Hey JJ! I've read quite a few of your analyses and I'm just wondering if you've ever written about Santana's father? Specifically, why we haven't met him, even though the little he's been mentioned, it seems though he is at least IN her life?
Hey, @harmonelson!
I actually just posted an answer about Santana and her father a little while ago. You can read it here, if you like. The post deals mostly with what information we do—and, more often, don’t—know concerning the mysterious Dr. Lopez.
As for the issue of why we’ve never met the man on the show, here’s the gist:
There is no compelling in-universe reason why Dr. Lopez never plays an active role in Santana’s storylines on Glee.
To the best of our knowledge, Dr. Lopez and Maribel remain married throughout the duration of the show, so it would make sense for them to occasionally appear together on screen.
From what little we know, Dr. Lopez’s relationship with Santana during her teenage years is a good one, so it would also make sense for him to occasionally have significant interactions with his daughter and for us to be able to see them when he does so.
He is supportive of Santana’s coming out, so he could feasibly be part of any and all storylines having to do with Santana being disowned by her grandmother. He could also feasibly take an active role at Santana’s wedding.
Hell, one would even expect it. She’s his only daughter, for Chrissakes!
But despite what might be possible with this character and what one might expect with him, the man nevertheless remains elusive.
We get a glimpse of someone who may be him in episode 3x08 “A Wedding,” but he is never identified by name, and he certainly doesn’t play an active role in the episode’s storyline (see here).
So the question is, “What gives?”
Why isn’t Dr. Lopez sitting in the booth at BreadStix next to his wife and across from his daughter and future daughter-in-law in episode 3x22 “Goodbye”? Why isn’t he toasting the brides or having a daddy-daughter dance with Santana in episode 3x08 “A Wedding”?
Frankly, because, out-of-universe, the showrunners at Glee simply couldn’t be bothered to actively include him in Santana’s storyline.
Some heavy criticism of Glee writing and production after the cut.
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Casting parts and writing characters requires effort and a certain degree of finesse, and, especially in its later seasons, Glee ran short on both of those things.
Each time you add a new character to a script, it means that, metaphorically speaking, the writers have more pins to juggle, and, honestly, the Glee writers were never great jugglers. They were already struggling just with handling Santana’s mother and grandmother and with negotiating Santana’s onscreen coming out, never mind anything to do with Santana’s enigmatic father.
While it would have been relatively easy for skilled writers to insert Dr. Lopez into Santana’s storyline, particularly in a solely supporting role to Maribel, the Glee writers couldn’t quite get a handle on the situation, and they allowed opportunities to develop Santana’s home life to slip through their fingers time and time again.
Their failure to develop Santana’s home life is most obvious where it concerns Santana’s father, but, frankly, their whole approach to dealing with Santana’s family on the show was kind of a disaster from start to finish.
I mean, for the love of god, they made her a Lopez on both sides of her family (see here). The sheer laziness and racism apparent in that particular production decision alone is just staggering.
And that’s to say nothing of all the seeming inconsistencies in Santana’s backstory: For example, if her father is a rich doctor, how is she from “the wrong side of the tracks” (see here)? Was Alma ever truly mean to her prior to her outing, or was that just something she told Finn to scare him? Why is the narrative telling us that her parents are supportive and loving at the same time that it often implies that they’re distant and possibly even abusive (see episodes 3x22 and 4x20, for instance)?
Not only was her family background pockmarked with plot holes, but, on a production level, the incorporation of her family members into the show was bungled at every step along the way from Seasons Three to Six.
The showrunners at Glee first hired Gloria Estefan to play Maribel Lopez waaaaaaaaay back in November 2011 (see here). Originally, they told her she would be both singing and dancing when she appeared on the show, and they made a huge deal in the press about how she was going to stick it to Santana’s homophobic abuelita.
But then that didn’t happen.
Ivonne Coll appeared in episode 3x07 “I Kissed a Girl” and then wasn’t asked to reprise her role until Season Six.
