Editorial
Last week was a recent attempt for the Roman Catholic Church to lobby in the U.S. immigration debate. Unlike their approach in pro-life legislation, and traditional marriage legislation, the Roman Catholic Church's position on immigration seems to focus only on the U.S. accepting an increasing amount of immigrants, this policy does not apply to other nations such as Mexico, or to the Vatican itself!
Again, consider contacting key Roman Catholic bishops about this, whether you are Catholic or not!
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mexico. Show all posts
Monday, September 16, 2013
Friday, September 13, 2013
Action Alert: Contact Catholic Bishops, Even if You're Not Catholic ***BUMPED***
Action Alert
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Action Alert: Contact Catholic Bishops, Even if You're Not Catholic ***BUMPED***
Action Alert
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Over the past weekend, and scheduled for the Next several Weekends, the Roman Catholic church will be giving Homily Sermon messages encouraging their parishoners to lobby for increased immigration. This comes at the expense of unemployed Americans. You can read an article from VDARE about it here. After that, whether you are Catholic or not, you can contact the closest Roman Catholic bishops and the following key bishops with the message that follows their contact information:
Your Closest Bishop
Bishop Dolan NY
Bishop Chaput Philadelphia
Bishop Olmstead Phoenix
Bishop Gomez Los Angeles
You can use or modify this message
Honorable Bishop,
I am asking you to make a public statement against S.744 and any “pathway to citizenship”.
This bill will allow 33 million new immigrants over the next decade.
The 33 million green cards offered by S. 744 in the first decade would go to:
• around 11 million for illegal aliens (could be millions more if the official estimate is wrong)
• around 11 million in continuation of elevated flows from 1990 surge policy
• around 5 million from end of numerical limits on people waiting in line (mostly chain migration)
• around 6 million from new and expanded categories
On the other hand,
Nearly every section of the Gang Amnesty bill seems to add more foreign workers to compete with unemployed and underemployed Americans. The Gang apparently believes that the way to help the 20 million Americans who can't find a full-time job is to give out another 20-30 million lifetime work permits to foreign citizens over the next decade.
This bill would further flood labor markets at the lower-skill levels where real wages have declined 10% to 22% since 1980.
If the bill becomes law, the chances of Americans with no more than a high school education entering the middle class may disappear.
But it isn't just the low-end where Americans are threatened. The bill would make huge increases in importing higher-educated workers at a time when around half of all recent American college graduates either have no job at all or they aren't working in a degree job.
The under-32 Millennial Generation already is in danger of being a lost generation. After this bill, we may see these young adults spend the rest of their lives only partly engaged in the economy as they depend on government and family.
None of this is the kind of economy or society most Americans desire. Surely a compassionate and thoughtful citizenry will put a stop to this nonsense and ask its Representatives to go back to work putting Americans back to work.
In appreciation of your consideration,
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
A Democrat’s Sermon: Catholic Bishops’ Treason Offensive Hits Next Sunday, September 8
A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about Catholic immigration policy towards the U.S. (but no other nation). This follows this post about the reduction in immigration leading to the increase in Civil Rights. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what you can do click here and you can read two very interesting books HERE.
A Democrat’s Sermon: Catholic Bishops’ Treason Offensive Hits Next Sunday, September 8
No American patriot should have failed to study the recent New York Times cheerleading reportorial Catholic Push to Overhaul Immigration Goes to Pews (by Ashley Parker and Michael D. Shear, August 21 2013). A huge offensive is about to be launched against US citizens by a (tax-exempt) church, led by a foreign power, for its own secular and selfish motives:
Pass this kind of legislation and the U.S. on the way to becoming a banana republic.
And note that there’s no discussion of overall numbers, of unemployment—or anything resembling a concern for America’s national interest.
CNA even tells us that the appalling Appleby implicitly concedes that patriotic American Catholics aren’t buying their Bishops’ baloney:
CNA also reports that Awful Appleby implicitly concedes that there’s actually nothing in Catholic doctrine to support the bishops’ position on the Schumer-Rubio Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Bill. It falls into the area of “prudential judgment,” where laymen can make up their own minds.
But Arrogant Appleby still tries to bluster a way out for the bishops:
And don’t think the bishops won’t be pushing the guilt trip on their flocks.
You really have to be impressed by this slick attempt to use religious arguments for blatantly secular ends!
CNA quotes Kim Daniels, spokesperson for the U.S. bishops' conference president, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York:
Even more important: did Gomez truly “abjure foreign potentates” when he took the U.S. Oath of citizenship?
VDARE.com has for years exposed the forces advocating Open Borders for legal and illegal migrants: Big Business; ethnic advocacy groups; religious lobbies like the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Immigration Table etc.
Tellingly, that we are mired in the worst economic situation since the Great Depression simply does not to matter to those forces.
It’s obvious that many faithful Catholics have been deeply affected by their church’s ongoing pedophiliac scandals and (I believe as a long-time liberal Democrat) its inflexible views on family planning, abortion, gays and divorce. By evading these issues, and instead speaking from its pulpits all over the US about “social justice” a.k.a. Amnesty, these prelates show they are just the same sort of self-interested crooks as the Latino tribes and the greedy business types who want cheap labor.
The New York Times piece tells us how powerful this push will be:
How can so many be so stupid, greedy, selfish—and blind to how this must inevitably appear to American patriots?
Donald A. Collins [email him], is a freelance writer living in Washington DC and a former long time member of the board of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. His views are his own.
Catholic bishops and priests from major dioceses across the country will preach a coordinated message next month backing changes in immigration policy, with some using Sunday Masses on Sept. 8 to urge Congressional passage of a legislative overhaul that includes a path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants.This Appleby point man [email him] makes clear the rhetoric will be emotional and manipulative:
The decision to embrace political action from the pulpit is part of a broader effort by the Roman Catholic Church and other faith groups that support President Obama’s call for new immigration laws…
"We want to try to pull out all the stops," said Kevin Appleby, the director of migration policy at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, who said the immigration issue was at a now-or-never moment. "They have to hear the message that we want this done, and if you’re not successful during the summer, you’re not going to win by the end of the year."
Catholic leaders, who have tried to wield their clout against Mr. Obama on issues like abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage, are betting that their congregations will be able to exert pressure on reluctant Republicans and wavering Democrats to support the president on immigration. They say they are motivated by the Bible’s teachings and by the reality that many Latino immigrants are Catholics and represent a critical demographic for the church.
[Emphases and links added throughout].
Underlying an effort by U.S. bishops to coordinate messages on the need for comprehensive immigration reform is a profound sense of pastoral care, said an official at the bishops’ conference.Whoa! Come here illegally and that gives you the right to stay?
‘Sometimes [the bishops] are criticized that they're encouraging lawbreaking, but the fact is, these folks are here, and their families are getting separated, and what the bishops are trying to do is change the law so they can help them,’ said Kevin Appleby, director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' migration policy and public affairs office.
Bishops' immigration outreach based on 'pastoral' concern, by Carl Bunderson, Catholic News Agency, Aug. 30, 2013
Pass this kind of legislation and the U.S. on the way to becoming a banana republic.
And note that there’s no discussion of overall numbers, of unemployment—or anything resembling a concern for America’s national interest.
CNA even tells us that the appalling Appleby implicitly concedes that patriotic American Catholics aren’t buying their Bishops’ baloney:
Appleby described a disconnect between the polling which has overwhelming support among Catholics for a comprehensive bill with a path to citizenship and action.Maybe that “hard time” is because the “polling” was just pollaganda?
"We've had a hard time transitioning from 'I support the bishops on this issue,' to people picking up the phone, sending an email, writing a letter, being active on it? With this push we're trying to change that a bit, we'll hopefully get more Catholics to speak up, and say, 'we want this done.'
CNA also reports that Awful Appleby implicitly concedes that there’s actually nothing in Catholic doctrine to support the bishops’ position on the Schumer-Rubio Amnesty/ Immigration Surge Bill. It falls into the area of “prudential judgment,” where laymen can make up their own minds.
But Arrogant Appleby still tries to bluster a way out for the bishops:
He explained that it is important for Catholics to read Church documents, and the writings and homilies of bishops on the issues. While “we can sit here and have an argument over whether something is a prudential judgment versus a doctrinal issue,” he said, it is important to remember that a bishop’s teaching, even on matters of prudential judgment, “calls for careful consideration by Catholics.”Wow, let’s get it from on high, ignore the secular reality, and vote for more unemployment and cultural disarray!
And don’t think the bishops won’t be pushing the guilt trip on their flocks.
To disregard—refusing to even consider—the bishops' position on immigration reform because it is a matter of prudential judgment is a disconnect, Appleby explained.Translation: Catholics in America are behaving like Americans—difficult for their Leftist church bureaucrats to manipulate.
“Even under a prudential judgment analysis, someone is required to at least consider the arguments being put forth by the Church, to take them into consideration there is a responsibility to at least consider what the Church is saying, and then incorporate it into their position to the degree that they can."
He added that the tendency of Catholics in America to put their party affiliation, be it Republican or Democrat, ahead of their faith, means that “there's a lot of education to be done.”
You really have to be impressed by this slick attempt to use religious arguments for blatantly secular ends!
CNA quotes Kim Daniels, spokesperson for the U.S. bishops' conference president, Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan of New York:
“We support immigration reform as a response to Pope Francis' call to resist indifference and to regain a sense of 'fraternal responsibility' regarding the suffering of immigrants,” she told CNA Aug. 27….Archbishop Gomez, now enthroned in Los Angeles, is an immigrant from Mexico. Why doesn’t he urge Mexico to show more “hospitality” to immigrants, and stop mistreating illegal immigrants?
In a July 21 homily, Archbishop José Gomez taught that “God comes to us in the person of the stranger,” that hospitality is a “sacred duty,” and that immigration is “not only a matter of politics,” but is “a matter of our relationship with God.”
Even more important: did Gomez truly “abjure foreign potentates” when he took the U.S. Oath of citizenship?
VDARE.com has for years exposed the forces advocating Open Borders for legal and illegal migrants: Big Business; ethnic advocacy groups; religious lobbies like the Catholic Church, the Evangelical Immigration Table etc.
