Thread: Mexican Claims to Southwestern U.S. Lands Spurious

Having witnessed the effects of all but unchecked illegal immigration of Mexicans into the Southwest United States and listening to what the Mainstream Media refers to as the 'debate' on the topic, there are several persistent themes I have wondered about when listening to pro-immigrant supporters. Of late I have perused and very soberly examined several sources that conclusively prove the claims of the pro-immigration crowd and so-called Reconquista supporters are spurious and not based upon facts.


One assertion the pro-immigrant and pro-illegal crowd often advances is that what is now the southwest United States was ancestral lands of the Indians that later constituted what are now known as Mexicans after extensively intermarrying with the Spanish. In short, the modern Mexican state implies and many Mexicans outright assert the lands of the Southwest United States were theirs and were stolen through conquest by Americans and supporters of the nascent Texas Republic. Not true at all. When the Spanish arrived in the lands that now constitute modern Mexico, the Indian indigenous and aboriginal population was centered in the areas referred to by geographers and historians as Mesa Central and Oaxaca, far from the Rio Grande and the modern U.S.-Mexico border.


No people that consider themselves Mexicans today nor any of the Indian tribes or clans that intermarried with the Spanish heavily in central Mexico were anywhere near what is now the Southwest United States. In fact what became the Southwest United States was inhabited in 1528 -- the onset of Spanish rule in Mexico -- by North American plains and agricultural Indians. The tribes then arrayed along what became the modern border were: Yuma, Maricopa, Chiricahua, San Carlos, Mescalero, Comanche, Apache, Tonkawan and Karankawa. I am not aware that any current members of those tribes claim any affiliation with Mexico or claim to have Mexican citizenship rights.


The tribes that later became the slaves of the Spanish and, technically, Mexican through intermarriage with the Spanish and members of the Spanish colony of Mexico were: Opata, Seri, Tarahumare, Yaqui, Mayo and Teperhuanes. Those tribes were settled mostly in temperate central Mexico and had no holdings anywhere near the Modern U.S.-Mexican border. It was through the establishment of the encomiendero and hacienda economic systems that took the Spanish and many of their subservient aboriginal Mexicans to the less arable lands north and east toward the Rio Grande and the area of the modern Gadsden Purchase. No aboriginal peoples who later came to constitute the ancient or modern Mexican state resided in the lands that became modern California, Arizona, New Mexico or Texas. The area of modern Mexico referred to by the Spanish as Mesa Del Norte and constitutes the modern Mexican states of Chihuahua, Coahuila, Durango and Sonora were, in 1540, sparsely populated due to the desert climate and annual rainfall of less than 10 inches per year.


By 1572 there were some 507 Spanish-ruled encomiendas in Mexico and were concentrated in the regions known as Mesa Central in Yucatan and on the Oaxaca Plateau – far, far from any lands that became the modern American nation. What finally took the Spanish and their ancient Mexican slaves farther north was the introduction of cattle and horses from Spain. This spurred a northward movement, though not to any lands that later became America, to the grasslands north of modern Mexico City that were able to support domesticated livestock. These facts alone undermine the claim of many that the Southwestern United States were somehow always ancestral lands of aboriginal Mexicans. By 1810, though, the encomiendas and haciendas In the areas north of Oaxaca had not done well, speaking to the fact the aboriginal Mexicans never had an incentive to move north and into lands that later became the American Southwest. The land in northern Mexico and south of the modern international border was – and still is – very poor and not suited to the agricultural systems of the aboriginal Mexicans. The Spanish in 1810 recorded 4944 substantial holdings in Mexico of the hacienda and estancia de ganado (cattle stations) types. Of those holdings 79 were in the eastern provincial areas of Nuevo LÑ

Hey! Welcome ChrisTheMediocre. Great posting and I loved seeing your well researched personal arguments against Reconquista baloney.

(Did you post it 3 times by accident?)

This is such a well-researched and well-written piece! Thank you and welcome.

Welcome!!! La Raza doesn't need to base their decision on fact, they preach their message to people that most likely are illiterate and want to feel pride in their home country and race! So their agenda is driven by and Idea that is easy to distribute and understand for people who deem themselves as oppressed by Whites. Its not true but it works well to pound home their message that they need to take back whats rightfully theirs from oppressive whites. And free themselves. La Raza knows what they are doing and so do we but unless the MSM and the rest of Americans wake up to their racist hate driven extermination of the American southwest nothing will happen and We the People will still be forced to fund their goals with our tax dollars. We need to them cut off and exposed ASAP!