Of Gringos and Old Grudges: This Land Is Their Land

The New York Times ^ | January 9, 2004 | TIM WEINER

[adx]

If the Mexicans are hostile foreign nationals nursing a 150 year old grudge, perhaps we should be a little more circumspect about inviting them into our living rooms...hmmmm?

It also makes you wonder about the motivations of some of the pro-illegal supporters here on this forum. It makes me wonder why I should support anyone who pursues policies that could get my family slaughtered for being gringos when these folks decide to take the Southwest back for keeps and ethnically cleanse the place.

[navyblue]

Mexicans got nothing coming...but mean to take everything they can get their hands on... Worst part is ..they have allies in CONUS willing to help them....for a price....

They sure do have allies! Right at the top! Price? We sure haven't seen any price Mexico is paying for all this. It seems to be an all one way deal!

[sarcasm]

irredentist

One who advocates the recovery of territory culturally or historically related to one's nation but now subject to a foreign government.

[ZULU]

"In the United States, almost no one remembers the war that Americans fought against Mexico more than 150 years ago."

In the United States, hardly anyone remembers anything historical. Ask some kids when the Declaration of Independence was signed, or who Richard Cheney is.

"In Mexico, almost no one has forgotten."


REALLY??? I doubt it. Probably only a handful of La Raza types. Mexico has had many more serious problems than the loss of a vast wilderness, relatively unihabited by anyone except indians, a century and a half ago.


"The war cut this country in two, and "the wound never really healed," said Miguel Soto, a Mexico City historian."

How melodramatic. But what do you expect from a Mexican historian. Go ask the average Mexican mestizo what they think of the central government in Mexico. Then ask him about the Mexican War. He'll probably bubble over with criticism and accusations about the former and look you blankly in the eye about the other.

" It took less than two years, and ended with the gringos seizing half of Mexico, taking the land that became America's Wild West: California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah and beyond."

As I said, aside from a few small areas in California, Santa Fe, and a small part of Texas, there simply were very few Mexican actually living in those territories. As a matter of fact, the Mexican government actually INVITED Anglo settlers into Texas for the explicit purpose of protecting Mexican living in northern Mexico from sale raids by Plains tribes like the Commanches, and the Apaches - which were mainly retalitory as the Mexicans did their own share of slave raiding and buying of young Indian captives.

"In Mexico, they call this "the Mutilation." That may help explain why relations between the nations are sometimes so tense."

Guess they forgot how we helped get the French out of their country after the Civil War. The main "mutilation" in Mexico has been purpetrated by a succesion of gangster regimes against the Mexican peasants.

"As President Bush prepares to fly down to Mexico from Texas, where the war began back in 1846, the debate here over how to relate to the United States is heating up once again."


Should read: "As President Jorge Bush prepares to fly down to Mexico to kiss Vicente Fox's ring in gratitude for all the all "help" (sarcasm) Mexico gave us in the U.N. recently, by opening our arms to an army of social destitutes Mexico created and is unwilling to support.

"The question of the day is the more than 20 million Mexicans who now live in the United States."

20 Million?? Last I heard it was 8 to 12 Million. Do I hear 50 million??


"To realize that the border was fixed by war and controlled by the victors is to understand why some Mexicans may not love the 21st-century American colossus."

????????????? Name a national border that was established by a card game - go on, I DARE YOU.

"Yet they adore the old American ideals of freedom, equality and boundless opportunity, and they keep voting, by the millions, with their feet."


I can't balme people for wanting to steal what is better. But I can blame people like Bush for not wanting to stop them. Better then should stay at home and correct their own government and we should help them. Better yet, ANNEX MEXICO. Anglicize it and make it well. Its a sick country. Their people would be better off. (So would we. They have lots of oil.)

"In "a relationship of love and of hatred," as Mr. Soto says, bitter memories sometimes surface like old shrapnel under the skin."

This guy is too much. Is he a history teacher or a drama teacher??

"Fragments of the old war stand in the slanting morning sunlight at an old convent here in Mexico City, a sanctuary seized by invading American troops in 1847, now the National Museum of Interventions, which chronicles the struggle."

Millions of people they can't employ, feed or support and they build an entire museum to a lost war from a century and a half ago. Brilliant!!!

"The war between Mexico and the United States has a different meaning for Mexicans and Americans," said the museum's director, Alfredo Hernández Murillo. "For Americans, it's one more step in the expansion that began when the United States was created. For Mexicans, the war meant we lost half the nation. It was very damaging, and not just because the land was lost."


This guy gets more and more maudlin. Like I said, MOST of what we took was not occupied or used. At the time it was a wasteland and wilderness which was unexploited. The average Mexican non-historian today probably has a lot more problems to think about than Buena Vista and Molino Del Rey.
But, what the heck, when your economy is collapsing, find some fall guy to take the heat. It worked before with other corrupt governments, why not Mexico's?


