Who Owns the Southwest?

By Allan Wall
TheConservativeVoice.com | February 7, 2007

The Second Annual "National March for Immigrant Rights" , on the U.S.-Mexico border, began on February 2. Last year, the march was also held on February 2. What’s going on here? Why February 2? Answer: February 2nd is the anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. That 1848 treaty officially ended the Mexican War and legally turned over most of the Southwest to the United States.

The average American doesn’t know much about the Mexican War and thinks about it less. But here in Mexico they do think about it—a lot. In Mexico, everybody knows that "the U.S. took half our national territory." "La Intervención Norteamericana" has been described—by Mexican writer and Nobel laureate Octavio Paz—as "one of the most unjust wars of conquest in history." Not only that, but the loss of Mexico’s northern territories has been used as a reason—an excuse, really—for the economic failures of Mexico compared to the economic success of the United States. According to at least one poll, conducted in 2002 by Zogby in Mexico, 58% of respondents agreed with the statement that "the territory of the United States’ Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico." [MS Word] Now that’s definitely a different perspective. In a lighter vein, some Mexicans jokingly quip that, when the U.S. took half of Mexico’s territory, we took the half with the paved roads.