by Matthew Bracken, 2014
The fallacies surrounding the history of the Southwest are staggering, chief among them the “Aztlan” fairy tales. What is the truth? How did the Spanish Europeans conquer the Southwest? The “conquistadores” (that means “conquerors”) did it with the lance, and the lash.
For example, in 1541 Coronado entered present-day New Mexico (which included present-day Arizona during the Spanish era) searching for the “lost cities of gold.” One of his first actions upon meeting the natives was to burn hundreds of them alive in their dwellings for not handing over suspected horse thieves. That is how Spain conquered the natives of the present US Southwest—not with hugs and kisses. It was certainly no love-fest between long-lost brown-skinned soul-mates, as it is often portrayed today by the delusional Aztlaners, who spin the “new bronze race of Mestizos” toro-mierda fable.
By 1821, Mexico City was strong enough to overthrow the even more decrepit and ineffectual Spanish colonial rule. However, the distant provinces of the current U.S. Southwest were far beyond the reach of the authority of the independent but strife-torn and financially insolvent newborn government in Mexico City. These distant northern provinces received neither military protection nor needed levels of trade from the nascent Mexican government. Under Spanish colonial rule, trade with the USA was forbidden, but at least Spain provided trade and Army protection from hostile Indian attacks. Under Mexican abandonment and neglect, the Southwest received neither trade nor protection from Mexico City.
For example, Comanches and Apaches ran rampant in the 1830s in the power vacuum created by Mexican neglect, burning scores of major ranches that had been active for hundreds of years and massacring their inhabitants. Mexico City could neither defend nor keep the allegiance of its nominal subjects in these regions. Nor did it provide needed levels of trade to sustain the prior Spanish colonial era standard of living. Mexican governmental influence atrophied, withered and died at the same time that American pathfinders were opening up new routes into the region.
Increasingly, a growing United States of America was making inroads into the Southwest, via ships into California, and via wagon trains of trade goods over the Santa Fe Trail from St. Louis. The standard of living of the Spanish inhabitants of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas subsequently increased enormously, which is why they did not support Mexico City in the 1846-48 war. In fact, the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the Southwest never considered themselves “Mexicans” at all, ever. They went, in their own eyes, from Spanish directly to American. To this very day, if you want a punch in the nose, just call a Hispanic native of New Mexico a “Mexican.”
So how long did these self-proclaimed (but newborn), free and independent Mexican governments have even nominal jurisdiction over the American Southwest? For only 25 years, during which time they had no effective control, and the area slipped backwards by every measure until the arrival of the Americans. The Spanish inhabitants of the Southwest never transferred their loyalty from Madrid to Mexico City, because all they received from the chaotic Mexican governments was misrule, neglect, and unchecked Indian raids.
Since then, how long has the area been under firm American control? For over 160 continuous years, during which time the former Spanish inhabitants of the region, (all the while full American citizens), have prospered beyond the wildest dreams of the Mexicans still stuck in Mexico. To compare the infrastructure, roads, schools, hospitals etc. of the two regions is to understand the truth. The Mexican government has been mired in endemic graft, corruption, nepotism and chaos from the very start until today. The ordinary Mexican peons have been trampled and abused, while only the super-rich elites have thrived. This is why millions of Mexicans want to escape from Mexico today, to enjoy the benefits of living in America that they can never hope to obtain in Mexico.
And because today Mexico is a corrupt third-world pest-hole (despite having more millionaires and billionaires than Great Britain), we are supposed to let any number of Mexicans from Chiapas, Michoacán or Yucatan march into the American Southwest, and make some “historical claim” of a right to live there? From where does this absurd idea spring?
At what point in history did Indians and Mestizos from Zacatecas or Durango stake a claim on the American Southwest? (2014 update: Add the citizens of Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and any other nation who can reach our unguarded border.) Neither they nor their ancestors ever lived for one single day in the American Southwest. The Spanish living in the Southwest in 1846 stayed there, and became Americans by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. There were no Spanish inhabitants of the Southwest who were marched to the border and driven into Mexico. It didn’t happen. The Spanish in the Southwest welcomed American citizenship, which brought stability, protection from Indian raids, and a vast increase in their standard of living with the increase in trade with America.
In summary, no current inhabitants of Mexico (or Guatemala, etc.) have a claim on even one single inch of the American Southwest. Not one single citizen of Mexico is sneaking into the United States to reclaim property their ancestors were deprived of. Not one. They are criminal invaders and colonizers, pure and simple.
It’s time Americans learned the true history of our Southwest, as a counter to the currently prevalent “Aztlan” fairy tales put out by “La Raza” (The Race), “the Brown Berets of Aztlan,” “MEChA” (the Student Movement for Aztlan, whose very symbol is a lit “mecha” or fuse on a dynamite bomb), and other radical (and usually openly communist) anti-American groups.
2014 post script: The U.S. Constitution, in Article 4, Section 4, still mandates that the executive branch—President Barack Obama—must protect the states against invasion. Instead of protecting the states from invasion, our rogue president and his gangster henchmen are now intentionally and with forethought laying open our national borders, and are encouraging and assisting the invaders.
How is this not treason?
Indeed. We are being invaded including Mexican military helicopters coming across the border and firing on Border Patrol agents.
