Mexican cooperation could have spared Marine from ordeal, say border sources

I always thought the food was lousy in Mexico, but I thought that opinion may have been partly because I never had much money, and always ate cheap, but even trying to be optimistic, I didn’t believe that I was really just having such an almost unbroken string of bad luck in choosing cafes.

I didn’t like it much either and we didn’t always eat on the cheap. Stayed in some nice hotels and went to some nice restaurants. The best food was in better restaurants serving American or somewhat French cuisine. On the Pacific coast the seafood was good. Also, your description of Mexico in the ‘50s is exactly what it was like in the late ‘60s. I think it is even worse now.

Actually, Spain had claimed and even settled most of the American Southwest and SE, including Florida. The only Huguenots who ever landed here were sent by the French king in 1565 to prevent the Spanish (who had already explored and claimed the territory of Florida) from settling on the Atlantic coast, since most Spanish settlements had been on the Gulf coast although the Spanish had gone all the way to the Hudson on the East coast and had planned to build a number of settlements there.

When the Spanish learned of the French plans, they sent Pedro Menendez de Aviles, the commander of the Atlantic fleet, to Florida. He was also going to look for his son, who had disappeared in the Caribbean during one of the voyages, and the Spanish Crown funded his voyage with the condition that he would protect Spanish Florida.

When he got here, the French king (who was Catholic, btw) had sent the Norman Huguenots. Normans were excellent sailors but generally considered pirates by Spain and the rest of Europe, because they either had letters of marque or didn’t have letters of marque and simply set out on their own. They harassed the coasts of Spain and Portugal and also the Azores. They would plunder not only ships but coastal villages, destroying and sacking the (Catholic) churches, and on more than one occasion, setting fire to them with the priest and the more important parishioners inside. In their words, they did this “on behalf” of Protestantism and not France, btw.

Pedro Menendez actually spent 5 years in a French prison because they captured him and wouldn’t exchange him.

When he got here, the French had arrived about 2 months earlier and had built a fort. They were Protestants because that was the group that the (Catholic) French king had sent here. Menendez attacked the fort, spared the women and children (and the musicians, because often the pipe band was made up of young people who had been impressed or captured, and had no ideological views) and sent the survivors away on various ships.

One of the ships turned back to St Augustine, and the Huguenots were sneaking up on the town to attack the population in their sleep when Menendez found them and killed them all (except for the Catholics and the musicians, who were impressed or prisoners).

One of the other French ships went off course and ran aground, and the French shipwreck victims unfortunately arrived not long after the French attack. Menendez put them to death too, but he actually later on said that he regretted this because he let his anger at the earlier attack overcome his military procedures. Normally, the second group would have been spared and ransomed for Spanish sailors and military personnel in French captivity, but he couldn’t feed them for the winter and he obviously was not inclined, after the first French attacks, to begin negotiations with a French king who had not even openly declared this war.

You have to look at all of this in the context of European history, something of which most Americans are completely ignorant.

Religion played into it, too, however, and was used by both sides. But the Protestant hatred of Catholics is probably why the Protestants were destroying Spanish churches on the Spanish coast, burning to death villagers and priests, and leaving destruction that can still be seen (they hacked off the hands and faces of the statues). Almost as bad as the Muslims.

I am fully aware that the political situation in Europe at the time was mirrored in North America. Roman Catholics were burned at the stake in Massachusetts during the same time period, hardly what I would call friendly.

You made the claim that Americans hate Mexicans. That is not true. We have always been opposed to large populations trying to come here en masse, whether they were Chinese, Eastern Europeans, or Italians. It is far easier to assimilate foreigners if they come here in small groups of less than 100,000.

I’m originally from California, and my best friend had been born in Chihuahua. She’s now a U.S. citizen, a military veteran, and married to an Anglo from a Midwestern state. Assimilated? You bet.

What we have on our southern border is an invasion force. This force also includes a violent criminal class along with Muslims from the Middle East passing themselves as Mexican. This is not a friendly situation, and your statement that we hate Mexicans only adds the equivalent of pouring gasoline onto a raging fire.

You’re on the mark. Mordida (bribery) is a way of life in among officialdom in Mexico.

We do it even better here in the USA.