March 19, 1999
Part 1 of 3
by Jacob G. Hornberger
PROLOGUE
For decades, the federal government has waged war against Mexican immigrants attempting to enter the United States. They have shot and killed them in violent confrontations. They have jailed them in detention centers. They have spent millions of dollars building a fortified wall along the California-Mexico border. They have criminalized the hiring of undocumented workers. They have raided homes and businesses in search of people to deport. Central to this decades-long policy, of course, is a basic premise: that it would be a bad thing to have Mexicans freely coming into the United States.
Is such a premise valid? If not, then wouldn't it be much more rational and humane to simply end the war on immigrants and open the borders to the free movements of goods and people? A review of the Mexican heritage in the American Southwest might help us to move away from a policy of animosity and war toward a policy of friendship and openness with our southern neighbors.
THE SPANISH EMPIRE
Before Mexico won its independence from Spain in 1821, the Spanish Empire stretched from Central America all the way to the lands encompassing the current states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California. These territories also included parts of the current states of Utah, Colorado, and Nevada. The Spanish had tried to encourage people to colonize these northern reaches of New Spain but had been only partially successful. Indian raids and desolate country had discouraged Spanish colonists from moving north. When Spain acceded to Mexican independence in 1821, after ten years of revolution, all of this territory became part of the new nation - Mexico.
MEXICO BECOMES INDEPENDENT
To discourage foreign intrusion into the northern part of their country, the Mexican authorities also did their best to encourage Mexican citizens to colonize in the north. Again, they were only partly successful. Mexican population levels in the northern part of the country remained relatively low. What is important to keep in mind though is that all of these territories —and virtually all the people who lived there when Mexico won its independence— were Spanish and Mexican. The language and culture were Spanish and Mexican. People ate Spanish and Mexican food. They learned Spanish, Mexican, and Indian history. Their political and economic systems were based on those of Spain. Their towns and cities had Spanish names: San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, El Paso, San Antonio. Most of the people living in this region were as much Spanish and Mexican as the people in Massachusetts and Virginia were once British.
IMPORTANCE OF TEXAS IN OUR HISTORY
Crucial to the history of the people of the Southwest —Mexican, Mexican American, and Anglo American— is the story of Texas. In 1822, with the permission of the Mexican government, Stephen F. Austin (for whom the state capital is named) began bringing American immigrants into Texas, which was a territory in the Mexican state of Coahuila. In return for being permitted to settle in Mexico, the colonists were required to become Mexican citizens, swear allegiance to Mexico, and agree to abide by Mexican law.
Colonists were provided with cheap land and a promise by the Mexican government to exempt them from tariffs for a period of seven years. Americans colonists began flooding into Texas, and it wasn't long before American Mexicans far outnumbered the Mexicans. For example, by the end of the 1820s, there were an estimated 25,000 American Mexicans living in Texas, compared with an estimated 4,000 Spanish-speaking Mexicans. Mexico's Constitution of 1824 had guaranteed a decentralized, federal type of political system. That is, the nation would consist of individual states, each of which would have autonomy within its own region, similar to the type of political system that existed in the United States in the 19th century. The Mexican federal government would have little power over the affairs of the several states.
In 1834, Antonio López de Santa Anna assumed the presidency of Mexico. Endorsing the concept of a strong centralized government, Santa Anna discarded the Constitution of 1824 and, from Mexico City, the nation's capital, began regulating the people in the various Mexican states, much as the U.S. government does today to the American people from Washington, D.C.
By this time, the seven-year grace period for tariff exemption for the American-Mexican colonists had expired. Santa Anna announced that customs stations were being established along the eastern border of Texas. He also sent Mexican troops to Texas to maintain order. Believing that American-Mexican immigrants, including American illegal aliens, were threatening Mexico with their foreign language and foreign culture, he closed the Texas territory to any further immigration by Anglo Americans. The American Mexicans were outraged over Santa Anna's imposition of immigration controls and tariffs. They considered these actions tyrannical, and petitioned the Mexican government for redress of grievances. But the petitioning process had never been part of the Mexican or Spanish political system, and the Mexican officials considered the petition to be an unlawful questioning of their authority. Santa Anna assumed the position of commander in chief and led the Mexican army north to quell the growing resistance to his rule.
THE ALAMO
There were approximately 180 men, including William Barrett Travis, David Crockett, and James Bowie, holed up at an old Spanish mission in San Antonio called the Alamo. Santa Anna's forces numbered approximately 4,000. As the Mexican troops surrounded the Alamo, Santa Anna raised the "no quarter" flag, indicating that no man inside the Alamo would be taken prisoner. Santa's Anna's forces attacked, and every defender of the Alamo was killed.
Soon after the battle of the Alamo, however, Santa Anna's forces were defeated by Sam Houston's army at San Jacinto, Texas, and Santa Anna was captured. In return for his life's being spared, Santa Anna personally agreed that Texas would be an independent nation, after which he was shipped back to Mexico in disgrace. There was one big problem with this agreement, however: It was never ratified by the Mexican Congress. Mexico refused to recognize Texas as an independent nation and instead continued to claim the territory as its own. For years after the battle at San Jacinto, the Mexican government continued sending troops into Texas but would quickly withdraw them to avoid extended conflict with the Texans. Aggravating matters was a decision by Texas to claim the Rio Grande as its southern boundary even though the southern boundary of the Texas territory had always been, going all the way back to the Spanish Empire, the Nueces River, which was about 125 miles north of the Rio Grande and which, more or less, paralleled the Rio Grande.
U.S.-MEXICAN WAR
Thus, 10 years later —in 1846— there were two matters in dispute. Was Texas truly an independent nation by virtue of a successful revolution and the agreement with Santa Anna? The Texans said yes, and the Mexicans said no. Second, if the Texans were right, was the new nation's southern boundary (and, therefore, Mexico's northern boundary) the Nueces River? Or was the boundary 125 miles south, along the Rio Grande, as the Texans now claimed?
These two questions were, of course, of crucial import to the people living in Mexico and in Texas. But they were especially important to the people living in Texas who had been Mexican citizens all their lives, especially those who lived on the strip of land between the Rio Grande and the Nueces. For example, my hometown of Laredo, which had been established by Capt. Tomás Sánchez in 1755, was located on the northern bank of the Rio Grande and, therefore, within the disputed strip. In 1840, four years after the battle at San Jacinto, the Mexican states of Tamaulipas and Nuevo Leon, themselves disgusted with the dictatorial rule of the Mexican government, declared their independence from Mexico, and Laredo, despite being claimed by Texas, became the capital of the new Republic of the Rio Grande. The Mexican government suppressed the revolt nine months later, but Laredoans chose to remain loyal to Mexico rather than Texas. Issues involving political boundaries would ultimately be determined by the Mexican War in 1846 and by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. That war and that peace agreement would also make such things as family, language, history, and culture along the southern border more complicated than ever.
(Mr. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Va., and co-editor of The Case for Free Trade and Open Immigration.)
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