Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
University of California Institute for Mexico and the United States
“In the Name of Civilization and with a Bible in Their Hands:” Religion and the 1846–48
Mexican-American War
Author(s): Peter Guardino
Source: Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer 2014), pp. 342-365
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the University of California Institute for
Mexico and the United States and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
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‘‘In the Name of Civilization and with a Bible
in Their Hands:’’ Religion and the 1846–48
Mexican-American War
Peter Guardino*
Indiana University
Religion was crucial to how Americans and Mexicans saw their enemies and
motivated themselves to contribute to the 1846–1848 war. The very strength
of religious attitudes made controlling their effects difficult. Some U.S. troops
attacked Mexican Catholicism, inspiring Mexican resistance. Conversely,
Mexican authorities sometimes sought to limit religiously inspired resistance. Furthermore, at a key moment some Mexicans felt their religious
concerns required them to violently oppose their own government. Mexican
negotiators gained protections for Catholics in the territory transferred by
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, but anti-Catholic politicians in the U.S.
Senate eliminated these protections before ratifying the treaty.
*Acknowledgments: The author developed some of the arguments made about
the Mexican clergy in this article in the context of the seminar ‘‘¿Secularización y
modernización del Estado mexicano? Religiosidad, clero, y nación en México a partir
de las Reformas Borbónicas’’ led by Brian Connaughton at the Colegio de San Luis in
2008. A chapter presenting those arguments appeared in 2010 as ‘‘La iglesia mexicana y
la guerra con Estados Unidos’’ in Dios, religión, y patria: Intereses, luchas e ideales
sociorelgiosos en México, siglos xviii y xix, edited by Brian Connaughton and Carlos
Rubén Ruiz Medrano and published by the Colegio de San Luis. The author is grateful
to Connaughton, Ruiz Medrano, and the other seminar participants for their intellectual support. Later the author researched and developed the analysis of American
religious strife, sentiment, and politics during the period. This led to the elaboration
of the more complete comparative arguments seen here, and versions of those
comparative arguments were presented to groups of colleagues at the University of
Chicago in 2010 and Vanderbilt University in 2011. The author is very grateful to the
colleagues who attended those presentations for the comments they offered on those
occasions. He is also grateful for the comments of Jason McGraw and the two anonymous reviewers who read the article for Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos.
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos Vol. 30, Issue 2, Summer 2014, pages 342–365. issn 07429797, electronic issn 1533-8320. ©2014 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights
reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content
through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.
ucpressjournals.com/reprint.info.asp. DOI: 10.1525/msem.2014.30.2.342.
342
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Guardino, Religion and the 1846–48 Mexican-American War
343
La religión constituyó un factor crucial en la manera de concebir al enemigo y
de animarse a participar en la guerra de 1846–1848 entre estadounidenses y
mexicanos. La misma fuerza de las actitudes religiosas dificultaba el control
de sus efectos. Algunas tropas estadounidenses atacaban el catolicismo mexicano e inspiraban ası́ la resistencia. A su vez, las autoridades mexicanas
a veces buscaban limitar la resistencia inspirada por la religión. Además, en
un momento clave, algunos mexicanos sintieron que sus preocupaciones
religiosas les exigı́an oponerse violentamente a su propio gobierno. Los
negociadores mexicanos obtuvieron protección para los católicos en el territorio transferido mediante el Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo, pero los
polı́ticos anticatólicos del Senado de Estados Unidos suprimieron esta
protección antes de ratificar el tratado.
Key words: Mexican War, religion, expansionism, Manifest Destiny, religious
tolerance, nativism, anti-Catholicism, Catholic Church, nationalism, sacrilege, Polkos Rebellion, church-state conflict.
Palabras clave: La Invasión Norteamericana, religión, expansionismo,
Destino Manifiesto, tolerancia religiosa, nativismo, anticatolicismo, Iglesia
católica, nacionalismo, sacrilegio, Rebelión de los Polkos, conflicto IglesiaEstado.
Observers of the 1846–1848 war between the United States and
Mexico often imagined it as a conflict between a backward, traditional
Mexico and a rapidly modernizing United States; however, it is
important to avoid the temptation to see Mexico as a religious society
and the United States as a more modern, secular one. Many Mexicans
and Americans believed their countries had religious destinies, and
their religious beliefs were important to their identities as citizens of
nations. Participants on both sides of the war saw their opponents as
religious Others, and thus religion shaped their experiences during
the conflict.
This article argues that examining religion in both countries can
help bring the war into better focus. The Polk Administration was
determined to expand the United States to the Pacific Ocean, and
many Americans supported expansionism because they felt that new
territories would increase their economic opportunities. They were
quite aware, however, that expansion came at the expense of Mexicans. Justifying expansionism was only possible if Americans could
cast Mexicans as inferior and unworthy of holding those territories.
Mexicans’ Catholicism was crucial to the ways in which Americans
justified their aggression, and in this way religion made the war possible. Religion was also crucial to how soldiers and civilians on both
sides saw their enemies and motivated themselves to contribute their
blood or treasure to the struggle. As potent as religious motivation
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was, at times, religious feelings undercut the war efforts of both
countries. The very strength of religious attitudes made controlling
their effects difficult. The attacks some US troops made on Mexican
Catholicism hampered the American war effort by inspiring Mexican
resistance. It is unlikely that a Mexican political system plagued by
political instability and fiscal weakness could have fielded army after
army and prolonged centrally organized resistance for more than
sixteen months without winning a single battlefield victory if politicians had not been able to argue plausibly that domination by the
United States threatened Catholicism itself. Conversely, Mexican
authorities sometimes sought to reign in religiously inspired resistance. At a key moment in the war, some Mexicans felt their religious
concerns required them to violently oppose their own government.
Finally, religion also figured into the negotiations that ended the war.
Considering the role of religion in both countries helps us understand national identity. National governments and political leaders in
both nascent countries worked hard to make this a war about what it
meant to be a Mexican and what it meant to be an American. In both
countries, many people believed that religion was an essential part of
their national identity and the national identity of their enemies. The
religious differences between Mexico and the United States were
critical to the way in which Mexicans saw Americans and vice versa.
Moreover, when Americans wrote about Catholic Mexico, they were
simultaneously making arguments about the Protestant nature of the
United States, and when Mexicans wrote about the Protestant United
States, they were simultaneously making arguments about the Catholic nature of Mexico. The only group in either country that systematically critiqued this binary opposition consisted of American
Catholics. Ironically, American Catholic leaders supported the war
in order to argue for a more secular version of American nationalism,
one in which they could fully participate.
The first part of this article explores some of the myriad ways in
which religion shaped how various Americans and Mexicans understood and experienced the war. It begins with background on how
religious and social changes in the United States shaped American
expansionism and how Americans saw Mexico. Then it analyzes the
attitudes of both kinds of troops that the United States sent to the
war. After that, it turns to how Catholicism shaped Mexicans’ ideas
about their national identity and the way Mexicans interpreted the
conflict with the United States.
Religious beliefs were important in motivating and justifying
American expansionism. Most Americans saw Protestantism as essential to American republicanism and successful Anglo-Saxon civilization,
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Guardino, Religion and the 1846–48 Mexican-American War
345
and this sense of religion’s importance was increasing, not decreasing.
By the 1840s two recent developments had reinvigorated the feeling
that the unique character and expansionist destiny of the United
States were tied to Protestantism. The first was the Second Great
Awakening, a surge of evangelical fervor that swept much of the
nation beginning in 1800. The second was a dramatic increase in
anti-Catholic sentiment, which, although it owed something to the
Second Great Awakening, was driven mostly by the suddenly larger
and more visible presence of Catholic immigrants in US cities.1
In the Second Great Awakening, waves of Protestant revivals and
camp meetings swept different regions. Meetings were often occasions of great emotional power, as people sought to remake their
relationship with God and, to a lesser extent, with each other. Historians have written about how this fervor fed antebellum reform movements, including abolitionism. The Second Great Awakening also
revived an almost millenarian belief that America had a uniquely
Protestant and republican destiny, one that fed directly into the
expansionism of the 1840s.2
The Second Great Awakening was intimately related to the second development that reinvigorated the ties between US expansionism and Protestantism. American culture had inherited anti-Catholic
attitudes from its English forebear, but anti-Catholicism was surprisingly muted in the new republic until large numbers of relatively
impoverished Catholic Irish and German immigrants arrived in the
1830s and 1840s. These new immigrants were seen as racial Others,
subject to vicious attack in the media, and their Catholicism was
crucial to this characterization.3
Before this wave of immigrants, Protestant clergy attacked
Catholicism in theological tracts with relatively limited readership.
1. John Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest: Anti-Catholicism, Manifest Destiny,
and the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846–48’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Tennessee, Knoxville,
2002), 151.
2. Anders Stephanson, Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of
the Right (New York: Hill and Wang, 1995), 5; Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God
Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2007), 285–286.
3. John Dichtl, Frontiers of Faith: Bringing Catholicism to the West in the Early
Republic (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 2008), 170–171; Howe, What Hath
God Wrought, 320. The literature on nativism and race is, of course, vast. See, at
a minimum, Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York: Routledge, 1996);
David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American
Working Class (London: Verso, 1991); and Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the
White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America
(London: Verso, 1990).
