In Chapter 7: “Foreigners in Their Native Land” Takaki concludes that similarly to Irish work, Mexican conquest and land was a necessity for American, or “white,” expansion.
Mexican land was the only thing between the United States border and the Pacific Ocean. Americans, whites, had gone into Mexican territory and were claiming it as theirs. Americans coming into this territory were at first accepted. But, they viewed Mexicans as idle, lazy, and inefficient in enterprise, and this would soon lead to conflicts. As Richard Henry Dana stated, “In the hands of an enterprising people [whites], what a country this might be!” (171). People began to come in groups to the western land, and they were coming to change the image from Mexican to American. “The idea these people [whites] formed is that God made the world and them, so what is in the world belongs to them as sons of God,” (172). They viewed themselves as conquerors, not to be confused with thieves or robbers of course. The Mexican-American War ensued. For white Americans, a goal was to obtain more land which equates to more money. Whites viewed the conflicts and war as attempting to redeem land from the “wilderness” and to civilize a “mongrel Spanish-Indian and negro race,” (174). The idea of Manifest Destiny “embraced a belief in American Anglo-Saxon superiority,” and gave them the right to western lands to the Pacific Ocean because they were destined to obtain that land (176). After the conquest of their land, Mexicans were guaranteed to have the rights of American citizens if they wished to stay. They were now “foreigners in their own land,” (178). They were not treated as citizens though. The creation of laws aimed at Mexicans made it even harder for Mexicans to be “Americans.” Mexicans soon lost much of their land and became poor. Mexicans had to settle for the worst jobs, and less pay than Anglos. A “West Coast version of the ‘giddy multitude’” thus formed with these discontent Mexicans (188). Once again, whites enter a foreign land and feel that they have a right to it because they are special, white. They take the land without consent and allow the native people of the land to stay there and experience all rights of citizenship. However, whites discriminate against this foreign group and in practice do not give them the promised rights of citizenship.
Thomas Jefferson had a “vision of an American continent covered with ‘a people speaking the same language, governed in similar forms, and by similar laws,’” (166).
Jefferson did not say the same skin color, or race, but was that supposed to be another similarity in his vision? There are so many contradictions that could be brought up on this subject. Jefferson owned hundreds of slaved, yet wanted slavery to be abolished? Indians and Mexicans owned land that was taken from them by whites. They cooperated with these whites, yet still they became targets of discrimination and oppression. Are whites the only group of people that can speak and be governed the same?
I think a lot of irony was brought up in this chapter. The Irish had been pushed from Ireland by British colonialism, and were later in the United States armed forces, aiding in the conquest of another peoples, Mexicans (167). Today there is so much talk about Mexicans being illegal aliens in the United States. However, the land they cross into was first theirs and people from the United States previously came there as illegal immigrants before conquering the land from the Mexicans. Mexicans ended up working for strangers in their native land. President Polk said that war was trying to be avoided, yet American volunteers killed Mexicans for their own amusement? Also, if the white Anglos were so superior, why did they have to rely on others such as Indians and the Irish so much for success?
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Spain and, later Mexico, claimed only what is now the American Southwest and parts of California. Russia, Great Britain and the United States contested sovereignty over the Northwest. Native American tribes exercise actually ownership over the entire area, except for Spanish enclaves in California, New Mexico and South Texas. Spain invited settlers from Missouri and Germany to settle Texas as a buffer between Apache and Comanche raiders and settlements south of the Rio Grande. The population of Texas was overwhelming Anglo while Texas was still part of Spain. The Anglos were Spanish citizens, most small farmers who owned their own land. The Hispanic populace probably never rose above a few thousand; consisting mostly of mesitos who live on mission land around San Antonio or worked large rancheros for mostly absentee Spanish landlords.
Texas became part of Mexico in 1824 and was one of three states that revolted in 1835 when Santa Anna revoked the Constitution of 1864 and proclaimed a new constitution that ended the republic and the federation, imposed a central style of government with power concentrated in the President, and turned states into provinces with governors appointed from Mexico City. Texas became an independent republic in 1836, gained international recognition, and turned back Mexican armies that try to reassert Mexican control. When Texas sought admission to the United States, it wasn’t worried about Mexico; it needed help stopping Comanche raids.
The Spanish who lived in settlements along the Rio Grande in New Mexico had been loyal to Spain and accepted Mexican rule grudgingly. They lived precariously, outnumbered and surrounded by Pueblo Indians who had already driven them once from the province during a bloody rebellion. During the Mexico War, they surrendered, grudgingly, without a fight because the United States offered them protection against Apache and Navaho raids, something the Mexican government could not provide. The Californians put up more of a fight, but not much of a fight; they were, for the most part, Spanish loyalists who resented being ruled by the new government in Mexico City.
Texas, the Southwest, and California were never predominately Hispanic; it was predominately Native American and then predominantly Anglo. Today, Texas, New Mexico, and California are predominantly Hispanic for the first time.
The Irish were never pushed out of Ireland, at least not by British armies. The British pushed Irish clans out of Northern Ireland into Southern Ireland and replaced them with Scots. The Irish later migrated to the United Sates because of economic conditions and famine brought on by British policies. The first wave of Irish immigrants were Scots-Irish Protestants, They were descendants of the Scots who had migrated from Scotland into Northern Ireland. They began arriving in the United States in the mid 1700s and went straight to the Appalachians. These are the people who crossed over the Appalachians into Tennessee and Kentucky and then continued moving west into Texas and beyond, all the way to California. Today, their descendants don’t think of themselves as Irish. The famine ship Irish began arriving in the late 1800s. These are the Catholics who established the Irish-American stereotype and pine of the old sod on Saint Patrick’s Day.
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