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Old 11-17-2003, 04:16 PM
Beau Beau is offline
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Afro-Mexican history, like Filipino-Mexican and Chinese-Mexican history, has unfortunately, been clouded by the Mexican myth of national identity that was created in the 1920s. African slaves were first brought to Mexico in 1519 with Hernando Cortez and continued to be imported thereafter because of the Spanish need for plantation laborers and the decimation of the indigenous populations from war, famine, and disease. The last estimates that I recall about Indian deaths resulting from the Conquest were between 11 and 20 million persons. The Spanish established a classification system based upon blood quantum, referred to as Metizaje from which we get the term Mestizo or ?half-breed,? that was used to group people of mixed blood. Under that system, came terms such as Octaroons, Quadroons, Chinos, etc., collectively called Las Castas that defined the individual by the amount of Indian or African blood that was mixed with European.

The Spanish Empire eventually imported some 2,500,000 African slaves, in addition to enslaving large numbers of indigenous people who survived the Conquest. The Portuguese imported many more from Africa, bringing 4,000,000 to Brazil alone to work on sugar cane plantations. When acquiring slaves from Africa proved difficult or too costly, the Spanish and Portuguese sought new population sources. Consequently, it was suggested by colonial officials that the silver mines of Potosi in Peru be worked by ?Chinese, Japanese, and Javanese from the isles of the Philippines.? In this way, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and South Asian Indians were first brought to the Americas?as the replacements for Africans.

The difference between the Spanish slavery system and its European and later, Anglo-American counterparts was that there was a legal mechanism to achieve manumission and attain freedom. Consequently, there was present in Mexico a free population of persons of African and Indian or European descent within presumably one generation after contact. At one time, their numbers in Mexico City became so great that they became a concern for the Spanish authorities and they were expelled from the capital, en masse.

The Conquest of Mexico, like all of those that followed, was an act of violence, whose intent was to accomplish the complete destruction of Indian society, its institutions, and religions. Through rape or agreement (since Indian as well as Spanish and African soldaderas accompanied the Conquistadores during the campaigns in Mexico and also fought alongside them) Mestizo offspring were produced within the first year of contact. In the decades following, there was always existent some level of mixing, whether sanctioned by the church and the Spanish Crown or otherwise. The colonization process created an intermediary class of persons who were placed above the native population but beneath the European-born colonizer. So, whether in Mexico, Brazil and South America, the Philippines, or French Indochina, a Mestizo or in French, a Metis class of persons, fathered by European men and indigenous women was always created. In the latter case, the Metis class numbered between 20,000 and 30,000 Eurasians. They were evacuated en masse from French Indochina in 1955 and resettled in the abandoned mining town of Noyant, France.

From this Mestizo class came the persons who later formed the local officials of colonial government, who collected taxes and functioned as bureaucrats and middlemen or became as some French described, ?a subclass of petty criminals and prostitutes.? They helped supply the Colonizer with raw materials that were shipped to Europe for consumption and manufacture and bought the Euro-goods that were returned to the colony. In general, this ?acculturation? process lead Mestizos, regardless of ethnicity, to come to deride their ?cousins,? who constituted native populations and native cultures, as ?backward and uncivilized? at best or at worst, as ?evil and vile.? European Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, functioned as the ideological underpinning of the Conquest of the ?New World? and of Colonization as it was applied globally. Even during the period following the American-Philippine War, the term ?unchristianized? was used by protestant American colonial officials as a synonym for ?uncivilized? and served as descriptions of local hill tribes that were published by the U.S. Government.

From its beginnings with the Portuguese in the early 1400s, chattel slavery had been sanctioned by the Catholic Church and later, by the Protestant churches , although there were courageous individuals of European and indigenous descents who fought for the rights of enslaved people, and who brought about the eventual demise of the institution in the New World four hundred years later. Its end in Mexico came in 1821, thirteen years before the end of another nefarious institution?the Mexican Inquisition?a 343-year campaign against Sephardic Jews who were forced to leave Spain or convert to Catholicism and who emigrated to the farthest reaches of the empire. Since the Philippines as a colony was administered from the seat of government in Mexico City, the Inquisition found its way to Manila and was implemented there as well.

The source of Spanish colonial income from Asia was facilitated by the Acapulco-Manila Trade and it may be noted that a scarcity of African slaves in Michoacan in 1565 prompted ?colonists to use the Philippines as a source of new workers.? Consequently, some 19,000 Filipino slaves were settled in Mexico , where they married Indian women and had children. As a twenty-first century population, however, their oral histories have lost their connection with their origins in the Philippines and many describe themselves simply as Chinos. The Filipinos settled in an area north of Acapulco and their descendents can be found there today.

Similarly, a large population of Afro-Mexicans settled in the state of Guerrero. Located in a largely rural area, their oral histories provide little information as to how they remained a distinct population, nor that they are even black or negro. Although not widely publicized, it should be noted that Frey Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who pronounced the famous Grito de Dolores and initiated the first revolt against the Spanish in 1810 was Afro-Mexican.