In the meanwhile, after hiring Mrs. Estefan in November 2011, the Glee showrunners failed to make prompt use of her. Santana’s coming out storyline was put on the backburner following episode 3x07 “I Kissed a Girl,” and it only received fleeting development during the latter episodes of the season. While Mrs. Estefan was originally slated to appear in episode 3x12 “The Spanish Teacher,” somehow that didn’t end up happening (see here).
Mrs. Estefan expressed some confusion as to what was going on with her guest appearances on the show in interviews and on Twitter, but nothing was resolved until the end of Season Three, when the Glee writers finally managed to squeeze her in for a quick and almost forgettable appearance in episode 3x22 “Goodbye,” which aired on May 22nd, 2012, nearly six months after her original hiring date.
In that episode, Mrs. Estefan neither sings nor dances, and she certainly doesn’t stick anything to Santana’s homophobic abuelita, who isn’t even present.
For the record: Mrs. Estefan is not the only guest star to have a poor experience while working with Glee. Demi Lovato openly complained about the way the powers that be at Glee disrespected her and underutilized her talent during her brief stint on the show in Season Five (see here).
Mrs. Estefan did not appear again on the show until February 2015, when she resurfaced in time for Santana and Brittany’s wedding. At this point, she appeared on screen with Ivonne Coll for the first time, though they didn’t share any dialogue.
Frankly, had Glee really wanted to include Dr. Lopez as a character on the show, it would have made sense for them to cast him around the same time that they cast Gloria Estefan as Maribel. It would have been natural to see him playing a part in Santana’s graduation drama, particularly as he is name-dropped several times during the episode. He also could have easily played a role in the Brittana wedding proceedings, if not to the degree that Brittany’s father does, then at least to say or do something to make his presence known.
I mean, Blaine’s mother inexplicably attends the wedding and has a speaking part, so why not Santana’s father?
Honestly, I think the Glee showrunners believed that it would be enough to imply the existence of Santana’s father and his participation in her life. They seemed to think that Maribel’s presence was sufficient to flesh out Santana’s home and family situation. They also seemed feel that they needn’t go through the trouble of writing a part for Santana’s father when they had already cast a big name star as her mother. They dropped hints about him here and there, but they weren’t really committed to the idea of developing Santana’s relationship with the man to any meaningful degree.
As stated, better writers (and showrunners) could have, would have, and should have written Santana’s father into her story, or at least provided a plausible explanation for his noticeable absence from it. As is, his absence from many of her major life events unnecessarily complicates our understanding of her character.
If the Glee writers had known who Santana’s father really was and how he fit into Santana’s life, it would have been relatively easy for them to incorporate him into the story and fun for us to see how they did so. Instead, they left us with more questions than answers about him, and Santana’s storyline bears a conspicuous Dr. Lopez-shaped hole.
Unfortunately for us, since the show ended without answering questions about Dr. Lopez, the best we can do is speculate about him—and, of course, write fic. Thankfully, I’ve seen lots of good takes on the good doctor from our fandom’s very capable authors.
I was re-watching Pot 'o Gold and this Santana quote really bothered me: "Somebody’s gotta look out for Brittany. I mean, that special place where she lives? Yeah, it’s beautiful, but someone’s gotta help her cross the street". Santana usually doesn't make comments about Brittany's intelligence; why say that?
Hey, ramen-noomerals!
So here’s the thing: When Santana says that line, Mercedes almost certainly understands what Santana is saying to mean, “Brittany isn’t that bright. I mean, I love the girl, but she isn’t all there. She needs babysitting, you know?”—and, admittedly, that is the most straightforward reading of the line.
But I don’t actually think Santana is referring to Brittany’s intelligence here—and especially not in order to disparage it.
Instead, I think she’s referring to Brittany’s worldview.
Let’s talk about why after the cut.
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Santana very much believes that Brittany is a genius—and that point has already been established by the time episode 3x04 takes place.
We’ve seen Santana laud Brittany’s intelligence in episode 2x22 during the Heart Locker scene and in episode 3x02, when she alone understands the genius of Brittany’s unicorn campaign—and none of what Santana says in either of those cases is just lip service.
