 years ago, proving that North African & Sub-Saharan African populations evolved separately.
This is why e1b1b is found almost universally in North Africa, while e1b1a is dominant in sub-Saharan Africa. While e1b1b is found in Ethiopia & Somalia, it of different subclades (E‑M78 & EV32) due to trans-Saharan migrations from Northern Africa where the E-M81 subclade is found (and is absent in sub-Saharan Africa)
The NBC link I previously posted details a study which found that the “Sub-Saharan” DNA component often detected in Southern Europeans is, in reality, North African, due to genetic admixture that occurred between Bedaine (white) Moors
Here it is again, as well as the study that it referenced
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/all/southern-europeans-more-african-thought-flna6C10184579?utm_source=copilot.com
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1306223110
The DNA study below makes it very clear that North African (and therefore Bedaine, or White, Moor) ancestry was not black sub-Saharan. In fact it states that “there is limited genetic differentiation between Middle Easterns, Europeans, and North Africans”.
Meanwhile, the SSA contribution to the modern NA overall sample in minimal (and likely isn’t even present in every subject, as the figures are averages, and therefore many included would have no SSA contribution at all, but the Eurasian component is overwhelming throughout the sample size).
And as I will explain towards the end of my reply, SSA DNA that shows up in black and/or non-black North Africans is due to the trans-Saharan slave trade which brought blacks to North Africa, and didn’t really take off until the 10th Century (Moorish immigration to al-Andalus, or Moorish Spain, meanwhile effectively ended in the mid-8th Century, which would not allow for an SSA contribution to modern Spanish genetics).
Nearly all, and in many cases all, of modern North African DNA is Eurasian, as the link describes. This is due to the fact that in addition to North African DNA evolving separately from Sub-Saharan DNA, North Africa’s genetic makeup was, and is, greatly influenced by back-to-Africa migration patterns, most notably due to Anatolian, Arab as well as ancient European farmer populations.
Below is the aforementioned study
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s13059-024-03341-4?utm_source=copilot.com
The study states that sub-Saharan African DNA was found in some subjects involved in the study, but this would have been due to samples obtained from black Sub-Saharan Africans living in North Africa, and if it was found amongst some members of the general population, then it would have been introduced well after the Muslim rule of Spain began in the 8th Century, as whatever breeding between slaves/former slaves in North Africa that could have affected any part of North Africa’s modern genetic makeup would have had to have taken place.
This is due to the fact that the trans-Saharan slave trade didn’t really take off until the 10th Century (it technically started in the 7th Century but didn’t enter full force until several hundred years later), and by the mid-8th Century Bedaine Moorish immigration to Moorish occupied Spain (al-Andalus) had effectively ended as Muslim communities there had become self-sustaining.
Therefore, virtually none of the Moorish immigrants to al-Andalus would have carried any sub-Saharan African DNA that people such as yourself allege carry today (or supposedly carried back then) which is confirmed by the 2013 genetic study referenced earlier in my reply here.
Just last year, in 2025, a genetic study was conducted on 7,000 year-old remains in Southern Libya of a Takarkori person, whose DNA was exclusively North African, which strongly suggests that there was no gene exchange between Sub-Saharan Africans & Northern Africans during the “Green Sahara” period which lasted 11,000-5,000 years ago.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-08793-7
It was previously believed that gene flow between NA & SSA did occur during the Green Sahara period, but with that now being invalidated, the only reason that some non-black North Africans may have SSA DNA would have had to have been due to admixture between North Africans & sub-Saharan that occurred centuries after the Moors stopped coming to Spain en masse.
These genetic studies do not lie, and the proof is in the pudding. Here is a very good video which provides computerized reconstructions of what the Bedaine Moors looked like. Hint: they weren’t black.
https://youtu.be/whhMgjIixMQ?si=LiHCu1t7KclJhQ3p
“Black Moors” refers to Haretine Moors who did not participate in the Muslim Conquest of Iberia (711-718), because, as was previously mentioned, they could not have formed as a social cast since the trans-Saharan slave trade had not yet brought larger amounts of them to North Africa
Here is an answer on the website Quora which shows drawings from 13th/14th Century Spain (one from the palace of Alhambra itself) that proves that Moors were Eurasian in appearance and not black
https://www.quora.com/How-can-people-say-the-Moors-werent-black-when-they-have-the-statues-and-paintings-in-Europe/answer/Child-of-Radio?ch=17&oid=366613893&share=c74e048b&srid=tn9Nr&target_type=answer
The word Moor has its origin in Mauretania, BTW, which was the ancient region that is now Western Algeria/North-East Morocco which is where the Moors hailed from
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Moor-people?utm_source=copilot.com
Do a Google image search of Native North African Berbers, and you will see that they do not have the wide-nose feature you described (high cheekbones is not something unique to or even universal to Sub-Saharan Africans either, as many black Africans have oval-shaped, dropping faces, although high cheek bones are very common amongst other ethnicities such as Slavs, East Asians & Amerindian peoples), and that they are not black at all (in fact many of them are white, like the one featured in the Reddit link below)
https://www.reddit.com/r/Africa/comments/1ntgp24/indigenous_women_of_north_africa/
Quora, Youpoop, ABC and all the media and socials are worthy like farts as I said Moors like the present Mena never been and are not Europeans I live in Europe and we spot them for their darkness and Arab-Indian faces, some can seem even sort of Hawaiians and Maori due the combo of Mongoloid admixture.