The establishment of Texas or Tejas, apart from an extensive mythology about how and why Anglo American Protestants created it, was to allow slavery. After the 1821 Plan de Iguala outlawed the practice, Anglo American and European settlement was encouraged by the Mexican Government. Anglo-American in-migration, legal or otherwise, however, occurred at a phenomenal rate during the following two decades, to such a degree, that by 1835, there were 35,000 non-Spanish speaking immigrants who occupied lands in Texas. Conversely, the Spanish-speaking population in that same year numbered only 3,000 individuals. This condition inadvertently set the stage for a revolt and establishment of the Anglo-American Republic in 1836 and later annexation to the United States in 1845. The Mexican-American War was an imperial conflict and was rampant with Anglo atrocities against Mexican citizens that were equal to those perpetrated three centuries earlier by the Spanish conquistadores.
During the period that followed leading up to the American Civil War, Mexico remained a destination for runaway slaves from the American South and intermarriage between former slaves and Mexicans continued. Afro-Mexicans participated in the Mexican Revolution of 1911, and several soldaderas were recorded in photographs from the period. A black surgeon joined the forces of Caranza and tended the wounded until he was murdered in the desert by Anglo-American troops in 1916. Unfortunately, following the revolution, the ideology of La Raza Cosmica was promulgated by the Partida Revolucionario Indepencia or PRI that proclaimed a new Mexican national identity, created solely from the amalgamation of Indians and Europeans. All others were excluded. Consequently, the other histories have only recently been discovered and recorded.
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Old 11-17-2003, 05:48 PM
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Reading through this it sounds so similiar to World History in Gerneral.

The conquerors conquer, Whether its Babylon, Egypt, China, the Mongols, Greece, Rome, France, England, Germany, Dutch, those with the technology conquer those without and establish some form of slavery. Imperialism is the way of history and certainly when Western Europe began its conquering of North America it was the same thing. The doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Yet even within the Native American Society the same thing was going on. Tribe conquering another tribe and taking slaves, etc. No group of people is less guilty of this uncivilized activity. Yet, the same old stuff continues on. Iraq would have conquered all they could have if it weren't for the two Gulf Wars. Its just one big circle that has gone around since civilization was invented. Its the old testament over and over again and again.

Keith
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Old 11-18-2003, 07:06 AM
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Originally posted by Beau Afro-Mexican history, like Filipino-Mexican and Chinese-Mexican history, has unfortunately, been clouded by the Mexican myth of national identity that was created in the 1920s. African slaves were first brought to Mexico in 1519 with Hernando Cortez and continued to be imported thereafter because of the Spanish need for plantation laborers and the decimation of the indigenous populations from war, famine, and disease. The last estimates that I recall about Indian deaths resulting from the Conquest were between 11 and 20 million persons. The Spanish established a classification system based upon blood quantum, referred to as Metizaje from which we get the term Mestizo or ?half-breed,? that was used to group people of mixed blood. Under that system, came terms such as Octaroons, Quadroons, Chinos, etc., collectively called Las Castas that defined the individual by the amount of Indian or African blood that was mixed with European.

The Spanish Empire eventually imported some 2,500,000 African slaves, in addition to enslaving large numbers of indigenous people who survived the Conquest. The Portuguese imported many more from Africa, bringing 4,000,000 to Brazil alone to work on sugar cane plantations. When acquiring slaves from Africa proved difficult or too costly, the Spanish and Portuguese sought new population sources. Consequently, it was suggested by colonial officials that the silver mines of Potosi in Peru be worked by ?Chinese, Japanese, and Javanese from the isles of the Philippines.? In this way, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, and South Asian Indians were first brought to the Americas?as the replacements for Africans.

The difference between the Spanish slavery system and its European and later, Anglo-American counterparts was that there was a legal mechanism to achieve manumission and attain freedom. Consequently, there was present in Mexico a free population of persons of African and Indian or European descent within presumably one generation after contact. At one time, their numbers in Mexico City became so great that they became a concern for the Spanish authorities and they were expelled from the capital, en masse.

The Conquest of Mexico, like all of those that followed, was an act of violence, whose intent was to accomplish the complete destruction of Indian society, its institutions, and religions. Through rape or agreement (since Indian as well as Spanish and African soldaderas accompanied the Conquistadores during the campaigns in Mexico and also fought alongside them) Mestizo offspring were produced within the first year of contact. In the decades following, there was always existent some level of mixing, whether sanctioned by the church and the Spanish Crown or otherwise. The colonization process created an intermediary class of persons who were placed above the native population but beneath the European-born colonizer. So, whether in Mexico, Brazil and South America, the Philippines, or French Indochina, a Mestizo or in French, a Metis class of persons, fathered by European men and indigenous women was always created. In the latter case, the Metis class numbered between 20,000 and 30,000 Eurasians. They were evacuated en masse from French Indochina in 1955 and resettled in the abandoned mining town of Noyant, France.

