Free Republic

There’s a popular saying among those of us in the Mexican American community who grew up on the border: We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us. With Sunday’s election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as Mexico’s next president, the idea to revisit the legality of our southern border, proposed by Mexican leftist leader Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas Solórzano, is suddenly not so crazy.

In the face of increasing terror attacks on our rights and our freedoms from the media and their anointed deities in Washington, it is important that we remember our history. And those who died looking at the guns of oppression for many days, but who refused to quit. -- And, in Goliad a few days before, remember also those who were mercilessly slaughtered AFTER meekly surrendering to the same invading horde of despots. Those deaths prove that "Quitting" and "Negotiations" are a fast way to death. not peace.

President Felipe Calderon of Mexico reacted sourly to news of the Senate's rejection of the proposed immigration law overhaul, calling the senators' action "a grave error." "It's a grave mistake first because it's a problem that's not being confronted, and with this evasive action the U.S. Senate is making it worse," Calderon told reporters in Mexico City during a joint news conference with President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua, who is finishing a two-day visit to the Mexican capital. "Secondly, because to close the door on legal immigration, the only thing the Senate does is open the door to illegal immigration"...

 The Second Annual "National March for Immigrant Rights" , on the U.S.-Mexico border, began on February 2. Last year, the march was also held on February 2. What’s going on here? Why February 2? Answer: February 2nd is the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That 1848 treaty officially ended the Mexican War and legally turned over most of the Southwest to the United States.The average American doesn’t know much about the Mexican War and thinks about it less. But here in Mexico they do think about it—a lot. In Mexico, everybody knows that "the U.S....

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) -- A cactus-dotted stretch of land that lay forgotten for more than a century is where the National Park Service decided to put its first site dedicated to the U.S.-Mexican War. Appropriately, the 3,400-acre Palo Alto Battlefield is where U.S. and Mexican soldiers began a fight that led to Mexico losing half its territory and the United States gaining claim to the Southwest. However, the visitor's center, which officially opens Saturday, will feature displays reflecting both U.S. and Mexican perspectives on the war -- in English and Spanish -- in hopes of attracting visitors from both sides...

In November 1835, the northern part of the Mexican state of Coahuila-Tejas declared itself in revolt against Mexico's new centralist government headed by President Antonio López de Santa Anna. By February 1836, Texans declared their territory to be independent and that its border extended to the Rio Grande rather than the Rio Nueces that Mexicans recognized as the dividing line. Although the Texans proclaimed themselves citizens of the Independent Republic of Texas on April 21, 1836 following their victory over the Mexicans at the Battle of San Jacinto, Mexicans continued to consider Tejas a rebellious province that they would reconquer...

The Gadsden Purchase:Odd Land Deal The Gadsden Purchase was one of the most curious real estate deals in which Uncle Sam has ever taken part. James Gadsden (1788-1858), whose name the purchase bears, was a grandson of Christopher Gadsden (1724-1805), a South Carolina Revolutionary soldier and statesman who was captured by the British at Charleston and confined as a prisoner for ten months at St. Augustine. James Gadsden soldiered for several years under General Andrew Jackson and it was he who seized the papers that led to the trial and execution of Robert C. Ambister and Alexander Arbuthnot in Florida...

One Reporter's Opinion: Our Own Paul Revere George Putnam Friday, Sept. 26, 2003 It is this reporter's opinion that certified American heroes are few and far between. One of my own present-day heroes is the man referred to as the "Guardian of the Gates," Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. Tom is the outspoken guardian of America's borders. He puts his ALL on the line in battling against the illegal alien invasion of the United States. Recently, Tom said, "Osama bin Laden could shave off his beard, land in Canada, call himself 'Omar the Tentmaker,' come on in and – without identification...

"...To us, it's as if the map [showing an "Ancient Homeland of the Aztecs"] has lifted an oppressive aura of "suspicion" from the psyche of Mexicans/Central Americans -- populations that have been deemed to be illegitimate by some in U.S. society... Some readers are speaking of putting the map up as a billboard along the U.S./Mexican border that proclaims "Welcome to Your Ancestral Homeland."