Mexico Independence Quotes

To dream a garden and then to plant it is an act of independence and even defiance to the greater world.

Besides Sumerian cuneiform, the other certain instance of independent origins of writing in human history comes from Native American societies of Mesoamerica, probably southern Mexico. Mesoamerican

Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff I don't need to impress people I don't like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse, for a major online supplier. The stuff is crap all made somewhere else in the world where they don't have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen- to sixteen-hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won't last a month. It is all going to a landfill. This company has hundreds of warehouses. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country with a cheap labor force where we don't have to seem them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. This American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world.

We have a predator that came from the depths of the cosmos and took over the rule of our lives. Human beings are its prisoners. The Predator is our lord and master. It has rendered us docile, helpless. If we want to protest, it suppresses our protest. If we want to act independently, it demands that we don't do so... I have been beating around the bush all this time, insinuating to you that something is holding us prisoner. Indeed we are held prisoner! "This was an energetic fact for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico ... They took us over because we are food for them, and they squeeze us mercilessly because we are their sustenance. just as we rear chickens in chicken coops, the predators rear us in human coops, humaneros. Therefore, their food is always available to them." "No, no, no, no," [Carlos replies] "This is absurd don Juan. What you're saying is something monstrous. It simply can't be true, for sorcerers or for average men, or for anyone." "Why not?" don Juan asked calmly. "Why not? Because it infuriates you? ... You haven't heard all the claims yet. I want to appeal to your analytical mind. Think for a moment, and tell me how you would explain the contradictions between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his systems of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerers believe that the predators have given us our systems of belief, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores. They are the ones who set up our hopes and expectations and dreams of success or failure. They have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary, and egomaniacal." "'But how can they do this, don Juan? [Carlos] asked, somehow angered further by what [don Juan] was saying. "'Do they whisper all that in our ears while we are asleep?" "'No, they don't do it that way. That's idiotic!" don Juan said, smiling. "They are infinitely more efficient and organized than that. In order to keep us obedient and meek and weak, the predators engaged themselves in a stupendous manoeuvre stupendous, of course, from the point of view of a fighting strategist. A horrendous manoeuvre from the point of view of those who suffer it. They gave us their mind! Do you hear me? The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind. The predators' mind is baroque, contradictory, morose, filled with the fear of being discovered any minute now." "I know that even though you have never suffered hunger... you have food anxiety, which is none other than the anxiety of the predator who fears that any moment now its manoeuvre is going to be uncovered and food is going to be denied. Through the mind, which, after all, is their mind, the predators inject into the lives of human beings whatever is convenient for them. And they ensure, in this manner, a degree of security to act as a buffer against their fear." "The sorcerers of ancient Mexico were quite ill at ease with the idea of when [the predator] made its appearance on Earth. They reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then, everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. What I'm saying is that what we have against us is not a simple predator. It is very smart, and organized. It follows a methodical system to render us useless. Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat." "There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic.

All of the likely or possible independent inventions of writing (in Sumer, Mexico, China, and Egypt), and all of the early adaptations of those invented systems (for example, those in Crete, Iran, Turkey, the Indus Valley, and the Maya area), involved socially stratified societies with complex and centralized political institutions, whose necessary relation to food production we shall explore in a later chapter. Early writing served the needs of those political institutions (such as record keeping and royal propaganda), and the users were full-time bureaucrats nourished by stored food surpluses grown by food-producing peasants. Writing was never developed or even adopted by hunter-gatherer societies, because they lacked both the institutional uses of early writing and the social and agricultural mechanisms for generating the food surpluses required to feed scribes.

Farming was independently invented at least seven times—in China, the Middle East, New Guinea, the Andes, the Amazon basin, Mexico, and West Africa.

I wanted to listen to “Huapango de Moncayo,” a traditional Mexican song that I associate with the pain and happiness of being Mexican. The song picks up slowly; then the trumpets blare and make you feel like the angel perched on a Paseo de la Reforma roundabout—the Angel of Independence—stretching her wings to the heavens.

Would the behavior of the United States during the war—in military action abroad, in treatment of minorities at home—be in keeping with a “people’s war”? Would the country’s wartime policies respect the rights of ordinary people everywhere to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? And would postwar America, in its policies at home and overseas, exemplify the values for which the war was supposed to have been fought? These questions deserve thought. At the time of World War II, the atmosphere was too dense with war fervor to permit them to be aired. For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history textbooks, but not its record in world affairs. It had opposed the Hatian revolution for independence from France at the start of the nineteenth century. It had instigated a war with Mexico and taken half of that country. It had pretended to help Cuba win freedom from Spain, and then planted itself in Cuba with a military base, investments, and rights of intervention. It had seized Hawaii, Puerto Rico, Guam, and fought a brutal war to subjugate the Filipinos. It had “opened” Japan to its trade with gunboats and threats. It had declared an Open Door Policy in China as a means of assuring that the United States would have opportunities equal to other imperial powers in exploiting China. It had sent troops to Peking with other nations, to assert Western supremacy in China, and kept them there for over thirty years.

In 1835, Americans in Texas rebelled against Mexican rule, waging a war under the command of a political daredevil named Sam Houston. In 1836, Texas declared its independence, founding the Republic of Texas, with Houston its president. Mexico’s president, General Antonio López de Santa Anna, warned that, if he were to discover that the U.S. government had been behind the Texas rebellion, he would march “his army to Washington and place upon its Capitol the Mexican flag.

