Mexican Rule Research Articles

Tijuana Desenmascarada

Tijuana Desenmascarada Michael Dear and Gustavo Leclerc (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Tijuanan workers assembling electronics in a maquiladora. Photo from The New Tijuana (Frank Christopher, 1990). The principal trope in artistic, cultural, and intellectual representations of Tijuana is space: spaces of the border, spaces of xenophobia, and spaces of liminality. In a nineteen-thirties documentary film of a US border patrol around Tijuana, two policemen are seen driving their vehicle into the desert. They stop at a pure white column, resembling an Egyptian obelisk but inscribed with the words “US-Mexico Border.” They proceed to traverse the desert spaces on foot, occasionally dropping on one knee to inspect the sand for traces of illegales, mojados. They are like Indian scouts fleetingly the center of attention in a Western movie. Cut to a commercial silent movie, Licking the Greasers (also known as Shorty’s Trip to Mexico). Here, yanqui cowboys rescue Shorty’s (Mexican) girlfriend. As they hightail it for home, they pass by the same white, border-defining obelisk and they are safe once again. The famous monolith in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey could not be a more potent symbol of spatial order and fealty. Globalspace Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 2. Postcard: “Boundary Monument Between U.S. and Mexico, Tia Juana, Mexico. During the past 150 years, political and economic relations between the US and Mexico have been characterized by an ever-increasing integration. The nineteenth-century preindustrial period witnessed a border urbanization principally in centers that had been established under eighteenth-century Spanish rule, [End Page 211] including Ciudad Juárez and San Diego. The growth impetus later spread to nineteenth-century towns established as civil centers and forts under Mexican rule, including Tijuana in 1840. And finally, after the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hídalgo created the international boundary, it affected towns established as forts and supply stations (e.g. El Paso, Texas), and post-Civil War settlements such as Nogales (Arizona and Sonora), Tecate (Baja California) and San Ysidro (California). Between the 1900s and 1960, the US economy moved rapidly toward industrialization, and initial linkages with Mexico were based on agriculture and tourism. Industrial growth and urbanization in the South-West were rekindled after the Great Depression, and consolidated by the second World War. Another boom (this time in agricultural employment) was stimulated by the 1942 US Emergency Farm Labor Program, also known as the Bracero Program. At first, the program employed about 50,000 Mexican workers in US agriculture; by the time it ended (in 1964) over 4.6 million contracts had been issued. Entire neighborhoods sprang up in cities like Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez, based largely [End Page 212] on temporary residents. In the early fifties, Tijuana was reputedly the fastest growing city in Mexico. But in the recession following the Korean War, US unemployment rose and the government initiated “Operation Wetback” to return Mexican laborers to their homeland. Border cities grew at record levels as returning laborers resettled. In 1954 alone, over one million Mexican braceros were deported from the United States. During the sixties the global economy entered a period of economic restructuring, associated with international financial instability, the rise of competitive trading blocs, and the oil crises of 1973 and 1979. One of Mexico’s responses to high unemployment was to initiate the Border Industrialization Project (BIP) which authorized the establishment of maquiladoras (assembly plants) in specially-designated zones. By 1992, there were over 2,000 such plants in Mexico, employing about half a million workers. 1 Several drastic devaluations of the peso also affected the industrialization process, and Mexican wage levels tumbled relative to the US. The passage of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) simply confirmed what was obvious to most border mavens: the US and Mexican economies were increasingly being integrated and wired into the global economy. The spaces of the borderland became concrete manifestations of the emerging globalspace. Localspace Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 3. Postcard: “El Paso de Los Angeles ‘The Pathway of the Angels’” Globalization can be traced in Tijuana’s evolving urban form. The city’s five...

The history of Alta California: a memoir of Mexican California

Antonio Maria Osio's La Historia de Alta California was the first written history of upper California during the era of Mexican rule, and this is its first complete English translation. A Mexican-Californian, government official, and the landowner of Angel Island and Point Reyes, Osio writes colorfully of life in old Monterey, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, and he gives a first-hand account of the political intrigues of the 1830s that led to the appointment of Juan Bautista Alvarado as governor. Osio wrote his History in 1851, conveying with immediacy and detail the years of the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848 and the social upheaval that followed. As he witnesses California's territorial transition from Mexico to the United States, he recalls with pride the achievements of Mexican California in earlier decades and writes critically of the onset of American influence and imperialism. Unable to endure life as foreigners in their home of twenty-seven years, Osio and his family left Alta California for Mexico in 1852.