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As nativism gathered steam, however, anti-Catholicism became popularized. Authors and journalists published dozens of sensationalist
articles and books about Jesuit designs on the US republic, greedy
priests and bishops, and, above all, unnatural sexual relationships in
convents and monasteries. The most famous tale was that of Maria
Monk, a woman who claimed to have been sexually exploited in
a Montreal convent. This widely believed tale sold more than
300,000 copies and was the best-selling American book before the
publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.4
This anti-Catholicism was intimately linked with nativism. The
arrival of thousands of Catholic Irish and German immigrants further
unsettled a society already in flux because of the market revolution
and rapid urbanization. In a Jacksonian America taken with the idea
that all white men were equal, many Americans simply did not see the
immigrants as white. The immigrants’ Catholicism was the most
important component of their non-white racial identity. Nativists
argued that Catholics were barbaric, superstitious, and subject to the
dictates of the Pope. They represented not simply an underclass, but
a threat to American democracy. Samuel Morse wrote popular antiCatholic tracts arguing that Catholics were conspiring against civil
and religious liberty. It was Lyman Beecher, however, one of the most
prominent preachers of the Second Great Awakening, who most fully
elaborated the connection between American expansion and antiCatholicism. In a best-selling tract, Beecher argued that America’s
destiny to populate the continent was being hindered by hordes of
Catholic immigrants who were bent on destroying free American institutions by establishing their own schools and convents in the West.
European Catholic priests were sending ‘‘swarm upon swarm upon
our shores.’’ Beecher believed that this immigration was part of a Papal
plot to dominate North America. Catholics were dangerous to democracy because they would vote as their priests demanded they vote.5
Thousands of Americans read anti-Catholic, nativist literature,
but they did not merely read. The United States experienced a series
4. John Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 14; Maria Monk, Awful Disclosures of
Maria Monk; as Exhibited in a Narrative of her Sufferings during a Residence of Five
Years as a Novice . . . (New York: Howe and Bates, 1836); Jennie Franchot, Roads to
Rome: The Antebellum Protestant Encounter with Catholicism (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994), 154–161.
5. Quote from Lyman Beecher, A Plea for the West, 2nd Ed. (Cincinnati: Truman
and Smith, 1835), 162. Franchot, Roads to Rome, 100, 109; Beecher, A Plea for the
West, 59; Brutus [(Samuel Morse], Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the
United States: The Numbers of Brutus, Originally Published in the New York Observer
(New York: Leavitt, Lord, 1835), 25–94; Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 16–17.
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Guardino, Religion and the 1846–48 Mexican-American War
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of anti-Catholic riots, from the 1834 mob burning of a Massachusetts
convent to the 1844 riots in Philadelphia that left more than thirty
people dead. Untangling nativism from anti-Catholicism in these riots
is generally impossible. Many Americans believed that immigrants
were ignorant, lazy, and barbaric because they were Catholic, and
they believed that Catholicism was evil because it held people in the
thrall of a religion that was emotional rather than logical and a religion in which obedience to hierarchical authority was central to religiosity. Immigrants were unfit to become true American citizens
because they were Catholic. Beecher, for instance, argued that the
political doctrines and practice of the Catholic church had always
been ‘‘hostile to civil and religious liberty.’’6
Nativists viewed the struggle against Catholicism as crucial to the
preservation and furthering of American liberty. As John Pinheiro
explains, ‘‘all nativists and anti-Catholics believed that a strong republic guaranteeing civil and religious liberty could only be built upon
a Biblical foundation.’’ Thus, it is not surprising that the Philadelphia
riots stemmed from the efforts of nativists to ensure that only the
King James version of the Bible be used in public schools. Nativists
were trying to minimize the influence of Catholicism in public life,
and Beecher himself had argued that the battle for America would
take place in education.7
The Texas Revolution occurred almost simultaneously with the
surge in American nativism and anti-Catholicism. Not surprisingly, its
advocates argued that Mexico’s Catholicism was the root of the Texas
Revolution. This rhetoric became more heated in subsequent years as
the issue of Texas annexation advanced. Advocates of annexation
denigrated Mexicans in the same terms they used for Catholics and
immigrants. Mexico’s Catholicism and the way it was antithetical to
liberty and progress dominated American writing about Mexico from
the 1830s to the Mexican War. Even William Prescott, the popular
American author who was least critical of Catholicism, argued that it
lacked substance and was designed to appeal to the senses rather
than reason. Waddy Thompson, former American minister to Mexico,
wrote in an influential book published just before the war that
Catholicism, with its rituals, was dominated by ‘‘mummeries.’’8
6. Quote from Beecher, A Plea for the West, 92; Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 14–15; Stephanson, Manifest Destiny, 25.
7. Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 50.
8. Waddy Thompson, Recollections of Mexico (New York: Wiley and Putnam,
1846), 110; Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 30–40.
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Reginald Horsman has argued eloquently that racism was essential to Manifest Destiny’s assertion of superior American right and
that a key part of this racism was the construction of the United
States as an Anglo-Saxon civilization. The notion of Mexican inferiority was based not solely on indigenous or African or even Spanish
biological ancestry, but also on Mexicans’ adherence to Catholicism.
Many Americans saw Catholicism as the principal obstacle to liberty
and progress in Mexico, and they believed that if Catholicism were
allowed to dominate the West, it would also threaten liberty and
progress in the United States. Moreover, spreading Protestantism
from sea to shining sea was part of Manifest Destiny because Protestantism was essential to liberty and republican institutions. Thus,
many anti-Catholic Protestant ministers argued that one of the
Mexican War’s positive effects would be to spread Protestantism
to Mexico. Some took active steps to this end, giving Spanishlanguage Protestant Bibles to volunteer troops bound for Mexico.
For these men, the war would be an opportunity to redeem Mexico
religiously.9
The United States sent two very different kinds of soldiers to the
Mexican War, and the difference between them was important to how
these soldiers understood the war and how Mexican civilians experienced it. After the war began, the US government issued a call for
volunteer units. Politicians and other notables recruited companies
of soldiers in their localities, and these companies were then organized into state regiments. These men served with their peers from
their home towns and regions, and they elected their own officers.10
Many volunteers only witnessed Catholic practices for the first
time after their arrival in Mexico, but they were already fully equipped
with the anti-Catholic attitudes that were so prevalent in the United
States. They saw Catholic beliefs about the Eucharist and the veneration of images as evidence of un-Christian superstitions. They were
alienated by the open gestures of respect and religious fervor that
they saw in processions, and some believed that such devotion had to
be feigned. For instance, Lieutenant W. E. Blackburn of Kentucky
wrote the following in a letter home:
9. Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American
Racial Anglo-Saxonism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1981); Pinheiro,
‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 92, 101–104.
10. James McCaffrey, ed., Surrounded by Dangers of All Kinds: the Mexican War
Letters of Lieutenant Theodore Laidley (Denton: University of North Texas Press,
1997), 13; Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 130–131.
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Guardino, Religion and the 1846–48 Mexican-American War
349
I was at church yesterday in Matamoros, it was a great day with the Catholics,
such ringing of bells and firing of guns you never heard. Their ceremonies are
characterized by the greatest superstition. It was a singular scene to see hundreds of men and women kneeling with strange gestures & mock gravity.11
Many volunteers believed that these religious practices approached
primitive idolatry. They felt that these superstitions helped the clergy
deceive the people, enriching the clerics and contributing to Mexico’s economic backwardness. Many argued that Mexico was a pagan
or ‘‘heathenish’’ country.12
Popular anti-Catholicism in the United States stressed the ways in
which Catholic ceremonies and Catholic spaces sought to impress
the senses rather than the logical mind. Volunteers who signed up
to go to Mexico were primed by American travel accounts about
Mexico and Prescott’s historical writings to expect churches full of
gold and silver devotional objects. These objects surely could be
liberated from their owners—after all, the religion they served was
a set of superstitions and, moreover, a set of superstitions that threatened the American way of life. Recruiters offered potential volunteers
the possibility of plundering Mexican churches, an opportunity that
they summarized with the phrase ‘‘Golden Jesuses.’’13 Samuel Chamberlain, attempting to win election as an officer of an Illinois volunteer
unit, offered the men ‘‘the Golden Jesus’s of Mexico.’’14 Kentucky
volunteer George McCormic promised to bring his sweetheart a ‘‘little
Gold God and silver Jesus’’ from Mexico, and she, in turn, vowed to
marry him.15 Volunteers, to the tune of Yankee Doodle, sang:
We’re the boys for Mexico
Sing Yankee Doodle Dandy
Gold and silver images,
Plentiful and handy.
Churches grand, with altars rich
Saints with diamond collars
11. Lt. W. E. Blackburn to Mrs. Henrietta Blackburn, June 11, 1846, Blackburn
Family Papers (Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky).
12. Ferdinand Van Derveer to John Gano, October 2, 1847, Gano Family Papers,
Mss qG198P RM Folder I 22 (Cincinnati Historical Society Library, Cincinnati, Ohio).
[Au: See note 21—should they both refer to the Cincinnati Historical Society Library?
or are these two different institutions? ce]
13. National Intelligencer, June 17, 1847.
14. Samuel Chamberlain, My Confession: Recollections of a Rogue (Austin: Texas
State Historical Association, 1996), 50.
15. C. M. Lillard to John Lillard, February 2, 1847, Lillard Family Papers (Filson
Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky).
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(That’s the talk to understand,)
With lots of new bright dollars.16
Not only did volunteers fantasize about plundering Mexican
churches, but also they fulfilled their fantasies. Volunteers stripped
many churches of their ornaments and religious utensils.17 Volunteers also deliberately engaged in other outrages against Catholicism.
Then, as now, Mexicans used crosses to mark places where people
had died, and volunteers used these crosses for target practice.
Volunteers also disrupted masses and religious processions, tore
crosses out of churches and dragged them through the streets, and
robbed priests and stripped them of their robes.18 In March 1848,
a volunteer unit pursuing Mexican guerrillas looted and burned the
village of Zacualtipan in central Mexico. They devoted great attention
to the village church, destroying the tabernacle and defecating in the
church, breaking the statues, emptying vessels of chrism and holy oils
onto the floor, stealing all of the chalices and other religious utensils,
and stabling their horses in the church overnight.19 These actions
were clearly informed by an already existing disdain for Mexican
religious beliefs. If venerating a sacred image or the Eucharist held
in a chalice was idolatry, why not make those objects more useful?