From this Mestizo class came the persons who later formed the local officials of colonial government, who collected taxes and functioned as bureaucrats and middlemen or became as some French described, ?a subclass of petty criminals and prostitutes.? They helped supply the Colonizer with raw materials that were shipped to Europe for consumption and manufacture and bought the Euro-goods that were returned to the colony. In general, this ?acculturation? process lead Mestizos, regardless of ethnicity, to come to deride their ?cousins,? who constituted native populations and native cultures, as ?backward and uncivilized? at best or at worst, as ?evil and vile.? European Christianity, whether Catholic or Protestant, functioned as the ideological underpinning of the Conquest of the ?New World? and of Colonization as it was applied globally. Even during the period following the American-Philippine War, the term ?unchristianized? was used by protestant American colonial officials as a synonym for ?uncivilized? and served as descriptions of local hill tribes that were published by the U.S. Government.

From its beginnings with the Portuguese in the early 1400s, chattel slavery had been sanctioned by the Catholic Church and later, by the Protestant churches , although there were courageous individuals of European and indigenous descents who fought for the rights of enslaved people, and who brought about the eventual demise of the institution in the New World four hundred years later. Its end in Mexico came in 1821, thirteen years before the end of another nefarious institution?the Mexican Inquisition?a 343-year campaign against Sephardic Jews who were forced to leave Spain or convert to Catholicism and who emigrated to the farthest reaches of the empire. Since the Philippines as a colony was administered from the seat of government in Mexico City, the Inquisition found its way to Manila and was implemented there as well.

The source of Spanish colonial income from Asia was facilitated by the Acapulco-Manila Trade and it may be noted that a scarcity of African slaves in Michoacan in 1565 prompted ?colonists to use the Philippines as a source of new workers.? Consequently, some 19,000 Filipino slaves were settled in Mexico , where they married Indian women and had children. As a twenty-first century population, however, their oral histories have lost their connection with their origins in the Philippines and many describe themselves simply as Chinos. The Filipinos settled in an area north of Acapulco and their descendents can be found there today.

Similarly, a large population of Afro-Mexicans settled in the state of Guerrero. Located in a largely rural area, their oral histories provide little information as to how they remained a distinct population, nor that they are even black or negro. Although not widely publicized, it should be noted that Frey Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, who pronounced the famous Grito de Dolores and initiated the first revolt against the Spanish in 1810 was Afro-Mexican.

The establishment of Texas or Tejas, apart from an extensive mythology about how and why Anglo American Protestants created it, was to allow slavery. After the 1821 Plan de Iguala outlawed the practice, Anglo American and European settlement was encouraged by the Mexican Government. Anglo-American in-migration, legal or otherwise, however, occurred at a phenomenal rate during the following two decades, to such a degree, that by 1835, there were 35,000 non-Spanish speaking immigrants who occupied lands in Texas. Conversely, the Spanish-speaking population in that same year numbered only 3,000 individuals. This condition inadvertently set the stage for a revolt and establishment of the Anglo-American Republic in 1836 and later annexation to the United States in 1845. The Mexican-American War was an imperial conflict and was rampant with Anglo atrocities against Mexican citizens that were equal to those perpetrated three centuries earlier by the Spanish conquistadores.
During the period that followed leading up to the American Civil War, Mexico remained a destination for runaway slaves from the American South and intermarriage between former slaves and Mexicans continued. Afro-Mexicans participated in the Mexican Revolution of 1911, and several soldaderas were recorded in photographs from the period. A black surgeon joined the forces of Caranza and tended the wounded until he was murdered in the desert by Anglo-American troops in 1916. Unfortunately, following the revolution, the ideology of La Raza Cosmica was promulgated by the Partida Revolucionario Indepencia or PRI that proclaimed a new Mexican national identity, created solely from the amalgamation of Indians and Europeans. All others were excluded. Consequently, the other histories have only recently been discovered and recorded.
Above Writings: by Stan Solamillo, Anglo-Filipino, Historian, former Texan?, worked with refugee children as a student volunteer, as well as with Afro, Asian and Laino communities in Dallas and was on the Board of Directors of the Vientamese Mutual Assistance Association of greater Dallas .... and a whole bunchas other nice things.

He was writing not so much about Imperialism or slavery, but the little known ethnic history of Mexico (ref: "... or PRI that proclaimed a new Mexican national identity .... all others were excluded."

_________________________________________________

response from another Forum: =Hi Beau,

I join Mark in appreciating reading the above post. This is the type of history that should serve as the standard for other writings. The social migrations - and the background reasons why - are so frequently neglected in the study of history.
A couple of points;

One major problem in the early US military was that all did notspeak English ! Contrary to the television programs of the 1950s, large groups - or at least noticable sized groups spoke German. The immigration from Europe encompassed more than the British Isles.

Re " Javanese from the isles of the Phillippines." as an aditional source of labor; remember the Moluccans who hijacked a Dutch train in the 1970s? The islands of modern Indonesia and Phillippine Republic blended together in the early colonial days. Java Island is now Indonesian. The Moluccas are also known as the "Spice Islands". Its the islands betwen former Portugese Timor and the western section of New Guniea Island (Irian Jaya).

Before geting to Indochinese being resettled in Mexico, we should mention that the Irish maidens from the "laundries" were not part of the landed gentry emigrating to the New World.

The Russian slave system (The place is part of Europe) did have a mechanism for release from chattel bondage (serfdom). It could be accomplished by death.