Most countries no longer engage in full-scale war for the simple reason that they are no longer independent. Though citizens in Israel, Italy, Mexico or Thailand may harbour illusions of independence, the fact is that their governments cannot conduct independent economic or foreign policies, and they are certainly incapable of initiating and conducting full-scale war on their own. As explained in Chapter 11, we are witnessing the formation of a global empire. Like previous empires, this one, too, enforces peace within its borders. And since its borders cover the entire globe, the World Empire effectively enforces world peace.

Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff I don’t need to impress people I don’t like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse, for a major online supplier. The stuff is crap all made somewhere else in the world where they don’t have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen- to sixteen-hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won’t last a month. It is all going to a landfill. This company has hundreds of warehouses. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country with a cheap labor force where we don’t have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. This American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world.

I also worried about her morale. During Linda’s first season working for Amazon, she had seen up close the vast volume of crap Americans were buying and felt disgusted. That experience had planted a seed of disenchantment. After she left the warehouse, it continued to grow. When she had downsized from a large RV to a minuscule trailer, Linda had also been reading about minimalism and the tiny house movement. She had done a lot of thinking about consumer culture and about how much garbage people cram into their short lives. I wondered where all those thoughts would lead. Linda was still grappling with them. Weeks later, after starting work in Kentucky, she would post the following message on Facebook and also text it directly to me: Someone asked why do you want a homestead? To be independent, get out of the rat race, support local businesses, buy only American made. Stop buying stuff I don’t need to impress people I don’t like. Right now I am working in a big warehouse, for a major online supplier. The stuff is crap all made somewhere else in the world where they don’t have child labor laws, where the workers labor fourteen- to sixteen-hour days without meals or bathroom breaks. There is one million square feet in this warehouse packed with stuff that won’t last a month. It is all going to a landfill. This company has hundreds of warehouses. Our economy is built on the backs of slaves we keep in other countries, like China, India, Mexico, any third world country with a cheap labor force where we don’t have to see them but where we can enjoy the fruits of their labor. This American Corp. is probably the biggest slave owner in the world. After sending that, she continued: Radical I know, but this is what goes through my head when I’m at work. There is nothing in that warehouse of substance. It enslaved the buyers who use their credit to purchase that shit. Keeps them in jobs they hate to pay their debts. It’s really depressing to be there. Linda added that she was coping

We still talk a lot about ‘authentic’ cultures, but if by ‘authentic’ we mean something that developed independently, and that consists of ancient local traditions free of external influences, then there are no authentic cultures left on earth. Over the last few centuries, all cultures were changed almost beyond recognition by a flood of global influences. One of the most interesting examples of this globalisation is ‘ethnic’ cuisine. In an Italian restaurant we expect to find spaghetti in tomato sauce; in Polish and Irish restaurants lots of potatoes; in an Argentinian restaurant we can choose between dozens of kinds of beefsteaks; in an Indian restaurant hot chillies are incorporated into just about everything; and the highlight at any Swiss café is thick hot chocolate under an alp of whipped cream. But none of these foods is native to those nations. Tomatoes, chilli peppers and cocoa are all Mexican in origin; they reached Europe and Asia only after the Spaniards conquered Mexico. Julius Caesar and Dante Alighieri never twirled tomato-drenched spaghetti on their forks (even forks hadn’t been invented yet), William Tell never tasted chocolate, and Buddha never spiced up his food with chilli. Potatoes reached Poland and Ireland no more than 400 years ago. The only steak you could obtain in Argentina in 1492 was from a llama. Hollywood films have perpetuated an image of the Plains Indians as brave horsemen, courageously charging the wagons of European pioneers to protect the customs of their ancestors. However, these Native American horsemen were not the defenders of some ancient, authentic culture. Instead, they were the product of a major military and political revolution that swept the plains of western North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a consequence of the arrival of European horses. In 1492 there were no horses in America. The culture of the nineteenth-century Sioux and Apache has many appealing features, but it was a modern culture – a result of global forces – much more than ‘authentic’.

The enemy won some points at the very beginning. On both of the two days preceding his remarks about Worth, Hitchcock notes that American deserters had been shot while crossing the Rio Grande. Probably they were just bored with army rations but there was some thought that they might be responding to a proclamation of General Ampudia’s which spies had been able to circulate in camp. Noting the number of Irish, French, and Polish immigrants in the American force, Ampudia had summoned them to assert a common Catholicism, come across the river, cease “to defend a robbery and usurpation which, be assured, the civilized nations of Europe look upon with the utmost indignation,” and settle down on a generous land bounty. Some of them did so, and the St. Patrick Battalion of American deserters was eventually formed, fought splendidly throughout the war, and was decimated in the campaign for Mexico City — after which its survivors were executed in daily batches.… This earliest shooting of deserters as they swam the Rio Grande, an unwelcome reminder that war has ugly aspects, at once produced an agitation. As soon as word of it reached Washington, the National Intelligencer led the Whig press into a sustained howl about tyranny. In the House J. Q. Adams rose to resolve the court-martial of every officer or soldier who should order the killing of a soldier without trial and an inquiry into the reasons for desertion. He was voted down but thereafter there were deserters in every Whig speech on the conduct of the war, and Calm Observer wrote to all party papers that such brutality would make discipline impossible. But a struggling magazine which had been founded the previous September in the interest of sports got on a sound financial footing at last. The National Police Gazette began to publish lists of deserters from the army, and the War Department bought up big editions to distribute among the troops. Taylor sat in his field works writing prose. Ampudia’s patrols reconnoitered the camp and occasionally perpetrated an annoyance. Taylor badly needed the Texas Rangers, a mobile force formed for frontier service in the Texas War of Independence and celebrated ever since. It was not yet available to him, however, and he was content to send out a few scouts now and then. So Colonel Truman Cross, the assistant quartermaster general, did not return from one of his daily rides. He was still absent twelve days later, and Lieutenant Porter, who went looking for him with ten men, ran into some Mexican foragers and got killed.