If one could not find a Golden Jesus, why not take a chalice? In fact,
anti-Catholic ministers and editorialists in the United States had written that eliminating Catholicism would help Mexicans. Destroying
these objects of superstition could be seen as part of this reformist
effort. One volunteer wrote to a cousin that he wished he could strip
Mexican churches:
. . . bring off this treasure hoard of gold silver and jewels, and to put the
greasy priests, monks, friars and other officials to work on the public highways as a preliminary step to mending their ways . . . It is perfectly certain that
this war is a divine dispensation intended to purify and punish this misguided nation.’’20
Certainly not every volunteer who stole from a Church or mocked
Catholic ceremonies saw his actions as an effort to reform Mexican
culture, but an anti-Catholic version of Manifest Destiny clearly
16. Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 142–143; see also 135–141; Paul Foos,
A Short, Offhand Killing Affair: Soldiers and Social Conflict during the MexicanAmerican War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 128.
17. Foos, Short, Offhand Killing Affair, 130–131.
18. Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 164, 200–208.
19. Archivo General de la Nación (Mexico), Justicia y Negocios Eclesiásticos, vol.
154, folio 264.
20. Cited in Foos, Short, Offhand Killing Affair, 128.
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Guardino, Religion and the 1846–48 Mexican-American War
351
shaped and justified the volunteers’ behavior. They identified American civilization with Protestantism and denied the legitimacy of Catholic beliefs. From there, it was a short step indeed to acts that
Mexicans considered sacrilege. There was nothing random about
these attacks, and they served no military purpose at all. American
volunteers repeatedly demonstrated in very physical ways the importance of American anti-Catholicism in shaping their experience of the
war.
The volunteers were not the only soldiers in the American army.
Before the war, the United States had a small regular army. The social
origins of these soldiers and their attitudes toward Catholicism were
very different from those of the volunteers. The regular army recruited its rank and file soldiers in American cities, looking for men
willing to pledge five years of service in exchange for a modest wage,
a clothing allowance, and room and board. The men who signed up
for this deal were those who had a difficult time moving ahead or
even surviving in the rough and tumble world of the market revolution. They hailed from the urban poor, and at least 40 percent of
them were recent immigrants, generally Catholics from Ireland and
Germany. Most Americans despised regular army soldiers. They
believed that the regular army was a refuge for those too lazy, drunk,
violent, and profligate to prosper, and soldiers in uniform often faced
jeering crowds.21
Regular Army officers often agreed quite fully with the nativist
and anti-Catholic sentiments of the time and treated immigrant soldiers more harshly than they did the native born. They saw their
Irish and German soldiers as, in fact, little better than Mexicans.
Immigrant soldiers complained that officers tried to coerce their
men into attending Protestant services where preachers denounced
Catholicism. Faced with such pressure, one Irish soldier replied that
it would be a sin to go and ‘‘hear a swaddling preacher mocking the
holy religion.’’ This religious division in the regular army shaped its
experiences in Mexico. Catholic soldiers quite regularly sought out
opportunities to attend Mexican church services, and, despite their
21. Francis Prucha, The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the
Frontier, 1783–1846 (London: Collier-Macmillan Ltd., 1969), 320–326; Paul Foos,
‘‘Mexican Wars: Soldiers and Society in an Age of Expansion’’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1997), 177; George Ballentine, Autobiography of an English Soldier in the
United States Army (Chicago: Lakeside Press, 1986), 34–35; C. M. Reeves, ‘‘Five Years
Experience in the Regular Army of the United States, including the War with Mexico,’’
manuscript, n.d. (Cincinnati Historical Society Library, Cincinnati, Ohio).
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reputation in the United States as ruffians, regular soldiers generally
behaved much better toward the civilian population of Mexico.22
Religion was important in the most striking episode that the
regular army experienced during the war. Catholic immigrant soldiers faced a situation with unusual problems and possibilities when
they entered Mexican territory. Their Protestant officers treated them
with extreme severity, trying to mold an army that would hold up
under the strains of battle. Simultaneously, the Mexican government
flooded their camps with leaflets arguing that the invasion was unjust
and anti-Catholic. It offered deserters land and other economic
opportunities. Soldiers who also agreed to join the Mexican army
were offered higher pay and the chance to advance in rank. The vast
majority of regulars who deserted during the war sought to become
civilians, either in Mexico or the United States, but a significant
minority took up arms for the Mexican cause, forming a unit that
came to be called the St. Patrick’s Battalion. This unit fought in several of the bloodiest battles of the war and acquitted itself well.
Knowing to what degree these men were motivated by religion is
difficult. Different historians and contemporaries also cite the harsh
discipline of the American army, the excesses of nativist officers, economic inducements, and Irish nationalism. Religion was clearly part
of this equation, however. Although the various appeals Mexican
officials made to induce desertion from the US army only sometimes
mentioned religious motivation, Mexican press descriptions of the
Saint Patrick’s soldiers and other potential deserters often emphasized their Catholicism.23
Mexican interpretations of the Saint Patrick’s soldiers were a manifestation of a general belief that Catholicism was crucial to Mexico’s
22. Quote from Ballentine, Autobiography of an English Soldier, 44. See also
332–333 and the testimony of deserter Colin Dangale in Archivo de Defensa Nacional
(hereafter ADN), Exp. 2699, folio 11, México City.
23. Peter Stevens, The Rogue’s March: John Riley and the St. Patrick’s Battalion
1846–1848 (Washington, DC: Brassey’s, 1999), 107; Jorge Belarmino, Cuestión de
sangre (Mexico: Planeta, 2008); Michael Hogan, The Irish Soldiers of Mexico (Guadalajara: Fondo Editorial Universitario, 1997); Robert R. Miller, Shamrock and Sword:
The Saint Patrick’s Battalion in the U.S. Mexican War (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1989); Robert R. Miller, ‘‘Los San Patricios en la guerra de 1847,’’ Historia
Mexicana 47 (October–December 1997), 345–385; Dennis Wynn, The San Patricio
Soldiers: Mexico’s Foreign Legion (El Paso: Texas Western Press, 1984). For an appeal
soliciting desertion that mentions religion, see Gen. Pedro Ampudia’s proclamation of
September 15, 1846, in ADN, Exp. 2250, folio 18. For others, see Gen. Juan Alvarez’s
undated proclamation in ADN, Exp. 2505, folio 86. For a typical depiction of the San
Patricios in the Mexican press, see Alcance al Diario del Gobierno de la República
Mexicana, September 10, 1847.
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identity. Many Mexicans had a strong sense that their national purpose was to fulfill a particular religious destiny. This idea had deep
roots in the early colonial period. Evangelizing friars believed that
they had been called to expand the reign of God by converting indigenous people to Catholicism and restoring the ideals of the primitive
Church. Much more recently, Mexico’s war of independence had
been initiated by Catholic priests who argued vociferously that one
of their purposes was to preserve a pure Catholicism threatened by
religious, ideological, and political developments in Europe. Independence leaders Miguel Hidalgo and José Marı́a Morelos, both
priests, insisted that Mexicans were more religious than the people
of Spain, and this, in the words of Brian Connaughton, ‘‘bestowed on
their political movement, and eventual independence, a transcendent
mission.’’ The religious interpretation of Mexican identity became
more popular after Mexico became independent in 1821. Dozens
of writers and politicians, both religious and secular, argued that
Catholicism was inseparable from Mexicanness. Some went so far
as to say, echoing the millenarian preoccupations of the sixteenthcentury friars, that Mexico was fated to regenerate man morally in the
New World, providing an example to redeem a decadent and materialist Europe.24
Most Mexicans believed that Catholicism was essential to Mexico’s national identity. Mexican constitutions enshrined Catholicism
as the official religion, and religious metaphors abounded in politics.
Prayer was a key part of every civic ceremony, and public officials
worked with religious authorities to arrange for special prayers during droughts, epidemics, and wars. To many Mexicans, one of the
most important functions of government was to establish conditions
that would allow the Catholic Church to assure the eternal salvation
of souls. Laws prohibited other religions and required immigrants,
including American immigrants to Texas, to convert to Catholicism.25
Many Mexicans saw the United States with its plethora of denominations as an example of the worst kind. Religious tolerance and
liberty of conscience were not bringing Americans closer to God but
instead leading them away from God and putting their souls at risk.
How could Americans, surrounded by diverse and sometimes bizarre
24. Quote from Brian Connaughton, ‘‘Conjuring the Body Politic from the Corpus
Mysticum: The Post-Independent Pursuit of Public Opinion in Mexico 1821–1854,’’
The Americas 55 (January 1999), 464, see also 462–473; and Osvaldo Pardo, The
Origins of Mexican Catholicism (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).
25. Peter Guardino, The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca,
1750–1850 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), 159–160.
