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. |
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