"It's a symbol of Mexico's weakness throughout history in confronting the United States. For Mexicans, it's still a shock sometimes to cross the border and see the Spanish names of the places we lost."

A symbol of Mexico's weakness is the fact that millions of its sons and daughters have to flee their native country just to get enough money to buy breakfast.

"Those places have names like Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego, Santa Fe, El Paso, San Antonio; the list is long."

Yeah, yeah, and New Orleans, Detroit, etc. Should we give that land back to France? How about Staten Island? Should we give it back ot the Netherlands??

"The war killed 13,780 Americans, and perhaps 50,000 or more Mexicans — no one knows the true number."

More Mexicans probably died in the Mexican War from Santa Ana's inadequate or non-existant Medical corps and insane marching than from Yankee bullets.

"It was the first American war led by commanders from West Point. These were men like Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman, Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis. A little more than a decade later, Grant and Sherman battled Lee and Davis in the Civil War."

So what has this got to do with the discussion??

"Historians are still fighting over how and why the battles of the Mexican War began. Some say it was Mexico's fault for trying to stop the secession of what was then (and to some, still is) the Republic of Texas. Some say it was an imperial land grab by the president of the United States."

It was due to many factors, among them these. Not all the people at the Alamo were Americans. A lot of Tejanos hated Santa Ana, as well as a lot of Mexicans and Mexican Indians. He was a bloodthirsty megalomaniac.

"President James K. Polk did confide to his diary that the aim of the war was "to acquire for the United States — California, New Mexico and perhaps some other of the northern provinces of Mexico." When it was won, in February 1848, he wrote, "There will be added to the United States an immense empire, the value of which 20 years hence it would be difficult to calculate." Nine days later, prospectors struck gold in California."

He tried to buy the southwest from Mexico. I believe the Americans actually DID pay Mexico for the Southwest after the war.

"It shows Gen. Winfield Scott riding into Mexico City's national square — "the halls of Montezuma," in the words of the Marine Corps Hymn — to seize power and raise the flag. He had followed the same invasion route as the 16th-century Spanish conquerors of Mexico. The American occupation lasted 11 months."

And I bet it was the most secure, most sanitary 11 months in Mexico City's history.

"Many of the 75,000 Mexicans living in the newly conquered American West lost their rights to own land and live as they pleased. It was well into the 20th century before much of the land was settled and civilized."

Sad, but true. But then, we have changed a lot haven't we in 150 years?

"Now, that civilization is taking another turn. More than half of the 20 million Mexicans north of the border live on the land that once was theirs. Some 8.5 million live in California — a quarter of the population. Nearly half the people of New Mexico have roots in old Mexico. Mexico is, in a sense, slowly reoccupying its former property."

Onlyu bceause we have people like Bush and his predecessors in the White House. Where is that guy Polk when you REALLY need him??

"History extracts its costs with the passage of time," said Jesús Velasco Márquez, a professor who has long studied the war. "We are the biggest minority in the United States, and particularly in the territory that once was ours."

So?? America is a nation of minorities. Consider yourselves lucky to be here.

The New York Times is really a rube paper. They INVITE criticism by their idiotic articles. Now I understand why Ann Cooulter has such a field day with them.

---

[GrandEagle]

They have almost completed the task of retaking it.
True.. The last time I went through there the what little border we still have was located at I-10.

[KellyAdmirer]

There are so many easy solutions to this whole Mexican problem - fortify the border, beef up the INS dramatically, outlaw any business using more than a few illegals - but nothing productive ever gets done.

Polk is probably the least-appreciated US President, btw. He did more for the US than many others combined.

[jpl]

I'm so sick and tired of pundits who try to make it seem as though America is the only country on the face of the earth founded in war. Every single national border that exists on the face of the earth was at least partially formed in bloodshed.

[MissAmericanPie]

"In the United States, almost no one remembers the war that Americans fought against Mexico more than 150 years ago"

I may not remember that, but I do remember mexicans celebrating 9-11 in towns across the nation, selling Ben Laden T-shirts and masks whipped out in an instant, already manufactured and awaiting the day for their demand.

I remember the American flag being torn down at a soccor game in California and the riot that insued of the mexican humilation of defeat.

I remember members of La Raza attacking vets in their sixties and seventies on Memorial Day outside a military cemetary. I remember all that.

[BadAndy]

Historically, land only belongs to you until someone can take it from you. If you can't defend it it's not yours. It has been this way since territoriality first developed in animals.
Unfortunately it looks like the US is not willing to defend our territory, so Mexico may be able to reclaim the southwest without firing a shot.

If the US was so imperialistic, why didn't we take ALL of Mexico?