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religious creeds, find the one true way to the Divine? As one Mexican
author put it, ‘‘without a guide, without hope for the future, the heart
cannot find the stopping point among the innumerable sects that
teach pretending to know the way to worship Divinity.’’26
Catholicism was a central theme in the efforts of politicians and
intellectuals to inspire resistance to the American invasion. Literate
Mexicans were well aware of anti-Catholic riots and the toxic antiCatholic press in the United States. Moreover, the Mexican press
widely publicized the many acts of violent sacrilege committed by
American volunteer soldiers during the war. Hypocrisy was a major
theme. One editorial called American troops ‘‘bandits, who in the
name of civilization and with a Bible in their hands, dig the grave
of humanity.’’27
Most calls to resistance combined three threads of argument:
They appealed to a relatively general form of patriotism, often by
invoking the memory of independence war heroes. They called on
Mexicans to defend the honor and bodies of their wives and daughters. And, most importantly for this article, they stressed the need to
protect Catholicism and its sacred objects from the rapacity and impiety of American soldiers. Dozens of documents combined these last
two elements, including an April 1847 proclamation of the Zacatecas
town council, which speaks of Americans ‘‘destroying, occupying and
burning our cities, trampling on our altars, stealing our property, and
sacrificing to his brutal customs our chaste maidens, our faithful
wives.’’28 Even nuns would not be safe from rape. Leaders repeatedly
26. Boletı́n Oficial del Gobierno de San Luis Potosı́, May 9, 1846. See also Contestación del Illmo. Sr. Vicario Capitular del Arzobispado a la Circular de 19 Mayo
del ministerio de Justicia, suscrita por El. Sr. D. Luis de la Rosa (Mexico: Imprenta del
Católico dirigida por Mariano Arevalo, 1847). Flor de Marı́a Salazar Mendoza and
Sergio Cañedo Gamboa point out the fierce determination of the Mexican clergy to
maintain Catholicism as the only religion in Mexico in ‘‘El discurso de la unidad del
clero potosino frente a la Invasión Norteamericana: Patriotas y defensores irrestrictos
de la religión católica, 1846–1847,’’ in Brian Connaughton and Carlos Rubén Ruiz
Medrano, eds., Dios, religión, y patria: Intereses, luchas e ideales sociorelgiosos en
México, siglos xviii y xix (San Luis Potosı́: El Colegio de San Luis, 2010), 212.
27. Boletı́n Oficial del Gobierno de San Luis Potosı́, April 11, 1846.
28. This quote is from Archivo Histórico del Estado de San Luis Potosı́ (hereafter
AHESLP), Secretarı́a General del Gobierno, Impresos, 1847, Vol. 3, exp. 18. See also
Vol. 19; La E´poca, Periódico Oficial de San Luis Potosı́, March 16, 1847, April 6, 1847,
April 15, 1847, May 6, 1847, and May 8, 1847; Sergio Cañedo Gamboa, Los festejos
septembrinos en San Luis Potosı́. Protocolo, discurso y transformaciones, 1824–1847
(San Luis Potosı́: El Colegio de San Luis, 2001), 150; A las armas ciudadanos, que el
enemigo se acerca (San Luis Potosı́: Imprenta de M. Escontrı́a, 1847); AHESLP,
Secretarı́a General del Gobierno, Impresos, 1847, Vol. 3, exp. 28; Salazar Mendoza and
Cañedo Gamboa, ‘‘El discurso de la unidad,’’ 212, 220, 226–230.
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criticized the conduct of American troops. A National Guard commander cited ‘‘their depraved conduct, immoral and irreligious conduct, seen as they profane churches and use in a savage way the
sacred vessels in which our priests consume the mysteries of our Holy
Religion.’’29 Religious authorities argued that in occupied territory
Catholic ceremonies would have to be hidden to avoid confrontations with anti-Catholic American troops. This would limit the availability of the sacraments needed to assure access to eternal life. An
1847 pamphlet explained that the Americans would turn churches
into barracks, steal chalices and vestments to use for impure purposes, expel monks and nuns from convents, and impose religious
tolerance.30 To Mexicans, these kinds of acts were not mere signs of
disrespect. They would have lasting consequences because they
endangered Mexicans’ access to eternal life.
Many Mexicans interpreted the military successes of the United
States as a divine test or a divine punishment. President Antonio
López de Santa Anna, for instance, commented that ‘‘Divine Providence, which rules the destinies of nations, has given Mexico a difficult test.’’31 For some Mexicans, the war, more than a test, was
a punishment for Mexico’s sins. This idea was expressed more forcefully when American armies were nearing the center of the country.
Of course, this punishment need not be lethal. God certainly would
help Mexico owing to the justice of its cause. Defeats had to be seen,
according to an anonymous resident of Puebla, as ‘‘the healthy punishment of a father to his child and a proof of God’s love.’’ The
punishment was designed to reform the country, not to destroy it.32
What could Mexicans faced with American military successes do?
For the pious, both civilians and soldiers, one obvious response was
prayer. Sometimes governments asked church authorities to lead
public ceremonies and sometimes the clergy itself initiated efforts.
These ceremonies included the litany of the saints, novenas, rosaries,
masses, and processions. Mexicans took sacred images out in procession and said masses for the souls of fallen soldiers. These were all
public rites. Their religious purpose was to awaken God’s mercy,
convincing Him to intervene in the war as ‘‘the God of Battles,’’ an
often-invoked phrase, or to grant eternal life to the dead, even if they
29. La E´poca, Periódico Oficial de San Luis Potosı́, January 12, 1847.
30. AHESLP, Secretarı́a General del Gobierno, Impresos, 1847, Vol. 1, exp. 1.
31. AHESLP, Secretarı́a General del Gobierno, 1846, Vol. 14, exp. 22. See also Vol.
5, exp. 28.
32. Quote from AGN, Justicia y Negocios Eclesiásticos, Vol. 160, folio 77. See also
Vol. 160, folio 53; AHESLP, SGG Impresos, 1847, Vol. 3, exp. 28.
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had died in the violence of battle without the opportunity to confess
their sins. Yet, as public ceremonies, these acts also served to construct and reinforce the Christian solidarity of a nation in danger and
to underline the differences between Catholic Mexico and its impious
Protestant neighbor.33
Both secular authorities and the clergy recognized the importance of the pulpit in forming Mexican opinion. Thus, politicians sent
letters to religious authorities asking them to encourage resistance,
and the latter responded with great enthusiasm. In October 1846,
Governor Manuel José Othón of San Luis Potosı́ explained to parish
priests that the American invasion imperiled both national independence and Catholicism, and he asked them to use their pulpits to
exhort the faithful. Many priests responded that they had already
begun preaching resistance, but they would renew their efforts.
A typical response was that of Father Anastacio Escalante of Rı́o Verde,
who wrote
Considering the imminent danger in which are found our nationality and the
religion that we profess . . . I cannot but fulfill my duties as a minister . . . and
as a citizen. . . . I will urge them to defend with ardor the very holy maxims of
the only saving doctrine of the crucified, and the sacred rights of the great
Mexican family.34
For priests, who believed that Catholicism was the only path leading
to the salvation of souls, stopping the invasion was a way to protect
Mexicans’ chances of attaining eternal life. The war was not purely
political; it was eminently religious.
The previous paragraphs showed how religious identity shaped
the ways in which many people on both sides saw the war and how it
could inspire both conquest and resistance. The next part of the
article reveals how the emotional power of religion sometimes hampered the efforts of the US and Mexican governments to fight the war
effectively. In both countries, religion was important in internal debates during the war. Finally, the article concludes with an examination of how religion shaped critical debates about how the war
should end.
The strength of religious attitudes may have contributed to
successful efforts to mobilize Americans for war, but it was not an
33. For a use of the phrase ‘‘God of Battles’’ by an American volunteer soldier,
see Allan Peskin, ed., Volunteers: The Mexican War Journals of Private Richard
Coulter and Sergeant Thomas Barclay (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1991),
162. AHESLP, Secretarı́a General del Gobierno, 1846, Vol. 5, exp. 28; AGN, Justicia y
Negocios Eclesiásticos, Vol. 160, folios 53, 77, 67, 55, and 52.
34. AHESLP, Secretarı́a General de Gobierno, 1846, Vol. 20, exp. 44.
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Guardino, Religion and the 1846–48 Mexican-American War
357
unmitigated blessing for the American government. The Polk Administration was fully aware of the importance of religious emotions.
Whatever its leaders felt about Catholicism, they realized that it
would be exceedingly impolitic to stress the religious dimensions
of the conflict. American urban Catholics had significant weight in
the Democratic Party. More importantly, Polk wanted to achieve his
expansionist ambitions with as little fighting as possible. He first
sought to intimidate Mexico into making territorial concessions without armed conflict, and when that gambit failed, he hoped to fight
a war against the Mexican government, not the Mexican people. Polk
wanted to minimize popular resistance to the invading armies and
also popular support for the Mexican government’s war effort. Religion increased the stakes of the conflict, and the resulting intensity
fueled the support many Mexicans gave to continuing the war to the
bitter end.
Polk and his generals tried to reassure Mexicans that the American army would respect the Catholic Church and Mexican religious
beliefs. Polk appointed Catholic chaplains to the invading army.
American regular officers repeatedly told the Mexican public that
their religious beliefs and Church property would be respected. More
importantly, American generals, especially Winfield Scott, sought to
control the behavior of American troops. Ordered to invade Central
Mexico, Scott was very aware that in the highly populated regions
where his army would have to operate his small force would be
extremely vulnerable to popular mobilization. For this reason, he
ordered his troops to respect the civilian population in general and
Catholicism in particular. His fame as a disciplinarian helped him,
and so fewer outrages occurred in the center of the country than did
in the north.35 Scott also made a determined effort to gain the confidence of Mexico’s church hierarchy in areas that his troops occupied through acts like paying his respects to the Bishop of Puebla.
One of Scott’s officers, Thomas Childs, went so far as to participate in
a Catholic procession, accompanying the transfer of the Eucharist
through the streets of Puebla. Childs marched in the procession hatless with a candle in hand and ordered American troops to kneel and
remove their caps when the procession passed. Notably, the regular
troops present complied without hesitation, but the volunteers
35. Timothy Johnson, A Gallant Little Army: The Mexico City Campaign (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2007), 59; Foos, Short, Offhand Killing Affair, 127,
131; Irving Levinson, Wars within War: Mexican Guerrillas, Domestic Elites and the
United States of America, 1846–1848 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press,
2005), 69–71.