Roman Law in the Water, Mineral and Public Land Law of the Southwestern United States

Much of the arid zone of the Southwestern United States was under Spanish (and later, Mexican) rule until the fourth and fifth decades of the 19th century. This includes the present states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Utah, Nevada, and parts of southern Colorado. Only Texas, New Mexico, and California were populated before the change of sovereignty. Texas had about 36,000 inhabitants in 1836, 24,000 of whom were English-speaking. The populations of New Mexico (55,000) and of California (3,000) were Spanish-speaking. There were also small Spanish-speaking settlements in Arizona and in Colorado before 1848. The present legal systems of these states are based on the common law, which was introduced in Texas in 1840, in California in 1849, and New Mexico in 1876. To a greater or a lesser extent, these legal systems respect rights acquired under Spanish and Mexican law. Mexican property rights are also protected by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848). Until 1821, the law applicable in the settled areas of the American Southwest was what is commonly called the derecho castellano e indiano, i.e., the law specifically enacted for the ultramarine possessions of the Spanish Empire, supplemented by the law of Castile. After Mexican independence (September, 1821), Mexican central legislation, and (after 1824) Mexican state legislation was superimposed on this corpus of Spanish imperial and Royal Castilian law, but neither Mexican water law nor Mexican mineral law were (as such) codified or even substantially modified in the few decades of Mexican rule in what is now the Southwestern United States.

Water Rights during the California Gold Rush: Conflicts over Economic Points of View

he availability of water proved critical as the American West was settled and its natural resources were developed. Under Spanish and Mexican rule, and later when the first Americans moved west, settlers dealt with inadequate rainfall by locating near the few streams and springs. While this settlement pattern accommodated dispersed farming and ranching activities, it precluded the exploitation of mineral resources distant from water sources. The 1848 California discovery of gold caused an upheaval in the pattern of isolated communities separated by vast tracts of arid and semiarid lands. Led by miners lusting for gold, westerners began to settle away from naturally existing water supplies. Major conflicts resulted that ultimately forced California to develop entirely new systems of water use and regulation. California's experience, in turn, influenced other western states as they confronted their own water problems. Much has been written about early water conflicts in the West, and most commentators believe those controversies led to a major departure from the legal treatment of water in the eastern United States. Most of these writings examine the challenge to the common law principle of riparian rights by the western custom of prior appropriation. Riparian and appropriative rights differ significantly. Riparian rights are held by those owning land next to a stream and entitle them to an undiminished flow of water past their property. Generally speaking, riparian owners may divert a stream temporarily (such as to power a mill) but must return it to its bed unchanged in quantity and quality so that downstream riparian owners also may have its use. This common law doctrine assumes that regular rainfall provides adequate water for the crops and domestic needs of those not fortunate enough to live next to a stream.

Land tenure and rancho expansion in Alta California, 1784–1846

Popular writers and historians have viewed the rancho as a symbol of the halcyon days of hispanic California and often have overlooked the role of rancho land grants in changing the land tenure system of Alta California during Mexican occupance. This paper views the rancho as an integral part of a land tenure system under which considerable land was granted and examines the patterns of rancho land grants to 1846. The majority of rancho grants were less than six years old at the end of Mexican rule, but they were instrumental in introducing a new land tenure system which imposed a distinct order and design on the Alta California landscape. The land policies of Mexico have been strikingly persistent; rancho boundaries still constitute a prominent part of the modern landscape of California. As a settlement institution, the rancho was more than boundaries delimiting ownership of land, it was the primary means by which resources were distributed, organized and exploited. While the granting of land in Alta California was a distinctive practice, an investigation of how this land system came about and its impact on the land adds to our understanding of tenure practices in general and in particular provides insights into the way in which cultural and economic values are impressed on the land through land ordinances.