Santana puts her money where her mouth is when it comes to praising Brittany’s smarts, proving that she believes in Brittany’s brilliance by the way she responds to the things that Brittany tells her.
Santana is the type of person where, if she truly thought that Brittany was anything but sharp, she would disregard what Brittany told her to do and probably be mean about it. I mean, the girl does not suffer fools, and if she thinks that someone is an idiot, she lets them know about it, such as is the case when she interacts with Finn Hudson.
With Brittany, she not only doesn’t insult Brittany’s brainpower, but she actually praises it, and she routinely turns to Brittany for advice, which is something that no one else at McKinley would ever deign to do. Whenever Brittany tells Santana that she ought to do something, Santana seriously considers what Brittany has told her, and then almost inevitably takes Brittany’s advice, even if she has to work up the nerve to do so over time.
(See, for example, Santana wearing the “LEBANESE” shirt in episode 2x18, or returning to the prom after she loses for prom queen in episode 2x20, or starting to be more herself throughout the course of Seasons Two and Three.)
So what we’re seeing here is not a case of Santana talking up Brittany’s intelligence in Brittany’s presence but disparaging it when Brittany’s not around, because, frankly, Santana isn’t like that, and especially not with Brittany.
Instead, what we’re seeing here is Santana talking about Brittany’s belief in “magic.”
Brittany actively believes that the world is a magical place, not in the sense that everything is enchanted like in a Disney movie but in the sense that there are reasons to be optimistic, even when facing extreme difficulties.
Every day, Brittany makes a conscious decision to trust that the impossible is possible, that good things can happen even when the world sometimes seems bad, that love wins out even in the face of opposition, and that the things that make people unique will ultimately help them triumph, even if they’re disparaged for them at first.
Brittany’s no fool, and she knows that life can be hard for anyone who exists outside the realm of what society considers “normal,” but she clings to the belief that the traits that make people different also make them special.
That’s what she’s talking about when she says, in episode 3x02, that she’s starting to believe in her own magic.
That’s her whole philosophy regarding her and Santana’s struggles throughout late Season Two and early Season Three—i.e., that because what they have together is “magic,” things will work out for them, because that’s just what happens regarding true love.
Right will conquer, you know?
Santana is well aware of Brittany’s belief in magic. She’s seen it in action for as long as she and Brittany have known each other, and especially over the course of the last year in show time, when she and Brittany have been through so much both individually and together, and Brittany’s belief that things will turn out has never wavered.
Honestly, it’s one of the things that Santana loves most about Brittany—that Brittany can believe in good things coming, even when she can’t believe in those same good things coming herself.
All of Brittany’s speeches about how if Santana were to embrace all the awesomeness that she is, everyone would accept her, and how Brittany believes that, because she and Santana love each other more than anything else in the world, anything—and everything—is possible for them, have truly touched Santana and resonated with her in an abiding way.
It means the world to her that Brittany continually believes that she is better than most people give her credit for, that she is good and brave and kindhearted and loveable, and that she can do even the things that scare her the most.
Part of why it means so much to Santana that Brittany believes in her that way and that Brittany believes in magic in general is because Santana herself doesn’t.
She tries—really, truly she does—but she finds it almost impossible to trust that good will win out in the end and that she’ll eventually overcome her obstacles. She wants desperately to believe that what makes her different also makes her special, but she’s seen so much evidence to the contrary.
Brittany is the only person in her life who consistently tells her that she’s awesome and worthwhile and that she deserves to have nice things. Everyone else tells her how awful she is and makes no secret of the fact that they enjoy it when she loses out.
That being the case, Santana has this constant war raging between her head and her heart (see episode 3x07): On the one hand, she has her own natural pessimism in her head telling her to give up because she’s never going to make it. On the other hand, she has Brittany’s optimism in her heart telling her to keep going because she is so incredibly close to getting everything she’s always dreamed about.
