Unreasonable Landholdings During The Nineteenth Century

The Indian race was not supposed to own land in America but in regard they were concentrated in slums adjacent to the cities. Here they were exposed to poor housing, lack of clean water and poor man related work that ranged from fishing and hunting thus they were regarded as second class American citizens. In response to these social status inequalities, the Indians staged demonstrations against the vices and afterwards grated accessibility to land and its resources. The land given to them was of low quality the low quality that they were classified as marginal land s that could not support farming. This shows that the American government was in support of the discrimination against these Indians. In support of the racial discrimination strategy, the state even ensured that no white citizen became poor or bankruptcy by buying their land parcels. These lands were then subdivided to the Indians who were later to be killed by the Americans in their efforts to get the land for their mining activities. The sequence of events showed how discrimination was the main agenda of the

In this paper, I will be summarizing the following chapters: Chapter 3: "A Legacy of Hate: The Conquest of Mexico’s Northwest”; Chapter 4: “Remember the Alamo: The Colonization of Texas”; and Chapter 5: “Freedom in a Cage: The Colonization of New Mexico. All three chapters are from the book, “Occupied America, A History of Chicanos” by Rodolfo F. Acuna. In chapter three, Acuna explains the causes of the war between Mexico and North America. In chapter four, Acuna explains the colonization of Texas and how Mexicans migrated from Mexico to Texas. In chapter five, Acuna explains the colonization of New Mexico and the economic changes that the people had to go through.

In Harvest of Empire’s “Mexicans: Pioneers of a Different Type” Juan Gonzalez outlines how Mexican descendants contributed to U.S. prosperity and culture. Gonzalez’s assertion is that the Mexicans and their culture have been in the United States long before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the establishment of settlements and trade along the Rio Grande by Mexican pioneers, and the important factor Mexican-American workforce had in the nation. He supports his argument using historical records, individual’s stories and local papers. Respectively, Gonzales provides information that Mexicans greatly affected the economic uprising and culture of United States across the border.

II. Thesis Statement: Mexico is an interesting country, with many different and people and customs, as well as major problems.

The property rights of women during most of the nineteenth century were dependent upon their marital status. Once women married, their property rights were governed by English common law, which required that the property women took into a marriage, or acquired subsequently, be legally absorbed by their husbands. Furthermore, married women could not make wills or dispose of any property without their husbands' consent. Marital separation, whether initiated by the husband or wife, usually left the women economically destitute, as the law offered them no rights to marital property. Once married, the only legal avenue through which women could reclaim property was widowhood.

Between the late 1800s and mid-1900s, to help procure land, supplies, and workers, farmers turned to sharecropping. In mostly all instances of sharecropping the croppers would get a percentage of the crops they worked while the rest would go to the landowner. In most situations the croppers got a smaller percentage than the landowners. In this certain contract between a landowner and the Grimes family in North Carolina, there were some unfair condition. One of the unfair conditions was the results of not feeding his team. The cropper was required to feed his team every day in the morning, noon, and night, and if he didn’t he must pay the landowner five cents. The workers were also required to repair the fence if it was blown over or broken

One of the earliest forms of resistance against the American occupation of the Greater Southwest was social banditry. As individuals realized through personal experiences that the promises in the treaty were not being upheld they resisted through banditry. Acuna describes social bandits as individuals who rebel against an injustice and through that rebellion gain the popular support of their race. They are not necessarily social revolutionaries with goals of transforming society. These individuals have just had enough (71). Citing the work of British social historian Eric Hobsbawn, Gilberto Lopez y Rivas explains that “social banditry is one of the most primitive forms of organized social protest and [that it is] a phenomenon almost universally [identified] with rural conditions where the oppressed has neither developed a political awareness nor acquired more effective means of social agitation” (Lopez y Rivas, 1979, 100). Mexicans living in Texas and the Greater Southwest after the Mexican- American War fit into this description of a rural environment. Moreover, any access they had to US courts and politics was undermined by