Tellingly, that we are mired in the worst economic situation since the Great Depression simply does not to matter to those forces.
It’s obvious that many faithful Catholics have been deeply affected by their church’s ongoing pedophiliac scandals and (I believe as a long-time liberal Democrat) its inflexible views on family planning, abortion, gays and divorce. By evading these issues, and instead speaking from its pulpits all over the US about “social justice” a.k.a. Amnesty, these prelates show they are just the same sort of self-interested crooks as the Latino tribes and the greedy business types who want cheap labor.
The New York Times piece tells us how powerful this push will be:
"The political campaign by Catholic priests is certain to catch the attention of Catholic members of Congress. Catholics are the largest single religious group in Congress, making up just over 30 percent of the members, according to the Pew Research Center’s Religion and Public Life Project. The current House has 136 Catholic members, including Speaker John A. Boehner and 60 other Republicans, according to Pew.The Catholic Church has what are supposed to be deep differences with Obama over abortion, homosexual marriage and other matters. But, paradoxically, the New York Times article noted:
For some Republican members, vocal support by local priests and bishops could provide the religious rationale they need to support an overhaul in the face of criticism from conservatives.
"White House officials said they were counting on Catholics and members of other religious groups to help pass an immigration overhaul through a Republican-controlled House that is filled with members fighting against one. Cecilia Munoz, the director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, said Catholic leaders had participated in outreach meetings at the White House.When you add the fear, which I believe is vastly overrated, that Republicans must completely kowtow to Latinos, it adds up to trouble.
"It’s pretty rare for the Catholics to take on an issue like this straight to the pews," said Ms. Munoz, who is leading Mr. Obama’s immigration effort.
How can so many be so stupid, greedy, selfish—and blind to how this must inevitably appear to American patriots?
Donald A. Collins [email him], is a freelance writer living in Washington DC and a former long time member of the board of FAIR, the Federation for American Immigration Reform. His views are his own.
Thursday, August 15, 2013
Oil Companies Aren’t Evil–Except PEMEX Which STOLE U.S. Assets!
A timely post about from www.Vdare.com about PEMEX, when a foreign nation STOLE U.S. Assets! This follows this post about energy independence items you can participate in now. In the meantime, you can get more involved if you like here and read an interesting book HERE.
Oil Companies Aren’t Evil–Except PEMEX
[James Fulford]
Thomas Sowell has an article saying that oil companies aren’t necessarily evil, in which he says, among other comments:
“Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their ‘greed’? Or could it all be supply and demand – a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like ‘greed’?”The “Greed” Fallacy,
But Mark In Mexico has a post about one company that doesn’t really underestand supply and demand–the only oil company in North America that may be running out of oil: PEMEX.He writes that
Pemex was formed after 1938 when President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized Mexico’s oil industry. When a government nationalizes its oil industry, that means that the government steps in and confiscates all of the equipment, drills, pumps, buildings, refineries, vehicles, ships, airplanes, offices, records, bank accounts etc. of the private companies to which that same government had previously sold leases and other rights.In other words, the government sells licenses to various foreign investors to attract them to invest billions of dollars, then steps in and steals it all. In almost all cases, the government blames the foreign companies, and often the foreign governments, for “robbing” the people’s energy inheritance. Except, of course, when a US company is involved, in which case the local government always blames the US government.And, frequently, America gets blamed even when there are no US companies involved at all.
In Bolivia, the Bolivian Gas War was brought on by a minority group’s charge that the United States was absconding with the Bolivian people’s natural gas inheritnce. But the companies that had extraction rights are all European companies. If an American energy company wanted Bolivian gas, it had to buy that gas from and pay market prices to a European energy company that was extracting that gas. Oh well.The problem is, in essence, that while the corrupt governments, and corrupt governments, that control the company are greedy, the company itself, as a government-run monopoly, isn’t greedy.
So the Mexican government and a whole slew of Mexican governments since 1938 have had control of the Mexican oil industry through a government controlled company called Pemex. You know how that had to go. Badly. And it has.These governments have, year after year and decade after decade, used Pemex as a private funding source. It is estimated that Pemex loses a cool billion dollars a year just to internal corruption.All of that corruption has little to do with oil extraction or oil availability or oil reserves. What it does do however, is cause gasoline at Pemex gas stations — the only ones allowed here — to cost the Mexican consumer about $1.00 per gallon more than that same oil costs once it is shipped to the United States. At an Exxon station in Laredo, Texas, you pay $1 per gallon less for gasoline than you do at a Pemex station just a couple of miles to the south. And that’s for gasoline produced from oil from the same Mexican well.What that corruption also does is bleed money away from Pemex that should have been reinvested in the company. That loss, along with the Mexican government’s skimming off 60% of all Pemex revenue to pay for all the sub-standard public services that the bloated Mexican constitution guarantees to the Mexican citizens, leaves no money for exploration or drilling for new sources or the technology development necessary to tap those new sources nor even enough to maintain its existing facilities.
I’ve noted that earlier that Mexico has a public holiday celebrating
the biggest armed robbery of the twentieth century. It left all the oil in Mexico in the hands of corrupt Mexican governments, who couldn’t even get most of it out of the ground; a lot of it is just sitting there, because they won’t allow foreigners to touch it.
See Businessweek’s article Pemex: Still in the Dark Ages, for a discussion of how Mexico doesn’t want to have Americans exploit Mexicans by drilling wells, which means fewer jobs for Mexicans, who go north illegally and exploit Americans.
VDARE.com: Blog Articles — proudly powered by WordPressThe articles on VDARE.com are brought to you by the VDare Foundation.We are supported by generous donations from our readers. Contributions are tax deductible and appreciated. Contribute
[James Fulford]
Thomas Sowell has an article saying that oil companies aren’t necessarily evil, in which he says, among other comments:
“Now that oil prices have dropped big time, does that mean that oil companies have lost their ‘greed’? Or could it all be supply and demand – a cause and effect explanation that seems to be harder for some people to understand than emotions like ‘greed’?”The “Greed” Fallacy,
But Mark In Mexico has a post about one company that doesn’t really underestand supply and demand–the only oil company in North America that may be running out of oil: PEMEX.He writes that
Pemex was formed after 1938 when President Lázaro Cárdenas nationalized Mexico’s oil industry. When a government nationalizes its oil industry, that means that the government steps in and confiscates all of the equipment, drills, pumps, buildings, refineries, vehicles, ships, airplanes, offices, records, bank accounts etc. of the private companies to which that same government had previously sold leases and other rights.In other words, the government sells licenses to various foreign investors to attract them to invest billions of dollars, then steps in and steals it all. In almost all cases, the government blames the foreign companies, and often the foreign governments, for “robbing” the people’s energy inheritance. Except, of course, when a US company is involved, in which case the local government always blames the US government.And, frequently, America gets blamed even when there are no US companies involved at all.
In Bolivia, the Bolivian Gas War was brought on by a minority group’s charge that the United States was absconding with the Bolivian people’s natural gas inheritnce. But the companies that had extraction rights are all European companies. If an American energy company wanted Bolivian gas, it had to buy that gas from and pay market prices to a European energy company that was extracting that gas. Oh well.The problem is, in essence, that while the corrupt governments, and corrupt governments, that control the company are greedy, the company itself, as a government-run monopoly, isn’t greedy.
So the Mexican government and a whole slew of Mexican governments since 1938 have had control of the Mexican oil industry through a government controlled company called Pemex. You know how that had to go. Badly. And it has.These governments have, year after year and decade after decade, used Pemex as a private funding source. It is estimated that Pemex loses a cool billion dollars a year just to internal corruption.All of that corruption has little to do with oil extraction or oil availability or oil reserves. What it does do however, is cause gasoline at Pemex gas stations — the only ones allowed here — to cost the Mexican consumer about $1.00 per gallon more than that same oil costs once it is shipped to the United States. At an Exxon station in Laredo, Texas, you pay $1 per gallon less for gasoline than you do at a Pemex station just a couple of miles to the south. And that’s for gasoline produced from oil from the same Mexican well.What that corruption also does is bleed money away from Pemex that should have been reinvested in the company. That loss, along with the Mexican government’s skimming off 60% of all Pemex revenue to pay for all the sub-standard public services that the bloated Mexican constitution guarantees to the Mexican citizens, leaves no money for exploration or drilling for new sources or the technology development necessary to tap those new sources nor even enough to maintain its existing facilities.
I’ve noted that earlier that Mexico has a public holiday celebrating
the biggest armed robbery of the twentieth century. It left all the oil in Mexico in the hands of corrupt Mexican governments, who couldn’t even get most of it out of the ground; a lot of it is just sitting there, because they won’t allow foreigners to touch it.
See Businessweek’s article Pemex: Still in the Dark Ages, for a discussion of how Mexico doesn’t want to have Americans exploit Mexicans by drilling wells, which means fewer jobs for Mexicans, who go north illegally and exploit Americans.
VDARE.com: Blog Articles — proudly powered by WordPressThe articles on VDARE.com are brought to you by the VDare Foundation.We are supported by generous donations from our readers. Contributions are tax deductible and appreciated. Contribute
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Reconquista DJ Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo Not Only Accused Of Sexual Harassment, But Of Falsifying Letters In Support Of Amnesty
A timely post from www.Vdare.com about the radio DJ “Piolin.” This follows this post about the University of Washington mandating an anti-white, anti-male, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-heterosexual class. In the meantime, you can read an interesting take on society's problems HERE and another interesting book HERE.
More On Reconquista DJ Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo Falsifying Letters In 2007—This Seems To Have Been Unlucky For Everyone Involved
More details of this accusation against Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo:
That letter [a lawyer's letter obtained by the Times] also contains Cortez's claims about falsifying letters. According to Cortez, after the immigration reform drive fell well short of garnering the 1 million letters that Sotelo had pledged to deliver, Sotelo ordered his staffers to "clandestinely photocopy letters so that it would appear as if he had gathered 1 million signatures." Clayton writes that Cortez "initially refused but was told in no uncertain terms that the team needed to comply."Here's a contemporary report of that trip: Popular disc jockey goes to Washington with 1 million letters, AP, June 11, 2007.