A technical point on the original Inquisition; Discussing the Spanish Inquisition and not the Italian Inquisition, the actual jurisdiction of the court dealt only with Christians; not Jews. This is a technicality. I consider the most famous "converso" to be Christopher Columbus. Besides being a convert, he was a "Miranno" a secret Jew. It's correct that the colonial ventures used Christianity as the moral underpining of the projects. However, with Columbusbeing one of the first, it must be mentioned that on his return to Spain after his first voyage of 1492, he had a 400% profit. He did not immediately report to Ferdinand and Isabella, but to his sponsors, Banker Don Issac Abravanel, Banker Luis de Santangel, Banker Gabriel Sanchez and Professor Abraham ben Zacuto. No priests were on the 3 ships of Columbus' initial voyage to the New World. Columbus knew where he was going to. Columbus was in the Western Hemisphere in 1467 as a member of a Danish-Portugese expedition. It's believed he went to Baffin Island, Canada.

Beau, the post above is excellent. You made my day !

Warm regards,

Bob Warren
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Old 11-18-2003, 08:02 AM
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Is there going to be a test ?
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Old 11-18-2003, 08:31 AM
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Originally posted by DMZ-LT Is there going to be a test ?
The authors intimate an Afro-Asian-Pre-Columbian connection to the Old School, Chicano music group ... "Tierra" [sung best by a real "Paco" ... sans "k" .... riding low and slow and 8 inches off the street ...]

("Together" .... "We could be, in poverty, With no one to lend a helping hand. But it's alright, alright I knooowwww ....")

Question: explain "blood quantum" .... for a bonus point, and the right to graduate 5th grade .... are the authors making a bio-ethnic linkage between the noveau Afro-Filipino-Chicano subcultures ... and Beau's "Barrio" or "Ghetto" strut, during a a rather, shall we say, "White Bread" gathering and photo op ? Thusly, making all rather uncomfortable, but setting the former "brother who was a brother" (Afro-Corpsman) into laughs?

(I'm getting outta here ... I am outta here) Please leave your answers with my Assistant, Masters candidate "Rossanna" Chan .... tips accepted.

someone else, not Beau
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Old 11-18-2003, 08:58 AM
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Is the answer 1066 The Battle of Hastings ?
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Old 11-18-2003, 10:09 AM
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Originally posted by DMZ-LT Is the answer 1066 The Battle of Hastings ?
That is so 2 seconds beyond Eurocentric ... but what should I 'spec.

The answer is ... Halls of Moctezuma .... and yes, the bro who was a bro connected with our afro-mesican East LA .... blood quanta ... Old School Barrio strut for a photo op.
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Old 11-20-2003, 08:05 PM
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I think I'll stay here in the 1800s ... feels right ... see where it goes. So, Mexicans are not of one, or Spanish and Indian heritages, but include Africans, Filipinos/Malays, Vietnamese, French, etc.. ergo ...

Article Last Updated: Monday, May 26, 2003 - 9:07:21 AM PST



Humble Homies
Fans see themselves in figurines
By Ricardo Gandara
COX NEWS SERVICE

WHEN Chelsea Camacho stares at the tiny plastic figures neatly arranged on the shelf of her bedroom, she sees her family. The fat guy named Sapo (toad in Spanish) looks like Uncle Jessie Godinez to her even if Uncle Jessie is on the slim side.

"Sapo is also Uncle Jessie's nickname," she says. "Isn't he cool?"

Chelsea, 11, dropped 75 cents in a gumball machine to get Sapo.

The toy figures, hot collectibles that have hit eBay and other national markets, are Homies, the creation of artist David Gonzales, who lives in Richmond. He depicts the barrio of his youth in many of the 120 characters in the Homies line.

Collectors, both young and old, especially those of Hispanic descent, see themselves in the 2-inch figures. Or they see a relative or perhaps someone from their childhood. Homies is a street term for someone from your neighborhood or hometown or, in a broader sense, anyone you would acknowledge as your friend.



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First sold in Hispanic neighborhoods in California in 1998, they're now in every state, England, Canada, Australia and Japan. National chain store Tower Records carries Homies, and they soon will be coming to Spencer Gifts.

The distributor, A&A Global Industries in Maryland, will not release sales information, but The New York Times reported sales of the figures have grown into the tens of millions. Denver, San Antonio and Chicago are the biggest Homies markets.

Since Gonzales introduced Homies, he's branched out to create Mijos, figures based on a tightly knit group of Hispanic children growing up in the barrio. He recently signed a contract with Scholastic Inc. to write and illustrate five books on the adventures of the Mijos characters. The storyline will be set in Oakland, Gonzales says via e-mail.

"If this thing makes it to animated television, and it looks like it will, the Mijos will call Oakland home, and help bring a little more prestige to the city," he says.

His other line is the Hood-rats, his answer to the Rugrats. And on shelves soon will be angels depicting children of all races, and the Palermos, a mob family turned clean.

As the Homies collection has grown, fans have spread across gender, age and race.

