[News] Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - 164 years of occupation!

[Anti-Imperialist News]

2 pieces follow

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 1848
Feb 2, 1848-2012  -  164 years of occupation!

Because in the 1836 to 1900', we as a Mexican@ Indigenous people were
displaced by force off our lands in South Texas and what is now the
Southwestern United States, and by the 1900's we were working what
were our lands but now under Gringo ownership. The invaders and
occupiers became the owners and we became 'cheap' wage-labor,

Because the clauses guaranteeing the land ownership of Mexican and
Indigenous people north of the borderline established by the War of
the United States against Mexico 1845-48 and under the protection by
the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo but that were VIOLATED repeatedly and
with impunity,

Because our people suffered a campaign of terror and death at the guns
of white racist vigilantes, lynchings by White mobs, the mass savage
killings by the Texas Rangers, and genocide under the Slave Republic
of Texas and under United States occupation and military control that
turned the northwestern part of Mexico, into the now Southwest of the
United States,

Because we have been treated and have experienced genocide in
indigenous peoples and lands, national oppression as a people,
exploitation as a working class, racism and racial segregation, mass
deportations as migrant workers and youth experience incarceration not
education,

And because, our people have a story of unending struggle and
resistance against the violence, national oppression, racist
segregation, class exploitation, mass deportations, and inequality

We believe that we must recognize the US-Mexico border line and the
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo of 1848, as ILLEGAL! (It is a border
imposed by military force, war, invasion and oppression) and denounce
them every year on this date,

We must rescue and revive our peoples struggles and stories; A
regeneration of our culture, universal human rights, indigenous roots,
and languages, and connection to the land that is not U.S. Centric,

We must decolonize our lands, our minds, spirits and our people for we
are for all practical and political purposes treated as an internal
colony within the entrails of the monster.

We reject the assimilationist models of hegemonic power, capitalism
and imperialism, colonialism and white supremacy and hold high our
goal for liberation, not just reform; but true democracy, and
universal equality for all!

Another United States is Possible and Necessary for another world to
be possible and happen!

*******************************************
Discussion Paper On Immigration 2012
Mexican National Liberation Movement

The recent history of the Mexican people in the 
United States of America clearly shows that we as 
a community started out on the right track by 
attempting to transform our situation and to 
create a better life for our children. However, 
much of the energy that we generated in the year 
2005 was quickly taken away from us by the powers 
that be. The Catholic Church, along with the 
Labor Unions, could not allow the Mexican people 
to start to define for themselves what we needed 
as a people. They could not let the feelings of 
our people run free. They felt like they had to 
corral that energy and so they moved to harness 
all of our people’s energy and redirected all our 
momentum down a road that they picked for us – 
the road towards reform. They said to us that we 
had to exercise our power within the parameters 
set down by the Democratic Party, Labor Unions 
and the Catholic Church. These institutions could 
not allow for an independent base to emerge 
within the confines of the United States, and so 
the only way to harness this power was to direct 
it in the direction of political reform and 
completely away from the direction of 
independence, which the powers that be knew that 
the United States population would never accept. 
Those of our people who were first generation or 
second generation bought into the whole question 
of democracy, while never understanding 
historically what the Mexicans that had lived 
here since the termination of the Mexican 
American war had experienced. An so they took our 
people down the road to reform and what 
transpired was the corruption of all that energy, 
the same energy that could have given us some 
form of substance, methodically evaporated into nothing.

We must look to what has historically transpired 
with the Mexican population since the Alamo or 
since the Mexican American war. We are a very 
resilient people but we have to make some 
historical analysis of our current situation. We 
as Mexicans are the only people that had a war 
waged against them and who also reside within the 
confines of this country. The Mexican American 
war was the cession of Texas and the battle at 
the Alamo. Because of this, we cannot allow the 
criminalization of our people and the term 
illegal to be applied to us as humans. We must 
counter this attack with the fact that the United 
States stole and plundered our land and raped our 
people. We as Mexicans have a right to be here on 
our land. We have to fight for this position 
today as the Empire is engulfed in wars of 
conquest in the Middle East. How can this Empire 
propose democracy in the world and build a wall 
of infamy against our people? We as a people have 
to rise up to their challenge as original people 
in the Americas, as the original inhabitants of 
Turtle Island. Why do we want to be part of an 
empire that is destroying people in all parts of 
the world? This is the same empire that has 
created the conditions in Mexico where 51 % of 
our people live in poverty and 25 % live in 
extreme poverty. This means that only 20 % of our 
people are making it. This is a reality that all 
of Latin America currently faces.