Sometimes, for a few brief, shining moments, Santana can believe in magic like Brittany does—like when she bravely returns to the prom after losing the race for prom queen, and it turns out to be the right decision for her to make (see episode 2x20); or when she finally musters up the courage to ask Brittany if they’re really dating, and Brittany says yes, and then she asks Brittany to hold her hand, and Brittany does, and it’s wonderful (see episode 3x04).
But, inevitably, those moments never last long for Santana.
There is always something that snaps her back to reality, like how, after the prom, things started to look up for her for a while, but then Finchel made the New Directions lose Nationals in New York, and she and Brittany still weren’t together, and she didn’t know what to do (see episode 2x22); or like how, just as she and Brittany were getting together, Rory appeared and started giving them a hard time, and things got really strained between Santana and the New Directions, and Santana was faced with the choice of whether to join Mercedes and Sugar’s new glee club or not (see episode 3x04); or even how her own fear set in after just a few milliseconds of her holding Brittany’s hand in public, so she had to cover their hands with a napkin (see episode 3x04).
Santana wants so much to believe in magic like Brittany does, but she just can’t help but feel afraid that she’s never going to win out—or, worse, that she will win out, only to then immediately have everything she’s won taken away from her.
Over the course of her life, she has just had too many bad outcomes—too many experiences that have reinforced to her that people can’t be trusted, that even those who are good and worthy don’t always overcome, that underdogs are underdogs for a reason, that dreams that seem impossible usually are, and that even forces as powerful as true love aren’t always powerful enough to make a difference. She’s been taught that being different can be bad, and that her specific kind of differences are inherently bad. She’s been told that she is a terrible person who doesn’t deserve nice things.
So Santana can’t believe in magic like Brittany does—even though she wants more than anything to do so.
And, to me, that’s what Santana is saying here.
She’s saying, “Brittany’s worldview is beautiful. Brittany believes that people are generally good, that good will overcome, and that her dreams will come true. She also believes that I’m good, and that means everything to me. But, Mercedes, you and I both know that, no matter how beautiful Brittany’s worldview is, the world isn’t actually like that, and Brittany is setting herself up to get hurt. Brittany is the type of person who believes that if she steps out into the street, cars will stop for her because she’s a pedestrian, and that’s the way the world is supposed to work. But I can’t help but check for cars, even when there aren’t any in sight. I can’t believe that people obey traffic laws, just because they’re supposed to. Optimists like Brittany need pessimists like me. Because when things don’t work out the way she hopes they will, I’m able to come in and pick her up and dust her off and help her to keep going. That’s why I can’t leave her alone with the New Directions. She has such high expectations for them, but they’ll let her down, the way they’ve let you and me down. I have to be there to make sure that she can go on believing that the world is good and that nothing crushes her spirit. Her belief in magic is so important to me, so I have to make sure that she can hold onto it. She has to be able to go on believing for the both of us. I need that.”
Santana’s specifically thinking of what happened with Kurt’s senior class president campaign when she’s talking about these things.
Brittany became Kurt’s campaign manager, fully believing that what made Kurt different made him special and that she would be able to help him see that and that everyone would appreciate his uniqueness and that the world would ultimately become a better place for what they were trying to do together.
But, ultimately, Kurt rejected Brittany’s campaign, and he even yelled at her for pointing out the things that make him different/unique. He told her that her belief in magic was stupid—and, in so doing, he almost crushed Brittany’s spirit.
Santana couldn’t allow that to happen, so she intervened and helped Brittany to maintain her magical belief system.
She was able to say to Brittany, “Look, this campaign is brilliant—completely!—and if [Kurt] doesn’t get it, then he doesn’t deserve to have you as his campaign manager. There’s no one like you. You’re a genius, Brittany. You are the unicorn,” using her understanding that the world can sometimes be a bad and disappointing place to help Brittany continue to believe that what she was trying to accomplish was a good and worthy goal.
