Slaves in New Spain.

There's a room in the 17th century placita at El Rancho de las Golondrinas called "el cuarto de cautivos" -- the captives' room. It's a small room that contains a fireplace, a couple of wooden bins, and a Navajo loom. It's meant to depict the sort of accommodations that Spanish settlers would have provided for their captives at the ranch in the 1600s.

The room is usually gated -- that is, you can look in, but there's typically no one inside to explain what it's about. Slavery is difficult to discuss. But here's one fact: the captives held by settlers here, in the northernmost outpost of New Spain, were not Black. They were Native American.

How is it that 17th century Spanish settlers held Native Americans in bondage, but in much of the rest of America, slaves were imported from Africa? 

Tinnakom | Deposit Photos

During volunteer training for our upcoming season, we heard a presentation from Jon Ghahate (Laguna Pueblo/Zuni Pueblo), an educator for the Crow Canyon Archaeological Center in Cortez, CO. Ghahate explained that slavery was not unknown in the Americas before the coming of the Europeans; after all, people are people everywhere, with the same urges to be both bad and good to one another. What was different among the Europeans was the Catholic Church. Christianity teaches us to be kind to other people -- with the emphasis on people. If the creature in front of you isn't a person, then no matter how you treat that creature, it won't keep you from getting into heaven. In essence, the church indemnified those who held slaves. And just as the church allowed Christians to see Africans as less than human, it also gave them the same excuse when it came to Native Americans. (Not-so-fun fact: The United States didn't grant citizenship to Native Americans until 1924.)

The year 1492 was a big one in the history of what was to become Spain. Ferdinand and Isabella married and combined their kingdoms into one, Castile and Aragon. Pretty much immediately, they set about kicking the Moors out of Andalucia in southern Spain and taking the land for themselves. And in that same year, they gave their okay to Christopher Columbus to sail west in search of a more direct, and less fraught, trade route to Asia. But Ferdinand and Isabella didn't grant the funds to Columbus outright -- they gave him a loan that he was supposed to pay back with the spoils he gained from his adventuring. (The later conquistadors got the same deal, which explains why they were so hot to find gold here.)

Columbus never made it to continental North America. His ships landed on the island of Hispaniola, which today is split between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. People were living there when Columbus arrived, but very little of their DNA survives today, for a very good reason: Columbus and his men basically slaughtered them. We know this because among the Spaniards who traveled to the New World with Columbus was Bartolomé de las Casas, who chronicled the treatment of the Natives at the hands of the explorers. De las Casas petitioned Charles V of Spain to grant the Natives some rights. 

But all this meant that there weren't enough workers for the plantations that were beginning to be set up in the West Indies. So de las Casas got a bright idea: why not bring in Africans?

Eventually he realized what a bad idea that was, in terms of human rights, but by then the damage had been done. And that's how the idea was planted to bring Africans to the New World ... by any means necessary.

By the time the Spanish made their way north to New Mexico, they had "perfected" their system of dealing with the Natives. In 1510, the church approved a document that was to be read to any Indians the conquistadors met, advising them that they were now subjects of the Spanish crown and of the Pope, and they had better behave as set forth herein or they could be forced to behave. Of course, this document, the Requeremiento, was in Spanish, which the Natives had no way of understanding. (The text at the link is in English.) 

One begins to understand why the Pueblo Indians rose up and drove the Spaniards out of New Mexico in 1680. It didn't last -- the Spanish returned in 1692 -- but the Pueblo Revolt remains, as stated on the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center's website, "the only successful Native uprising against colonizers in North America."

In practice, Ghahate told us, the Spaniards didn't so much take slaves as they impressed Natives to work for them. But they required tribute -- food and supplies, as well as a guide to show them where that gold was -- and forced the Natives to convert to Christianity. In that sense, the system of slavery here in the Southwest was different than that practiced by plantation owners in the Deep South. Also here, some slaves were more like indentured servants and could eventually buy their freedom. They and other outcast people -- Jews and poor Spaniards who came to the New World to find their fortune but never did -- were known as genizaros and lived apart, in their own villages. Intermarriage with Mexican settlers was common, though. Eventually the Mexican government declared all citizens equal, including the genizaros and others of mixed race -- but in society, as you might expect, prejudice lingered. Even today, Hispanic folks here will say they're Spanish, even if their DNA tells a different story. 

DNA is causing a lot of trouble everywhere, am I right?

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On a completely different topic: The Social Security Administration this week that it's making big changes in the way it claws back overpayments from recipients. This comes after news reports indicated that the existing draconian system was impoverishing some people -- even causing them to lose their homes. The two biggest changes: 1) Instead of taking 100% of a recipient's benefit until the overpayment is satisfied, the reduction will now be capped at 10% per month -- and the SSA is instituting a longer time frame for people to pay the overpayment back; and 2) instead of forcing recipients looking for relief to prove why they need it by providing a boatload of financial information, the burden is now going to be on the government to prove why the recipient needs to make reimbursement.

