Our laws and our popular sentiment say that there is no need to apologize, but since we are now a government of Men not Laws, there is an opportunity here to make it up to the Mexicans.
I’ve had debates with Mexicans on their loss of the American West as a result of their defeat in the war, however we did pay for it, albeit not much. The problem was in that vast expanse there were only about 75,000 Mexican nationals in that entire territory, no where near enough to secure it much less keep it in the event of a war or other problem (the American Indians didn’t want anything to do with the Mexicans controlling them either and were pretty much left alone). The Mexicans didn’t control their borders (sound familiar?), with so much infighting and problems going on in Mexico City for decades after their freedom from Spain. The continued expansion of European immigrants to the West exacerbated the problem and it was only a matter of time (sound familiar?). In the end the argument I have with Mexicans ends with “if Mexico still owned all that land and never lost it to America, would it have prospered despite the war or would it be just as poor, mismanaged, and corrupt as the rest of Mexico is today and the border jumpers would be plying their craft along a different line in the dirt?” They often get a blank expression on their face and then change the subject. They know I’m right; their resentment isn’t really over the land, it’s over the system that operates in their lost land (democracy, capitalism, minimal corruption, etc.) one that they haven’t figured out how to create in their own homeland. And their corrupt government, in order to stay in power, is happy to continue to instill hate in their citizens towards the U.S., while liberal idiots are happy to provide the victim label on these people to secure their votes. Sad, sad, sad.