And, really, that’s the thing: Ultimately, even though Santana finds it almost impossible to believe in herself, she finds it easy to believe in Brittany, and she will do just about anything to help Brittany maintain her unique Brittanyness, which includes her magical worldview. It’s supremely important to Santana that even if she can’t believe in magic, Brittany can.
So, to me, that’s what she’s talking about when she says the line in question to Mercedes—and the line itself has nothing to do with Santana’s views on Brittany’s intelligence.
Santana understands that Brittany is a genius AND someone who believes in magic and that both of those things are part of Brittany’s core identity.
She loves that about Brittany, to the point that she will fight for Brittany’s ability to continue to be herself in that particular way.
Hey JJ! Wish you were at BrittanaCon, but your tags gave so much life (and killed us!) in ways we weren't ready for, lol. I have a question for you. Where do you think this fannon that Santana's parents were awful/inattentive/abusive came from? I know you've touched on her relationship with her parents before in some of your analyses, and was wondering if you'd take a closer look at it. I never got that feeling from the canon, and always thought her mom at least seemed really supportive. Thanks!
Hey, g0dblessthefandom!
BrittanaCon sounds like it was wonderful! I’m glad my tags got to be a part of it again this year, even if I couldn’t be there in person.
In response to your question:
Obviously, when it comes to fanon, not everyone who subscribes to a particular fanon notion does so in the same way. There are always variations, based on individual headcanons. Consequently, it’s difficult to say, “Here is why everyone who subscribes to this particular fanon does so,” with any degree of certainty.
Like, it’s gonna vary across the board.
So, that said, what follows is just my speculation.
I tend to think that the “Santana’s parents are awful/inattentive/abusive” fanon is an old one—i.e., it’s something that became popular during Seasons One and Two of the show, long before we ever saw Santana’s outing and her parents’ canonically supportive response to it take place, long before Maribel Lopez made a first appearance on the show, long before Brittana’s wedding story arc played out, etc., etc.
For instance, you often see this fanon written into older fics, posted (or at least begun) prior to Season Three, when we actually started learning concrete facts about the Lopez family and how Santana gets along with them.
To me, said fanon seems mostly like a “fossil” from the B.C.—i.e., “Before Canon”—era in the Lopez Family Timeline.
My guess is that said fanon became popular largely because of the dearth of information surrounding Santana’s parents in canon.
Whereas we had “met” the parents of many glee clubbers on screen throughout Season One (e.g., Carole Hudson, Burt Hummel, Russell and Judy Fabray, Mrs. Puckerman, etc.) and heard about many more by way of mention (e.g., Dr. Jones the dentist, Rachel’s famous “two gay dads,” Artie’s dad who served as his chauffeur, etc.), Santana’s family and home life remained a total mystery to us up to episode 2x02.
Whereas even Brittany had referred to having a mother (who got barked at by homeless Patches outside the library) and a little sister (who played soccer with Brittany’s “boyfriend” Wes Brody), Santana had never referred to anyone in her family at all, and she wouldn’t do so until Season Two, when she finally talked about her doctor father (who scored her “killer health insurance” in 2x02) and her mother (to whom she lied about being hungover in 2x14).
Since fanon is all about “filling in the blanks,” I think that’s what happened when it came to Santana’s mysterious family—i.e., people made what were, at the time, their best guesses concerning Santana’s home life and background, not yet having heard “the good word” on the matter from TPTB at Glee.
But why did many members of the fandom go to the “Santana’s family is likely abusive and/or neglectful” place, seemingly right off the bat?
Again, I think because they had limited evidence to go on.
One of the beautiful things about Santana Lopez as a character is that even before the show started to explain some of her inner workings and background, it was always clear, from the very beginning, that there was ~something going on with her.
For the first season of the show, she was a background character—and Naya was not main cast—so she didn’t get much in the way of personal development or individual focus or exposition, and yet her behaviors were so distinctive and so obviously driven that anyone who watched her closely would get that there was more to her than what was evident only on the surface level.
She just had to have a story.
She just had to have some secrets.
So people took what little they did know about Santana and tried to backform the reasons behind it. They said, “Okay, so Santana does X, Y, and Z. Why is that the case?”
