The Mexican American War &
Hispanic Land Dispossessions

Select the topic you want to examine: | Mexican American War   |   Displacement of Chicanos from the Land |

Mexican American War

Spanish settlements in the Southwest date to the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The earliest settlements were in Santa Fe which was founded in 1609.
Over the next 200 years additional settlements were established; by the early 19th century, three major Spanish settlements were found in

• New Mexico territory,

• southern and southeastern Texas, and

• along the California coast.

With independence of Mexico from Spain in 1821, these three frontier settlements became part of the new Mexican republic.

These Spanish areas started having contact with parts of the United States, particularly with Missouri merchants in St. Louis, with the opening of the Santa Fe Trail in 1822. While Anglos traded and engaged in land speculation in New Mexico and later in California following the overland Old Spanish Trail, Texas received the most "American" settlers.

• In Texas, Spain and later Mexico used land grants to encourage both Hispanic and Anglo settlements -- the most of the latter was the Austin Colony. By 1830s only the areas around and south of San Antonio was distinctively Mexican.

• In the 1830s, Texas contained 25,000 Anglos and only 4,000 Spanish-speaking Mexican.

In 1830, Mexico abolished slavery, and passed the Colonization Law to prevent slaves from being imported into Texas by Anglo landowners.

Anglo settlers also wanted to engage in free trade with the United States and resented Mexican custom laws. When internal conflict broke out in Mexico, Anglo settlers revolted at the Alamo and other places, and created the Republic of Texas in 1836. Texas wanted to be annexed to the United States, but issues of slavery in this area had to clarified before Texas was admitted, which occurred in 1845.

• Mexico never recognized the independence of Texas and broke off diplomatic relationship with the United States, when it admitted Texas.

• The US government tried to purchase the areas of New Mexico and California from Mexico, which Mexico refused.

An armed clash between Mexican and US troops along the Rio Grande provided the incident for the US government to declare war against Mexico! The Mexican American War lasted from 1846-1848 and resulted in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) which transferred vast areas of the Southwest (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, southern Colorado, and Texas) to the United States.

Displacement of Chicanos from the Land

The governments of Spain and Mexico had land grants that included common lands to communities The community grants contained tracts of individual land for house sites and gardens with the remainer of the land being used in common for forestry resources and grazing. These common properties grants were the equivalent of the Mexican ejidos.

After the Mexican American War, Mexican Americans in New Mexico and southern Colorado began to lose their land to Anglos, although the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed the new citizens the security of their properties. Although the pace of dispossession varied from state to state, the general trend was everywhere consistent: Mexican American lost their land holdings to Anglos by means of US legal means, land sales brought on economic distress, land seizures, and fraud and force. For example, without compensation, the U.S. National Forest Service took millions of acres from northern villages for national forests. Hispanos must now pay grazing fees on land that once belonged to their villages. Lawsuits in Vallecitos, NM, and the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado demand that these common lands be returned to local Hispanic communities for their economic and cultural survival.

The dispossession from the land depleted the economic base of Chicanos and put them in an even less favorable position to exercise their influence over the political process. Without a land base, Chicanos increasing turned to wage-labor in agriculture, industry, and services.

Also read Malcolm Ebright, Land Grants and Law Suits in Northern New Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. 1995.
Timothy Dunn, The Militarization of the U.S.-Mexican Border, 1978-1992. Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas, 1996.