Nicole Garcia, 12, loves Homies because they are the first toy she's seen that reflects Hispanic life. "When I saw Right-eye, the girl with the long hair, I saw myself right away. I had long hair. That made me feel good to see myself in her," she says. She also likes the character Gata (female cat), who is modeled after creator Gonzales' wife.

Gonzales, 43, was the very first Homie created, a depiction of himself with the puffed hair he wore during the disco era. Today he describes himself as "a huge Raider fan" who sits in the Black Hole. He's the author of an underground comic strip called "Diehard Dan the Raiderfan" that appeared in a Raider fan magazine handed out in the parking lot before games.

He's also the artist responsible for the mural painted in the Fremont Post Office lobby called "Journey of a Letter."

Homies initially received flak from the Los Angeles Police Department and Hispanic advocacy groups that claimed the toys glorified gang members and stereotyped Hispanics. Gonzales says the opposition has died down. "I first started drawing Homies when I was 14," says Gonzales, who grew up in Richmond and was a student at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland from 1978 to 1980. "These were people I saw in my neighborhood. What I'm doing is an entertainment property, not a political statement. I'm not a spokesman for Hispanics. I'm an artist and millions of people love what I do and a handful of people who speak loud don't."

In development is a Homies grandmother and nurse because collectors are clamoring for them, says Gonzales.

Alicia Gaspar de Alba, who teaches a course called "Barrio Popular Culture" at the University of California at Los Angeles, had two students do a research project on Homies.

"The students found that Homies are produced by and are meant to represent the barrio community," she says. "When I'm asked if Homies might send a negative message or at least communicate that it's OK to be a gangbanger or a prostitute, I explain to be wary of imposing outsiders' value judgment on a cultural product developed by insiders for insiders. Gangbanging and prostitution aren't really anybody's first choice for a profession but that there are social conditions that lead people to perform those functions."

Arnold Ventos, a professor of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Texas, says Homies are a product of barrio art that's been around a long time. "Barrio artists have always created images that reflect their surroundings. It's an expression of their environment. As local art, Homies are OK. However, when you commercialize the product, it takes on a different dimension and can be misunderstood. But I also see that he's taken a negative image and turned it into a positive image," Ventos says.

The story behind Willie G. is an example. The figure represents an ex-gangster in a wheelchair who has turned his life around. He's a counselor who advises youths of the possible consequences of being in gangs. Every Homie has a story that can be found at www.homies.tv/home.htm The figures are sold without names or background information in a plastic capsule.

One Austin collector who defends Gonzales is Richard Ball, who has 80 Homies. "All I see are these little guys who look cool. What's the problem? They're just figures. The artist is just being himself. He needs that expression of art," says Ball.

Gonzales scoffs at the early criticism: "I think there are a lot of people who aren't in touch with Chicano art in this country. I'm doing my own thing and making my own path. I say if you don't like the toy, don't buy it."

Staff writer Catherine Schutz contributed to this story.

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Old 11-20-2003, 08:18 PM
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A Short, Offhand, Killing Affair
Soldiers and Social Conflict during the Mexican-American War

by Paul Foos
Copyright (c) 2002 by the University of North Carolina Press. All rights reserved.




Introduction

"A Mexican mob is not that short, offhand, killing affair that it is in the 'far west' of the United States; . . . it is rather an uproarious meeting, a somewhat irregular procession, arranged with a certain decency, and executed more from love of plunder than thirst of blood."[1] Thus did an American doctor from Missouri summarize his treatment at the hands of a would-be lynch mob?and, by implication, the entire experience of the Mexican-American War. Adolphus Wislizenus meant to disparage Mexicans with his comments, showing a preference for more decisive, American modes of action. This is somewhat odd, given that he owed his life to the decision of a patriotic Mexican mob to demonstrate rather than to execute. Wislizenus and a small group of Americans set out on an exploratory and trading journey in 1846 and were caught in Chihuahua shortly after the outbreak of war. They were neither killed nor plundered, but held for a few months until American troops arrived.

It was not at all unusual for Americans to offer broad generalizations about Mexico and its people during the 1840s, and for those statements to reflect strong prejudices about race, religion, and nationality. American supporters of the Mexican War wished to see Mexicans as inherently flawed, their society sliding toward dissolution, thus creating an opening for Americans to take control.

The experience of many soldiers in Mexico, however, led them to harsh criticisms of their own officers and comrades. Ohio volunteer Orlando John Hodge saw his fellow privates whipped and executed for infractions of discipline when he served along the Rio Grande in 1847; he complained that his officers wasted their time drinking and gambling and even fighting duels. Hodge returned home convinced that military discipline, based in class privilege, was more hateful than any racial or national enemy.[2]

An Arkansas soldier, John Palmer, was befriended by Mexican rancheros and sought to settle in northern Mexico as a landowner. His plans were set awry by the hostility of both lower-class Mexicans and soldiers in the Arkansas regiment who were denied similar opportunities to seize the fruits of manifest destiny.[3]

In the late 1840s the United States faced deep racial and ethnic divisions, leading ultimately to civil war. The war of 1846-48 provided Americans with a venue to confront their own internal conflicts as they fought a war heavily promoted by politicians and press in the name of white, Anglo-Saxon supremacy.