Colorado Shakespeare Festival

This year the Colorado Shakespeare Festival celebrated its twentieth anniversary, complete with a Colorado Shakespeare Festival Day proclaimed by Governor Richard D. Lamm and a letter of congratulations from President Carter. There was a new Festival Stage of tile and mortar (replacing a surface of astro-turf) at the Mary Rippon Outdoor Theatre on the Boulder campus of the University of Colorado, and this stage provided a hospitable locale for three Shakespearean productions: Much Ado, The Merchant of Venice, and Richard II. The only drawback was rain. It happened to rain, at times to pour, the three consecutive nights I attended performances. As a consequence, there were delays in starting, several interruptions during each play, and extended intermissions. But thanks to the perseverance of the performers, the staff, and the audience, each play was offered in its entirety. Much Ado was directed by Edgar Reynolds, a veteran of the Colorado Shakespeare Festival. He set the play in the American southwest territories under Mexican rule in approximately 1840, opening the action with two barefoot guitarists in sombreros amidst the sound of gunfire. I found the transfer in time and place not at all uncomfortable. For one thing, it gave the audience the comic highpoint of the Festival, the portrayal of Dogberry, Verges, and the Watch. Dogberry was played as the gringo, a somewhat anachronistic Texan with badge, six-guns, cowboy hat, spurs, and drawl. The role was handled admirably by Frederick Ponzlov, and it was amusing to observe the working-class Mexicans of the Watch trying to make sense of the gringo before deciding he was a fool. A reviewer for The Colorado Daily charged that the production ridiculed Mexicans and was herefore racist; I thought the accusation absurd.

The Little Lion of the Southwest: A Life of Manuel Antonio Chaves

Manuel Antonio Chaves' life straddled three eras of New Mexican history: he was born (1818) at the tag end of the Spanish colonial period, he grew to manhood in the rough and heady days of the Santa Fe trade during the quarter century of Mexican rule (1821-1846), and he spent his mature years under the territorial regime established by the United States. Manuel Chaves' long career (died 1889) was interwoven with almost every major historical event which occurred during his adult life-the Texan-Santa Fe Expedition, the Mexican War, the Civil War, skirmishes with Utes, Navajos, and Apaches. He was called El Leoncito, Little Lion, having earned the name as an Indian fighter. He lived for two years in St. Louis and was a well-travelled man, doing business in New Orleans, New York, and Cuba. A hundred years ago when men still gathered around campfires and storytelling was a well-developed art, Chaves' exploits were known to all New Mexicans. But history has a capricious memory and his name became virtually forgotten. Around the turn of the century, Charles F. Lummis' flowery pen recalled brief attention to Chaves' life, and in 1927 he appeared as a minor character in Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop-but otherwise was virtually forgotten. Alas. Too few of our Spanish frontiersmen have been studied in depth. Manuel Chaves and his life should not be lost. He was of the legendary but real men who pioneered and built the 19th century Southwest. Howard R. Lamar laments: The Spanish-American population of New Mexico still lacks a historian. Marc Simmons' biography of Manuel Chaves helps fill that gap. Marc Simmons was called by another writer one remarkable caballero. He certainly is. He has been a Wyoming ranch hand, a movie extra with Warner Brothers, a Peace Corps training officer, a horseshoer, and has taught history at the University of New Mexico. Simmons is probably the only professional farrier in the Southwest with a Ph.D. He now lives in Cerrillos, New Mexico in an adobe house he built himself, and concentrates on horses, mules, research, and writing. He is at work on his next book, Trailing the Long-Ears: An Informal History of Mules and Burros in the Southwest.

A British Consular Agent in California: The Reports of James A. Forbes, 1843-1846

Research Article| June 01 1971 A British Consular Agent in California: The Reports of James A. Forbes, 1843-1846 RUSSELL M. POSNER RUSSELL M. POSNER Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Southern California Quarterly (1971) 53 (2): 101–112. https://doi.org/10.2307/41170342 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation RUSSELL M. POSNER; A British Consular Agent in California: The Reports of James A. Forbes, 1843-1846. Southern California Quarterly 1 June 1971; 53 (2): 101–112. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/41170342 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentSouthern California Quarterly Search This content is only available via PDF. © Copyright 1971 The Historical Society of Southern California Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.