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refused, offering further proof of the skepticism with which many
volunteers viewed Catholicism. Anti-Catholic newspapers in the
United States widely reported this incident, criticizing officers for
forcing soldiers to participate in a Catholic ceremony.36 The Polk
Administration apparently also made covert overtures to the Church
hierarchy through confidential agent Moses Beach. Beach claimed to
have successfully persuaded Mexican bishops not to continue their
moral and financial support for the Mexican government, although
reality never quite matched his reports. In general, American protestations of good will paled beside the vivid acts of sacrilege committed
by American volunteers. Fierce resistance continued during the
entire period in which US troops occupied Mexican soil.37
Religion was also important in internal US politics during the
war. This war, like many wars in the history of the United States,
sparked discussion about what it meant to be American and who
might be included among Americans. Catholic clergy and immigrant
leaders supported the war and encouraged the recruitment of volunteer units from immigrant communities. Catholic leaders argued that
the willingness of immigrant Catholics to volunteer for war service
was evidence that they, contrary to the critiques of anti-Catholic
nativists, were loyal and patriotic Americans. The war offered these
leaders a chance to take on nativist, anti-Catholic arguments and
stake out a claim to American identity. They were the largest group
to reject systematically the juxtaposition of a Catholic Mexico and
a Protestant United States. Still, only a few companies of volunteers
were recruited from among Catholic immigrant groups. The experience of these small groups of men, embedded among the thousands of Protestant volunteers who were often anti-Catholic and
nativist, was not always comfortable. In August 1846, a bloody brawl
erupted within Georgia’s volunteer regiment between a company
composed mostly of Irish Catholics and a more typical volunteer
company. The conflict became the subject of intense coverage in
Catholic newspapers.38
36. Ballentine, Autobiography of an English Soldier, 227–229; Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 69, 197–199.
37. A. Brooke Caruso, The Mexican Spy Company: United States Covert Operations in Mexico (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1991), 142–143.
38. Tyler Johnson, ‘‘Punishing the Lies on the Rio Grande: Catholic and Immigrant Volunteers in Zachary Taylor’s Army and the Fight against Nativism,’’ Journal of
the Early Republic 30 (Spring 2010), 63–84. Johnson has also published a general
history of immigrant volunteers in the war. See Tyler Johnson. Devotion to the Mother
Country: U.S. Immigrant Volunteers in the Mexican War (Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 2012).
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We have seen how the strength of religious feelings helped the
Polk Administration by inspiring the recruitment of volunteers and
political support for the war, but it could also be problematic. Religious feelings were too intense to be easily harnessed to the kind of
limited war the Administration wanted to fight. Religion was also
a double-edged sword for the Mexican government. One of the many
ironies that surround the war is that the Mexican Catholic Church
became known afterward, not for its contribution to the defense of
Mexico, but instead for encouraging armed resistance against the
government to protect Church property. Moreover, Mexican politicians sometimes found the religious fervor that inspired resistance to
the Americans to be inconvenient and even terrifying.
From the beginning of the war, the Church provided enormous
financial resources to pay for the armies Mexico raised to fight the
United States. Priests donated their personal wealth and contributed
church bells to be remade into cannons or ammunition. Convents
and churches were also used as barracks or fortifications. The Church
loaned the government several million pesos during the war, seriously damaging its economic health even before the government
tried to confiscate church wealth for the war effort. Several church
organizations had already begun to sell real estate to satisfy the needs
of the government. Although these sums were at least nominally
loans, no one was foolish enough to believe the government would
ever be able to repay them.39
Despite the Church’s economic contributions, in early 1847 the
government’s fiscal situation was dire. Santa Anna had collected a formidable army, but he did not have funds to pay and feed his soldiers.
He complained incessantly to Vice President Valentı́n Gómez Farı́as.
The Catholic Church was the only place Gómez Farı́as could possibly
have gone for more funds. On January 11, the government decreed
the nationalization of church property to raise 15 million pesos for
the war effort.40
The Church hierarchy sought the law’s repeal. During January
and February, the clergy published many pamphlets and articles.
39. Sergio Cañedo Gamboa, Los festejos septembrinos, 135; AHDF, Guerra, Vol.
2264, exp. 8; La E´poca, Periódico Oficial de San Luis Potosı́, December 17, 1846;
AHESLP, Secretarı́a General de Gobierno, 1846, Vol. 20 s/e; Brian Connaughton, ‘‘Agio,
clero y bancarrota fiscal, 1846–1847,’’ MS/EM 14 (Summer 1998), 263–285; Salazar
Mendoza and Cañedo Gamboa, ‘‘El discurso de la unidad,’’ 230–233.
40. Carlos Rodrı́guez Venegas, ‘‘Las finanzas públicas y la Guerra contra los Estados Unidos, 1846–1848,’’ México al tiempo de su guerra con los Estados Unidos
(1846–1848), ed. Josefina Vázquez (Mexico: Secretarı́a de Relaciones Exteriores, El
Colegio de México, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1997), 124–125.
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Their tone was severe. The writers argued that if all real estate held by
Catholic organizations was sold at once, property prices would plummet, and the government would receive little cash. They also pointed
out the Church was simply not as wealthy as it might seem. More than
that, denying the Church the right to own property would make it
totally subordinate to the government, keeping it from fulfilling its
mission on earth. Without financial resources, the Church would not
be able to organize religious ceremonies or fund Catholic education.
Souls would be put at risk. The government’s policy was seen as
a threat to the Church’s existence and, thus, a threat to the souls of
the faithful.41
In February, National Guard units revolted in Mexico City,
demanding the abolition of the law. A civil war took place in the
capital, even as the country sought to defend itself from the United
States. Although the conflict was the culmination of several months of
tensions between moderates and radicals in local politics, few
doubted the rebels had the backing of the Church hierarchy. Michael
Costeloe has shown that various clergy provided the necessary funds
for the revolt and very highly placed members of the hierarchy
approved it. Without this money and without the fierce publicity
campaign against the law, there would have been no possibility of
a revolt.42
The unrest seriously damaged the ability of the government to
respond to the landing of Winfield Scott’s army in Veracruz, which
effectively opened a new front much closer to the capital. The rebellion prevented the government from sending reinforcements to the
coast—reinforcements who might have been able to stall Scott’s army
enough to keep it in the lowlands until the onset of the yellow fever
season, a serious threat to the army’s strength. Santa Anna returned
from the north to negotiate an agreement with the Church and the
rebels under which the decree was revoked, but the Church also
immediately provided a 1.5 million peso loan for the war. This agreement was acceptable to the hierarchy because even if the wealth of
the Church continued to melt away, at least the government still
41. Reynaldo Sordo Cedeño, ‘‘El facionalismo en la Guerra con los Estados Unidos 1846–1848, in Symposium La Angostura en la Intervención Norteamericana
1846–1848 (Saltillo: Secretarı́a de Educación Pública de Coahuila, 1998), 29; Moisés
Guzmán Pérez, Las relaciones clero-gobierno en Michoacán: La gestión episcopal de
Juan Cayetano Gómez de Portugal (Mexico: LIX Legislatura Cámara de Diputados,
2005), 187–195, 190; Contestación del Illmo. Sr. Vicario Capitular, 14–15; Guardino,
The Time of Liberty, 216.
42. Michael Costeloe, ‘‘The Mexican Church and the Rebellion of the Polkos,’’
Hispanic American Historical Review 46 (May 1966), 170–178.
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Guardino, Religion and the 1846–48 Mexican-American War
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recognized that the wealth belonged to the Church and not the
nation.43
How do we reconcile the efforts of the Mexican Church to
oppose the American invasion with backing for a revolt that weakened Mexican resistance? The clergy’s patriotism during the war was
interwoven with their vision that Mexico’s Catholic religious destiny
was the key component of its national identity. For clerics and many
other Catholics, the government’s principal role was to provide the
conditions necessary for souls to be saved by guaranteeing the social
order and protecting Mexicans from heresy. For them, the government was betraying the Mexican nation by confiscating Church
wealth. The Church supported and encouraged resistance to the
Americans primarily because the Americans represented a religious
threat. An American victory, more than putting into question the
existence of a secular nation, would endanger the ability of the
Church to save Mexicans’ immortal souls. Seen this way, the attitude
of the Church toward the nationalization law and the Church’s work
against the Americans stem from a single source. It was not a contradiction to oppose the Americans and foster armed resistance to a government measure that threatened the ability of the Church to continue
its religious work.
The ability of religion to inspire resistance to the Americans was
sometimes inconvenient, however, and even frightening for some
members of the political elite. We can see this in the popular reaction
against the American occupation of Mexico City. After a series of
bloody battles, the American army marched into Mexico City on the
morning of September 14, 1847. A massive popular rebellion began
minutes after troops arrived at the center of the city. Many city inhabitants fought the Americans not only with the few firearms available, but also with improvised weapons, including cobblestones,
boiling water, and clubs.44
A key element in preparing the ground for popular resistance was
a publicity campaign designed to show the city’s population the damage that an American occupation would do to Catholicism. From the
beginning of the war, Mexico City, as center of the Mexican press, had
seen the publication of many pamphlets and editorials that criticized
43. Costeloe, ‘‘Mexican Church.’’
44. Luis Fernando Granados, Sueñan las piedras: Alzamiento ocurrido en la
ciudad de México, 14, 15 y 16 de septiembre de 1847 (Mexico: Ediciones Era/Consejo
Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes/Instituto Nacional de Antropologı́a e Historia,
2003), 94; Archivo Histórico del Distrito Federal (hereafter AHDF), Guerra, Vol. 2265,
exp. 27, folios 3, 19, 36–43; exp. 25, folio 12.
