American Thinker:
This month marks the 171st anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo; the 1848 agreement that ended the Mexican-American War and secured for the U.S. most of the lands of California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah, as well as small parts of Colorado and Kansas.
That it came just before President Trump refused in his State of the Union address to commit to an amnesty-for-wall deal was actually coincidental. Although the land granted under the Treaty was exchanged for money and debt-relief (and ratified by large majorities of both the Mexican and Democrat-led U.S. senates), today the transfer is routinely characterized as an act of theft. Because of this, so the argument goes, both a border wall along those lands and a denial of amnesty are respectively illegitimate and unjust.
The stolen-land or “reconquest” argument for amnesty stands out among the others because, as Samuel Huntington once pointed out, it is fundamentally an aggressive one. It suggests that amnesty is a form of justice and that it is Mexicans’ right to freely enter these parts of the U.S. since it was once their land. As the slogan goes: “We didn’t cross the borders, the border crossed us.” It stands for immigration as vindication.
Examples of this angle abound in op-eds throughout institutional news outlets (here, here, and here, for instance), but I’ll focus on this one in the New York Times penned by Enrique Krauze, “arguably [Mexico’s] most prominent public intellectual,” according to the New Yorker. Quoting him at length, he writes:
Three centuries before the ancestors of Mr. Trump landed on United States soil, there were Mexicans in that northern territory known as New Spain and Mexico. But neither they nor their descendants are even symbolically part of American national pride….
… It is time for it to come fully into the light, to be recognized and vindicated. For us Mexicans, this is the chance for a kind of reconquest… We need a reconquest of the memory of that war so prodigal in atrocities inspired by racial prejudices and greed for territorial gain.
Of course, it’s true that the indigenous people of the Southwest inhabited the region before the president’s ancestors (who arrived in the late 1800s) as well as the early English settlers. In the mid-1500s, they were colonized by Spanish conquistadores and then, in 1810, forcibly made to merge into newly independent Mexico. That they were subsumed into a Spanish-turned-mestizo population along the way isn’t mentioned by Krauze and rarely is elsewhere because it creates a problem.
I’ve heard it from Russians that we only rented Alaska. No, really, that’s a thing.
Junk climate science, junk history, junk biology, junk politics… seems to me the APPROPRIATE place for democraps would be… a dumpster. 😳
Couldn’t we be reconquered by a country with a higher literacy rate and a lower infant mortality rate?
As Barry once said, ‘We won.’
With my heritage I think I’ll reconquer England, Ireland and western Europe.
Come to think of it the property I sold 6 years ago has appreciated, therefore It was theft, I want the balance and the right to enter and live on the property I once owned.
That sounds reasonable.
171 years ago.
NO
It has no merit, and it was mutually agreed upon. There was no ‘imposition.’
But, Laches doctrine:
“Laches is the legal doctrine that an unreasonable delay in seeking a remedy for a legal right or claim will prevent it from being enforced or allowed if the delay has prejudiced the opposing party. The doctrine is an equitable defense that seeks to prevent “legal ambush” from a party who is negligent in failing to timely make a claim….”
https://definitions.uslegal.com/l/laches/
“The person invoking laches is asserting that an opposing party has “slept on its rights”, and that, as a result of this delay, circumstances have changed, witnesses or evidence may have been lost or no longer available, etc., such that it is no longer a just resolution to grant the plaintiff’s claim. Laches is associated with the maxim of equity, “Equity aids the vigilant, not the sleeping ones [that is, those who sleep on their rights].” Put another way, failure to assert one’s rights in a timely manner can result in a claim being barred by laches.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laches_(equity)
NOPE, pedro.
you snooze, you lose <- that is what this means
go take a nap or siesta and dream up something else
Tell ya what Enrique, until you can prove that “your people” fought and died in the Civil war, American Revolutionary War, WWI, WWII, Korean, well you get the picture, AND were contributors to the Industrial Revolution, Transcontinental Railroad, Technological Revolution, just stay on your side of the border, plant blue agave, send us tequila, and keep your people where they belong.
Under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo we did buy the land described, but just as importantly, we gave to Mexico all of the remaining land of Mexico which we had taken by conquest in a war they started. If that treaty is invalid, perhaps we should do our own “reconquest”.
Yes, the US won, but actually PAID for the land acquired.
If Mexico wants the territory back, it should pay full market value, plus interest. How many billions, or trillions would be required? History citers tend to recreate it to shape present policy, leaving out pertinent facts. The amount paid back then may not seem enough, but it was a super amount at that time.
“The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which brought an official end to the Mexican-American War (1846–48), was signed on February 2, 1848, at Guadalupe Hidalgo, a town near Mexico City. The U.S. paid Mexico $15 million and absorbed another $3 million in debts, and acquired New Mexico, Arizona and California.[1] The treaty ended Mexican claims to own Texas, which had been the cause of the war.”
https://www.conservapedia.com/Treaty_of_Guadalupe_Hidalgo
Then kick us out. We’re waiting.
As P.J. once said, I paraphrase here… “The Mexicans are pissed off still because we took that part of their country with the good roads, schools, hospitals, etc.”
All I can tell the border jumping bastids and their enablers is tough shit pendejos.
Yes, the US won, and actually PAID for the land acquired.
Pay full market value, plus interest.
U.S. paid Mexico $15 million and absorbed another $3 million in debts. Today the inability to determine the debt since Mexico is unable to govern themselves cannot be even ascertained.
Yet US liberals for votes by non-citizens absorb more debt than these non legal trespassers could ever contribute too!
Bottom Line to me is
F’Off