The changes are coming too late to help me -- I finished my penance this month -- but I'm very glad to see that others won't have to go through the same thing I did.

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One more update, and then I swear I'm done: Surprising absolutely no one, Congress took the latest budget brouhaha down to the wire, approving the final six continuing resolutions yesterday. The approval technically came after the Friday night deadline, but the several-hour delay created no damage (other than to Americans' faith in government working for us and our reputation overseas and all the rest). Immediately after the vote, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (GQP-Georgia) moved to remove Speaker Mike Johnson because he, y'know, had to get help from the Democrats to keep the government running through the end of September. It's unclear whether her motion will go anywhere when the House comes back from yet another freaking recess -- but Johnson, apparently having decided that Greene has done her worst, reportedly plans for the House to take up funding for Ukraine when it returns to work after Easter.

That sound you hear is tens of thousands of pairs of eyes owned by rational Americans rolling so far back into their heads that they can see their brains.

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These moments of indentured blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Social Security surprises. Not the good kind.

stokkete | Deposit Photos

Consider this a cautionary tale.

As y'all know, I retired in mid 2020, several years before reaching my full retirement age. I crunched the numbers and figured I could make it work with Social Security and various investments, plus a part-time job. And it did work -- until I bought a condo and the condo association slapped the owners with a massive, multi-year special assessment. So I went back to work full-time in May of last year. 

Until you reach the year of your full retirement age, Social Security will let you earn a certain amount each year and still keep getting your benefits -- but if you earn more than their max, they'll dock your benefit by $1 for every $2 over the max you earn. The earnings limit in 2023 was $21,240. I knew I was going to make more than that last year, so in May, I sent Social Security a letter letting them know that I was going to make way more than their earnings limit for the year. 

In early November, I got a letter from Social Security that said -- I'm paraphrasing here -- "Oh hai, you are going to make way more than you should have this year, so we are going to stop paying you benefits for four months, starting now."

The face that guy is making up top is an approximation of my reaction. I mean, I went back to work because I needed the money. I'd made plans several months out based on what I thought would be my monthly income -- which was now being cut by about a third. 

It's not so much that they cut back my benefit. I knew they were going to -- that's why I sent them the letter. But what I want y'all to understand is how they do it: There's no monthly payment plan. They just stop paying you 'til they get back what they "overpaid" you. And they give you very little warning.

So how can you avoid this whack upside the head? You have three options:

1. You can wait 'til you reach your full retirement age before you start taking Social Security.
2. If you retire early, you should keep a close eye on your annual earnings to make sure you don't go over the max earnings for the year (it's $22,320 for 2024).
3. You can tell Social Security to stop sending you money for a while. 

There are a couple of ways to accomplish that third option. If you haven't reached full retirement age yet, you can do what's called a withdrawal of benefits. You can only do it within the first twelve months of retiring, and you can only do it once. And there's another catch: You have to pay them back everything they've already paid you. So let's say you retired for six months, then went back to work. You'd have to give Social Security back every penny they'd paid you -- money you had presumably been living off of, so you wouldn't have it to give back. And if the new job doesn't work out, tough bananas -- Social Security won't pay you anything again until you reach full retirement age.

The other way is called suspension of benefits. Basically, you tell Social Security you'd like to stop getting a check from them until you ask them to start paying you again (or until you turn 70). Under this option, you don't have to pay back anything they've already paid you. But the catch is that you have to have reached full retirement age to exercise this option. 

Both of these options reset the year that you started taking benefits, which will mean a bigger monthly payment for you when they do resume. But lawdy, they don't make it easy for you to change your mind.

Anyway, in my situation, option 3 was not an option; I had yet to reach my full retirement age, and it had been more than a year since I first retired. 

I've been using a term that I haven't explained: full retirement age. What is it? Well, it depends on when you were born. For decades, everybody's full retirement age was 65. Then Congress started dinking around with it, raising it to supposedly stave off a shortfall in the Social Security system (I have Opinions, but that would be another post). For me, full retirement age is 66 and a half. (Here's how to figure out yours. The chart is at the top of page 3.)

As for this withholding-part-of-your-benefits business: The rules change when you get to the year in which you will reach full retirement age. Then the amount you can earn that year raises by a lot -- for 2024, it's $59,520 -- and as long as you don't make that much before the month you reach full retirement age, you're golden. Even if you do make that much money that year, the penalty is less harsh; Social Security retains only $1 for every $3 (instead of every $2) you make over the limit.

Also, Social Security swears that once I hit full retirement age, they'll give me back the money they've withheld from me. It's not like they'll send me a fat check all at once, though; instead, they'll use some arcane formula to bump up my monthly benefit. In other words, they'll give it back in convenient monthly installments -- an option they didn't give me when they began withholding my benefits. Hmph.

The good news for me is that this is the last time I'll have to deal with this. I'll reach full retirement age in 2024, and no way I'll make $59,520 in the months before I get there. So soon all this folderol will be behind me. I just need to make it to March, when my benefit payments will resume.