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the religious disorder seen in the United States, with its impiety and
the sacrilegious excesses of American soldiers. During the Churchinspired rebellion of February and March, the Church continued its
criticism of the Americans, and even government supporters printed
pamphlets and editorials that emphasized the idea that the Americans
were the true enemies of religion. The sense of danger increased after
the Americans began their invasion of Central Mexico, arriving at
a critical level when the Americans neared Mexico City.45
On September 7, President Santa Anna made his final efforts to
arouse popular ire against the Americans. He sent the archbishop
a letter advising him to order priests to tell the people that they
should be prepared to defend Catholicism with their lives. Santa
Anna added that if the Americans entered the capital, ‘‘their thirst for
gold and their anxious desire to trample our religion will make the
Sacred Image of our Lady of Guadalupe vulnerable.’’46 This message,
although addressed to the prelate, was clearly intended for the
population of the city: the government printed 300 copies and posted
them on the street corners.47 That same day the city council of Mexico
sent a circular to the city’s convents, ordering the friars to preach
resistance to the invader ‘‘in the neighborhoods, in the streets, or
in any other convenient place, exciting the people to the common
defense of our religion and our country.’’ Various convents responded that they had already begun to do this.48
The capital’s priests were not content with only preaching
against the Americans. At least five different priests, two them brandishing the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, led crowds fighting the
Americans. On September 15, municipal leader Manuel Reyes Veramendi told the archbishop that
a friar from the convent of the Merced is riding a horse through the neighborhoods of Santa Catarina and Santa Anna with a lance in his hands, urging
the people to rise up against the American army. Various other ecclesiastics
are doing more or less the same, continuing to incite the people to defend
themselves.
45. Infame polı́tica de los Estados Unidos de América, y suerte que nos espera si
no defendemos nuestra independencia (San Luis Potosı́, Imprenta del Palacio, n.d);
AHESLP, Secretarı́a General del Gobierno, Impresos, 1847, Vol. 3, exp. 28.
46. La E´poca, Periódico Oficial de San Luis Potosı́, September 14, 1847.
47. AHDF, Guerra, Vol. 2265, exp. 28, folio 5.
48. AHDF, Guerra, Vol. 2265, exp. 27, folio 32. See also Jesús Cosamalón Aguilar,
‘‘Léperos y yanquis: el control social en la Ciudad de México durante la ocupación
norteamericana, 1847–1848,’’ Culturas de pobreza y resistencia: Estudios de marginados, proscritos y descontentos. México, 1804–1910, ed. Romana Falcón (Mexico:
Colegio de México/ Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro, 2005), 118.
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363
Reyes Veramendi reported the same thing to the American commanders, blaming the resistance on these priests.49
The desperate fighting in the city streets caused the invading
army serious casualties. American soldiers used heavy artillery to
destroy houses from which people resisted, and they also sacked
those houses. Winfield Scott told the city council that he would allow
his soldiers to sack the entire city if resistance did not stop. He also
contacted religious authorities, telling them he would make sure
every church in the city was sacked if they persisted in their open
confrontation with the Americans. Both civil and religious authorities
responded. Reyes Veramendi tried to end the uprising, and the archbishop sent new instructions to priests, telling them to stop preaching resistance and instead exhort their flocks to keep the peace. This
sudden change of heart on the part of the authorities did not stop the
fighting immediately, but slowly calm was reestablished. Nevertheless, the American military authorities continued to fear religion’s
power to inspire resistance. On Sunday September 19, the churches
of the city did not ring their bells to summon the faithful to mass,
a ritual the Americans were familiar with from other cities they had
occupied. American officers saw this as part of a plot to incite a new
uprising by denying Mexicans the sacraments. Again, they threatened
to allow their soldiers to sack the churches, so the priests opened
church doors for mass.50
The importance of religion in shaping the attitudes and experiences of participants during the Mexican War is also seen in the very
outcome of the war. During the war, Mexican priests and the faithful
had agonized over the religious consequences of a defeat. Their worries were justified. The records document a bitter litany of sacked
churches, disrupted ceremonies, Mexican soldiers who died without
confession, and other religious horrors. Nevertheless, American soldiers did not stay in Central Mexico forever. For the Catholic Church
in most of Mexico, the war had two long-term consequences. The war
even further weakened the Church’s finances, and the war also
greatly sharpened the conflict between the Church and some Mexican politicians, taking Mexico one step closer to the cataclysmic civil
war that would shake Mexico a decade later.
49. Quote from AHDF, Guerra, Vol. 2265, exp. 28, folio 30. See also Granados,
Sueñan las piedras, 69, 92–93, and 150; Cosamalón Aguilar, ‘‘Léperos y yanquis,’’ 119–
120; Johnson, Gallant Little Army, 241.
50. AHDF, Guerra, Vol. 2265, exp. 28, folios 21, 26; Levinson, Wars within War,
72; Johnson, Gallant Little Army, 242–243.
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364
Mexican Studies/Estudios Mexicanos
Serious negotiations to end the war began after the Americans
took Mexico City. Just as religion shaped the racialization of Mexicans that prompted the American aggression, now that same
intense sense of difference limited the scope of American territorial
gains by scuttling the efforts of some politicians to annex all of
Mexico. Both supporters and opponents of annexing the entire
country featured religion very prominently in their arguments. Supporters argued the Mexican people could be elevated to US standards if American religious freedom were allowed to reign there.
Opponents of complete annexation worried about adding so many
members of an inferior race to the US populace. Some also argued
that Catholicism was a serious obstacle to bringing American civilization to Mexico’s people because Catholicism was simply incompatible with liberty, democracy, and progress. Opponents of
annexing the entire country described Mexico’s population in the
same disparaging terms that nativists used to characterize Catholic
German and Irish immigrants. The arguments against annexing all
of Mexico won the day.51
Religion was also a crucial issue in the negotiation, modification,
and eventual approval of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This
treaty transferred a very extensive part of Northern Mexico populated
by thousands of Catholics to the United States. The Mexican negotiators made a strong effort to defend the religious rights of those
Mexicans. They succeeded in making sure that Article IX of the treaty
included specific guarantees for the property and work of Catholic
religious corporations in the territories that passed to the United
States and free communication between the faithful of those territories and their bishops in Mexico. Unfortunately for the Mexicans,
the treaty had to be approved by the United States Senate, and there
the guarantees of Catholic rights ran into a brick wall of antiCatholic sentiment. Article IX was the most hotly debated article
of the treaty. In the end, the Senate modified the treaty, removing
all specific guarantees for Catholicism, inserting instead a simple
pledge to respect religious freedom. Polk, who was well aware of
Mexico’s attachment to Catholicism, was extremely worried that the
Mexican government might reject the modified treaty. It did not, as
by the spring of 1848, little hope of successful resistance against the
American occupiers remained. There is a palpable irony in the
51. John Pinheiro, ‘‘‘Religion Without Restriction’: Anti-Catholicism, All Mexico,
and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,’’ Journal of the Early Republic 23 (Spring 2003),
85–90.
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Guardino, Religion and the 1846–48 Mexican-American War
365
removal of specific guarantees for Catholics from the treaty. In the
end, the only hope that Mexicans in the newly annexed territories
had for their future as Catholics lay in the very same religious tolerance that many Mexican clergy and faithful had seen as a threat to
Mexico’s religious future.52
52. Pinheiro, ‘‘Religion without Restriction,’’ 91–94; Pinheiro, ‘‘Crusade and Conquest,’’ 223–228.
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The responses must be in short essay format and include the following:
1. Who
2. What
3. When
4. Where
5. Why (significance) Make sure you think critically of the significance. For example, why
is the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo important? What were the ramification of the
Treaty?
You can only use lecture notes and class assigned readings in your responses.
Length of a response should be approximately half a typed page, single spaced.
In your response please use MLA citations. You must cite at least from one article from your
assigned readings. Last name of author and page numbers inside parenthesis suffices. For
example, (Gutiérrez, 34).
If you use information from lectures, you must cite the date and title of lecture in parenthesis.
For example, (Márquez, “Mexican Independence to the Alamo,” 8-11-20).
No Works Cited Page/Bibliography needed.
th
th
th
th
It covers lectures from: Aug. 5 , Aug. 10 , Aug. 12 , and Aug. 17 .
Please be sure to turn in your typed response.
Identifications: (choose 3 to write about)
1. La Malinche
2. Quetzalcoatl
3. Treaty of Velasco
4. The Alamo
5. Repatriation
6. Porfirio Díaz
CHI 10 - Mexican Revolution and Mexican Exodus
Good afternoon CHI 10 students,
Today we are going to be talking about the Mexican Revolution and what scholars referred to
as the Mass Exodus.
We're going to be focusing on what is happening in the United States, as well as Mexico
simultaneously, to encourage mass migration of Mexicans into this country. How they're
received and also what role they play once they arrive here.
And so, I think it's really important for us to think about how Mexicans are recruited into this
country during this time period, and the relationship between the United States and Mexico,
which I think, solidifies really what we have to present day in terms of Mexico being highly
dependent on the United States economy. And this consistent sort of reliance also on the
workforce. All of these things are critical, in terms of us understanding, not only the
relationship between the nations, but also its people.
And so, by the late 1800s, the United States was undergoing mass industrialization. That was
really mitigating labor and immigration to the United States. By the late 1800s, we have large
amounts of European immigrants, mostly from Eastern Europe coming into the United States to
fill jobs in the Northeast and Midwest in factories.
And the garment industry also, I'm thinking about Boston and New York. And these laborers
were at first received with open arms, but once they started coming in large numbers that
began to change.
And we're going to be talking about some immigration restriction laws that also prevented the
migration of folks from Asia and Europe, and at the same time encouraged migration from
Mexico. So, when is it feasible to have immigrants from Mexico? And when does it become a
nuisance to the United States economy?
By the late 1800s, Mexicans had started to come into the United States in large numbers.
Outnumbering the US-born Mexicans that were already here, prior to American conquest.