In June 2007, Sotelo traveled to Washington, D.C., to present the letters to a congressional delegation composed of Sens. Edward Kennedy, Mel Martinez, Robert Menendez and Arlen Specter, as well as members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.
'Piolin' Sotelo, Univision parting follows harassment allegations, By Reed Johnson and Meg James, July 29, 2013
Those "million signatures" seem to have been bad luck.
Since then, Kennedy has died, Mel Martinez has resigned his Senate seat to cash in as a lobbyist, Arlen Specter switched parties, was defeated in a primary, and died, and Robert Menendez narrowly escaped prosecution over his sexual conduct. And now El Piolin has lost his job!
Reconquista DJ Eddie "Piolin" Sotelo Not Only Accused Of Sexual Harassment, But Of Falsifying Letters In Support Of Amnesty
From the KTLA website:
LOS ANGELES — Spanish-language radio personality Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo’s mysterious departure from the airwaves last week came after a performer on his nationally syndicated program accused him of sexual harassment, according to documents obtained by The Times.El Piolin (the nickname means "Tweety Bird" in Mexican Spanish) has supporting amnesty for years, and we've got a lot of material on him. Last year, Brenda Walker wrote
Alberto “Beto” Cortez, a writer, producer and performer on the popular “Piolin por la Manana” radio program, alleged that his boss Sotelo was “physically, sexually and emotionally harassing” him for a three-year period ending last January. The claim was made in an April 16 letter from Cortez attorney Robert R. Clayton to executives Roberto Llamas and Jose Valle of Univision Communications Inc., which broadcast and syndicated the show.
In addition to the claim of sexual harassment, Cortez alleged that Sotelo ordered members of his radio production team to falsify letters in support of a high-profile campaign for congressional immigration reform, an issue that Sotelo championed on his program.[Emphasis added]
When thousands of illegal aliens show up for May Day marches demanding amnesty, part of the organizing comes from Spanish radio and TV which urge unlawful foreigners to complain en masse. In Los Angeles, local Mexican radio guy Piolin is credited with turning out huge crowds of amnesty pests.Piolin is reported to have "entered the US illegally on a forged green card," in 1986 and presumably was amnestied as a result of IRCA.
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Mexican Meddlers Eager To Boost Obamnesty—With Birth Certificate Vending Machines At Mexican Consulates!
A very interesting post from www.Vdare.com about Mexico preparing to assist immigrants become legal. This follows this post about amendments to the Gang of Eight bill, S744. This follows this post about the disruption of the SAFE Act in the House of Reps. This follows this post about the release of illegal immigrant felons from prison by ICE. This follows this post about how to Report Illegal Immigrants! For more about what is happening in the nation now click here and you can read the two very interesting books that are shown HERE.
Memo From Middle America | Mexican Meddlers Eager To Boost Obamnesty—With Birth Certificate Vending Machines At Mexican Consulates!
I write from Mexico, where my family and I are visiting for about a month. Of course, I try to keep up with the latest on the Amnesty debate in the US. And, of course, that's being covered here in Mexico. Guess what, Mexicans support amnesty, so it must be good for the United States, right?
Being here in Mexico while this is going on brings back memories. As longtime readers of VDARE.COM know, it was my experience living in Mexico for many years that helped transform me into an American immigration patriot. (See my article THE EDUCATION OF A GRINGO IN MEXICO, Or How Living in Mexico Helped Transform Me Into A VDARE.COM Contributor. )
The Mexican media and political class keep close tabs on U.S. immigration legislation—closer tabs than most Americans do. And of course Eduardo Medina-Mora, Mexico's ambassador in Washington, is particularly on top of things:
The Ambassador of Mexico in the United States, Eduardo Medina Mora, praised the migratory reform Project being discussed in the U.S. Senate.” Embajador de México en EU alaba avance en reforma migratoria, [By Angel Villarino, Terra.com, June 12th, 2013 ]
The ambassador prefaced his remark with a typical disclaimer - "The government of Mexico admits that the migratory reform in the United States is a domestic issue..." (Mexican diplomats say that when they're about to meddle) - but we cannot fail to recognize its deep impact."
The ambassador continued "The possibility that this reform is passed is a reminder of the best traditions that have made this country great." Actually, this reform is in the tradition of things that are destroying our nation.
Medina Mora's comments were made at an American Enterprise Institute symposium on June 12th—the same day the Senate voted to begin deliberations on S. 744. He was the keynote speaker at the symposium ludicrously entitled "Where is Mexico Headed?"
Where is Mexico headed? To the United States, obviously—in droves.
And the Villarino article included this equally ludicrous comment:
Meanwhile, back in Mexico the Mexican Congress is also working on S. 744. Recently, Mexican congressman Miguel Alonso Raya [Twitter] presented a statement to the Comisión Permanente [Permanent Commission] of the Mexican Congress. (The Comisión Permanente is a sort of mini-Congress with 37 members, which is in session during congressional recesses.)
Raya’s memo was actually an exhortation telling the Mexican executive branch to "prepare to respond...to an unprecedented demand for documents on the part of Mexican migrants resulting from the approval of a migratory reform in the United States” and to "coordinate with the state governments, the chief of the Federal District and the municipal governments to respond to such a demand of documentation over nationality, identity and civil state." (This would include Mexican citizenship, birth and civil state documents).
In other words, this congressman wants the Mexican government to get ready to help Mexican illegal aliens to be legalized under S. 744.
Ayala pointed out, in fact, that there already is a demand for such documents, and as the Amnesty progresses and the Treason Lobby keeps getting people's hopes up, the demand is going to be unprecedented. (Diputados piden a México prepararse ante reforma migratoria en Estados Unidos, El Semanario, June 10, 2013
Another, more famous, member of the Mexican Congress, Amalia Garcia, (a former Governor of Zacatecas and failed candidate for the leadership of her party) is thinking along the same lines. As reported on an official website of the Mexican Congress:
In what may truly be a Mexican technological innovation, Amalia Garcia calls for the installation of birth certificate vending machines [“máquinas expendedoras”] in Mexican consulates in the U.S.
As reported in the Mexican congressional bulletin:
Amalia Garcia is very interested in our immigration policies:
So not only are Mexico and other countries meddling in our immigration legislation (with the aid of some U.S. representatives and Hispanic activists) but if Amnesty is actually passed, the meddling will increase. Mexico will "help" the Obama Administration speed along the paperwork.
Hmm, do you suppose that the Mexican government would ever tell us "No, don't legalize that guy—he doesn't have the proper paperwork?"
And this meddling will never end. Mexico reformed its citizenship rules in 1997 so that Mexican immigrants who take U.S. citizenship, and their U.S. born children, can retain Mexican citizenship. This fits in with the general Mexican viewpoint that people in the U.S. of Mexican ancestry are essentially Mexicans, regardless of citizenship. As then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo told Mexican-American politicians in Texas back in 1995: “You're Mexicans—Mexicans who live north of the border." Zedillo specifically said he wanted to “create an ethnic lobby with political influence similar to that of American Jews.” [Mexico Woos U.S. Mexicans, Proposing Dual Nationality, By Sam Dillon, NYT, December 10, 1995]
Well, we can’t say Mexico didn’t tell us.
Millions of Americans, sadly, are completely clueless about what is happening to the United States.
But Mexican politicians certainly aren't. They're all for Amnesty—and eager to do their part to maximize its impact.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here ; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.
Being here in Mexico while this is going on brings back memories. As longtime readers of VDARE.COM know, it was my experience living in Mexico for many years that helped transform me into an American immigration patriot. (See my article THE EDUCATION OF A GRINGO IN MEXICO, Or How Living in Mexico Helped Transform Me Into A VDARE.COM Contributor. )
The Mexican media and political class keep close tabs on U.S. immigration legislation—closer tabs than most Americans do. And of course Eduardo Medina-Mora, Mexico's ambassador in Washington, is particularly on top of things:
The Ambassador of Mexico in the United States, Eduardo Medina Mora, praised the migratory reform Project being discussed in the U.S. Senate.” Embajador de México en EU alaba avance en reforma migratoria, [By Angel Villarino, Terra.com, June 12th, 2013 ]
The ambassador prefaced his remark with a typical disclaimer - "The government of Mexico admits that the migratory reform in the United States is a domestic issue..." (Mexican diplomats say that when they're about to meddle) - but we cannot fail to recognize its deep impact."
The ambassador continued "The possibility that this reform is passed is a reminder of the best traditions that have made this country great." Actually, this reform is in the tradition of things that are destroying our nation.
Medina Mora's comments were made at an American Enterprise Institute symposium on June 12th—the same day the Senate voted to begin deliberations on S. 744. He was the keynote speaker at the symposium ludicrously entitled "Where is Mexico Headed?"
Where is Mexico headed? To the United States, obviously—in droves.
And the Villarino article included this equally ludicrous comment:
While other governments such as South Korea or China have lobbied to support migratory reform, Mexico (the country with the most migrants in the United States) has preferred to maintain itself at the margin.Mexico at the margin of the immigration debate? Baloney! Mexico is already well-established in the United States with its 50 consulates and its flagrant meddling in our internal affairs apparently isn't an issue. (When was the last time you heard a GOP politician complain about it?)
Meanwhile, back in Mexico the Mexican Congress is also working on S. 744. Recently, Mexican congressman Miguel Alonso Raya [Twitter] presented a statement to the Comisión Permanente [Permanent Commission] of the Mexican Congress. (The Comisión Permanente is a sort of mini-Congress with 37 members, which is in session during congressional recesses.)
Raya’s memo was actually an exhortation telling the Mexican executive branch to "prepare to respond...to an unprecedented demand for documents on the part of Mexican migrants resulting from the approval of a migratory reform in the United States” and to "coordinate with the state governments, the chief of the Federal District and the municipal governments to respond to such a demand of documentation over nationality, identity and civil state." (This would include Mexican citizenship, birth and civil state documents).
In other words, this congressman wants the Mexican government to get ready to help Mexican illegal aliens to be legalized under S. 744.