Though citizens in Israel, Italy, Mexico or Thailand may harbour illusions of independence, the fact is that their governments cannot conduct independent economic or foreign policies, and they are certainly incapable of initiating and conducting full-scale war on their own.

Coat of Arms for Cuba since April 24, 1906. It was created by Miguel Teurbe Tolón and consists of a shield, crowned by a soft conical cap known as a Phrygian Cap, signifying freedom and the pursuit of liberty. The star in the middle of the cap denotes Cuba’s Independence. The same symbol is used on the seal of the United States Senate and the United States Department of the Army. The shield, supported by oak leaves on one side and laurel leaves on the other, is divided into three sections. At the top of the shield is the sun rising over Cuba, the key to the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea. The diagonal blue and white stripes represent the Cuban flag, and the royal palm, with the Sierra Maestra Mountains looming in the background, represents the country’s abundance.

On the night of November 24, 1956, the Granma slipped her moorings with Castro’s guerrillas aboard, known as “los expedicionarios del yate Granma,” and left from Tuxpan, Veracruz, setting a course across the Yucatán Channel for southeastern Cuba. The 1,200-mile distance between Mexico and their landing point in southeastern Cuba was difficult and included 135 miles of open water and cross currents between Cape Catoche in Mexico and Cape San Antonio in Cuba. They had to stay far enough off the southern coast of Cuba to remain undetected. The overcrowded small vessel leaked, forcing everyone to take turns bailing water out of her, and at one point they lost a man overboard, which further delayed them. In all, the entire five-day trip ultimately lasted seven days. Their destination was a playa, beach, near Niquero in the Oriente Province, close to where José Martí landed 61 years prior, during the War of Independence. However, on December 2, 1956, when the Granma finally arrived at its destination, it smashed into a mangrove swamp crawling with fiddler crabs, near Los Colorados beach. They were well south of where they were supposed to meet up with 50 supporters. Having lost their element of surprise, they were left exposed and vulnerable. After the revolution the Granma was moved to Havana and is now on display in a protected glass enclosure at the Granma Memorial, near the Museum of the Revolution. The official newspaper in Cuba is also called the Granma. Note: Ships and boats as well as newspapers and other publications are italicized whereas memorials are not!

Even if making precise predictions about which societies will prosper relative to others is difficult, we have seen throughout the book that our theory explains the broad differences in the prosperity and poverty of nations around the world fairly well. We will see in the rest of this chapter that it also provides some guidelines as to what types of societies are more likely to achieve economic growth over the next several decades. First, vicious and virtuous circles generate a lot of persistence and sluggishness. There should be little doubt that in fifty or even a hundred years, the United States and Western Europe, based on their inclusive economic and political institutions, will be richer, most likely considerably richer, than sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Central America, or Southeast Asia. However, within these broad patterns there will be major institutional changes in the next century, with some countries breaking the mold and transitioning from poor to rich. Nations that have achieved almost no political centralization, such as Somalia and Afghanistan, or those that have undergone a collapse of the state, such as Haiti did over the last several decades - long before the massive earthquake there in 2010 led to the devastation of the country's infrastructure - are unlikely either to achieve growth under extractive political institutions or to make major changes toward inclusive institutions. Instead, nations likely to grow over the next several decades - albeit probably under extractive institutions - are those that have attained some degree of political centralization. In sub-Saharan Africa this includes Burundi, Ethiopia, Rwanda, nations with long histories of centralized states, and Tanzania, which has managed to build such centralization, or at least put in place some of the prerequisites for centralization, since independence. In Latin America, it includes Brazil, Chile, and Mexico, which have not only achieved political centralization but also made significant strides toward nascent pluralism. Our theory suggests that sustained economic growth is very unlikely in Colombia. Our theory also suggests that growth under extractive political institutions, as in China, will not bring sustained growth, and is likely to run out of steam. Beyond these cases, there is much uncertainty. Cuba, for example, might transition toward inclusive institutions and experience a major economic transformation, or it may linger on under extractive political and economic institutions. The same is true of North Korea and Burma (Myanmar) in Asia. Thus, while our theory provides the tools for thinking about how institutions change and the consequences of such changes, the nature of this change - the role of small differences and contingency - makes more precise predictions difficult.

Cortés’s conquest of Mexico—and the plunder that came from it—threw Spain’s elite into delirium. Enraptured by sudden wealth and power, the monarchy launched a series of costly foreign wars, one overlapping with another, against France, the Ottoman Empire, and the Protestants in the Holy Roman Empire. Even as Spain defeated the Ottomans in 1571, discontent in the Netherlands, then a Spanish possession, was flaring into outright revolt and secession. The struggle over Dutch independence lasted eight decades and spilled into realms as far away as Brazil, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. Along the way, England was drawn in; raising the ante, Spain initiated a vast seaborne invasion of that nation: the Spanish Armada. The invasion was a debacle, as was the fight to stop rebellion in the Netherlands.

