[sam_paine]

Reading this caption, the ignorance (or willful disregard of history) is clear by the AP, this author, and, Absolut.

In this image released by the Mexican advertising firm of Teran/TBWA on April 7, an advertisement created for Swedish Absolut Vodka, which ran in Mexico, shows a map of the border of Mexico and the United States where it stood before the Mexican-American War of 1848. ASSOCIATED PRESS

So what of the REPUBLIC OF TEXAS from 1836 on? Hello?

Had Santa Anna, a DICTATOR, not gone after the rights of Texans, that whole thing might never have happened.

[Travis McGee]

Here's the reconquista map, from Mayday 2006 in San Diego.

[Kenny Bunk]

The Texans tried every possible avenue of approach with the Mexican Government to try and be annexed as citizens of Mexico and have their land holdings recognized. However, at that time there was a revolving-door series of Mexican governments, none of which could get it together to accept the Texans into their republic.

Eventually, the deal-breaker was slavery. It was outlawed in Mexico, and the slaves held in Texas would have been automatically freed by annexation to Mexico. It could be argued that this, perhaps more than other factors, led to the formation of the Texas republic.

Not a polite topic of conversation around the Alamo. Plus, Santa Anna, not an entirely bad military man, BTW, was a tyrannical SOB.