Remembering the Forgotten War: The Enduring Legacies of the U.S.-Mexican War

Abstract

Remembering the Forgotten War: Enduring Legacies of the U.S.-Mexican War. Michael Scott Van Wagenen, University of Massachusetts Press, 2012. 329 pages. $28.95 paperback.In January of 2004, the visitors' center of Palo Alto Battlefield Historic Site first opened its doors. Visitors' comments were solicited in the Register of National Park Visitors. Comments ranged from Viva to Excellent place-good information to The U.S. are such bullies!!! to informative and fairly balanced (p. 234). This one example, amongst many locations of historical memory of the U.S.-Mexican War, illustrates the subject of Van Wagenen's monograph: how representations of the U.S.-Mexican War have varied depending on who was doing the remembering. As Van Wagenen puts it, collective memory has the ability to serve any number of masters (p. 238). An ambitious undertaking, beginning in the years immediately following the Treaty of Guadalupe and ending in 2008, Van Wagenen's work examines the public memory of the war on both sides of the border. Alternating chapters on the United States and Mexico bring these two territories into dialogue with each other, showing how this war at times loomed large in the collective memory of one side of the border or the other-and at other moments was nearly forgotten.Van Wagenen explores how national politicians and grassroots organizations used the war to strengthen whatever claim they were making to economic resources and/or political power. In the U.S., the memory of the war was often affected by the goals of federal government and its foreign policy. In the era of the good neighbor, World War II and the Cold War, the need for an alliance with Mexico on the global stage meant that U.S. presidents honored the sacrifices of Mexican soldiers, toning down the rhetoric of Manifest Destiny and earlier characterizations of Mexicans as degenerate or savage which had rationalized expansion. Seeking Mexican support in opposing the Soviet Union, President Harry Truman famously placed a wreath on the memorial to the supposed cadets of the military academy (Ninos Heroes) who refused to surrender to US soldiers during the invasion of Mexico City by General Winfield Scott. This vision, however, could be directly contested by local groups, including those claiming to speak for U.S. veterans and their descendants. Overall, however, amnesia on the national level has more often made this the forgotten war (p. 242).In Mexico, the War of North American Intervention was typically used to shore up the power and hegemony of the state. President Jose Joaquin de Herrera (r. 1848-1851) preferred to emphasize the battle of Churubusco to defend Mexico City rather than the Ninos Heroes of military academy because of the prominent role of irregular soldiers in that battle and the imminent threat he faced of overthrow by members of the Mexican Army. On the other hand, authoritarian Porfirio Diaz (r. 1876-1911) used the ceremony at Chapultepec commemorating the deaths of six supposed cadets to further his own goals of centralization of power and to delegitimize irregular military forces, ignoring the commemorations of Churubusco. Textbooks were used to communicate patriotic values of self-sacrifice and obedience to the state using the hagiography of the Ninos Heroes. In spite of losing the war, the Mexican government was able to glorify the sacrifice of its soldiers and cadets as martyrs for the nation, finding a way to celebrate past defeat as a victorious symbol of independence and valor (p. 242), imbuing patriotism into Mexican youth as well as loyalty to the national government.Van Wagenen has marshalled an impressive variety of sources into a very readable narrative. Academic histories, public ceremonies, monuments and plaques, textbooks, music and poetry, and archival sources are woven together to present a clear argument in each chapter about the specific interests at stake in any particular region or nation at a given time. …