Olsson, Tore C. Sharecroppers and Campesinos: The American South, Mexico, and the Transnational Politics of Land Reform in the Radical 1930s. The Journal of Southern History Volume LXXXI, No. 3, August 2015.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which came into effect on 2 February 1848, ended the Mexican-American war and formally resolved territorial disputes resulting from that conflict. The treaty required the U.S. government to pay the Mexican government $15 million dollars, this in return for an expanse of territory that later became the states of Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Utah, Nevada, and Colorado. I intend to argue that the treaty benefitted the people who inhabited, and later came to inhabit, that territory. I also propose that, as a result of the transfer of territory from a dictatorial regime to one that was based on democratic principles, both Mexico and the United States ultimately benefitted in several ways.

As an American in the late 1800's, owning a farm was not too uncommon, especially if that farm was located in Mexico. At this time, though, Mexico was in the Porfirian Era (1876-1911). In this certain era, Mexico was being encountered by two very different cultures at the same time: the industrial, and the traditional. These distinctively separate cultures impacting Mexico made it as what can be described as "backwards" in a sense, as Mexico was practically regressing as the world around it was moving on to bigger and better things. Mexico was so behind that "many had concluded that Mexico had yet to advance beyond chipped rocks as utensils." (p.67). Mexico at this time had locked itself in

The defeat of the Native Mexicans (or Aztecs) can be believed to have verified the Spanish that they had political and social superiority over all Indigenous Americans. However, the idea of superiority is subjective and the views of both parties involved about the colonisation of New Mexico will be noted. Although the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan were conquered by Hernando Cortes and his Spanish army there is a great amount of evidence to support the idea that it was not a simple feat. In the case of Cortes’ conquest we are offered the opinion that the Spanish were justified in colonizing and dominating Mexico. In saying that, the views of the Aztecs of Tenochtitlan and other surrounding Aztec societies should be taken into consideration when assessing the validity of the previous statement.

Amidst these troubles, two more voluntary emigrating parties left Alabama in 1834 and 1835. A majority of the Creeks denounced emigration, however, and refused to go west. But continued encroachment on Creek land and the land frauds associated with selling Creek reserves caused sporadic violence between Creeks and white settlers into the 1830s.

Ever since the first English colonists arrived in Jamestown and Plymouth, the colonists and eventually Americans have always considered expanding west, whether the land was previously inhabited or not: And like most things, many people had different opinions if and how it should be done. Before the 1800s, this issue already had opinions on the best solution. One example of this can be observed by King George III in The Royal Proclamation of 1763, in which he forbade all English settlement past a line in the Appalachian Mountains. Contrarily, Daniel Boone carved out the Wilderness Road and built the settlement of Boonesborough in the late 1700s. These sharp contrasts in ideas led to future debates. From 1800-1855, territorial expansion ignited nationwide debates: The supporters of territorial expansion rallied behind the term “manifest destiny,” while the opposition argued the unconstitutionality of the acquisition of territory, and the future negative consequences expansion may cause.

In her book, “A Plague of Sheep,” Elinor Melville argues that it was not environmental inevitability, but human choice that caused the ecological degradation of the Valle del Mezquital. She outlines the environmental characteristics of the valley in Mexico before and after the colonial conquest of the region. Melville furthers her argument through the analysis of another region in Australia and the stratification of the conquest process. The study is focused on the decades between 1500 and 1600. A cogent book, “A Plague of Sheep” does well to deliver information pertinent, but sometimes irrelevant, to Melville’s argument.

The injustice surrounding the Indigenous populations in Mexico and Central America began with the Spanish colonies in the sixteenth century, and the struggle for their land and constitution rights has been an ongoing battle for hundreds of years. The indigenous people take up a large part of the population in Mexico and Central America. (See Table 1; Graph 1 below). Indigenous people make up of over 16 percent of the Mexican population, and over 66 percent of the population is indigenous in Guatemala. The historical reality of the indigenous peoples in Central America has been one poverty, eviction from their land, political violence and mistreatment at the hands of