[pikachu]

Where are the articles about the Toltecs, Aztecs, and the like who are still resentful about all the Spanish descendants and what they have done since Cortez showed up?

[BooBoo1000]

What ever happened to the Treaty of Guadalupoe-Hidalgo which was signed on the 2nd day of February 1848. In which we paid Mexico, $ 15,000,000.00, for which we received the Rio Grande as the border of Texas, and the entire territory including New Mexico, and Southern California??

[Red Boots]

Too many innaccuracies to name, but I will point out a least one:

Mexician Land and water rights and property titles WERE recognized and upheld by the US courts, as part of the treaty settling the war, and, in fact, continue to be upheld by US courts to this very day. A case was recently settled in SE Colorado reaffirming the rights of the decendants of Mexican settlers to gather wood and water on private ranch land. They claim was based on their historical use of the land, dating from the Mexican Occupation. They won. It's not an isolated incident; many such claims have been recognized throughout the SW.

Quite a bit of the territories were PURCHASED by the US as part of a willing exchange with Mexico. All the territory ceded as a result of the War was paid for by the US, to the tune of $15 million, way more than it was worth at the time, being largely unsettled and barren. Some later territory was bought outright; like the GAdsen Purchase of Arizona, which came well after the war. How dare they say we took it ??

That being said, it's not really going to matter as possession is 9/10 of the law, and our gubmint is not going to stop it, right or wrong.

[MissAmericanPie]

That is absolutely correct, the indians tribes kept them south of the Rio Grand, Texas was all but vacant when Americans began to populate it.

[Coeur de Lion]

The problem with these sorts of analyses isn't that it's historically inaccurate. Because it does capture the present attitudes of the Mexican's it's a good thing. Its problem is it perpetuates a myth. That myth is that Mexican claim to these territories was something more then in name only. The original territory was New Spain not Mexico. Claim to these territories were Mexico's as a consequence of their overthrow of Spain. This was true also with respect to the claim of the US to territories east of the Appalachians (i.e. it was initially in name only, it required their conquest and settlement to make it a fact).

The issue is that though there were some settlements which one could refer to as Mexican in these territories, they like the Spanish had made very few inroads. Most settlements were along the coast in California and into what is now Texas and New Mexico. What prevented anymore then a foothold was as a result of the hostility shown both the Spaniards and later the Mexicans by the various Indian tribes (e.g. Geronimo got his moniker because he ambushed a Mexican garrison and wiped them out on St. Jerome's day). The myth, to reiterate, is the territory was sparsely populated and required American innovation and ingenuity (e.g. the five cylinder Colt revolver) in order to open it up to large settlement and civilization, though the Native American population might object to the latter.

The present descendants of these original settlements don't even refer to themselves as Mexicans. They referred to themselves, and mostly continue to as Tehanos (Texas), Spaniards (New Mexico), and Californios. Those claiming otherwise are descendants of those who migrated to the area after the Mexican American War. And they were only able to as a result of the American conquest.

So my advice to Mexico is get over it.

[gundog]

1) To be logically consistent, if the Mexicans assert a claim to the SW U.S based on it being theirs first, they would then have to give it back to Spain.

Exactly...and the French should give Canada back to the beavers.

[sarcasm]

Remember how Vicente Fox called illegal aliens pioneers?

[fourdeuce82d]

It was very damaging, and not just because the land was lost.

yeah, the damn gringos stole the part that had hollywood, silicon valley, and the Los Angelese aerospace industry. THAT's why we are having such a hard time now. /sarcasm

[expat_panama]

Every single national border that exists on the face of the earth was at least partially formed in bloodshed.

The bloodshed part was smaller than the 'not-bloodshed' part, because  it was not the US military might that cut Mexico in two.  

When Mexico declared independence, the overwhelming majority of the area administered by Mexico City broke away.  This included the end of Panama where I'm at up, clear up to Oregon (claimed by among others- Russia).  Mexico got back Tijuana and Nogales by killing off a lot of Mexicans, but Texas (like Guatemala etc.) made it stick.  California's independent concession from Mexico is what isolated the territories in between, not the US army.  The biggest direct US role in setting the present border was the Gadson Purchase.

OK, the US army took over Mexico City, but I thought we gave that back.

[Snickersnee]

Exactly! The Mexicans actually invited Anglo settlers from trans-Appalachia to settle the area (and become "Texicans") to act as a buffer from the Comanches, who raided as far south as the suburbs of Ciudad Mexico itself. My ancestors from NC and Tenn. were among them.

[WackyKat]

Spaniards (New Mexico),

My cousin taught school in the New Mexico mountains and said that some of the people there spoke formal Castilian Spanish-using the vosotros form and pronouncing "z" as "th"- and had light hair, eyes, and fair skin.

As the descendents of the Conquitadors,they were rather contemptuous of Mexicans