Ayala pointed out, in fact, that there already is a demand for such documents, and as the Amnesty progresses and the Treason Lobby keeps getting people's hopes up, the demand is going to be unprecedented. (Diputados piden a México prepararse ante reforma migratoria en Estados Unidos, El Semanario, June 10, 2013
Another, more famous, member of the Mexican Congress, Amalia Garcia, (a former Governor of Zacatecas and failed candidate for the leadership of her party) is thinking along the same lines. As reported on an official website of the Mexican Congress:
The congresswoman Amalia Garcia Medina (PRD) urged the federal government to créate a special fund with public resources to support the 6.5 million Mexicans who seek to legalize their stay in the United States, if migratory reform is approved this year.Congresswoman Garcia is chairwoman of the congressional Migratory Affairs committee. Obviously, a Mexican congressional Migratory Affairs committee has to deal with U.S. immigration legislation, right?
Urge Amalia García al Ejecutivo a crear fondo especial de apoyo a 6.5 millones de mexicanos que legalizarán su estancia en EU si aprueban reforma migratoria, Nota N°. 3294, Camara de Diputados, 11-06-2013
In what may truly be a Mexican technological innovation, Amalia Garcia calls for the installation of birth certificate vending machines [“máquinas expendedoras”] in Mexican consulates in the U.S.
As reported in the Mexican congressional bulletin:
"In a press conference, she explained that vending machines for unfalsifiable birth certificates be installed in the 50 Mexican consulates in the United States, as they already exist in some states of the country."And get this, since there is (supposedly) an English-language requirement for legalization, Congresswoman Garcia reports that Mexicans in the United States have asked the Mexican government to provide English teachers!
Amalia Garcia is very interested in our immigration policies:
"The PRD representative commented that some days ago she visited Washington with a committee of legislators from Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic, where she met with Hispanic leaders, academics, [U.S.[ congressmen and [U.S.] government functionaries."Remember in a recent article I reported that it´s not just Mexicans, but also Central American governments are meddling in our affairs? That’s the visit I was talking about.
So not only are Mexico and other countries meddling in our immigration legislation (with the aid of some U.S. representatives and Hispanic activists) but if Amnesty is actually passed, the meddling will increase. Mexico will "help" the Obama Administration speed along the paperwork.
Hmm, do you suppose that the Mexican government would ever tell us "No, don't legalize that guy—he doesn't have the proper paperwork?"
And this meddling will never end. Mexico reformed its citizenship rules in 1997 so that Mexican immigrants who take U.S. citizenship, and their U.S. born children, can retain Mexican citizenship. This fits in with the general Mexican viewpoint that people in the U.S. of Mexican ancestry are essentially Mexicans, regardless of citizenship. As then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo told Mexican-American politicians in Texas back in 1995: “You're Mexicans—Mexicans who live north of the border." Zedillo specifically said he wanted to “create an ethnic lobby with political influence similar to that of American Jews.” [Mexico Woos U.S. Mexicans, Proposing Dual Nationality, By Sam Dillon, NYT, December 10, 1995]
Well, we can’t say Mexico didn’t tell us.
Millions of Americans, sadly, are completely clueless about what is happening to the United States.
But Mexican politicians certainly aren't. They're all for Amnesty—and eager to do their part to maximize its impact.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A. after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here ; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here.
Friday, May 3, 2013
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES’ Eva Longoria And The Failure Of Mexican Assimilation
Here is an interesting article from www.Vdare.com about Eva Longoria. This follows this post about Jessica Alba's opinion of American culture and this post about about Miss Kentucky Latina under indictment. In the meantime, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES’ Eva Longoria And The Failure Of Mexican Assimilation
http://www.vdare.com/articles/memo-from-middle-america-desperate-housewives-eva-longoria-and-the-failure-of-mexican-assim
Contemporary American society is celebrity-obsessed, and celebrities are rich, famous and influential. One of those celebrities is Eva Longoria.
Eva Longoria was born in Texas in 1975, of Mexican ancestry. Her first big role was in the soap opera The Young and the Restless (2001-2003). She achieved her biggest acting role as Gabrielle Solis in Desperate Housewives, which ran from 2004 to 2012.
Aside from her matchless thespian talent, Miss Longoria is a model who has appeared on the covers of magazines and has been featured in advertising campaigns by L’Oreal, Bebe Sport, Hanes, New York & Co., Magnum Ice Cream, Heineken, Microsoft and London Fog. She has received numerous accolades, having been listed in the “Most Beautiful People” list by People en Español, as #1 in Maxim’s Hottest Female Stars of 2005 and 2006, #9 in Maxim’s Hot 100 2007 list, #14 on People’s Most Beautiful List of 2011, and in the 2012 People list Most Beautiful at Every Age.
She was a judge on Next Food Network Star and hostess of the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards.
Eva Longoria has made a lot of money. She was #1 on Forbes magazine’s list of highest-paid TV actresses of 2011, pulling in 13 million dollars last year.
She has her own perfume “EVA by Eva Longoria” and she’s published her own cookbook.
The celebrity marriage/divorce is also a staple of the celebrity lifestyle, and Eva’s been part of two of those: the first with Tyler Christopher of General Hospital (2002-2004); the second with Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs (2007 to 2011). The rights to publicize her Paris wedding to Parker had been marketed to OK! magazine.
On the rebound from her marriage to Tony Parker (get the pun?), she has dated Spanish actress Penelope Cruz’s little brother Eduardo.
So Eva Longoria is a big celebrity, in our celebrity-crazed society. She’s rich, successful, popular and comfortable.
She is also a full-fledged leftist Raza promoter. For several years, she has worked for the activist organization known as the National Council of La Raza. (For more on that outfit, see my article Yes, La Raza Really Does Mean “The Race” – And the Idea Was Invented By A Nazi Sympathizer
Unlike most Americans, Eva Longoria doesn’t want illegal aliens deported. She has agitated for more Spanish translators in hospitals
Of course Eva is for the DREAM Act. And, again unlike most Americans, she opposes Arizona’s SB 1070.
In fact, she teamed up with MALDEF (Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund) to oppose the Arizona law. Not only that, but Eva Longoria has also determined that the law is unconstitutional:
When Arizona adopted SB 1070 ….Eva Longoria announced the bill was unconstitutional. With MALDEF’s (Mexican American Legal Defense Fund) Executive Director Thomas A. Saenz, she briefed Hollywood professionals on the bill and its implications.
Celebrity Politics: Eva Longoria and Immigration, by David S. Meyer, Politics Outdoors, May 17th, 2011).
Isn’t it great to know that a wealthy model/TV actress can now lecture us on what’s constitutional or not?
In 2009, Eva enrolled in a master’s program in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies of California State University (Northridge).
Several months ago, Eva was named as a national co-chair of the Obama Re-election campaign (There are actually 35 co-chairs—another is unrepentant MECHista and LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Obama taps Villaraigosa, Longoria, others to co-chair campaign. LA Times, Feb. 22nd, 2012)
Check out this clip of liberal commentator/comedian Bill Maher interviewing Eva. Bill Maher is asking her about “your people” (which doesn’t mean Americans in general—just Hispanics). Maher gets into the friction between Cuban-Americans and Mexican-Americans, and in order to explain it, Eva claims that “Mexicans were occupied”. She’s probably talking about the fact that what is now the U.S. Southwest passed from Mexican to U.S. sovereignty a century and a half ago. Actually though, the vast majority of today’s Mexican-Americans are descendents of recent immigrants, and are not descended from the Mexican citizens who were here when the U.S. took control in the mid-1800s.
(For a pro-American perspective on this issue, check out my article On Guadalupe Hidalgo Day, Here’s Why The U.S. Has Title To The Southwest).
Eva also considers herself an agricultural expert. She informed Maher’s audience that U.S. agriculture is “wholly dependent on immigration”. “Wholly dependent”? In 1995, Mark Krikorian pointed out that "farmers and hired workers who are American citizens do almost 80 percent of the nation's farm work" and that even where immigrant pickers dominate, labor costs only make up ten percent of the retail price of your strawberries.
What’s interesting is that in many ways, Eva Longoria is from an assimilated family. English, not Spanish is her native language. She has learned Spanish, and can communicate in the language but is still not comfortable speaking it.
The Longoria family came from a village called Llongoria in Asturias, northern Spain. (Some of my wife’s forebears also came from Asturias). They arrived in New Spain—pre-independence Mexico—in 1603, and in 1767 an ancestor received a land grant along the Rio Grande from the king of Spain. That means that at least some of her ancestors were in Texas when it changed sovereignty from Mexico to the Republic of Texas to the U.S.
And Eva is also of mostly white ancestry. Eva’s ancestry was researched for the PBS Faces of America show, hosted by Harvard’s Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. They did a DNA test on her, and she was shocked and disappointed to find herself to be of mostly European ancestry (albeit with 27% Asian/ Indigenous, specifically Mayan ancestry; and 3% African).
Miss Longoria lamented:
I was like “I'm a proud Mexican-American.” I swear I was an Aztec princess in a past life, and then I do the blood test and I'm 75 per cent Spaniard. It totally screwed me up. Obviously there's a mixture of indigenous people and Spaniards because of the conquests, but I thought I was mostly Mexican... I'm Mayan! I thought I was Aztec this whole time... But I do think I was a Mayan princess now.
[Eva Longoria Shocked by DNA Test, Press Trust of India, April 04, 2010]
So what’s the big deal here? Another leftist Hollywood actress. So what else is new?
Well, here’s the National Question aspect: Eva Longoria was born in the U.S. Her native language is English. She is popular, rich and successful. She’s a millionaire.
And yet, and yet—for some reason, at some level, she doesn’t identify with this country. She doesn’t identify with the historical American nation—seeing “her people” as being “occupied”.
This indicates to me that the failure of Hispanics to assimilate is more than an economic issue, it’s more than a linguistic issue, it’s more than a racial issue—although it includes all these factors. There is some emotional issue involved.
Very assimilated Americans of Mexican ancestry have a distinct tendency suddenly to start indentifying as Mexicans.
Like U.S.-born New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, who said he “never thought much about being Mexican” while growing up—then suddenly announces at a press conference that “I am 100% Mexican.