—and, ultimately, I think that’s where the “neglectful/abusive parents” fanon came from (i.e., people trying to decode Santana’s sometimes erratic behavior during Season One).
Remember, this was all pre-Season Two, so it was not yet canon that Santana was gay, in love with Brittany, a “bitch because [she was] angry,” etc. All we knew along those lines was that Santana and Brittany were adorable together, seemed super close, and occasionally slept together. We had no indication that so much of Santana’s core characterization had to do with her sexuality/love for Brittany and her conflicted feelings about these two things.
In Season One, we have this girl with a vicious streak and some behavior issues, both of which things could potentially suggest that she comes from an unstable or even abusive home.
She has lots of casual sex—by her own admission with boys that she could honestly care less about—which is something that perhaps could suggest a lack of adult supervision in her life outside of school.
To add to those points, she craves approval from a distant, female mentor figure (i.e., Sue), which could maybe indicate that she craves adult (and specifically “motherly”) attention.
To top it all off, though she doesn’t often openly admit it, she thrives on the “found family” she develops in glee club, again, perhaps suggesting that she feels a lack of family bonds otherwise.
So then we get some new information in Season Two: namely, that Santana’s father is a doctor (see episode 2x02). And doctors work a lot, right? Depending on speciality and career progression, a doctor could potentially be a workaholic, working 80+ hours a week, couldn’t he? And a doctor could potentially have all sorts of charity fundraisers and medical conferences and golf games to attend, and he could potentially take his wife along to those sorts of things while leaving their teenage daughter home alone or at a friend’s house, yeah?
In fact, an absentee “doctor daddy” who spoils Santana materially while ignoring her personally could explain Santana’s obsession with bling and credit scores.
What’s more, it could also even (potentially) explain some of her dynamic with Brittany.
What if Brittany is the friend whose house Santana stays at when her parents are away, jetsetting and being workaholics? What if Santana is so strongly bonded to Brittany because Brittany is the only constant source of unconditional love in Santana’s life? What if Brittany, more than anyone, is Santana’s family?
The theory progresses, accumulating momentum as we learn more bits and pieces about Santana’s life throughout Season Two.
In 2x15, we see that Santana has this dark, lavish, expensive bedroom full of designer catalogue items, and yet she claims to live in Lima Heights Adjacent, which, according to her, is “the wrong side of the tracks” (see here).
So maybe her parents are divorced and her living accomodations with rich daddy are nice but her living accomodations with poor mommy are meager.
Or maybe she lies about where she lives to the kids at school so that no one will ever try to follow her home without permission, lest any of them accidentally glimpse her less-than-ideal family life in action.
After the events of 2x04 and 2x15, some people wonder if part of the reason why Santana has so much internalized homophobia and self-loathing isn’t because of her family. Perhaps they’re homophobes. Perhaps she’s scared to come out to them. Maybe their love is so conditional and fleeting that Santana fears she’ll lose it if she ever tells them that she’s gay. Maybe her parents have no idea that she’s struggling with her sexuality because they have no idea about anything in her life.
You can see how the headcanons all concatenate to form the fanon.
Based on the evidence available during Seasons One and Two, it wasn’t at all unreasonable to suppose that Santana came from a neglectful and/or abusive home.
Of course, as you point out, it’s also possible to watch Seasons One and Two without going to the “neglectful/abusive parents” place for Santana, as all of the “evidence” which might support this fanon is, in itself, ambiguous, considering the lack of context.
Given what we learn about Santana’s family life between Seasons Three and Six, we can now see that Santana’s meanness is partially a result of her anger at being closeted and her internalized homophobia. She learned her vicious words from her grandmother, not her parents—who are, by the way, seemingly married rather than divorced.
According to Santana, Dr. and Mrs. Lopez are totally supportive of her being gay. Whatever trepidation Santana had about coming out to her parents—and she did have trepidations, as we see in 3x06—seemed to stem more from Santana’s own uncertainty over how they might react than from her “knowing for sure” that they would react poorly.
