Mexican America History

The Treaty of Guadalpude Hidalgo created the Mexican American population but in doing so it also created a group of American’s that were not quick to assimilate to their new country. During the time this treaty was signed there was a wave of new immigrants from various European countries that fled to the United States. The Mexican American’s were expected to assimilate, like these groups, leavingbehind their heritage and adopting the ideologies of Americanization. This would be a bone of contention that would later lead to much debate with Government institutions and scholars. Because of the intolerance and exploitation they experienced in their new country, the United States, Mexican American’s were apprehensive to adopt, fully, the America they were expected to become.
Before Idiscuss the Treaty of Guadalpude Hidalgo one must understand why such a treaty should have been created. The United States believed that it was their destiny to control North America. This view was called Manifest Destiny and the “country to suffer most in the nineteenth century as a result of Manifest Destiny was Mexico”. But it wasn’t just the United States government that was a fault it was alsothe Centralist of the Mexican government as well. They instituted the empresario and grants, which grant gave free land for a specific amount of time to individuals if they brought a specified number of settlers into Texas. This would prove to be a problem for the Mexican government because once the contract with the settlers was up they could not get them to leave. The Mexican government was tornbetween the struggle of power of the centralist and the federalist that caused aggressive change in the Mexican government in a short amount of time. The empresario land grants would ensue a war in 1832 between the centralist and the federalist that resulted in Texas declaring conditional independence in 1835 and then full independence in 1836.
Due to the instability of the Mexican governmentallowed the idea of Manifest Destiny to populate even more. The Unites States saw this, as their opportunity to take what they believed should be theirs and established the Treaty of Guadalpude Hidalgo. Nearly 80,000 Mexican citizens living in this area became U.S. nationals that were promised the same rights as U.S. citizens. Within this treaty “it is stipulated that full title to all propertywould be retained with rights of disposal and inheritance, and it is guaranteed complete protection of these rights by the United States government.” The treaty was first Article IX, which states that the Mexican’s affected would ultimately become U.S. citizens but because the article was removed and Article X was added this was not granted to the Mexican’s. Unfortunately, the Mexican’s were notable to see the benefits of this treaty due to years of mistreatment and constant conflict between the white settlers and themselves. The Mexican American’s found their lands gone, that they were promised, their religion discriminated against, and they themselves were in a country were they did not know the laws, language, or customs.
The strife that was beginning due to the failures of the U.S.to honor their treaty set the stage for the Chicano/a movement for the next 100 years. Mexican’s began to hinder feelings about citizen ship. The idea of Americanism began to rise and in 1926 “ Atanasio Casares declared that “ a Mexican is as much and American as any Polak [sic] or Italian that carries a mere certificate in his pocket, for he was born on the North-American continent.” Casaresdid not believe that filing out papers that made you naturalized could determine who was and was not an American citizen.
The Assimilation theory was a theory within the to the Americanization theory, in my opinion, because the Assimilation theory, that was created by Midwestern academics from the experience of European immigrants, viewed the Mexican’s as “the last of the immigrants, and...