Then there is actress Jessica Alba, of Mexican ancestry on her father’s side, who didn’t identify as Hispanic until recently. Now she’s on the bandwagon, bashing SB 1070.
Or U.S. boxer Oscar de la Hoya, who took out Mexican citizenship after becoming famous, boasting that “To be a Mexican citizen is something that I have always wanted to be.”
Or U.S.-born /trained astronaut Jose Hernandez, who identified as a Mexican and took a Mexican flag to space on an American rocket.
And of course, here’s Eva Longoria, whose fame and wealth, derived from tawdry TV shows, apparently gives her the right to defend Mexicans who invade our country illegally.
Is there a pattern here? We’re talking about successful Mexican-Americans, including celebrities who make more money than most of us ever will—about English-speaking American citizens who have received a lot from this country. Yet, after they’re famous, they insist on identifying as Mexicans and even agitate against the interests of the United States in the area of immigration.
Is it wrong to notice this? Is it wrong to point this out?
What does it tell us about the assimilation of millions of Mexican immigrants who weren’t born in this country, when we see successful U.S.-born Mexican-Americans who nevertheless identify so strongly with La Raza?
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A in 2009, after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here
Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall
On Guadalupe Hidalgo Day, Here's Why The U.S. Has Title To The Southwest
http://www.vdare.com/articles/memo-from-mexico-by-allan-wall-24
By Allan Wall
The Second Annual "National March for Immigrant Rights" is scheduled to be held on the U.S.-Mexico border on February 2nd.
Last year, the march was also held on February 2nd.
What's going on here? Why February 2nd?
Answer: February 2nd is the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That 1848 treaty officially ended the Mexican War and legally turned over most of the Southwest to the United States.
The average American doesn't know much about the Mexican War and thinks about it less.
But here in Mexico they do think about it—a lot.
In Mexico, everybody knows that "the U.S. took half our national territory."
"La Intervención Norteamericana" has been described—by Mexican writer and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz—as "one of the most unjust wars of conquest in history."
Not only that, but the loss of Mexico's northern territories has been used as a reason—an excuse, really—for the economic failures of Mexico compared to the economic success of the United States.
According to at least one poll, conducted in 2002 by Zogby in Mexico, 58% of respondents agreed with the statement that "the territory of the United States' Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico". [MS Word] Now that's definitely a different perspective.
In a lighter vein, some Mexicans jokingly quip that, when the U.S. took half of Mexico's territory, we took the half with the paved roads.
Some Americans are shocked to learn that Mexicans actually have a different historical perspective than we do.
How dare Mexicans say the U.S. took the Southwest from Mexico? How dare they have a different perspective than us?
It's time for a reality check. Different nations have different historical perspectives on the same historical events. That's one reason they are different nations.
Of course Mexicans say that the U.S. took (or even "stole") the Southwest! Why wouldn't they?
We've got to get over this naïve belief that everybody in the world has the same values, and that everybody wants to be just like us.
Maybe we should have thought twice about importing millions of people from the only country on earth with an irredentist claim against us—and then encouraging them not to assimilate!
It's not that the facts of the war are in dispute. A Mexican historical text and an American historical text provide the same facts about the war. It's just that the "spin" is different. (And nowadays, some of the American treatments of the war are more critical of the war than the Mexican ones.)
Even some of the arguments used on our side are a little lame.
Some try to prove the territory wasn't conquered. After all, we did pay $15 million dollars for it.
True, but that makes it sound like a garden variety real estate deal. Mexico was soundly defeated, and as defeated nations throughout history, had to abide by the terms of defeat.
It was a conquest. And historically there's nothing unique about that. Just about every country in the world was formed by some type of conquest and just about all the real estate in the world has been conquered and re-conquered, some of it quite a few times.
That includes Mexico. The contemporary conventional Mexican view is that the evil Spaniards conquered Mexico. But when Hernan Cortes arrived in 1519, the present-day country of Mexico did not exist. The Aztec Empire (itself a product of conquest) only covered about a quarter of present-day Mexico. After the Spaniards conquered that empire, they went on conquering numerous other indigenous entities, including the Tarascan Empire, enemy of the Aztec Empire, thus assembling the enormous colony of "Nueva España", which was renamed Mexico after independence. Furthermore, throughout the history of independent Mexico, the government has repeatedly used force to subdue rebellious tribes and areas and keep them in Mexico. So yes, Mexico was formed by conquest as well.
Nor is invading a neighbor country at all rare. In fact, it's the most common form of international invasion there is.
And supposing the Mexican War hadn't started in 1846, it's quite probable Mexico would have lost the territories anyway.
The region in question was far from the heartland of Mexico, and sparsely settled. Neither the Spanish Empire nor the independent Mexico which succeeded it did much to develop the area, which was prone to frequent anti-government uprisings.
In the 1840s, there was speculation that the British, the French or the Russians might take try to take it.
But the most likely possibility would have been that growing communities of unassimilated American settlers would have revolted, seceded from Mexico, and joined the U.S.
It was the Texas dispute that provoked the Mexican War. Americans had settled in Texas, they didn't assimilate, they became the majority, and seceded from Mexico in 1836.
That was not the first time that Mexico lost territory. Upon independence in 1821, Central America had been part of Mexico, but Mexico lost that territory in the 1820s. Funny, I never hear about a Mexican "reconquista" of Central America.
The Republic of Texas was independent from 1836 to 1845, during which time it was diplomatically recognized by the U.S., France, Britain, Holland and Belgium, and Mexico was unable to get it back.
After Texas joined the Union in 1845, the dispute erupted again. Both countries sent troops into the disputed territory between the Rio Grande (which Texas said was the border) and the Nueces River (which Mexico said was the border). In April 1846, the two armies clashed in the Thornton Skirmish, followed by several battles in May of 1846, after which President Polk asked for and received a declaration of war from Congress. Three months later the Mexican Congress reciprocated.
Nowadays, of course, the war is seen as the attack of a strong U.S.A. upon a weak and peaceful Mexico.
But at the time, both countries were about equally hawkish and ready for war. Mexico had a larger full-time military (27,000 Mexican men under arms vs. a U.S. Army of about 7,000 soldiers—a number which soon swelled when volunteers flocked to join).
Nowadays, the idea of conquest is very unPC. But in 1846, neither the U.S. nor Mexico was against the idea of conquest in principle. It's just that each country wanted to be the conqueror and not the conquered.
Mexico's government planned an invasion of the U.S., predicting that as Mexico invaded, the slaves would revolt and the Mexican flag would fly over the U.S. capitol in Washington. The Mexican government planned to annex parts of the United States, in the Louisiana/Alabama region. What a plan!
But they didn't have the chance to do all that, because the U.S. Army invaded Mexico first. (Maps are available here and here.)
Brigadier General Zachary Taylor ("Old Rough and Ready") invaded and occupied part of northeastern Mexico, including the city of Monterrey, which fell after a fierce battle involving house-to-house combat, in September of 1846. After the battle of Buena Vista (February of 1847), conventional war in that theater was over, though there were guerrilla attacks against U.S. forces.
In another prong of the invasion, Colonel Stephen Kearny marched west from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, taking Santa Fe and arriving in California. There Kearney linked up with Captain John C. Fremont and some of those unassimilated American settlers who had already declared independence from Mexico. On July 7th, 1846, the Navy landed and did its part. By February of 1847 fighting in this theater was over.
Mexico had still refused to surrender. So President Polk sent an invasion force to take Mexico City. This expeditionary force, under the command of General Winfield Scott ("Old Fuss and Feathers") landed at Veracruz, on Mexico's Gulf Coast, and carried out the largest American amphibious landing up to that time.
Veracruz was taken in March 1847. Then the U.S. Army fought its way inland to Mexico City, taking the same route [Map] as Hernan Cortes in 1519.
Among the soldiers who fought under General Scott was a member of the Indiana Volunteers by the name of Robert Wall—my first cousin 4 times removed, the first member of my family to go to Mexico. After returning to Indiana, for the rest of his life my kinsman was known as "Mexican Bob". Mexican Bob had two cousins also named Robert Wall— a funny cousin known as "Monkey Bob" and a feisty one known as "Spunky Bob". Spunky Bob was my great-great-grandfather.
With the fall of Mexico City in September of 1847, major combat operations were over, although in both Taylor's and Scott's occupation zones, there were continued enemy attacks on U.S. supply convoys—just as in Iraq today.
Why did the American army defeat the Mexican army?
The American army, composed 100% of men who had volunteered, was better trained and better equipped, had its own supply convoys and medical personnel to care for the wounded. The U.S. Army's artillery was a decisive factor— each cannon's crew was overseen by a seasoned NCO known as "chief of the piece." (See illustration here.)
The Mexican army was mostly composed of draftees, had Napoleonic-era weapons, and sometimes left its wounded behind, not a great morale inducer. The classic Mexican history work México Á Través De Los Siglos points out that, though the Mexican soldiers in the rank and file were brave,
"…the mutual confidence between the leaders and officers did not exist, the weaponry was old and defective, the artillery was small and of short range, the cavalry was mostly useless, the movements were slow and heavy, and finally, ambulances and supplies of provisions and everything necessary for the good service of an army on campaign were lacking."(México Á Través De Los Siglos Vicente Riva Palacio, 1880).
Mexico's loss was also due to internal disunity. In the face of the American invasion, Mexico's leaders did not form a government of national unity and work together to defend their country.
Instead, Mexican leaders often seemed more concerned with maneuvering against each other than against the enemy. In December of 1845, with war imminent, General Mariano Paredes was sent north with an army to face off against the Americans. But on the way, he changed his mind and decided instead to return to Mexico City and overthrow the government.
That's how the more hawkish Paredes became president, replacing Jose Joaquin de Herrera, who was willing to compromise on the Texas issue. In August of 1846, Paredes himself was deposed by Mariano Salas. The presidency actually changed hands four times that year and by March of 1847, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was in charge of both the government and the military. He resigned after the Mexico City defeat of 1847.
Also during the war, the Mexicans had an internecine dispute about church property, an attempt to install a Spanish monarch, and about 35 uprisings throughout the country. Some Mexican communities didn't support the war effort, and had no qualms about trading with the American enemy. Others were simply indifferent and stayed out of it.
