Mexicans & Texans, a brief history

There's nothing like flag-wavin' to get the blood boiling.

Mexican and Mexican-American students carrying Mexico's red, white and green flag outside our public school have proved that.

It's led to some suggesting the protests over immigration reform are really more about "conquest" than legislation.

If there is a conquest in our future by the brown man (and woman), I feel reasonably secure in thinking it will be via the ballot box rather than the bayonet. After all, the population of state's largest city (Houston) is something like 40 percent Hispanic, right?

But, just for fun and so that we're all working from the same set of facts, let's look back at the last conquest, which really was a conquest.

Here's how it went down.

Texas originally belong to the republic of Mexico. Mexico allowed Americans to settle in Mexico's state of Texas. It was sparsely populated.

The American colonists didn't pay much attention to Mexico's central government. They introduced slavery despite that practice being prohibited by the Mexican constitution.

Before long, when enough Americans had drifted down to Texas, the colonists formed their own government and war ensued.

On April 21, 1836, when Gen. Sam Houston and his army defeated the Mexican army at San Jacinto and captured Santa Anna, it was all over but the shouting.

Houston could have executed Santa Anna and no one would have thought the worse of him in light of what happened at The Alamo and Goliad.

Instead, Houston compelled Santa Anna to sign an armistice, withdraw his troops
and cede Texas.

Now, you could say the treaty was made under duress and wasn't fair. But if you were Santa Anna, what would you have done?

Even so, Mexico never recognized the independence of Texas. Moreover, the newly formed Republic of Texas never really exercised any control of the land between the Nueces River (down around Corpus) and the Rio Grande, and the Mexicans really didn't recognize Texas independence in those parts.

It was wild, virutally unpopulated territory where the Red Man held sway more than anyone else.

By 1845, the Republic of Texas invited the United States to annex Texas, and it did.

Gen. Zachary Taylor took military possession of the new state of Texas and was ordered to march to the Nueces River. He didn't stop there, despite the border question, which was well known to all.

The U.S. Army ended up going all the way to Mexico City, conquering Mexico.

Being a "civilized" country and all, the USA didn't take over the whole country of Mexico even though it held all the cards. Instead, a treaty was negotiated (the "Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo") with the temporary government that had been established after Santa Anna & Co. headed for the hills.

The treaty made the official southern boundary of the USA (and Texas) the Rio Grande River and gave the USA the territory that then included New Mexico and Upper California. In return, the USA paid Mexico $15 million.

To the victor go the spoils, as the saying goes, but money did exchange hands, the books say.

Still, even back in those days, the Mexican War rubbed a lot of Americans the wrong way.


Ulysses S. Grant, who served in the Mexican War before serving as president from 1869 to 1877, complained that annexationists in the USA wanted more territory than Texas could provide in the 1845 annexation, so Zachary Taylor was sent south of the Nueces River, "apparently in order to force Mexico to initiate war."

The original treaty that led to the creation of the Republic of Texas, too, was pretty shady since it was made when Santa Anna was "under duress," Grant asserted.

"...he was a prisoner of war when the treaty was made, and his life was in jeopardy,"
Grant wrote of Santa Anna in "Personal Memoirs," shortly before he died of throat cancer. (Mark Twain edited and published the book.)

Grant called the Civil War "largely the outgrowth of the Mexican War."

"Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions," he wrote. "We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive war of modern times."

And, perhaps, in the immigration mess in which the USA now finds itself?

[amazon.com]