Although the war directly affected only a small minority of the citizens of the United States, it produced storms of controversy, changed the political and social climate, and inspired decisive action and much commentary from those who served in the military or were involved in the recruiting of armies for Mexico.

Through first-person recollections of Mexican-American War participants like Adolphus Wislizenus, Orlando John Hodge, John Palmer, and Other, this book examines alternative perspectives on the war. For the most part, diaries and letters from the Mexican War are steeped in romantic, heroic rhetoric. Accounts that focus on issues of desertion, actual relations with Mexicans, soldiers' rights, and the perplexing religious political, and racial importance in discerning the untold history of this war. Rather than providing an exhaustive or comprehensive history of the Mexican-American conflict, this book serves to enhance the existing body of work on the subject by analyzing newly uncovered and long-ignored sources. As much as possible these sources offer commentary that escews the heroic mode so common in personal and public accounts of the 1840s.

Another central concern here is the reclamation of the points of view of the laboring population that drifted in and out of military service in this era. The sources for this aspect of the Mexican War are fragmentary at best but important nonetheless. Most commentary by or about the nascent working class during this period comes from the antiwar, antislavery, and labor press. Unfortunately, many of these reformers were determinedly middle class in outlook (with a few important exceptions). They often dismissed soldiers as pawns of slave owners and politicians. A close look at soldiers' acts and words reveals much that is brutal and racist but also provides thoughtful reflections on issues of democracy, race relations, and the emerging capitalist society. Some Soldiers were infused with the spirit of manifest destiny, whereas others were troubled by implications of racial war and by the divisions it produced among white Americans. Grass-roots discontent with the American war played a crucial part in limiting U.S. gains. The annexation of Texas, New Mexico, and Upper California represented a shortfall of the goals of manifest destiny, a political program that aimed for continental and even hemispheric mastery.

Much historical writing on the 1846-48 war has focused on political debate over the expansion of slavery and the stirring up of sectional conflict. Although these issues are vital, in hindsight the stupendous catastrophe of the American Civil War has obscured some of the more important national and international struggles that were aggravated by the Mexican-American conflict.

The Mexican War was a pivotal event in westward expansion and, as such, was critical in shaping the new exploitive social relations that would characterize "free labor" and American capitalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The experiences of Americans in Mexico expose the colossal weight of racism as a determinant of Americans' thought and actions but also reveal the perplexing ways in which soldiers and others confused issues of race, ethnicity, religion, and economic status, making damning judgments based on peculiar configurations of personal experience, prejudice, and received propaganda.

Clearly, racism pervaded American popular thought and freighted almost every word and action. However, individuals made their own judgments about the meaning of race. The naked opportunism of the 1846-48 war, the class conflict that the army brought with it to Mexico, and face-to-face experience with the Mexican people would bring about changed racial thinking: some individuals and groups became more exploitive than ever, but others rejected the cant of racial destiny.

The experiences of Americans as occupiers of Mexico shook the foundations of Jacksonian ideas and practices, particularly the principle of herrenvolk democracy, which envisioned landed equality for whites, with servile subject races.[4] The limits of populist, Democratic ideology were reached in recruiting and mobilization of troops, when hierarchy and exploitation of whites became the norm rather than the exception. In 1847, after the initial war enthusiasm had waned, recruiters scoured jails and low taverns seeking men to "volunteer" under coercion.

The territorial gains of the Mexican War were significant, though the boundless optimism of manifest destiny was not sated. Disturbing social and political divisions intensified in the aftermath of the war. The shortfall of manifest destiny was a bitter pill, in an optimistic era, when many Americans thought that republicanism was the universal tonic for oppressed and divided nations of Latin America and Europe. Democratic Party propagandists dared to dream of an Americanized hemisphere and world. The retreat to "free soil"?a white man's empire upon "empty" lands?was a fallback position and turned American disputes over race and slavery inward, compressing and inflaming them.

Soldiers in Mexico often rebelled against their increasingly disciplined, waged role, subordinate to national and commercial interests. The loosely organized volunteers decided at the company level to collect the wages of manifest destiny in the form of looting and racial atrocity, or simply to return home. The regular army subjected immigrant and poor soldiers to harsh discipline. These men deserted the service in large numbers, most seeking nonmilitary employment, with a small but significant minority joining the Mexican army to fight against their nominal countrymen.

The years from 1835 to 1845 encompassed several invasions, occupations, and wars involving Mexico and the short-lived Republic of Texas?which was, in essence, an American creation. Also deeply involved were migrants, speculators, and mercenaries from the United States. These conflicts revolved around American desires to expand trade, agriculture, and political sovereignty. The aggressive activity in the Old Southwest of the United States and northern Mexico in these years set the stage for war and annexation. New Orleans occupied a central position in the commercial and military campaigns against Mexico; the city was a staging area for the occupation and seizure of Texas, for land speculators, and for depredations upon Mexican commerce. When national elites were ready and willing, in the 1840s, to back southward expansion, entrepreneurs and adventurers in New Orleans had already established procedures and rationales for doing so.