Poor Baby Girl just wanted to get it right.
—and, luckily for her, she did, and her parents reacted well; it was her grandmother who was the homophobe, which was a painful enough thing in itself, though, thankfully, it wasn’t also compounded by parental rejection.
Maribel, at least, seems like a fairly attentive mother, and Santana’s father is at least present for Santana’s coming out and graduation (and possibly her wedding).
Santana actually appears to get along well with her family, which means that the reason Santana so closely guards her home life from the kids at school is because she’s a much different person outside the walls of WMHS than she is within them—not because she comes from an abusive home.
Whereas at school, Santana projects confidence, aggression, aloofness, and even ruthlessness, at home, Santana is anxious, sweethearted, careful, and surprisingly quick to forgive.
She protects her privacy not because she wants to hide a bad home life from her schoolmates but because she needs to have the freedom to be someone different at home than she is at school—i.e., because she is jealousy guarding her “safe space.”
Only Brittany is allowed to know Santana in both of her worlds because only Brittany is careful with Santana’s “special things.”
Suffice it to say, once upon a time, there was a lot of circumstantial evidence that could have potentially supported the fanon that Santana came from a neglectful or abusive home. But as the evidence changes, so too must the theory. After Season Three—and especially after Season Six—we know that Santana’s family loves and supports her, even, eventually, down to her grandmother, which is all Santana ever really wanted, you know?
So gleerant and riverd0g were discussing for how long Santana's family may have been in the U.S. and whether or not Santana is a first-generation natural-born U.S. citizen (see here).
Glee hasn't given us any definitive answer on the subject yet, but it has given us some context clues, i.e.:
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On "Queso por Dos," Alma Lopez states that her first husband, Hector Lopez, died during the Vietnam War.
In order to have served in the Vietnam War as part of the U.S. Armed Forces, then Hector was likely a U.S. citizen (either naturalized or natural-born), a conscripted nonresident, or, perhaps, a Puerto Rican national with U.S. citizenship.
If the first option, then Alma and Hector could have come to the U.S. from elsewhere no later than 1972, if in fact they did come to the U.S. from elsewhere at all.
Of course, as riverd0g states, they also could have been in the U.S. at a much earlier date, as well, and they may even be or have been natural-born U.S. citizens themselves, depending on Lopez family history.
However.
If the second or third options, then Hector also may not have been a U.S. citizen or a U.S. national at the time he served in the Vietnam War.
It is important to note that we do not yet know for certain what Santana's ethnic background is.
If her maternal family is from Puerto Rico---as Brittany's "little girl in Puerto Rico" line from 6x06 hints that it might be---then it is possible that Hector Lopez could have served in the Vietnam War as a Puerto Rican national with U.S. citizenship conscripted into the U.S. Armed Forces (see here), as an estimated 48,000 Puerto Ricans and persons of Puerto Rican descent served in the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam War.
At this point, we don't know how old Santana's parents are supposed to be, and we also don't know whether Hector or Pedro Lopez is Santana's biological grandfather.
Ivonne Coll (who plays Alma) has stated that Maribel Lopez is Alma's daughter (see here), meaning that Alma is Santana's maternal grandmother, meaning that either Hector or Pedro is Santana's biological maternal grandfather.
If Maribel is the biological child of Hector Lopez, and Hector and Alma Lopez did immigrate to the U.S. from another country, then there is a possibility that Maribel was born outside the U.S.
If Maribel is the biological child of Pedro Lopez, then Maribel was most likely born in the U.S. (as Alma married Pedro after Hector's death).
So TL;DR?
If Maribel were born outside the U.S., then Santana may well be a first generation natural-born U.S. citizen on her mother's side of the family.
However, if Maribel were born in the U.S., then Santana could be a second generation natural-born U.S. citizen or more through her mother's side of the family.
(Thanks to proudlyunicorn and teez-ee for the info on Ivonne Coll!)
(Thanks to Carrie for her thoughts on Puerto Rican nationals with U.S. citizenship!)