Just in the Gold Rush alone and the year of 1849, 20,000 Mexicans from the state of Sonora,
which is a northern state in Mexico arrived to mine in the Gold Fields. And we also have the
expansion of the South Western economy that relies on cheap and unskilled labor and it needs
mass, a mass labor force, to move products. Mostly, I'm thinking here of, agricultural products
into the economy. And so, we have a high reliance on cheap, dispensable labor, and we'll be
talking about that some more.
Between 1890 and 1920, it is estimated that a million or perhaps a million and a half Mexicans
came into the United States. That made up almost 10% of the Mexican population. This number
was so big that scholars have referred to it as the Exodus, the exodus of Mexicans into the
United States, the Mass Exodus.
And this really transformed barrios (neighborhoods) in the United States; it transformed the
relationship between Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals, new arrivals to the country
and their place, right, what place did they serve? And how did they disrupt already a system
that was already in place by the time they arrived?
Scholars, oh, let me go ahead and get our PowerPoint up for today.
I think this lecture also focuses on the economies of both of these countries to explain what
happens.
Scholars have referred to this period as the Push/Pull Model, the Push/Pull Model. Sociologist
came up with this term to refer to the migration of this time period. And we're looking again at
1890-1920.
The Push/Pull Model relies on "push factors that involves a force which acts to drive people
away from a place and pull factors that draws them to a new location." So, they're being
pushed from their home country and being pulled at the same time. And as you can imagine, if
you're being pushed and pulled, right, it really accelerates the process of migration.
And so that's really important, I think, for us to think about.
The United States, as I mentioned earlier, was going through immense industrialization and
really what solidified the economy, the US economy, during this time period was the
establishment of the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad.
The U.S. Transcontinental Railroad served an immense role in speeding up the U.S. economy.
Really making the United States move into a first world country, a first world power. Absolutely.
And this happens on May 10, 1869 in Promontory, Utah. Where the Union Pacific tracks join the
Central Pacific Railroad. So, it is somewhere around here that you have the linking up the
Transcontinental Railroad. And we see here it's linked from east to west or west to east, right.
It's going horizontally across the United States and this is significant because you can
transport goods from California to the east coast. You can also transport mail and other goods
such as lumber and coal for mining and all of these things that folks are dependent on during
this time period during the turn of the century.
It links these markets, from the east to the west, almost instantly. I forgot to mention another
thing that is transported are people. So, not only do you have goods, but you have people who
are able to travel. And what was known as a very efficient, quick way through the United States
through the railroad.
The railroad also allows for these boom towns to explode around the railroads. A lot of towns
were created around the railroad and you have, you know, selling of goods and people began to
move to these locations, because of the convenience of having access to all of the goods that
are being transported through the railroad. So that is kind of the place to live. And many of us
who live in California, who’ve lived in California are very aware of the railroad.
Especially, I think, in northern and central California where a lot of little towns are created
around the railroad. As was my little town of Galt that was established around the railroad. And
of course, you know, it's very noisy and not very good place to live around the railroad. But
nevertheless, it's a very significant marker, I think, for towns in northern and central California.
At the same time, Mexico is developing its own Transcontinental Railroad with the Porfiriato
and I'll be talking about that some more in a little bit.
But there is a president and Mexico, his name is Porfirio Diaz and he was very instrumental in
modernizing Mexico during this time period. He believed in progress and order and he believed
that Mexico could only come out of the ruins of Mexican Independence by modernizing its
economy.
The way to modernize the economy, Porfirio Diaz would argue, was through the establishment
of the railroads and if you look here at the map, the railroads, rather than going east or west
were mostly going north and south and that is going to be key.
Because not only are you able to transport goods from Mexico, as you know, we depend a lot
on fruits and vegetables from Mexico. But you can also tap into Central America and those
goods can then be transported from Central America, through Mexico, and into the United
States.
And then of course the transportation of people, mostly laborers, who will be traveling through
the railroad. So, the railroads in Mexico are really connected to the United States. That is the
end goal there, where folks want the goods to be taken. To establish a very strong relationship
with the United States in terms of it of its economy, but that's going to come at a very high
price for Mexico who will get the short end of the stick in terms of what is able to do in terms of
its economy.
By 1911, oh, I should mention that Diaz was very aggressively seeking foreign investors to invest
in the Mexican railroad system, and he would make it very easy for them to invest. He would
exempt them from taxes, he would, you know, give them land so that they can build the
railroad, he would supply the cheap labor to build the railroads.
And then, these foreign investors would own the railroad then and they could charge a fee for,
for instance, delivering goods to the United States or they could charge a fee for people riding
on trains for transportation reasons. So, foreign investors do, indeed, take advantage of the
Diaz's offer.
By 1911, American investments accounted for 62% of the total capital in support of the railroad
system, 62%. Think about that, the United States is owning 62% of the railroad.
All foreign investment accounted for an alarming 80%. So really, who owns the railroads in
Mexico? Although, the railroads are physically in Mexico, they are not owned by Mexicans and
so that is going to put Mexico at a disadvantage and the United States at an advantage.
Because they can manipulate costs of transportation, since they own that. And indeed, this is
going to put Mexico in a very difficult position.
At the same time, there's ideas being circulated about Mexican labor and Mexicans in general.
And the idea is that we shouldn't worry too much about Mexican settling in the United States
because there's this this idea that they are in constant flux through a revolving door. That so as
long as they come in, as fast as they come in, they are going to be going out of the country.
The revolving door concept relies on "capital and the state condition the entry and exit of labor
based on supply and demand. Railroads proved as the most efficient means to many
manipulate the labor pool."
So, this idea, then that you can manipulate labor through the railroads and that you can help
them enter the country through the railroad, but also exit the country through the railroad. And
what do you think is a possible problem or short coming to this idea, this racialized idea?
Right. People do not operate like that, right. Folks are not dispensable; it's not like a good.
They're treating it as if Mexicans are like a good that you can transport them in and transport
them out.
And that doesn't happen because they're human and they're going to develop relationships.
Maybe they find a significant other, form of family, buy a home, build a home. Establish other
relations, friendships, they decide to stay, and this concept then is not accurate. It's not an
accurate portrayal of humans and their ability to form roots in the United States. Right, it
doesn't account for that.
So, this is going to be something that, mostly employers in the United States, are going to be
pushing the United States government to buy into this idea of the revolving door. "Don't, don't
worry about these Mexicans, you know, they're going to return back to their home country, as
soon as you know, the work runs out, or as soon as we no longer need them."
So, how does this happen? How is it that Mexicans are recruited to work in the United States?
And I think it's important for us to remember that the recruitment of laborers to the United
States is one, a highly organized process, highly organized process.
Number two, that it's a deliberate, it's a deliberate process. And number three, that it is
initiated by capital interests for cheap labor. So, it's organized, it's deliberate and it's based on
the need for cheap labor. Those three items represent the pull factor.
Mexicans will be recruited in central Mexico and southern Mexico. They will say, "Hey, we need
workers. Who wants to come?" and then you have a bunch of mostly young men, who are
going to be signing up for working in the United States. And of course, the lure is that you get
paid higher wages in the United States than in Mexico.
So, it's always based on this idea that you will make a higher income. You can provide for
yourself and your family and maybe even relatives when working in the United States. That is
always going to be the advantage that the United States has over Mexico.
It is that, you are in a first world country neighbored up against a third world country and
people can make more money quicker in the United States than they can in Mexico. And so, it is
very easy for labor recruiters to recruit Mexican workers to come to the United States. It's very
easy.
The United States, employers will also place ads and local newspapers will also run ads in
radios, radio stations, and will buy ads and tell folks. "Hey, if you want to come work in the
United States, we paid good money, we’ll pay your voyage."
And here you go, you have a way a mechanism set in place, which is the railroad, which is the
trains to transport these Mexican workers from the interior of Mexico to the United States.
Very, very efficient and effective way of getting the workers to fill those much-needed labor
intensive jobs that Americans do not want.
Where do they work? Well they work in mostly three major businesses. Number one is mining,
number two is railroads, and number three is agriculture. So those three: mining, railroad, and
agriculture, are going to play a central role in terms of getting these Mexican workers to work in
the United States.
You also have the development of new technologies that are going to require more workers to
come to the United States. Here we're talking about irrigation and the mechanization of farm
work. Which enabled for the cultivation of thousands of acres of land that once could not be
touched, but because of these new technologies we are seeing that, you know, you can actually
get to thousands of acres.
You also have the invention of the box car freezers. Box car freezers allow for produce or dairy
or meat products to be shipped from one place to another without spoiling. This was a great
invention. It like changed the way that we were able to receive fresh produce in the country.
And I think it's very, very effective.
In places like Texas, you have the expansion of the cotton industry. In places like Minnesota,
you have Sugar beets. Michigan, you have the expansion of the auto and steel industries and in
California agriculture really takes off.
By 1929 California had become the largest producer of fruits and vegetables in the American
Southwest. And many of those produce were moved from California from the West Coast to the
East Coast.
And so, as the United States really begins to take off in terms of industrialization, in terms of
the agricultural industry, Mexico is going through a similar process. And this is happening
through the efforts of President Porfirio Díaz.
I mentioned him earlier in the development of the Mexican Transcontinental Railroad.
Porfirio Díaz was seven times president. He was actually a dictator, so the term president
probably doesn't apply very well to him. He served from 1876 to 1911, for a period of 35 years.
He was Indigenous. He was born and raised in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico, which is the
southern-most part of Mexico. He was very dark skinned. He was illiterate. He became a
general, a Mexican general, a politician, and then finally a dictator.
He ruled Mexico with an iron fist. He was very hard on the indigenous populations which is
ironic since he himself is Indigenous and so he was very hard on the Indigenous populations.