In 1846 the administration of President James K. Polk, elected on a proexpansion platform, moved purposefully to acquire territory in western North America, putting diplomatic and military pressure on Great Britain and the Republic of Mexico. In the spring of that year, Polk accepted a diplomatic compromise with Britain over the Oregon territory, and mobilized armies and warships in provocative forward movements to the Rio Grande and Upper California. Polk's initiatives evoked military resistance from Mexico, a nation that had never recovered economically from a long and devastating revolutionary era, and which was in a chronic state of political and social turmoil. During 1846 and 1847, armed forces of the United States seized control of the Mexican provinces of Upper California and New Mexico and northeastern Mexico as far south as the Sierra Madre range. An American expeditionary force that landed at Veracruz on the Gulf Coast in January 1847 conquered and occupied the economic and population centers of the nation, including the capital, Mexico City. During 1847 and 1848, American officers and soldiers acted as an occupation force, setting up civil administration and battling partisan guerrilla activity.

The coalition of forces that elected James K. Polk to the presidency in 1844 explicitly sought free trade and territorial expansion. In the short term, these goals achieved some measure of success but soon reached immovable barriers. In discussing the expansionist propaganda of the Democrats of the 1840s, historians often view its grandiose vision of manifest destiny as exaggerated and hyperbolic?the effusions of overzealous editors and unrepresentative politicians.[5] A look at the responsible political figures, however, does not reveal them as having goals significantly more modest than those of James Gordon Bennett, Moses Beach, John L. O'Sullivan, or other enthusiastic spokesmen for hemispheric domination.[6]

Early in the war, Polk expressed his desire to take not only California and New Mexico but also the Mexican provinces north of the Sierra Madre range;[7] however, Polk had to remain acutely sensitive to public opinion, electoral politics, and the vicissitudes of the war. In mid-1846, as the war got underway, Polk sought to appease the northern wing of the Democratic Party by denying any plans to take Mexican territory. Ex-president Martin Van Buren and other northern Democrats were ready to split the party rather than endorse a war for the extension of slavery.[8] By August of 1846 the president was saying privately to advisors and party members that the settlement of the war must include purchase of Mexican territory. This raised a storm among Democrats who opposed the expansion of slavery, and resulted in Pennsylvania representative David Wilmot's famous proviso to the $2 million war appropriation bill. Antislavery politicians, wary of opposing funding for American troops in the field, consoled themselves with Wilmot's demand that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory."[9]

By late 1847 the U.S. president was exasperated with the dilatoriness of the Mexican Congress in settling the war, and with the continuing guerrilla warfare against the North American occupiers. Polk and his most influential advisors, discussed a range of options in dictating a peace to Mexico, including annexation of Mexico north of the twenty-sixth parallel, dismemberment of that nation, or establishment of an American protectorate.[10]

Treasury secretary Robert J. Walker was a consistent voice for annexation, and Polk was generally sympathetic to his views. But the president reluctantly accepted the terms of Ambassador Nicholas Trist's settlement?the basis for the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo?taking only New Mexico and California; Polk was politically strapped, with a Whig majority in Congress, and Whig war heroes vying for the presidency. Polk realized that Congress was likely to deny him funding to continue the war, and that this might lead to an even less favorable treaty.[11] On March 10 the Senate, after secret debate, voted 38 to 14 to ratify the treaty, with a majority of the northern senators voting in opposition. A motion to include a Wilmot Proviso clause in the treaty was defeated.[12]

Following the precedent of Anglo-Texan settlers of the 1830s and 1840s, the peace settlement of 1848 marked a continuation of colonization in the Mexican cession. Anglo entrepreneurs intermarried with landed Mexicans, slowly insinuating themselves into the old agrarian system. In later decades, the coming of the railroad and capitalist agriculture transformed this process; Anglos flooded into Texas and the Mexican cession after the Civil War and established firm social and economic dominance.[13]

In the areas of northern and central Mexico from which the United States withdrew in 1848, the Mexican propertied classes were not uncongenial to such an arrangement, but smallholders and laborers resisted it fiercely. Their steady war of attrition sapped the will of would-be conquerors. On the American side, common soldiers realized that their part in conquest would be as wage-earning guardians of the propertied classes, Mexican and Anglo, with their "glory" collected in the form of atrocities against the poor and dispossessed. This was a betrayal of recruiting promises: a demoralized soldiery tended toward desertion and riot.

Much of the historical scholarship on the Mexican War has stressed the enthusiasm for the war in the southern and frontier states as opposed to the tepid or negative reception Polk's call for volunteers received in the Northeast. The initial crush of volunteering in the South and West was indeed disproportionate: as a result of this enthusiasm of 1846 Tennessee received the soubriquet, "the Volunteer State."

This led to a perception, now somewhat discredited, that the Mexican War laid the groundwork for the sectional divisions of the Civil War.[14] Popular enthusiasm, at the outset of the war, was indeed greater in the western states, but some of the evidence that follows shows that enthusiasm was quite shallow and short-lived. Historians have noted that a large majority of Mexican War recruits enlisted in southern and western state regiments. This is true, but as shown in table 2 (in chapter 7), a little over a year into the war regular army and volunteer enlistment figures were almost even. The regular army was preponderantly drawn from the Northeast.

