Becoming Part of the United States
The first Mexicans to become part of the United
States never crossed any border. Instead, the border crossed them.
Spanish-speaking people have lived in North
America since the Spaniards colonized Mexico in the sixteenth
century, and Mexicans have always played a crucial role in the
continent's culture and history. Mexican culture brought many
firsts to North America: The first Thanksgiving took place in
either New Mexico or El Paso; the first university in North America
was founded in Mexico City; the first printing press on the continent
arrived in Mexico in 1538, more than a century before printing
came to New England.
Mexicans first
arrived in present-day New Mexico in 1598 and founded the city
of Santa
Fe in 1610. By 1800, Spain had governed Mexico as a colony
for almost 300 years. Although Spaniards held positions of power,
the people of Mexico were primarily mestizos--people of
both Spanish and indigenous heritage.
The northern
sections of Mexico, especially the lands north of the Rio Grande,
were lightly populated well into the 19th century. Mexican government
officials, merchants, and a few trappers and hunters from the
U.S. lived in small settlements, mostly around a series of mission
churches. This arrangement remained largely undisturbed after
Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821.
The Land Changes Hands
In 1846,
everything changed. War broke out between the U.S. and Mexico
over the U.S. annexation of Texas. Mexico was defeated, and in
1848 the two nations signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This
treaty gave the victorious nation an enormous amount of land,
including what would later become the states of California and
Texas, as well as parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah
and Nevada, in exchange for a token payment of $15 million.
One more
important piece of land changed hands in 1854, when the U.S. bought
what is now southern Arizona and New Mexico from the Mexican government
for $10 million. This land deal, known as the Gadsden Purchase,
brought the U.S. a much-coveted railroad route, and helped open
the West to further expansion.
With two
strokes of a pen, the larger nation had expanded its size by one-third.
And almost overnight, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens had
become residents of the United States. |