This was very ironic because he was indigenous himself, but I think he experienced some
internal racism, where he hated being Indigenous and, in fact, he worked really hard to get rid
of his heritage.
He would powder himself, for instance, with white powder trying to lighten his complexion,
which, you know, it's just like almost impossible to do. And he believed that the Indigenous
populations were bringing Mexico down and that Mexico should become more "European-ish"
and so, he was not a friend of the Indigenous.
And he had a very strong policy for the economy. He believed in order and progress. He aimed
at developing the economy and bringing investors into Mexico. He developed the industry of
the railroads, mining, and timber.
He encouraged the development of large haciendas, which are like large estates, at the expense
of communally owned farms. And more people will become landless under his administration
than any other time period.
Mostly the poor, the peasants would experience hunger and lose their property to these
foreign investors all under his administration. The Mexican population, especially the
underclass will become more desperate, many of them will move from rural areas into urban
cities in search of employment. Many of them will suffer hunger and will have a very difficult
time during his administration.
And if they couldn't find work in a city, then they would try to move to another city to find
employment and this is all really boiling up in Mexico as people will become more enraged at
Porfirio Díaz.
And in 1910 when he elects himself a president, one more time, even after tremendous
opposition to his election. He decides he, you know, "I'll be president one more time." The
people Mexico will revolt against him and the Porfiriato. The Porfiriato is a term that's often
referred to as his presidency.
And we will have a revolution in Mexico.
The Mexican revolution will last for seven years, from 1910 to 1917. It is one of the bloodiest
wars Mexico will see. It is a war led by the peasants, by the underclass, mostly Indigenous
peoples of Mexico will lead the revolution.
The revolution in Mexico also involves women who will serve on the front lines. Some of them
will become generals. And this has never been seen before in the world, where women are
actually involved in a war and can assume positions of power; that has never been seen before.
As you see here in this image.
The middle class will face political persecution, as well as violence. They will be targeted; many
of them will be the first to flee into the United States.
It is estimated that one in eight Mexicans will be killed during this war and approximately one
third of Mexico's population will flee into the United States during this time period. And so,
what does that mean? Well, where are they fleeing to?
They are going to flee to the United States. Why are they going to flee to the United States?
Well, they're going to flee to the United States, because one, it's safe to flee there. Two, there's
work for them. Three, there's established communities. Ethnic Mexican barrios, as you know,
have already been established there.
Some of them will have relatives already living in the United States, others will not. But they will
build communities. This population, known as the Mass Exodus, from Mexico will transform the
way that Mexican Americans in the United States are going to deal with this mass migration.
The reasons for the mass migration, they're going to have to deal with those issues as well. I
think, it's also important for us to think about when you are in danger, when your family is in
danger, like if you stay, you will be killed. People are not going to stick around for that, right.
It's like, we're always surprised. "Why are they moving? You know, like, we don't want them
here." Well, they don't have a choice. If they stay, they will die.
So, they would risk anything and everything for the safety of themselves and their families. And
I'll tell you as a mother, of course, I will do whatever it takes to protect my children, which
includes leaving my home. If that's what it took, I will do that. Absolutely, in a heartbeat.
And I think most humans have that reaction, right. And we can see it all over the world,
wherever there is a war and mass killings, people will migrate, and they will migrate where they
think it's safe for them to migrate to.
So, they do, they come to the United States and this is known as the major push factor. The
Mexican Revolution will push Mexicans to make the decision, the pain staking decision, to move
to the United States.
This is, I think, a very powerful image of Mexicans moving from Ciudad Juárez into El Paso,
Texas. And Ciudad Juárez and El Paso are sort of like San Diego and Tijuana, they're border
towns. And if you look at where they're walking and what they're following you will see train
tracks.
Ironically, nobody saw this coming, right, but Mexicans were well aware that if they followed
the train tracks, they will lead them north into the United States. And that's exactly what they
do.
Here you see mostly an impoverished population. They are literally carrying what little
possessions they have on their backs. You also see children being moved. You see women, men,
elderly, are all making their way across to the United States. And this underclass, these
peasants will also create some issues for Mexican Americans once they arrive.
Because the United States, in its racialization of Mexicans, will be unable to tell who is a new
immigrant and who has been here for generations. Still, to the very present day, right, we make
assumptions about Mexicans as all being recent arrivals, when that is not the case; has never
been the case.
But I think this Mass Exodus will absolutely challenge Mexican Americans to figure out how they
want to move forward, in terms of civil rights, and do they include this underclass, or do they
exclude them? Very important questions. I think that we’ll be answering them in the near
future.
What other pull factors are there? Well, immigration restrictions have absolutely contributed to
the pull factors during this time period. And I'm going to go over these relatively quickly, and I
apologize if I'm not spending too much time on them.
I really want us to just take them in as a whole, right, that it's not one immigration restriction
that leads to this favoring of Mexican laborers. It's a culmination of all of these four
immigration restrictions during this time period. If you look at the years even, I mean you're
talking what at? Maybe 22 years?
In a 22-year span, you have major immigration restriction. The first and really important, I think,
immigration restriction was aimed at the Chinese through the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Never before in US history, had a nationality, an entire group, been singled out for immigration
restriction and the Chinese will be the first. The Chinese are blamed for taking over jobs and I'm
thinking, mostly in the state of California and the railroad, even though we knew that
Americans were not able or willing to take these very strenuous jobs. They are blamed for
taking jobs from Americans. They're highly racialized. They experience a high level of racism
and discrimination in the state of California.
On May 6, 1882, May 6, 1882, President Chester Arthur signs the Chinese Exclusion Act that
bars Chinese laborer's immigration and naturalization of Chinese. And this is extended until
1943 and the reason why it's extended until 1943 is because the Chinese will become our allies
in World War Two.
The second immigration restriction also targets a nationality, and that is through the
Gentleman's Agreement Act of 1907 and 1908, which bar Japanese immigrants and restricted
them from civil rights, becoming naturalized citizens, owning property in the United States.
And the Japanese are barred entry into the United States. Many of them were successful
farmers in places like Washington state and also in the Central Valley. And they too would be
blamed for taking American jobs.
In 1917, we have the passage of the Immigration Act of 1917. Which is the first immigration law
that limits and sets quotas from immigrants from Europe, the Far East, and Africa and most
countries in the Middle East.
It limits their entry and within the law, it establishes statutes, such as: no criminals or
prostitutes; those likely to become public charges, which means, public charges meaning those
likely to become welfare recipients; person suffering from loathsome or dangerous and
contagious diseases; they also pass on literacy requirement; and head tax.
And the interesting thing about this law is that it looks at some Eastern Europeans as
undesirable and not of the Anglo-Saxon stock and therefore wanting to limit those immigrants
into the United States. Mexico will not be added to the Immigration Act until 1921 so there are
no quotas set on Mexican immigration.
And then the Immigration Act of 1924 also set even more strict quotas for immigrants in those
countries that I mentioned earlier. Eastern Europe, the Far East Africa and most countries in the
Middle East.
And so, we have this limit, this limitation, of immigrants into the country. Well who are you
going to turn to then?
You're going to turn to Mexico to supply the much-needed labor pool that is needed to operate
a very booming industrialization in the United States and the laws will always be bent for
Mexicans to enter whenever they're needed.
And of course, you'll see major, major crackdowns on immigration, when they are no longer
needed. A very sort of convenient relationship that the United States has with Mexico and its
peoples. Which are largely seen as undesirable immigrants and we're going to be talking about
that in the coming week, about ideas about Mexicans and their inability to assimilate.
Interestingly enough, we have the establishment of the U.S.-Mexico Border Patrol, U.S.-Mexico
Border Patrol, which had not existed prior to this time.
The Border Patrol is established in 1924 with as little as 450 agents. 1924, right, it coincides
then with the Immigration Act of 1924. And why is the Border Patrol established in 1924? What
does that mean, all those other decades before, right? If the Mexican American War ends in
1846 and you have nobody patrolling the border, what does that mean for folks?
Well, clearly, what it meant was that folks were free to enter the United States. It was a highly
sort of transient border where folks came and went, visited family, returned, maybe during the
cold months went to Mexico and there was no need for them to show proper documentation
or to limit their entry into the country.
But in 1924, ironically enough, the Border Patrol is set up, not to catch Mexican immigrants
coming into the country, but rather to catch who? Does anybody know who the U.S. Border
Patrol was intended to catch or police?
Chinese immigrants.
The Chinese were finding ways around Immigration Restriction Laws. As you know, they were
the first to be barred in 1882. And so, what they did is they would travel into Mexico and they
would mostly settle in northern Mexico learn Spanish and become, quote, "Mexicanized
Chinese" and try to pass as being Mexican.
And so, the Border Patrol was set up to catch these Chinese immigrants who were trying to
pass as Mexican coming into the United States. The irony, right?
I will say to that we have very strong Chinese communities in northern Mexico. In places like
Tijuana, we have communities that have been there for a very, very long time and it's all
stemming from this time period.
And they would intermarry eventually and become very, very important Mexican citizens vital
to the Mexican economy through the establishment of businesses in northern Mexico. So, the
Chinese will also, not only come into the United States, but also remain in Mexico.
Interesting how we saw, you know, the runaway slaves during the 1800s, the mid 1800s, flee
into northern Mexico and we're also going to see the Chinese come into northern Mexico and
establish roots there.
So, a little bit more multicultural, I think, then that than what we are used to hearing about
Mexico and its population and its origins. So, I think it's quite interesting.
So, labor agents would come into central Mexico to recruit workers, as I mentioned earlier, and
this was a way to keep wages down and to exploit Mexican workers who will not be protected
under any labor laws in the United States since they are seen as foreigners.
And all the while, families will begin to form in the United States. Women will have children
w...
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