This here is Miz Nellie Ward," Dane started. "Until about an hour ago, she was the owner of one of the finest brothels in Dodge City.” He smiled at the woman and continued. “The place burned to the ground and all her girls left to work for another house.” “What the hell is this about, Marshal?” Mindy said. “If you think I’m going to work for Nellie you’re crazy.” She nodded at the woman. “No offense, Nellie. It’s just that I ain’t got a hankering for spending my time flat on my back. That about killed my mama.” “None taken,” Nellie said, her lips twitching. “Although that’s not why Nellie is here, missy, you might not be so quick to dismiss a job,” the marshal said. “Stuart stopped me on the way over here so I could tell you to turn in your dress, cause you’ve been fired.” “Well, hell. Ain’t that like a man? Takes the mayor’s side in this, without even hearing what really happened.” “Forget it, girl. What I have to say to you—” his eyes swept over the other three women behind bars. “All of you—is I have a proposal.” He paused, making sure he had all their attention. “Nellie’s place burned down, and she has nowhere to go. All of you are a burr under my saddle. I can’t have women in my jail, but none of you have a job or a place to stay.” He took off his hat and ran his fingers through his hair. “So, this is the deal. There’s a wagon train right now at Fort Dodge from Independence that’s headed to Santa Fe, New Mexico territory. Now I happen to know there are plenty of men down that way looking for wives.” One of the women gasped. “Marshal, surely you’re not suggesting . . .” “Yes, ma’am I am suggesting. You gals will either get on that wagon train with Nellie here as your chaperone or wait until the circuit judge comes around when he sobers up. He’ll be so blasted hung over, he’s liable to send y’all off to the state prison.” “That’s outrageous. You can’t force us to marry strangers.” Another young, pretty girl clutched the cell bars, her knuckles white. “No, ma’am, you’re probably right. I can’t do that. But what I can do is leave you sitting here until old Judge Bailey makes his appearance. Sometimes we don’t see him for six months.” “I’m willing.” The girl curled up on her cot said, her voice barely above a whisper. From Prisoners of Love: Nellie, A Christmas to Remember

I wandered over to the adobe birthplace of Ignacio Seguin Zaragoza, whose father was posted at the garrison in the early 1800s. Zaragoza went on to become a national hero in Mexico, leading a reformist revolt against Santa Anna and defeat- ing an invading French force on May 5, 1862, the date celebrated as Cinco de Mayo. While exploring the birthplace, I met Alberto Perez, a history and so- cial studies teacher in the Dallas area who was visiting with his family. When I confessed my ignorance of Zaragoza, he smiled and said, "You're not alone. A lot of Texans don't know him, either, or even that Mexico had its own fight for independence." The son of Mexican immigrants, Perez had taught at a predominantly Hispanic school in Dallas named for Zaragoza. Even there, he'd found it hard to bring nuance to students' understanding of Mexico and Texas in the nineteenth century. "The word 'revolution' slants it from the start," he said. "It makes kids think of the American Revolution and throwing off oppression." Perez tried to balance this with a broader, Mexican perspective. Anglos had been invited to settle Texas and were granted rights, citizenship, and considerable latitude in their adherence to distant authority. Mexico's aboli- tion of slavery, for instance, had little force on its northeastern frontier, where Southerners needed only to produce a "contract" that technically la- beled their human chattel as indentured servants. "Then the Anglos basically decided, 'We don't like your rules,"" Perez said. "This is our country now.

Texans are no longer comfortable with submitting their political will to a people who, they perceive, wouldn’t know liberty and good government if it jumped up and bit them in the ass. There is a precedent for this feeling in Texas. The Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico specifically calls out the other Mexican States for their weakness in the face of Santa Anna’s tyranny.

Seeking a contrast to the government action they called socialism, southern Democrats after the Civil War celebrated the American cowboy, who began to drive cattle from the border of Texas and Mexico north across the plains to army posts and railheads in 1866. In their view, cowboys were real Americans who wanted nothing from the government but to be left alone. The Democratic press mythologized these cowboys as white men (in fact, a third of the cowboys were men of color) who worked hard for a day’s pay independent of the government—although the government bought the cattle, funded the railroads, and fought Indigenous Americans who pushed back against the railroads—all the while fighting off warriors, Mexicans, and rustlers who were trying to stop them.[

Naz was one of two leaders of the Sonora Cartel. Originally, three kingpins ran independent organizations under the alliance of the cartel, but before I came to live with him, Naz overthrew Alvarez and usurped his territory. I’d been told Alvarez came from a wealthy line of Spaniards, and he had thought himself superior to the other bosses. Naz had never talked to me about his motives, and I didn’t care. What I did know was that the takeover had been bloody, and Alvarez’s men had resisted the transition. “You control nearly half of Mexico and eighty percent of the drug trade in the US. Are you certain the expansion is necessary?

the case of Hispanics and Native Americans, it’s not even clear that there was an offense. Consider: Texas legitimately revolted against Mexico and established an independent republic. Mexico can’t exactly complain about that, because Mexico had just recently revolted against Spain. Then Texas chose to join the United States. Texas has a disputed border with Mexico, and the Mexican War erupted over that disputed territory. Mexico lost the war, and American troops were in Mexico City. America could have kept all of Mexico; instead, America returned half of Mexico and paid $15 million to settle Mexico’s debts. Arguably there is a theft in here somewhere, but it’s hardly clear. Moreover, a treaty was signed between the two countries establishing the new borders.

Every language defines a community, the people who speak it and can understand one another. A language acts not just as a means of communication among them but a banner of their distinct identity, often to the despair of national governments trying to forge a single identity for all their different language communities. This can have quite perverse effects. It is no coincidence that Nahuatl, with many other ancestral languages of Mexico, largely disappeared from written use towards the end of the eighteenth century, just when political movements led by urban Spanish speakers were raising consciousness of Mexico as a separate country with a view to independence. The contrast between Spanish-speaking mestizos and 'Indians' speaking the ancient languages of Mexico was seen as a distraction from the emergence of the indentity of the true Mexican. The older languages, seen as 'backward', had to go.

Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. 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. Texas was originally a state belonging to the republic of Mexico. It extended from the Sabine River on the east to the Rio Grande on the west, and from the Gulf of Mexico on the south and east to the territory of the United States and New Mexico – another Mexican state at that time – on the north and west. An empire in territory, it had but a very sparse population, until settled by Americans who had received authority from Mexico to colonize. These colonists paid very little attention to the supreme government, and introduced slavery into the state almost from the start, though the constitution of Mexico did not, nor does it now, sanction that institution. Soon they set up an independent government of their own, and war existed, between Texas and Mexico, in name from that time until 1836, when active hostilities very nearly ceased upon the capture of Santa Anna, the Mexican President. Before long, however, the same people – who with permission of Mexico had colonized Texas, and afterwards set up slavery there, and then seceded as soon as they felt strong enough to do so – offered themselves and the State to the United States, and in 1845 their offer was accepted. The occupation, separation and annexation were, from the inception of the movement to its final consummation, a conspiracy to acquire territory out of which slave states might be formed for the American Union. Even if the annexation itself could be justified, the manner in which the subsequent war was forced upon Mexico cannot. The fact is, annexationists wanted more territory than they could possibly lay any claim to, as part of the new acquisition. Texas, as an independent State, never had exercised jurisdiction over the territory between the Nueces River and the Rio Grande. Mexico had never recognized the independence of Texas, and maintained that, even if independent, the State had no claim south of the Nueces. I am aware that a treaty, made by the Texans with Santa Anna while he was under duress, ceded all the territory between the Nueces and the Rio Grande – , but he was a prisoner of war when the treaty was made, and his life was in jeopardy. He knew, too, that he deserved execution at the hands of the Texans, if they should ever capture him. The Texans, if they had taken his life, would have only followed the example set by Santa Anna himself a few years before, when he executed the entire garrison of the Alamo and the villagers of Goliad. In taking military possession of Texas after annexation, the army of occupation, under General Taylor, was directed to occupy the disputed territory. The army did not stop at the Nueces and offer to negotiate for a settlement of the boundary question, but went beyond, apparently in order to force Mexico to initiate war. It is to the credit of the American nation, however, that after conquering Mexico, and while practically holding the country in our possession, so that we could have retained the whole of it, or made any terms we chose, we paid a round sum for the additional territory taken; more than it was worth, or was likely to be, to Mexico. To us it was an empire and of incalculable value; but it might have been obtained by other means. The Southern rebellion was largely the outgrowth of the Mexican war. Nations, like individuals, are punished for their transgressions. We got our punishment in the most sanguinary and expensive

Reading Group Guide  1.   The river town of Hobnob, Mississippi, is in danger of flooding. To offset the risk, the townspeople were offered the chance to relocate in exchange for money. Some people jumped at the opportunity (the Flooders); others (the Stickers) refused to leave, so the deal fell through. If you lived in Hobnob, which choice would you make and why? If you’d lived in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina, would you have fled the storm or stayed to protect your house? Did the two floods remind you of each other in terms of official government response or media coverage?  2.   How are the circumstances during the Prohibition era (laws against consuming or selling alcohol, underground businesses that make and sell booze on the black market, corruption in the government and in law enforcement) similar to what’s happening today (the fight to legalize and tax marijuana, the fallout of the drug war in countries like Mexico and Colombia, jails filled with drug abusers)? How are the circumstances different? Do you identify with the bootleggers or the prohibitionists in the novel? What is your stance on the issue today?  3.   The novel is written in third person from two different perspectives—Ingersoll’s and Dixie Clay’s—in alternating chapters. How do you think this approach adds to or detracts from the story? Are you a fan of books written from multiple perspectives, or do you prefer one character to tell his/her side of the story?  4.   The Tilted World is written by two authors. Do you think it reads differently than a book written by only one? Do you think you could coauthor a novel with a loved one? Did you try to guess which author wrote different passages?  5.   Language and dialect play an important role in the book. Do you think the southern dialect is rendered successfully? How about the authors’ use of similes (“wet towels hanging out of the upstairs windows like tongues”; “Her nylon stockings sagged around her ankles like shedding snakeskin.”). Do they provide necessary context or flavor?  6.   At the end of Chapter 5, when Jesse, Ham, and Ingersoll first meet, Ingersoll realizes that Jesse has been drinking water the entire time they’ve been at dinner. Of course, Ham and Ingersoll are both drunk from all the moonshine. How does this discovery set the stage for what happens in the latter half of the book?  7.   Ingersoll grew up an orphan. In what ways do you think that independence informed his character? His choices throughout the novel? Dixie Clay also became independent, after marrying Jesse and becoming ostracized from friends and family. Later, after Ingersoll rescues her, she reflects, “For so long she’d relied only on herself. She’d needed to. . . . But now she’d let someone in. It should have felt like weakness, but it didn’t.” Are love and independence mutually exclusive? How did the arrival of Willy prepare these characters for the changes they’d have to undergo to be ready for each other?  8.   Dixie Clay becomes a bootlegger not because she loves booze or money but because she needs something to occupy her time. It’s true, however, that she’s not only breaking the law but participating in a system that perpetrates violence. Do you think there were better choices she could have made? Consider the scene at the beginning of the novel, when there’s a showdown between Jesse and two revenuers interested in making an arrest. Dixie Clay intercepts the arrest, pretending to be a posse of gunslingers protecting Jesse and the still. Given what you find out about Jesse—his dishonesty, his drunkenness, his womanizing—do you think she made the right choice? If you were in Dixie Clay’s shoes, what would you have done?  9.   When Ham learns that Ingersoll abandoned his post at the levee to help Dixie Clay, he feels not only that Ingersoll acted

Few Indians or castes fought to forge a new nation called Mexico; such a scheme would have made little sense, and held little interest, for them. They fought in the hope that their lot in life might in some way improve. The

The local Creole elites came to support independence in Mexico and Peru only because Ferdinand VII back in Spain agreed to accept the liberal constitution of 1812; independence for them was thus meant to prevent liberal reform from spreading to the New World.2 The makers of the American Revolution, by contrast, were liberal and democratic to the core. Independence from Britain served to embed democratic principles in the institutions of the new nation, even if it did not bring about a social revolution. The leaders of the independence movements in Latin America were far more conservative, despite the fact that they felt compelled to adopt formally democratic institutions.

