Guadalupe Hidalgo

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo is the treaty that ended the war with Mexico in 1848. Most  Americans had supported the war and accepted the manifest destiny that God wanted us to own the port of San Francisco (even Walt Whitman). It was a war that we started but lied about, much like the Vietnam War or the Second Iraq War. Mexico was not to blame, as people like Lincoln pointed out at the time. Grant denounced the war, although he fought in it. 

The first thing I learned was that Guadelupe Hidalgo is a building (like Appomattox Courthouse). I learned that Mexico signed the treaty, with a gun held to its head, because Mexico was dividing into factions, disunited and becoming a failed state with no tax base. Ending the war and getting some cash was the only way to hold together what was left of Mexico, the country's leadership thought.

I learned that the sometime President of Mexico, Santa Ana, was in treasonous communication with the American military, offering them advice on how best to win. (Amazing.)

What really matters, aside from the armed theft of half of Mexico, is that the treaty offered protections, property rights and citizenship for the Mexican citizens of California, New Mexico and so on (Mexico had citizens of all races, including Indians) after the Americans took control.

What actually happened was the Indians and the women of California lost the right to vote, nearly all the Mexican men lost their vast ranches and became second-class citizens, and all of this was winked at by the U. S. Supreme Court. (Apaches were finally granted the vote in 1953, more than 100 years later.) The American courts held that the treaty guaranteed Mexican subjects citizenship in their new country but not the right to vote. Never mind what the Constitution and its amendments said.

I was most surprised by the Supreme Court. Between 1848 and the present, the Court has ruled dozens of times that the treaty, a treaty guaranteeing property rights and signed by the Federal government, can be over-ruled by laws passed by state assemblies. The states passed laws that made it easy to take land from the Mexican owners. The Supreme Court apparently did this on the assumption that it would be good for business. Never mind that in theory federal law trumps state law. The Civil War settled that issue, but the courts paid no attention.

The local laws, in effect, made it easy to transfer lands from Mexican-Americans to the Anglos, often to the 1%. Within 30 years, the Mexican land owners (often called Dons) had lost everything. 

I sometimes think of today's Supreme Court as especially corrupt and twisted in its logic, but I guess that's not the case. Now that Latinos have become a large voting group, I wonder what will come next.