The Yucatan Peninsula, which had been independent from 1841-1843, declared independence again on January 1st, 1846 and announced its neutrality during the Mexican War. But the indigenous Maya revolted against Yucatan's white elite in the "Caste War", which broke out in 1847. The whites were forced to retreat into the walled cities of Merida and Campeche in 1848. After the U.S. withdrew from Mexico, Yucatan's leaders rejoined Mexico. It began a long drawn out reconquest of the Maya territory which didn't end until 1901.
The Mexican War had its contemporary American critics, mostly among the Whig party. Critics of the war included former president John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau who spent a night in jail because he refused to pay a $1 tax in protest.
Abraham Lincoln opposed the use of the Thornton Skirmish as justification for the war, although he still voted for funds to supply the U.S. Army in Mexico, and later supported Zachary Taylor's presidential campaign.
Among the 200 junior officers in the war who wound up being generals (Union and Confederate) in the Civil War, was future president Ulysses S. Grant, who at some point in his life decided that the war was evil.
But whatever Lincoln and Grant thought about the Mexican War, as president, neither man offered to give the conquered territories back to Mexico.
When Mexican leaders signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, they were almost out of money and the country was on the verge of a revolution. American troops had defeated the Mexican army, were occupying strategic parts of the country, and negotiator Nicholas Trist made clear that without a transfer of the territories, there would be no treaty. So the Mexican leaders decided to sign the treaty to avoid greater losses. It was signed on February 2nd, 1848 and ratified by both congresses several months later. The U.S. Army withdrew from all the territory it was occupying except the newly-annexed territories.
In the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the U.S. gained nearly all the Southwest,—all of California, Nevada and Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. (The area south of the Gila River in the present-day states of Arizona and New Mexico, was purchased from Mexico in the Gadsden Treaty of 1853.)
So the Southwest is part of the U.S. and has been for over 150 years, longer than most present-day national states have been in existence.
Even the Mexican Constitution doesn't claim the Southwest! That's right. The Mexican Constitution, in articles 42—48 [Word Document] spells out the extent of Mexican territory. It mentions Mexican islands, continental shelf, and airspace, Mexico's 31 states and federal district, but it never mentions California, Texas or Arizona.
So take that, you reconquistas!
When reflecting upon the Mexican War, some Americans ask why we didn't just annex the whole country. And there were actually people in favor of that—the "All Mexico" movement. But there were several reasons that didn't happen.
One was America's North-South divide, especially the congressional balance between free states and slave states, with northerners fearing that Mexico would be divided into slave states and thus upset the balance.
But John C. Calhoun and others opposed annexing Mexico for National Question reasons.
In 1848, the U.S. population was about 21 million, and the population of Mexico about 7 million, a third of ours. How well could we have assimilated 7 million Mexicans, with all the racial, cultural, social, nationalistic differences that would have been involved? Annexing Mexico would have changed the character of our nation.
Ironically, today's leaders have no such qualms. Today our leaders apparently see no problem in merging us with Mexico, despite the differences between our societies.
They are merging our countries on several levels. At one level is the mass migration of Mexicans into the U.S. coupled with a multicultural ideology which encourages non-assimilation and retention of their Mexican identity. At another level, inter-governmental agreements are moving us closer to some sort of North American Union.
It's a century and a half after Guadalupe Hidalgo. Who will be the winners in this century?
Will it be the U.S.A., Mexico—or a transnational elite, for whom all the residents of our continent are just interchangeable pieces in a vast market?
The next few years will give us the answer.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.
DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES’ Eva Longoria And The Failure Of Mexican Assimilation
http://www.vdare.com/articles/memo-from-middle-america-desperate-housewives-eva-longoria-and-the-failure-of-mexican-assim
Eva Longoria was born in Texas in 1975, of Mexican ancestry. Her first big role was in the soap opera The Young and the Restless (2001-2003). She achieved her biggest acting role as Gabrielle Solis in Desperate Housewives, which ran from 2004 to 2012.
Aside from her matchless thespian talent, Miss Longoria is a model who has appeared on the covers of magazines and has been featured in advertising campaigns by L’Oreal, Bebe Sport, Hanes, New York & Co., Magnum Ice Cream, Heineken, Microsoft and London Fog. She has received numerous accolades, having been listed in the “Most Beautiful People” list by People en Español, as #1 in Maxim’s Hottest Female Stars of 2005 and 2006, #9 in Maxim’s Hot 100 2007 list, #14 on People’s Most Beautiful List of 2011, and in the 2012 People list Most Beautiful at Every Age.
She was a judge on Next Food Network Star and hostess of the 2010 MTV Europe Music Awards.
Eva Longoria has made a lot of money. She was #1 on Forbes magazine’s list of highest-paid TV actresses of 2011, pulling in 13 million dollars last year.
She has her own perfume “EVA by Eva Longoria” and she’s published her own cookbook.
The celebrity marriage/divorce is also a staple of the celebrity lifestyle, and Eva’s been part of two of those: the first with Tyler Christopher of General Hospital (2002-2004); the second with Tony Parker of the San Antonio Spurs (2007 to 2011). The rights to publicize her Paris wedding to Parker had been marketed to OK! magazine.
On the rebound from her marriage to Tony Parker (get the pun?), she has dated Spanish actress Penelope Cruz’s little brother Eduardo.
So Eva Longoria is a big celebrity, in our celebrity-crazed society. She’s rich, successful, popular and comfortable.
She is also a full-fledged leftist Raza promoter. For several years, she has worked for the activist organization known as the National Council of La Raza. (For more on that outfit, see my article Yes, La Raza Really Does Mean “The Race” – And the Idea Was Invented By A Nazi Sympathizer
Unlike most Americans, Eva Longoria doesn’t want illegal aliens deported. She has agitated for more Spanish translators in hospitals
Of course Eva is for the DREAM Act. And, again unlike most Americans, she opposes Arizona’s SB 1070.
In fact, she teamed up with MALDEF (Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund) to oppose the Arizona law. Not only that, but Eva Longoria has also determined that the law is unconstitutional:
When Arizona adopted SB 1070 ….Eva Longoria announced the bill was unconstitutional. With MALDEF’s (Mexican American Legal Defense Fund) Executive Director Thomas A. Saenz, she briefed Hollywood professionals on the bill and its implications.
Celebrity Politics: Eva Longoria and Immigration, by David S. Meyer, Politics Outdoors, May 17th, 2011).
Isn’t it great to know that a wealthy model/TV actress can now lecture us on what’s constitutional or not?
In 2009, Eva enrolled in a master’s program in the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies of California State University (Northridge).
Several months ago, Eva was named as a national co-chair of the Obama Re-election campaign (There are actually 35 co-chairs—another is unrepentant MECHista and LA mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Obama taps Villaraigosa, Longoria, others to co-chair campaign. LA Times, Feb. 22nd, 2012)
Check out this clip of liberal commentator/comedian Bill Maher interviewing Eva. Bill Maher is asking her about “your people” (which doesn’t mean Americans in general—just Hispanics). Maher gets into the friction between Cuban-Americans and Mexican-Americans, and in order to explain it, Eva claims that “Mexicans were occupied”. She’s probably talking about the fact that what is now the U.S. Southwest passed from Mexican to U.S. sovereignty a century and a half ago. Actually though, the vast majority of today’s Mexican-Americans are descendents of recent immigrants, and are not descended from the Mexican citizens who were here when the U.S. took control in the mid-1800s.
(For a pro-American perspective on this issue, check out my article On Guadalupe Hidalgo Day, Here’s Why The U.S. Has Title To The Southwest).
Eva also considers herself an agricultural expert. She informed Maher’s audience that U.S. agriculture is “wholly dependent on immigration”. “Wholly dependent”? In 1995, Mark Krikorian pointed out that "farmers and hired workers who are American citizens do almost 80 percent of the nation's farm work" and that even where immigrant pickers dominate, labor costs only make up ten percent of the retail price of your strawberries.
What’s interesting is that in many ways, Eva Longoria is from an assimilated family. English, not Spanish is her native language. She has learned Spanish, and can communicate in the language but is still not comfortable speaking it.
The Longoria family came from a village called Llongoria in Asturias, northern Spain. (Some of my wife’s forebears also came from Asturias). They arrived in New Spain—pre-independence Mexico—in 1603, and in 1767 an ancestor received a land grant along the Rio Grande from the king of Spain. That means that at least some of her ancestors were in Texas when it changed sovereignty from Mexico to the Republic of Texas to the U.S.
And Eva is also of mostly white ancestry. Eva’s ancestry was researched for the PBS Faces of America show, hosted by Harvard’s Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. They did a DNA test on her, and she was shocked and disappointed to find herself to be of mostly European ancestry (albeit with 27% Asian/ Indigenous, specifically Mayan ancestry; and 3% African).
Miss Longoria lamented:
I was like “I'm a proud Mexican-American.” I swear I was an Aztec princess in a past life, and then I do the blood test and I'm 75 per cent Spaniard. It totally screwed me up. Obviously there's a mixture of indigenous people and Spaniards because of the conquests, but I thought I was mostly Mexican... I'm Mayan! I thought I was Aztec this whole time... But I do think I was a Mayan princess now.
[Eva Longoria Shocked by DNA Test, Press Trust of India, April 04, 2010]
So what’s the big deal here? Another leftist Hollywood actress. So what else is new?
Well, here’s the National Question aspect: Eva Longoria was born in the U.S. Her native language is English. She is popular, rich and successful. She’s a millionaire.
And yet, and yet—for some reason, at some level, she doesn’t identify with this country. She doesn’t identify with the historical American nation—seeing “her people” as being “occupied”.
This indicates to me that the failure of Hispanics to assimilate is more than an economic issue, it’s more than a linguistic issue, it’s more than a racial issue—although it includes all these factors. There is some emotional issue involved.
Very assimilated Americans of Mexican ancestry have a distinct tendency suddenly to start indentifying as Mexicans.
Like U.S.-born New York Jets quarterback Mark Sanchez, who said he “never thought much about being Mexican” while growing up—then suddenly announces at a press conference that “I am 100% Mexican.