Founded in Buenos Aires in 1974 and relocated to Mexico City after Argentina’s 1976 coup, Tercer Mundo (Third World) covered political events throughout what is today known as the Global South—Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. In its first issue (September 1974), the journal discussed Argentina’s nationalist leader, Juan Domingo Perón, events in Peru, the decolonization struggle in Mozambique, dictatorship in Bolivia, and the Middle Eastern conflict. In issue 4 (May 1975), Tercer Mundo analyzed “Islamic Socialism” in Somalia, denounced the U.S. economic “blockade” of Cuba, discussed cultural decolonization in Tanzania, and reported on struggles for economic independence in Angola and Panama. Publishing from Mexico City a few years later, the journal’s issues 20 and 27 (April 1978 and February 1979) trained its anti-imperialist lens on issues commonly affecting Libya, Morocco (Western Sahara), Zaire (Congo), Mexico, Panama, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iran, and Cambodia.

A woman's world has always revolved around children and other women. At least as long as I've been around, and I'm almost 60." she smoothed the sheet draped across Ellie as she talked, tucking it in around the sides of her body like a cocoon. "Don't get me wrong," she continued. "We love our men, and the idea of a husband is a good thing. What woman wouldn't want that?" Ellie thought of her brave, independent Aunt Nessa, teaching until she was seventy and dying in ehr sleep on a train bound for New Mexico. She'd never wanted to marry, and she was the happiest woman Ellie had ever known. Mrs Drake put the tissue from the box on Ellie's nightstand and blew her nose. "Men need us more than we need them," she said, and then lowered her voice. "Including the doctors around here. They walk around acting like God, but you should see the panic when one of them has to buy a birthday present for his wife. They have no idea what women want." She washed her hands in the small sink in the corner. "That's why we need our women friends. We're with each other from the beginning to the very end, and everything in between. We understand each other. It's instinctual.

Even after California became part of Mexico upon the country’s independence from Spain, the region’s inhabitants thought of themselves differently from their fellow Mexican citizens—they were gente de razón (people of reason), a term that distinguished them from the Indians or those of mixed blood, frequently called cholos.

Several years ago, the Mexicans organized and joined the union and struck for better wages, but it came with violence. Men died. Jack spent a year in San Quentin. When he came out, he was even more determined.” Loreda hadn’t considered prison. “How is it illegal to ask for better wages?” Natalia lit up another cigarette. “It isn’t, technically. But this is a capitalist country, run by big-money interests. After the state’s anti-immigration campaign, when they rounded up all the illegals and deported them back to Mexico, the growers would have had a real problem, but then…” “We started coming.” Natalia nodded. “They sent flyers across America, telling workers to come. And they came, too many of them. Now there are ten workers for every job. We’re having trouble getting your people to organize. They’re—” “Independent.” “I was going to say stubborn.” “Yeah. Well, a lot of us are farmers, and you have to be stubborn to survive sometimes.” “Are you stubborn?” “Yeah,” Loreda said slowly. “I reckon so. But more than anything, I’m mad.

As I twisted the steering wheel and forced the accelerator to the floor I was controlling Mexico, and might and aloneness and inexperienced youth and Bailey Johnson, Sr., and death and insecurity, and even gravity.

In terms of voting rights for males, some of these documents were strikingly democratic. Again, Mexico serves to make the point. In the years immediately before independence, what became this territory had officially been governed in accordance with the constitution of Cádiz, which, as we have seen, excluded most Blacks from active citizenship. But, in 1821, the Mexican warlord General Agustín de Iturbide eliminated these racial restrictions and expanded the local franchise. He ‘effectively enfranchised every man over eighteen who had employment of any kind’.

The Constitution of the Republic of Texas (1836) extended citizenship to all persons residing in Texas on the day of the declaration of independence as long as they were not Black or Indian.49 Mexicans who were white and mestizo became citizens of Texas. With respect to land, officials adopted some of Mexico’s property laws, but placed racial restrictions on those who would be able to recertify their grants. Under Mexican law, occupational land rights were recognized, and a person did not have to hold a deed to the land he lived on. Under the laws of the new republic, however, Indians and Blacks were prohibited from validating their Spanish and Mexican land grants, regardless of whether they held a deed. They also became ineligible to apply for new land grants.

Smith v. Smith became the precedent in Texas for upholding Mexico’s marriage and inheritance laws. The legal and cultural arguments used in defense of the Smiths’ interethnic marriage were later found to be equally applicable to interracial marriages. That is, although immediately after independence the Texas Legislature passed a series of “antimiscegenation” laws prohibiting the marriage of whites and Blacks, this type of interracial marriage was deemed legal if it had been conducted during Spanish and Mexican rule, and the children born from these marriages were eligible to inherit.