But the moral of the story for you guys is this: If you're going to start taking Social Security before your full retirement age, pay attention to your earnings if you go back to work. 

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One more thing: If you have your Medicare premium taken out of your Social Security check, but Social Security starts withholding your benefits, Medicare won't drop you or suspend you. Social Security will simply take the missed premiums out of your check once they start paying you again. Isn't that a nice change from the way private insurance companies operate?

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These moments of hair-pulling blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

Happy February. Bah, humbug.

I know I hinted about maybe posting more this week about that star-shaped afghan I've been working on because I'd almost finished it. 

Well, I finished it. And it didn't turn out the way I thought it would -- one side of each star point was obviously narrower than the other side. So I ripped the whole thing. The. Whole. Thing. Weeks of work.

I'm starting over, though, and I'm going to be more careful this time. I was pretty cavalier about counting my stitches the first time, and it's possible that's why it didn't turn out the way it should have. Or maybe I should have tried to even things out by blocking the afghan. If it turns out the same way this time, even with careful counting and so on, I'll try blocking it and see if that fixes it. Anyway, you'll get a picture eventually. Maybe.

That's kind of how this last week or so has been going in general, and it's making me grumpy. Or at least I thought that's what was making me grumpy. Then I looked at the calendar, and it all became clear.

I won't bore you again with my antipathy for Valentine's Day; I've written about it it often enough in the past. Instead, I will offer you, Dear Reader, a Valentine, generated for free from the website of the Washington Post. Feel free to follow the link and make your own!

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As long as we're talking about hearts and stuff, I thought I'd mention Medicare. And, what the heck, Social Security, too.

This past week, President Biden kind of pulled a fast one on the Republicans in Congress. He made a big deal during his State of the Union speech about how some of them plan to cut Social Security and Medicare. That is absolutely true, and the White House issued a fact sheet to back him up -- naming names, even. But of course, the Republicans weren't going to admit it in front of 27 million people on live television. So they joined their fellow members of Congress on the Democratic side of the aisle by standing and cheering when Biden said, "we all apparently agree" that Social Security and Medicare will not be cut -- and if a bill containing such cuts does somehow get to his desk, he'll veto it.

It made for great political theater. But we all know how politics works -- or we should by now. The GOP will try to cut the programs anyway; they just won't admit that's what they're doing. They'll call it something else.

One cut/not-a-cut that's been done in the past is to increase the age at which people can collect their full Social Security benefits. My father retired in the mid 1980s at the age of 65. That was full retirement age for everybody back then. But in 1983, saying Social Security was running out of money, Congress began rolling back full retirement age. My full retirement age is 66 and a half; I won't get there 'til next summer. Folks younger than me face a full retirement age of 67. 

The idea was to "save Social Security" by encouraging people to work longer. But it hasn't worked. CNBC has a great analysis of why it has failed. In a nutshell: Congress thought 401(k) plans, which were brand new at the time, would fund a bigger chunk of retirees' income. But not everybody has access to a 401(k) plan at work, and not everybody who has access to one is as diligent as they should be about paying into it. The result? The vast majority of retirees still rely on Social Security for most of their income. (In fact, according to the CNBC article, lower-paid workers are taking Social Security early to supplement their income. When they can't work anymore, their income drops. That's one reason why the poverty rate among seniors is rising.)

Keep that in mind the next time you hear somebody suggest that Social Security should be privatized; that's what 401(k) plans were supposed to do, and it hasn't worked. (Ditto for Medicare Advantage plans, which are supposed to save Medicare but instead are rife with fraud and abuse. I railed against that here not long ago.)

Congress in '83 also thought, somewhat giddily, that American workers would be healthy enough to work longer. While that's true for well-educated White folks with office jobs, it's not universally true. In fact, it discriminates against minorities and those who aren't as well educated. (Even having a cushy office job doesn't guarantee a long life; I watched for years as secretaries I worked with at the BigLaw firm retired, then died just a few years later. Turns out being sedentary is bad for longevity. Who knew?)

Regardless, the Republican Study Committee in the House of Representatives has drawn up a budget that would once again "save Social Security" by rolling back full retirement age some more, phasing in the rollback until folks born in 1978 or later would not reach full retirement age until age 70. 

You know what this would do, right? It would kick the can down the road, just like in '83. As Alicia Munnell, the director of the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College, says in that CNBC article, there are only two ways to fix Social Security: "You can have less money go out or more money come in." And Republicans won't raise taxes. The only solution they'll entertain is to cut benefits -- and as Munnell says, "increasing the retirement age is a benefit cut." Twenty years from now, or sooner, we'll be right back where we are now. 

I suppose eventually, Congress could raise the full retirement age so high that most folks would die before they could collect anything. That'll save Social Security, all right.

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Now I'm getting grumpy again. I'm going to go knit. Happy Valentine's Day.

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These moments of grumpy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!