According to these 19th-century intellectuals, the ideal settlers of the northern territories would be white Catholic Mexican farmers, who would serve as modernizing examples for the Indians and act as a barrier between Mexico and the rapidly expanding United States. 4 They passed laws facilitating the breakup of communal properties, hoping to attract new settlers and at the same time force the indigenous inhabitants to integrate into the national political and economic community. 3 Mexican intellectuals and politicians, similar to Thomas Jefferson in the United States, wanted to create a country of yeoman farmers cultivating small, individually owned plots of land. 2 Violent conflicts between Mexicans and independent Indian groups like the Apaches and the Navajos increased throughout the 1830s and 1840s, and Indian raids discouraged economic growth in Mexico’s northern states. Along this frontier, most of the land was either empty, tied up in large, inefficient estates, or owned communally by indigenous groups like the Caddos, Cherokees, and Comanches. Mexico also had a very large indigenous population-about 60 percent of the total-that was poorly integrated into the new imagined community of “Mexicans.” 1įederalist intransigence and indigenous autonomy were especially significant problems in Mexico’s northernmost territories. Local strongmen declaring themselves “federalists” or “liberals” resisted centralist efforts at political leadership. In the last years of Spain’s rule, and throughout the long struggle for independence, regional autonomy had been on the rise. When Mexico gained its independence from Spain in 1821, one of the most pressing problems that the new nation’s leaders faced was that of consolidating central power. The Original Sin of U.S.-Mexican Relations
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