Israel is being forced to self-destruct by setting indefensible borders with an entity that has sworn to destroy her. No other country on earth has been, or is being, forced to do this. India will not grant political independence to eight million Sikhs, despite the Sikh terror campaign which included the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Sri Lanka will not allow an independent state in the north for the Tamils, in spite of Tamil terrorism. Iran, Iraq, and Turkey will not grant the Kurds autonomy despite the ongoing revolts. The Flemish and the Walloons, ethnically different, are in a cultural struggle in Belgium but no one suggests dividing the country. Look at the Spanish and the Basques, the Rumanians and the Gypsies, etc. Only Israel must divide in two. Only Israel must give its enemies the means to destroy her. There has never been a case of a nation winning a defensive war and then ceding territory to the vanquished. Only Israel is expected to put this absurdity into practice. No nation in the world would ever agree to such a thing. The United States never considered returning California and New Mexico to the Mexicans. England is still laying claim to the Falkland Islands off the coast of Argentina, thousands of miles away from Great Britain.

Mexico itself gained its independence from Spain after a protracted war from 1810 to 1821, and its population generally consisted of a mix of three groups: a Spanish-origin elite population; mestizos (those of mixed European and Indian ancestry), who were mostly landless but who occupied many middle-tier positions in society (working, for example, as craftsmen, soldiers, laborers, and traders); and, finally, Indians, who remained outside of Spanish-speaking society and who farmed land in a traditional manner.

In 1836 Texas proclaimed its independence from Mexico and beat back a Mexican effort to reclaim the land. Then, at the request of the Texans, the United States annexed this territory in 1845, precipitating the Mexican-American War. After the Mexican army was defeated in 1848, Mexico ceded territory to the United States in what is now California, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Colorado as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. This treaty also gave U.S. citizenship to the fifty thousand or so Mexicans who remained.

Wikipedia: Reconquista (Mexico) A prominent advocate of Reconquista was the Chicano activist and adjunct professor Charles Truxillo (1953–2015) of the University of New Mexico (UNM). He envisioned a sovereign Hispanic nation, the República del Norte (Republic of the North), which would encompass Northern Mexico, Baja California, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. He supported the secession of US Southwest to form an independent Chicano nation and argued that the Articles of Confederation gave individual states full sovereignty, uncluding the legal right to secede. Truxillo, who taught at UNM's Chicano Studies Program on a yearly contract, suggested in an interview, "Native-born American Hispanics feel like strangers in their own land." He said, "We remain subordinated. We have a negative image of our own culture, created by the media. Self-loathing is a terrible form of oppression. The long history of oppression and subordination has to end" and that on both sides of the US–Mexico border "there is a growing fusion, a reviving of connections.... Southwest Chicanos and Norteño Mexicanos are becoming one people again." Truxillo stated that Hispanics who achieved positions of power or otherwise were "enjoying the benefits of assimilation" are most likely to oppose a new nation and explained: There will be the negative reaction, the tortured response of someone who thinks, "Give me a break. I just want to go to Wal-Mart." But the idea will seep into their consciousness, and cause an internal crisis, a pain of conscience, an internal dialogue as they ask themselves: "Who am I in this system?" Truxillo believed that the República del Norte would be brought into existence by "any means necessary" but that it would be formed by probably not civil war but the electoral pressure of the region's future majority Hispanic population. Truxillo added that he believed it was his duty to help develop a "cadre of intellectuals" to think about how the new state could become a reality.

If some Mexican-Americans have their way, they will not have to go back to Mexico for burial; Mexico will come to them. What is called the Reconquista movement aims to break the Southwest off from the United States and reattach it to Mexico or establish it as an independent, all-Hispanic nation, thus reversing the territorial consequences of the Mexican-American war. Reconquista is widely promoted on college campuses. Charles Truxillo, a professor of Chicano studies at the University of New Mexico, thinks “Republica del Norte” would be a good name for a new Hispanic nation, which would contain all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas and the southern part of Colorado. The Albuquerque-born Prof. Truxillo says the new nation is “an inevitability,” and should be created “by any means necessary.” He doubts violence will be necessary, however, because shifting demographics will make the transition seem natural.

Martí still had to consider himself lucky, since in 1871 eight medical students had been executed for the alleged desecration of a gravesite in Havana. Those executed were selected from the student body by lottery, and they may not have even been involved in the desecration. In fact, some of them were not even in Havana at the time, but it quickly became obvious to everyone that the Spanish government was not fooling around! Some years later Martí studied law at the Central University of Madrid (University of Zaragoza). As a student he started sending letters directly to the Spanish Prime Minister insisting on Cuban autonomy, and he continued to write what the Spanish government considered inflammatory newspaper editorials. In 1874, he graduated with a degree in philosophy and law. The following year Martí traveled to Madrid, Paris and Mexico City where he met the daughter of a Cuban exile, Carmen Zayas-Bazán, whom he later married. In 1877 Martí paid a short visit to Cuba, but being constantly on the move he went on to Guatemala where he found work teaching philosophy and literature. In 1878 he published his first book, Guatemala, describing the beauty of that country. The daughter of the President of Guatemala had a crush on Martí, which did not go unnoticed by him. María was known as “La Niña de Guatemala,” the child of Guatemala. She waited for Martí when he left for Cuba, but when he returned he was married to Carmen Zayas-Bazán. María died shortly thereafter on May 10, 1878, of a respiratory disease, although many say that she died of a broken heart. On November 22, 1878, Martí and Carmen had a son whom they named José Francisco. Doing the math, it becomes obvious as to what had happened…. It was after her death that he wrote the poem “La Niña de Guatemala.” The Cuban struggle for independence started with the Ten Years’ War in 1868 lasting until 1878. At that time, the Peace of Zanjón was signed, giving Cuba little more than empty promises that Spain completely ignored. An uneasy peace followed, with several minor skirmishes, until the Cuban War of Independence flared up in 1895. In December of 1878, thinking that conditions had changed and that things would return to normal, Martí returned to Cuba. However, still being cautious he returned using a pseudonym, which may have been a mistake since now his name did not match those in the official records. Using a pseudonym made it impossible for him to find employment as an attorney. Once again, after his revolutionary activities were discovered, Martí was deported to Spain. Arriving in Spain and feeling persecuted, he fled to France and continued on to New York City. Then, using New York as a hub, he traveled and wrote, gaining a reputation as an editorialist on Latin American issues. Returning to the United States from his travels, he visited with his family in New York City for the last time. Putting his work for the revolution first, he sent his family back to Havana. Then from New York he traveled to Florida, where he gave inspiring speeches to Cuban tobacco workers and cigar makers in Ybor City, Tampa. He also went to Key West to inspire Cuban nationals in exile. In 1884, while Martí was in the United States, slavery was finally abolished in Cuba. In 1891 Martí approved the formation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party.