They contributed so much to make half the Iberians colored.
They are Indo-Semitic.
I included numerous peer-reviewed genetic studies in my response, and they are all as reliable as one can get. The genetic study that my NBC link referenced was included with the NBC reference as well.
The DNA study from the Springer link also debunked your claim about Middle Easterners and Europeans not being closely related, although that claim of yours does not need debunking, as it is common knowledge. All non Sub-Saharan Africans (Europeans, Asians, Arabs, Amerindians and all others) all share the same general genetic makeup, which is evidence by the M & N haplogroups, branches of the L3 haplogroup which Sub-Saharan Africans do not have. Nor do Middle Eastern people have any Sub-Saharan haplotypes such as protruding jaws, flat noses or faces or kinky hair. Below is a link describing various Middle Eastern peoples, and they are all very similar to (and at times exactly similar to) Europeans.
https://deewaninstitute.com/people-middle-east/
Lots of Iberians pictured in the link below, and non of them remotely black. All very European
https://www.peopleareculture.com/spanish-people-culture/
The Springer-linked DNA study, as I mentioned in a previous comment, also mentioned the fact that Middle Eastern, European & North African DNA are nearly identical.
The Quora link provide links to peer-reviewed genetic studies, which are as also reliable as they get. When Quora answers provide proper references to reliable sources, Quora is a very useful & reputable source. The drawings presented in that link can are well-known, genuine ones from 13th/14th cebtury Spain that are found in historical texts, and in the palace of Alhambra today. Although I have already provided a link to them, one can find them anywhere else on the internet, including museum websites. The YouTube link also draws on & includes scientific references from well-respected sources.
Your rants are not “worthy” at all, as they provide no “worthy” sources to back up your claims (because such sources do not exist) and are merely wishful thinking and babble on your part.
After the admins on this site take a look at the research-backed info I have included here they will, in all likelihood, update the page & remove the African tag, due to the fact that the vast majority of Mexicans do not have sub-Saharan African ancestry, and only a small amount of North African ancestry, just like their Spanish forebears. That is all that matters.
Whatever nonsensical comments you may post regarding this matter in an attempt to have the last word because you were unable to prove your point of view here, I won’t be responding to or reading, as it’s clear that genetic history is not something you are well-versed in and you’re just trying to argue/get attention at this point. No sensible person takes what you have said seriously.
Goodbye
Adios, cabron.
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~celebrities/valens.html
What evidence is there of Ritchie’s African roots? I have looked at the provided link as well as familysearch (https://familysearch.org/tree/#view=ancestor&person=KL61-M61), and has only found ancestors born in Mexico, except one fifth great-grandfather, Jose Ygnacio Dominguez, born on Mallorca.
Also, to be more clear, he is 1/8 Chilean.
@madman
Seeing that the avg Mexican mestizo has been proven to have African ancestry, do you have any proof that Valens doesn’t?
“Do you have any proof that Valens doesn’t?” See this is the problem. the admins keep picking and choosing which rules they follow. For Cory Booker it was no Native American ancestry because it wasn’t documented, even though he is 7% by DNA. But Warren who is less than 1% (range of error) should be included because she “claimed it” and it would be “politically incorrect” now to not include it. Now we go to the question of since the average Mexican Mestizo has African ancestry the burden is on the users here to prove he doesn’t have distant African ancestry.
No way Ritchie Valens had more African ancestry that European/Amerindian, this is ridiculous stuff.
Maria Antonia “Sara” Lugo’s parents were listed as white on 1860 U.S. Census, so they unlikely were mulattoes
On the other hand, Ritchie mother was possibly part African indeed.
Historically speaking, it can’t be more than trace. Mexico never really had the slave trade that was present in the carribean, belize/honduras, or northern south america.