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Texas was also the destination of thousands of white immigrants to Mexico, and their failure to integrate eventually resulted in Mexico’s devastating loss of more than half of its national territory. Most black immigrants from the United States ended up settling in the Mexican state that was most easily accessible: Texas. A free black man living in Florida published an article in a New York newspaper in 1831 in which he minimized Mexico’s own racial tensions and advised other blacks in the United States to “look toward Mexico as a place of safety and permanent refuge.” “Mexico,” he wrote, “has a pleasant climate for people of dark complexions and the land is vast and either entirely uninhabited or thinly settled with people who are mostly colored and entirely free from all prejudice against complexion.” 6 As long as they professed the Catholic religion, fugitive slaves and free black men were given land in Mexico, along with civil and property rights. Mexico abolished slavery in 1829, thirty-six years before the United States. 5 It appeared that the only way to defend Mexico’s northern borders was to settle them.Įven though Mexico’s leaders preferred immigrants of European heritage, they also opened their territory to people of African descent fleeing from slavery and racial discrimination in the United States. Beginning with the Treaty of San Lorenzo in 1795, the United States started obtaining a great deal of what had been Spanish land in the Louisiana Territory and Gulf South, culminating with the acquisition of East and West Florida in 1821. territory quickly increased and spread west and south. After the original thirteen colonies declared their independence in 1776, U.S. counterparts were aggressive expansionists. Mexico’s early leaders, like those of New Spain before them, had not failed to notice that many of their U.S. According to these 19th-century intellectuals, the ideal settlers of the northern territories would be white Catholic Mexican farmers, who would serve as modernizing examples for the Indians and act as a barrier between Mexico and the rapidly expanding United States.
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4 They passed laws facilitating the breakup of communal properties, hoping to attract new settlers and at the same time force the indigenous inhabitants to integrate into the national political and economic community. 3 Mexican intellectuals and politicians, similar to Thomas Jefferson in the United States, wanted to create a country of yeoman farmers cultivating small, individually owned plots of land.
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2 Violent conflicts between Mexicans and independent Indian groups like the Apaches and the Navajos increased throughout the 1830s and 1840s, and Indian raids discouraged economic growth in Mexico’s northern states. Along this frontier, most of the land was either empty, tied up in large, inefficient estates, or owned communally by indigenous groups like the Caddos, Cherokees, and Comanches. Mexico also had a very large indigenous population-about 60 percent of the total-that was poorly integrated into the new imagined community of “Mexicans.” 1įederalist intransigence and indigenous autonomy were especially significant problems in Mexico’s northernmost territories. Local strongmen declaring themselves “federalists” or “liberals” resisted centralist efforts at political leadership. In the last years of Spain’s rule, and throughout the long struggle for independence, regional autonomy had been on the rise. When Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, one of the most pressing problems that the new nation’s leaders faced was that of consolidating central power. The gangs are fighting over drug sales and income from extorting protection payments from businesses, bars, bus and taxi drivers.The Original Sin of U.S.-Mexican Relations In January, the main Acapulco chamber of commerce reported that gang threats and attacks caused about 90% of the city’s passenger vans to stop running, affecting the resort’s main form of transport.Īcapulco has been bloodied by turf battles between gangs since at least 2006. But even the throngs of troops on the streets - about 10,000 National Guard and 6,500 soldiers - haven’t kept the gang violence at bay.
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The government has pledged to build about three dozen barracks for the quasi-military National Guard in Acapulco. Only a fraction of the city’s hotel rooms - about 7,000 - have been repaired. In early February, the state government deployed 60 gun-toting detectives to patrol the beaches “in light of the violent events that have occurred recently.”Īt least three people were shot dead on beaches in Acapulco that week, one by gunmen who arrived - and escaped - aboard a boat. Tourists have barely started trickling back into Acapulco, but gangland killings on the beaches have already returned.