The Mexican army offered surrender to the Alamo defenders, and 27-year-old commander of the Alamo William Barret Travis’ response was a single defiant cannon shot. After 12 long days of siege by the numerically superior Mexican forces, legend says that Travis offered escape to those defenders who did not want to stay with him and face certain death, calling the question on his offer with a literal line in the sand drawn with his sword. Mere hours later, all the defenders lay dead on the grounds of the mission, never knowing that, four days earlier, a convention of delegates from all over Texas had drawn up and signed a Declaration of Independence from Mexico, formally establishing the Republic of Texas. At

The generality of Mexicans refused the constitution, and the commander of the Spanish army in Mexico, General Agustin de Iturbide united with General Vicente Guerrero, commander of the insurgents (what remained of revolutionary forces launched by Fr. Hidalgo in 1810), in declaring the independence of Mexico. Thus, unlike the rest of Latin America, where independence came as the result of direct assaults on altar and throne by men like Bolivar, it was brought about in Mexico to defend them. Iturbide and Guerrero produced on February 24, 1821 the Plan of Iguala (from the town where it was proclaimed). This plan had three guarantees: 1) Mexico was to be an independent monarchy—under a Spanish or some other European prince; 2) Native and foreign-born Spanish were to be equal; and 3) Catholicism was to be the religion of the state and no others were to be tolerated. The following August 24, the Viceroy, Don Juan O’Donoju surrendered, and Mexico became an independent empire. No European prince would accept the throne, however, and so Iturbide became Emperor Agustin I on May 19, 1822. But influences from the north opposed the idea of a Catholic Mexican Empire; these inspired certain elements to back Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana against Agustin, who was deposed on March 19, 1823, and went into exile. He returned a year later, attempted unsuccessfully to regain the throne, and was executed. The next year saw the appointment of Joel Poinsett as first American Consul in Mexico. In this country, Poinsett is remembered as the importer of Poinsettia, which is so much a part of our Christmas celebrations. But in Mexico he is recalled as the originator of “Poinsettismo,” as the interference of the United States in the internal affairs of Mexico is often called there. He introduced the Masonic lodges into Mexico, and helped organize and strengthen the anti-clerical Liberal Party. From that day to this, the Mexican Liberals have always looked to the United States for assistance in battling the pro-Catholic Conservatives.

Rather than ally directly with Britain in the matter, however, President Monroe instead made a unilateral declaration: while currently existing European colonies would not be molested by the U.S., under no circumstances would new ones be permitted; nor would reconquest of the new Latin nations. While at the time only possible because the British were resolved on the same course, this “Monroe Doctrine” basically declared to the world that the Americas were henceforth open only to United States exploitation. This would have a tremendous influence on the subsequent internal history of Latin America. As in Mexico so in the rest of the region—the Liberals looked to the U.S. for support, while the Conservatives gazed towards a Europe rendered powerless to help them (unless the Europeans didn’t mind a war with the ever-stronger United States). The result in the immediate was that in 1824 Peru was finally forced into independence. The following year Bolivia was subjected to “liberation” with great loss of life. At last, in 1826, Chiloe, Puerto Cabello, San Juan de Ulloa, and Callao, Peru all surrendered. Spain’s empire in the New World was reduced to the Philippines, the Marianas, Puerto Rico, and Cuba siempre leal— “ever loyal Cuba.” Under cover of the Monroe doctrine, American interests worked ever for the triumph of anti-clericals over the Catholic interest.

Norio Hayakawa, a New Mexico resident who has independently studied Dulce Base for decades, wrote an article dated March 28, 2007 on the Rense.com website, which detailed his extensive research into the Dulce rumors over the years.

Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), the considerably influential Swiss-French political thinker, activist and writer on political theory and religion,708 whose ideas influenced the liberal movement in Spain, the liberal revolution in Portugal in 1820, the Greek war of independence soon after, and revolutionary movements stretching from Belgium, to Poland to as far as Brazil and Mexico over the same period also had his views on the matter. The only short text that he wrote before his death on the expedition of Algiers, while wishing for the victory of French forces and refusing ‘to respect the quality of sovereignty in a barbarian’, the Dey of Algiers, castigated the expedition as a political ploy on the eve of a crucial general election.709 But Constant, after dismissing the quarrel between Charles X and the Dey as an ‘affaire d’honneur’, declared that he would support the expedition ‘if it led to the ‘colonization’ of the Regency: for it to become an ‘affaire nationale’, he contended, ‘an undisputed, indisputable colonization should be the prize of victory and the fruit of the sacrifices risked’ by the Bourbon regime.710 Constant final hours on this earth must have been filled with glee as the news of the French entry into Algeria reached him on his death- bed. Pro or anti Regime, all welcomed the news of the expedition.