A paper for Spanish 101 by Erik Pukinskis. Disclaimer: the following is not vetted for accuracy in any way. It is culled from Wikipedia and even less reputable web sites. Nonetheless, it is probably not so far from the truth.
35,000 years ago, there were no people in the Americas. Just plants and animals. In some ways, they are the rightful owners of this place. But some time between 15,000 and 35,000 years ago, the first people made their way from Asia into the Americas via a land bridge, thus beginning a long string of territorial conflicts.
By 10,000 B.C., possibly earlier, people known as San Dieguito Paleo-Indians had settled in the region now known as San Diego. By the 18th century, these people had come to know themselves as Kumeyaay, and they occupied the land extending from the San Luis Rey River in Oceanside all the way to the Colorado River to East, and down into Baja California, well past what is now known as Ensenada.
Though Juan Rodrigues Cabrillo, a Portugese explorer sailing for Spain, landed a ship called the San Salvador in Kumeyaay territory in 1542 and declared it “San Miguel”, it wasn’t until 150 years later that the Spanish colonialization effort would begin in earnest. In 1769, Spanish conqueror Gaspar de Portolà established the first military outpost in San Diego, the “Presidio de San Diego” and began to try to establish rule.
Providing the religious component of the imperialist cocktail, Franciscan friars started building a mission in San Diego a few years later. The mission was built with slave labor, and despite arguments that Indians entered the mission of their own free will, by the time they were baptized, they were forced to work and forbidden to leave.
With the building of the mission came more and more European settlement and more and more Kumeyaay killed, abused, and forced out of their homeland.
The Kumeyaay were not happy with these conditions, and with the invasion into their territory, and in 1775 several hundred Kumeyaay stormed the mission, killed the priest, and burned it down. A new mission was built, where it still currently stands near the 8 and the 15.
With the arrival of the fort and the mission, the Kumeyaay population began it’s long decline. As of 1775, there were around 25,000 Kumeyaay, and 150,000 Indians in all of California. By the early 1800’s, their population was down to 3,000, due to disease and, destruction of their homeland and their forced relocation.
In 1821, Mexico gained it’s independence from spain, and in 1826, José María de Echeandía was the first Indian to be elected Governor of Alta California. He issued a “Prevenciónes de Emancipacion”, or emancipation proclamation, freeing Indians from mission enslavement, and granting them full Mexican citizenship.
In 1846, the U.S. invaded Mexico in what would come to be called the Mexican American War. 25,000 Mexicans were killed and the US took all of Nevada, Utah, and most of Arizona and California. Some Mexican soldiers, more loyal to their villages than to the imperialist Mexican state, deserted. The war ended with the so-called “Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo”, but the treaty only codified what had been decided through violence. The U.S. was stronger than Mexico and took the land by force.
About the war, Ulysses S. Grant said:
“For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory.”
After the war, many Mexicans remained in the U.S. The current Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar is a descendant of one such family.
By and large, however, the Kumeyaay were not allowed to flourish. By 1875 U.S. settlers had driven most of the Kumeyaay out of their ancestral lands, and by 1910 only 800 Kumeyaay were left alive anywhere in the U.S.
The political climate today takes the U.S.-Mexican border as something of a given. We are over here, on our land, and they are over their on theirs. Illegal immigration is seen by many as a violation of U.S. citizens’ rights to property.
But in light of the history of the region, this view is completely bogus. If anything, the land belongs to Mexico, or to the tens of thousands of Mexicans who were killed by U.S. soldiers while defending their land, or to the tens of thousands of Kumeyaay where were killed by Spanish and U.S. settlers while defending their land.
In light of these things, the notion that a U.S.-Mexican border is “defended” by a U.S. department of “Homeland” security is preposterous.
Words:
salvador(a) – savior, rescuer
tierra natal – homeland
rey – king
el río – river (el río san luis rey)
frontera – border
presidio – fortress
independencia – independence
prevenciónes – proclamation
emancipación – emancipation
el pueblo – village
leal – loyal (Ellos son leal al la el pueblo)
son – to be, conjugated for Ellos
la guerra – war
el imperialismo – imperialism
invadir/invasión – invade/invasion
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