Then there is actress Jessica Alba, of Mexican ancestry on her father’s side, who didn’t identify as Hispanic until recently. Now she’s on the bandwagon, bashing SB 1070.
Or U.S. boxer Oscar de la Hoya, who took out Mexican citizenship after becoming famous, boasting that “To be a Mexican citizen is something that I have always wanted to be.”
Or U.S.-born /trained astronaut Jose Hernandez, who identified as a Mexican and took a Mexican flag to space on an American rocket.
And of course, here’s Eva Longoria, whose fame and wealth, derived from tawdry TV shows, apparently gives her the right to defend Mexicans who invade our country illegally.
Is there a pattern here? We’re talking about successful Mexican-Americans, including celebrities who make more money than most of us ever will—about English-speaking American citizens who have received a lot from this country. Yet, after they’re famous, they insist on identifying as Mexicans and even agitate against the interests of the United States in the area of immigration.
Is it wrong to notice this? Is it wrong to point this out?
What does it tell us about the assimilation of millions of Mexican immigrants who weren’t born in this country, when we see successful U.S.-born Mexican-Americans who nevertheless identify so strongly with La Raza?
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) moved back to the U.S.A in 2009, after many years residing in Mexico. Allan's wife is Mexican, and their two sons are bilingual. In 2005, Allan served a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his Mexidata.info articles are archived here; his News With Views columns are archived here; and his website is here
Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall
On Guadalupe Hidalgo Day, Here's Why The U.S. Has Title To The Southwest
http://www.vdare.com/articles/memo-from-mexico-by-allan-wall-24
By Allan Wall
The Second Annual "National March for Immigrant Rights" is scheduled to be held on the U.S.-Mexico border on February 2nd.
Last year, the march was also held on February 2nd.
What's going on here? Why February 2nd?
Answer: February 2nd is the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That 1848 treaty officially ended the Mexican War and legally turned over most of the Southwest to the United States.
The average American doesn't know much about the Mexican War and thinks about it less.
But here in Mexico they do think about it—a lot.
In Mexico, everybody knows that "the U.S. took half our national territory."
"La Intervención Norteamericana" has been described—by Mexican writer and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz—as "one of the most unjust wars of conquest in history."
Not only that, but the loss of Mexico's northern territories has been used as a reason—an excuse, really—for the economic failures of Mexico compared to the economic success of the United States.
According to at least one poll, conducted in 2002 by Zogby in Mexico, 58% of respondents agreed with the statement that "the territory of the United States' Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico". [MS Word] Now that's definitely a different perspective.
In a lighter vein, some Mexicans jokingly quip that, when the U.S. took half of Mexico's territory, we took the half with the paved roads.
Some Americans are shocked to learn that Mexicans actually have a different historical perspective than we do.
How dare Mexicans say the U.S. took the Southwest from Mexico? How dare they have a different perspective than us?
It's time for a reality check. Different nations have different historical perspectives on the same historical events. That's one reason they are different nations.
Of course Mexicans say that the U.S. took (or even "stole") the Southwest! Why wouldn't they?
We've got to get over this naïve belief that everybody in the world has the same values, and that everybody wants to be just like us.
Maybe we should have thought twice about importing millions of people from the only country on earth with an irredentist claim against us—and then encouraging them not to assimilate!
It's not that the facts of the war are in dispute. A Mexican historical text and an American historical text provide the same facts about the war. It's just that the "spin" is different. (And nowadays, some of the American treatments of the war are more critical of the war than the Mexican ones.)
Even some of the arguments used on our side are a little lame.
Some try to prove the territory wasn't conquered. After all, we did pay $15 million dollars for it.
True, but that makes it sound like a garden variety real estate deal. Mexico was soundly defeated, and as defeated nations throughout history, had to abide by the terms of defeat.
It was a conquest. And historically there's nothing unique about that. Just about every country in the world was formed by some type of conquest and just about all the real estate in the world has been conquered and re-conquered, some of it quite a few times.
That includes Mexico. The contemporary conventional Mexican view is that the evil Spaniards conquered Mexico. But when Hernan Cortes arrived in 1519, the present-day country of Mexico did not exist. The Aztec Empire (itself a product of conquest) only covered about a quarter of present-day Mexico. After the Spaniards conquered that empire, they went on conquering numerous other indigenous entities, including the Tarascan Empire, enemy of the Aztec Empire, thus assembling the enormous colony of "Nueva España", which was renamed Mexico after independence. Furthermore, throughout the history of independent Mexico, the government has repeatedly used force to subdue rebellious tribes and areas and keep them in Mexico. So yes, Mexico was formed by conquest as well.
Nor is invading a neighbor country at all rare. In fact, it's the most common form of international invasion there is.
And supposing the Mexican War hadn't started in 1846, it's quite probable Mexico would have lost the territories anyway.
The region in question was far from the heartland of Mexico, and sparsely settled. Neither the Spanish Empire nor the independent Mexico which succeeded it did much to develop the area, which was prone to frequent anti-government uprisings.
In the 1840s, there was speculation that the British, the French or the Russians might take try to take it.
But the most likely possibility would have been that growing communities of unassimilated American settlers would have revolted, seceded from Mexico, and joined the U.S.
It was the Texas dispute that provoked the Mexican War. Americans had settled in Texas, they didn't assimilate, they became the majority, and seceded from Mexico in 1836.
That was not the first time that Mexico lost territory. Upon independence in 1821, Central America had been part of Mexico, but Mexico lost that territory in the 1820s. Funny, I never hear about a Mexican "reconquista" of Central America.
The Republic of Texas was independent from 1836 to 1845, during which time it was diplomatically recognized by the U.S., France, Britain, Holland and Belgium, and Mexico was unable to get it back.
After Texas joined the Union in 1845, the dispute erupted again. Both countries sent troops into the disputed territory between the Rio Grande (which Texas said was the border) and the Nueces River (which Mexico said was the border). In April 1846, the two armies clashed in the Thornton Skirmish, followed by several battles in May of 1846, after which President Polk asked for and received a declaration of war from Congress. Three months later the Mexican Congress reciprocated.
Nowadays, of course, the war is seen as the attack of a strong U.S.A. upon a weak and peaceful Mexico.
But at the time, both countries were about equally hawkish and ready for war. Mexico had a larger full-time military (27,000 Mexican men under arms vs. a U.S. Army of about 7,000 soldiers—a number which soon swelled when volunteers flocked to join).
Nowadays, the idea of conquest is very unPC. But in 1846, neither the U.S. nor Mexico was against the idea of conquest in principle. It's just that each country wanted to be the conqueror and not the conquered.
Mexico's government planned an invasion of the U.S., predicting that as Mexico invaded, the slaves would revolt and the Mexican flag would fly over the U.S. capitol in Washington. The Mexican government planned to annex parts of the United States, in the Louisiana/Alabama region. What a plan!
But they didn't have the chance to do all that, because the U.S. Army invaded Mexico first. (Maps are available here and here.)
Brigadier General Zachary Taylor ("Old Rough and Ready") invaded and occupied part of northeastern Mexico, including the city of Monterrey, which fell after a fierce battle involving house-to-house combat, in September of 1846. After the battle of Buena Vista (February of 1847), conventional war in that theater was over, though there were guerrilla attacks against U.S. forces.
In another prong of the invasion, Colonel Stephen Kearny marched west from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, taking Santa Fe and arriving in California. There Kearney linked up with Captain John C. Fremont and some of those unassimilated American settlers who had already declared independence from Mexico. On July 7th, 1846, the Navy landed and did its part. By February of 1847 fighting in this theater was over.
Mexico had still refused to surrender. So President Polk sent an invasion force to take Mexico City. This expeditionary force, under the command of General Winfield Scott ("Old Fuss and Feathers") landed at Veracruz, on Mexico's Gulf Coast, and carried out the largest American amphibious landing up to that time.
Veracruz was taken in March 1847. Then the U.S. Army fought its way inland to Mexico City, taking the same route [Map] as Hernan Cortes in 1519.
Among the soldiers who fought under General Scott was a member of the Indiana Volunteers by the name of Robert Wall—my first cousin 4 times removed, the first member of my family to go to Mexico. After returning to Indiana, for the rest of his life my kinsman was known as "Mexican Bob". Mexican Bob had two cousins also named Robert Wall— a funny cousin known as "Monkey Bob" and a feisty one known as "Spunky Bob". Spunky Bob was my great-great-grandfather.
With the fall of Mexico City in September of 1847, major combat operations were over, although in both Taylor's and Scott's occupation zones, there were continued enemy attacks on U.S. supply convoys—just as in Iraq today.
Why did the American army defeat the Mexican army?
The American army, composed 100% of men who had volunteered, was better trained and better equipped, had its own supply convoys and medical personnel to care for the wounded. The U.S. Army's artillery was a decisive factor— each cannon's crew was overseen by a seasoned NCO known as "chief of the piece." (See illustration here.)
The Mexican army was mostly composed of draftees, had Napoleonic-era weapons, and sometimes left its wounded behind, not a great morale inducer. The classic Mexican history work México Á Través De Los Siglos points out that, though the Mexican soldiers in the rank and file were brave,
"…the mutual confidence between the leaders and officers did not exist, the weaponry was old and defective, the artillery was small and of short range, the cavalry was mostly useless, the movements were slow and heavy, and finally, ambulances and supplies of provisions and everything necessary for the good service of an army on campaign were lacking."(México Á Través De Los Siglos Vicente Riva Palacio, 1880).
Mexico's loss was also due to internal disunity. In the face of the American invasion, Mexico's leaders did not form a government of national unity and work together to defend their country.
Instead, Mexican leaders often seemed more concerned with maneuvering against each other than against the enemy. In December of 1845, with war imminent, General Mariano Paredes was sent north with an army to face off against the Americans. But on the way, he changed his mind and decided instead to return to Mexico City and overthrow the government.
That's how the more hawkish Paredes became president, replacing Jose Joaquin de Herrera, who was willing to compromise on the Texas issue. In August of 1846, Paredes himself was deposed by Mariano Salas. The presidency actually changed hands four times that year and by March of 1847, Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna was in charge of both the government and the military. He resigned after the Mexico City defeat of 1847.
