RICARDO ROMO’S TEJANO REPORT 2.06.26 LATINOS OVERCAME A WAR AND A BROKEN TREATY

February 2, 1848 marks the date of the end of the war between Mexico and the United States and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which resulted in the U.S. annexation of fifty percent of Mexico’s territory.

Latinos were the first Europeans to settle North America, founding St. Augustine, Florida, in 1565. Before the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth
Rock in 1620, Latino mining families from Northern Mexico forged new towns in New Mexico starting in 1598. More than 100,000 Latinos lived in Mexican communities in the Southwest when Anglo-American settlers began arriving in the 1830s-1840s. The life of Southwestern Latinos changed dramatically with the U.S.-Mexican War of 1846-1848.

The Mexican War had its origins in the post-Texas Independence movement of 1836, when Texas officially became a Republic. The Republic of Texas claimed a vast territory encompassing parts of what are now New Mexico and Colorado. Under the Act of December 19, 1836, the First Congress of the Texas Republic declared its southern and western boundary to be the Rio Grande from its mouth to its source, and from there due north to the 42nd parallel. This line swept in the upper Rio Grande valley (including Santa Fe and much of today’s New Mexico), including a broad wedge of High Plains and Rocky Mountain country reaching into future Colorado, Kansas, and Wyoming.

When James K. Polk campaigned for the U.S. presidency in 1844, he promoted the concept of Manifest Destiny that encouraged U.S. territorial expansion, especially in Texas, California, Oregon, and New Mexico. Polk supported the annexation of Texas, knowing U.S. statehood for Texas would inflame tensions with Mexico, which still regarded Texas as its own province.

A disagreement over the boundary claims between Mexico and the newly created Republic of Texas led to war in 1846. After Texas entered the Union in 1845, the United States claimed the Rio Grande as Texas’s southern border, while Mexico insisted the boundary was the Nueces River, 150 miles to the north. In July 1845, President Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to Corpus Christi, Texas and by late 1845 had positioned about 3,500 troops near the disputed frontier.

In January 1846, Polk instructed Taylor to advance into the contested zone between the Nueces and the Rio Grande, an area Mexico regarded as its territory. Mexico perceived this as an invasion. On April 25, 1846, Mexican cavalry attacked a small U.S. detachment in this disputed region, killing and wounding several and capturing dozens. President Polk used this clash as the trigger, arguing in his May 11, 1846, war message to Congress that Mexico had “invaded our territory and shed American blood upon American soil.”

The signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, marked one of the most borderlands. The treaty brought an end to the Mexican-American War (1846–1848)—a two-year conflict that reshaped both nations. Under the Treaty’s terms, Mexico ceded approximately 525,000 square miles, or 55 percent of its territory, to the United States, including present-day California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Wyoming. In exchange, the U.S. paid Mexico $15 million—roughly five cents per acre—and assumed certain debts owed to American citizens. More importantly, the treaty established the Rio Grande as the official boundary between Texas and Mexico, settling years of territorial dispute dating back to the Texas Revolution of 1836.

For the nearly 100,000 Mexicans living in the annexed territories, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo promised civil rights, property protection, and freedom of religion, along with the opportunity for Mexicans living in the Southwest to become U.S. citizens. About 90 percent chose to become American citizens, anchoring Mexican cultural continuity in places like Santa Fe and San Antonio, cities established long before the United States existed. Yet, although the treaty professed to guarantee equality, Mexican Americans soon faced loss of lands, discrimination, and disenfranchisement, setting the stage for ongoing struggles over identity and rights–struggles that continue to resonate today.

The war’s aftermath severely weakened Mexico politically and economically. Just weeks after the Treaty’s signing, the discovery of gold in California accelerated American migration westward, intensifying pressures on Mexican and Indigenous communities already displaced by the Mexican War. Loss of territory and sovereignty contributed to decades of political instability in Mexico. Meanwhile, in the United States, debates over whether the new territories could allow slavery inflamed national tensions, helping to sow the seeds of the American Civil War.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo also reflected the limitations of 19th-century American democracy. It excluded Native Americans and enslaved people from its protections and referred to Indigenous nations as “savage tribes,” thereby denying them citizenship. The U.S. military’s subsequent campaigns against native peoples throughout the Southwest continued until 1886. The capture of Apache leader Geronimo ended the Indian Wars. However, Native Americans in these regions did not obtain full citizenship until 1924, and some, such as those in Arizona and New Mexico, only gained voting rights after World War II.

Largely ignored for more than a century, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo emerged as a powerful symbol during the Chicano Movement of the 1960s. Activists like Reies López Tijerina invoked the Treaty to demand the restitution of stolen land grants in New Mexico, and Chicano students studied its clauses as part of a rediscovery of Mexican American history and identity. The annual celebration of Segundo de Febrero (February Second) revived awareness of this pivotal event, particularly in regions like Texas and New Mexico, where the Treaty’s legacy remains entwined with daily life.

In San Antonio, this reclamation of history has found expression through art. In 1977, the Centro Cultural Aztlan launched the first Segundo de Febrero Exhibition, curated by Ricardo Jasso under the directorship of Ramón Vásquez-Sánchez. This groundbreaking exhibition invited Latino artists to interpret the Treaty’s historical and emotional weight—its promises and betrayals, its borders and bridges—through visual language. Over the past 49 years, the exhibit has evolved into a national model for artistic reflection on Mexican American identity, or Mexicanisimo, within the United States.

Artists exhibiting at the Centro blend historical memory with contemporary politics, linking the 1848 border redefinition to ongoing struggles over immigration, deportation, and belonging. Many recent works—including those created amid contemporary political rhetoric and heightened scrutiny by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—depict border patrol agents, migrant families, and symbolic landscapes such as the Presa Falcón reservoir, reminding viewers that the Treaty’s consequences continue to shape lived experience along a border that remains both real and psychological.

The observance on February 2 is vital, argues the Mexican American Heritage Association, because it transforms the historical memory of 1848 into collective action, giving Mexican American communities a space to honor our origins, assert our cultural presence, and reaffirm that Mexican American history is an essential thread in the broader American story. By gathering on February 2 each year across the country, Mexican Americans not only remember the moment our identity was born, but we also strengthen the intergenerational bonds that ensure the Mexican American story continues to be carried forward with dignity, pride, and purpose.

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Copyright 2026 by Ricardo Romo.