Scholars of the Mexican-American War have been hard-pressed to remain objective in the face of the contentious politics of the 1840s, using them?intentionally or unintentionally?as a sounding board for latter day political debates. The expansionist imperative of manifest destiny has been curiously echoed by contemporary scholars. A recent book went so far as to state that the policies of the 1840s made the United States "coextensive with the entire continent." U.S. historians of a nationalistic bent have viewed the outcome of the war as a triumphant moment for the United States: writing during the Vietnam era, Jack Bauer portrayed the Mexican War as an exemplary "limited war" that persisted despite widespread unpopularity and restored vigor to the nation's economy.[15]

Liberal scholars, from the era of the Civil War through the Cold War, have highlighted the resistance to territorial acquisition on the part of prominent Whigs and antislavery politicians such as Joshua Giddings, Daniel Webster, Abraham Lincoln, David Wilmot, and others. This school of historical scholarship stresses the importance of elite dissent in reining in the imperial ambitions of Polk and company; it portrays nonelites and popular opinion as putty in the hands of expansionist propagandists. The historian John S. Schroeder concluded that, in 1846-48: "Americans and their servants in government were more concerned with the reality of territory than with the abstractions of republican virtue, and the antiwar movement was swept aside by the relentless tide of expansionism. . . . Ebullient and determined to realize their territorial destiny, most Americans did not understand, nor did they care about the broad implications of an aggressive war."[16]

However, the nature of warfare and occupation in Mexico and the hierarchy of the military was odious to American soldiers in many ways: they did care, they did understand, although they, perhaps, did not speak the language of formal diplomacy or politics. Other Americans whose lives were touched by the recruiting drives, or who were caught up in the politics of slavery had a great deal to say about the war and its implications.

In using the military as a lens through which to view American society and thought in the 1840s, it will be crucial to understand the two opposing poles of military organization and philosophy, the regular army and the volunteer militia. The first two chapters of this book provide extensive background information on the nature of military service in the early republic and on the often schizophrenic ways in which Americans thought about the military?as the lowest sort of common labor and as the most vaunted civic duty.

Chapter 1 examines regular army life in the years leading up to the Mexican War, placing the lowly regular soldier in the context of other proletarian occupations. The U.S. Army camps in South Texas in 1845 were rife with internal conflicts that reflected the problems of creating large-scale organizations in a society based upon individualistic principles. Chapter 2 sketches the historical importance of armed volunteers to the republic and looks at the ways in which the militia system was contested social and political terrain in the mid-1840s. Although volunteering served republican theory as a great social leveler, emerging class and political interests tried to remold volunteering to suit their needs.

Chapters 3 and 4 examine Mexican War recruiting in the United States, focusing on various locales to illustrate the conflicts that arose between the volunteers' expectations and the reality of military service. The rhetoric of recruiters emphasized manifest destiny, yet Americans responded to the volunteer mobilization in surprising and individualized ways. The war mobilization receives an in-depth look in two locales; in Boston and New York City, the volunteer ethic was subsumed to the machinations of political and economic leaders, and working class and ethnic groups maintained spirited, though often sporadic, resistance to this process.

Chapters 5 and 6 shift to wartime Mexico and show soldiers interacting and fighting both among themselves and with Mexican soldiers and civilians. The promises of manifest destiny are contrasted with the actual experience of volunteer and regular soldiers. In the absence of any significant fulfillment of the recruiters' promises, individual soldiers acted to forward their own interests. Mexican War soldiers, like soldiers in countless other wars, acted out personal, organizational, and societal frustrations through atrocities on Mexican civilians. Rather than dismiss this as simply an inevitable consequence of wartime, chapter 6 dissects some of the situations in which American soldiers lashed out against Mexicans, and analyzes what these actions reflect about the situation of Americans in Mexico. The chapter also takes a look at Mexican society, with its own racial and class divisions, and the important ways in which Mexicans resisted and transformed the conditions of war and occupation.

Chapter 7 addresses the winding down of the war in northeastern Mexico and examines some individual soldiers who attempted to fulfill the promises of land and wealth in Mexico. The stories of these soldiers and the debates in Congress over annexing large areas of Mexico south of the Rio Grande outline the human and political limits of manifest destiny.

The final chapter looks at the homecomings of (mainly northern) soldiers and the ways in which they brought their experiences with the military and with Mexico into the political arena, creating shock waves for the political system, particularly for the Democratic leadership that sent them on their mission. The institution of the citizen-soldier, transformed in the Mexican War, was to experience a troubled career in succeeding decades.
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Old 11-21-2003, 12:09 PM
Beau Beau is offline
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Default Will Penny

Since I'm stuck here in the 1800s ... well, I beleive in Reincarnation, so maybe I was someone like "Will Penny" (a great Western ... when axed by a kid how it felt to kill someone, Will replies "bad scared before ... bad sorry after") ... but then, I do not believe that being reborn is the point, or endless reaping and sowing ... the point of Karma or Reincarnation to me, is to learn to identify with others (good and bad) ... just more thoughts to myself.

Beau
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