Also during the war, the Mexicans had an internecine dispute about church property, an attempt to install a Spanish monarch, and about 35 uprisings throughout the country. Some Mexican communities didn't support the war effort, and had no qualms about trading with the American enemy. Others were simply indifferent and stayed out of it.
The Yucatan Peninsula, which had been independent from 1841-1843, declared independence again on January 1st, 1846 and announced its neutrality during the Mexican War. But the indigenous Maya revolted against Yucatan's white elite in the "Caste War", which broke out in 1847. The whites were forced to retreat into the walled cities of Merida and Campeche in 1848. After the U.S. withdrew from Mexico, Yucatan's leaders rejoined Mexico. It began a long drawn out reconquest of the Maya territory which didn't end until 1901.
The Mexican War had its contemporary American critics, mostly among the Whig party. Critics of the war included former president John Quincy Adams, John C. Calhoun, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau who spent a night in jail because he refused to pay a $1 tax in protest.
Abraham Lincoln opposed the use of the Thornton Skirmish as justification for the war, although he still voted for funds to supply the U.S. Army in Mexico, and later supported Zachary Taylor's presidential campaign.
Among the 200 junior officers in the war who wound up being generals (Union and Confederate) in the Civil War, was future president Ulysses S. Grant, who at some point in his life decided that the war was evil.
But whatever Lincoln and Grant thought about the Mexican War, as president, neither man offered to give the conquered territories back to Mexico.
When Mexican leaders signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, they were almost out of money and the country was on the verge of a revolution. American troops had defeated the Mexican army, were occupying strategic parts of the country, and negotiator Nicholas Trist made clear that without a transfer of the territories, there would be no treaty. So the Mexican leaders decided to sign the treaty to avoid greater losses. It was signed on February 2nd, 1848 and ratified by both congresses several months later. The U.S. Army withdrew from all the territory it was occupying except the newly-annexed territories.
In the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the U.S. gained nearly all the Southwest,—all of California, Nevada and Utah, and parts of Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. (The area south of the Gila River in the present-day states of Arizona and New Mexico, was purchased from Mexico in the Gadsden Treaty of 1853.)
So the Southwest is part of the U.S. and has been for over 150 years, longer than most present-day national states have been in existence.
Even the Mexican Constitution doesn't claim the Southwest! That's right. The Mexican Constitution, in articles 42—48 [Word Document] spells out the extent of Mexican territory. It mentions Mexican islands, continental shelf, and airspace, Mexico's 31 states and federal district, but it never mentions California, Texas or Arizona.
So take that, you reconquistas!
When reflecting upon the Mexican War, some Americans ask why we didn't just annex the whole country. And there were actually people in favor of that—the "All Mexico" movement. But there were several reasons that didn't happen.
One was America's North-South divide, especially the congressional balance between free states and slave states, with northerners fearing that Mexico would be divided into slave states and thus upset the balance.
But John C. Calhoun and others opposed annexing Mexico for National Question reasons.
In 1848, the U.S. population was about 21 million, and the population of Mexico about 7 million, a third of ours. How well could we have assimilated 7 million Mexicans, with all the racial, cultural, social, nationalistic differences that would have been involved? Annexing Mexico would have changed the character of our nation.
Ironically, today's leaders have no such qualms. Today our leaders apparently see no problem in merging us with Mexico, despite the differences between our societies.
They are merging our countries on several levels. At one level is the mass migration of Mexicans into the U.S. coupled with a multicultural ideology which encourages non-assimilation and retention of their Mexican identity. At another level, inter-governmental agreements are moving us closer to some sort of North American Union.
It's a century and a half after Guadalupe Hidalgo. Who will be the winners in this century?
Will it be the U.S.A., Mexico—or a transnational elite, for whom all the residents of our continent are just interchangeable pieces in a vast market?
The next few years will give us the answer.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.
Jessica Alba talks about the U.S. for Cinco De Mayo
A very interesting book from www.VDare.com about Jessica Alba's opinion of American culture. This follows this post about about Miss Kentucky Latina under indictment and this post about the Tea Party being disparaged in the Fox TV show "The Cult." In the meantime, you can read two very interesting books HERE.
Jessica Alba Has Been Carefully Taught
[Linda Thom]
Jessica Alba clearly learned in California schools that being Native-American is the right thing to be and being European the wrong thing. (See The Fair Jessica Calls Arizona Racist below.) That is what one learns in California schools. That is what my California-educated children were taught but they are smart and Jessica is stupid.
My adult children do not care that they are part Native-American and part European. Personally, I never cared a bit but my Texas aunts and uncles cared. They were not happy about it. South of the border, they care too.
In Mexico and Guatemala, locals deny their indigenous roots because Mixtecs, Queche-speaking Mayans and others are considered to be the lowest of the low. For example, I have been told in Guatemala that they are heathens and burn chickens. I first heard these comments from a man whose face could have been the model for stelas at Tikal among the Mayan ruins.
Mixtecs from Oaxaca, Mexico, make up a large segment of the illegal farm worker population in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Most are illiterate in their own language which might be Trique, Amuzgo, Mixe, and P’urepecha. Most cannot even speak Spanish.
One of my long-time friends is a Mexican-American and a retired Sheriff’s Commander for Santa Barbara County. He told me that he was in the Santa Maria jail in northern Santa Barbara County and he spoke with an illegal alien who was accused (and later convicted of) murdering a Mixtec. My friend told me that the Mexican prisoner could not understand why he was in jail for murdering a Mixtec as “as they are just animals.”
Jessica should be proud of her heritage but she needs to travel to Mexico and Guatemala to find out what the locals thinks of Indigenas.
Jessica Alba Has Been Carefully Taught
[Linda Thom]
Jessica Alba clearly learned in California schools that being Native-American is the right thing to be and being European the wrong thing. (See The Fair Jessica Calls Arizona Racist below.) That is what one learns in California schools. That is what my California-educated children were taught but they are smart and Jessica is stupid.
My adult children do not care that they are part Native-American and part European. Personally, I never cared a bit but my Texas aunts and uncles cared. They were not happy about it. South of the border, they care too.
In Mexico and Guatemala, locals deny their indigenous roots because Mixtecs, Queche-speaking Mayans and others are considered to be the lowest of the low. For example, I have been told in Guatemala that they are heathens and burn chickens. I first heard these comments from a man whose face could have been the model for stelas at Tikal among the Mayan ruins.
Mixtecs from Oaxaca, Mexico, make up a large segment of the illegal farm worker population in Santa Barbara and Ventura counties. Most are illiterate in their own language which might be Trique, Amuzgo, Mixe, and P’urepecha. Most cannot even speak Spanish.
One of my long-time friends is a Mexican-American and a retired Sheriff’s Commander for Santa Barbara County. He told me that he was in the Santa Maria jail in northern Santa Barbara County and he spoke with an illegal alien who was accused (and later convicted of) murdering a Mixtec. My friend told me that the Mexican prisoner could not understand why he was in jail for murdering a Mixtec as “as they are just animals.”
Jessica should be proud of her heritage but she needs to travel to Mexico and Guatemala to find out what the locals thinks of Indigenas.
Wednesday, May 1, 2013
MAY DAY Reading!
Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot
Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot
By opening the ever-escalating debate regarding Latin America's "underdeveloped" status and cloaking the seriousness of the situation with wit and humor, the Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot reached number one status on the nonfiction bestseller lists in many countries in Latin America. It reveals the connection between economic success and cultural values—attitudes toward work, education, health care and community—and the consequence of the Latin American people retaining or evolving these values.
Great book, the Perfect L. Idiot is finally exposed!
By Karen Helweg-Larsen
Format:Hardcover
I was very surprised to finally read a book that doesn't portray Latin America as a "victim" of the US or the Old World. I think these three authors intelligently challenge the populist ideologies and myths of the left and the right that have made so much damage all over the spanish speaking countries south of the USA. Having met many "perfect latin american idiots" in the past, I can see now why they are so enraged with the succes of this book. They are perfectly described and they don't look pretty. For anyone else, this book offers a fresh, sharp insight in to Latin American issues that until recently were considered property of marxist and nationalist leaning intellectuals. These writers are shooting straight to the heart and they make no apologies.
This is an excellent book that examines the causes of Latin America's political and economical troubles from a libertarian point of view, debunking the old prejudices spread by the leftists - the idiots! - about that part of the world, which are still dominant in the mainstream media. Usually, Latin America is presented as a land where free enterprise and private property clearly failed the challenge of development, state interventionism (or socialism...) being depicted as the unique possible choice to solve and fight the continent's poverty. The authors sucessfully demonstrate the complete wrongness of this perspective: Latin America's problem is not a lack of state interventionism, but an excess of it, the historical existence of a centralist tradition suspicious about real liberalism (in the european tradition of the word) and freedom of enterprise, giving her preference to the creation of heavy bureaucratic systems and gigantic conglomerates of ineffective public companies, usually managed without any kind of economic rationality, only obeying to unclear and not well defined political criterions, Cuba being the main paradigm of the bad consequences of this model (the chapter about Fidel's island is simply superb). As I said initially, this is a fine book and the only reason I don't rate it with five stars is the following one: even the authors, in minor points, are not completely free of leftist idiocy, especially when they speak about extra Latin America realities...
I don't think anyone contends the US is innocent of many evils in Latin America. Everyone knows that we have done some bad stuff there. However, using that as the sole explanation for why the region continues underdeveloped is out of touch with reality. I get that sort of thing from professors in my Latin American studies grad program all the time and it rings hollow when one knows some of the counterfactual evidence in existense. This book does a good job of bringing that out. The only problem is that there are some factual accuracies. Example-- the authors ID 1977 as the year Archbishop Romero was killed in El Salvador. This is false. It was 1981, and they probably meant to refer to the 1976 assassination of Romero's friend Rutilio Grande. Little veting errors like this one are not too big a deal, though. The overall point that the US is not the only one to blame for Latin America's problems rings loud and clear. Ths authors do a sound job of making their case based on myriad historical examples which are well-documented and often selectively ignored by many aficionados of Latin American history who prefer to see the region as victims of Yankee aggression.
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