As Mexicans and Latinos we must understand what 
is happening in our homelands to be able to wage 
a struggle to emancipate our people-be it in 
Mexico or all of Latin America. All people who 
come here from all the different parts of the 
Americas have to understand that these 
territories, the seven states that were plundered 
during the Mexican American war, are all part of 
occupied Mexico. This is why we have to have a 
different view on the question of immigration. 
For the Mexican people this is really a question 
of migration from one part of our country to the 
other. People who choose not to hear this really 
do not understand history- you can distort it but 
you can never change it. As Mexicanos we are part 
of the original people of the Americas, and 
because of this we can never turn our backs on 
our history, as it is the door that will take us 
to our future. There can never be any reform for 
us in this empire because this empire was never 
created to accommodate us, it was created to 
plunder and rape our natural resources and our 
Mother Earth. If we as a people believe that we 
can accommodate ourselves to this empire then we 
have to also face the reality of going all over 
the world to kill people in their own homeland so 
that the empire can take control of their natural 
resources and gain control of the almighty 
dollar. If that’s what you as an individual are 
willing to do to accommodate yourself to be a 
part of this country then you have lost touch 
with your humanity. We as a people have to fight 
on both sides of the imposed border to affect 
change and to align ourselves with what really 
represents humanity and learn from other people 
in the world who have fought for the independence 
of their countries. Let us band together with the 
other five and a half billion people that work 
every day for fifty cents, one dollar or two 
dollars a day. In the words of Mao, we must 
“organize the many to defeat the few.” It often 
seems like such an insurmountable task but 
everywhere in the world there is poverty and 
there is struggle and even though it has its own 
dynamics we have to understand why this situation 
exists. We have to stop blaming ourselves for our own oppression.

The following legislative actions prove the 
historical contradictions of the so called 
democracy of the United States. The original 
fugitive slave act of 1793 was a federal law that 
was written with the intention of enforcing 
Article 4- section 2 of the United States 
Constitution. In 1850 the only people who had to 
deal with the question of papers and legality 
were African Americans. In recognition of 
southern support for California’s admission to 
the union as a free state and ending the slave 
trade in the District of Columbia, Congress 
enacted the Fugitive Slave Act to assist the 
south with maintaining a tight rein on 
slaveholders’ property. Existing laws had created 
a system designed to enforce the institution of 
slavery. Southern states usually had slave codes 
that prevented slaves from being at large without 
a pass. All this is very similar to Apartheid/ 
South African pass laws and today's papers for 
undocumented immigrants. The key word in all of 
this is racial profiling. This new law declared 
that any federal marshal or other officials who 
did not arrest a runaway slave was liable of 
receiving a $1,000 fine and six months in prison. 
Law enforcement officials everywhere now had a 
duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a 
runaway slave based on no evidence other than a 
claimant’s sworn testimony of ownership. Any 
individual providing food or shelter was subject 
to six month imprisonment and a $1,000 fine. The 
new laws created a new force of federal 
commissioners empowered to pursue fugitive slaves 
in any state and return them to their owners. No 
statute of limitations applied, and so even those 
slaves who had been free for many years could be 
and were returned to the slave traders. All this 
sounds like the Department of Homeland Security 
and Immigration and Customs enforcement, known as I.C.E.

The Fugitive Slave Act was passed and used 
against the African American community from 1865 
to 1965. Jim Crow type laws were used to 
completely control all aspects of African 
Americans’ lives in the United States. The 
Chinese Exclusion Act was also passed by Congress 
in 1882 and signed into law by President Chester 
A. Arthur. A ten year moratorium was passed for 
the first federal law proscribed entry of an 
ethnic working group on the premise that it 
endangered the good order of certain localities. 
In 1924 after the assassination of Zapata, Villa 
and Magon and the termination of the Mexican 
Revolution, the border patrol was created to 
maintain the division and control of the Mexican 
people. The border patrol agents were recruited 
from the Arizona, California and Texas rangers. 
The first wave of massive deportations occurred 
between 1929 and 1939 during the depression years 
under the Herbert Hoover administration when a 
million were deported to Mexico. This is not 
included in the history text books due to the 
fact that out of the one million deported, 
600,000 were Mexican Americans, legal citizens born in the United States.

This was followed by the internment of Japanese 
Americans in 1942. 110,000 Japanese Americans 
were sent to internment camps. Executive order 
9066 was issued Feb. 19, 1942 and signed into law 
by president Franklin D Roosevelt. In 1944 the 
Supreme Court upheld the Constitutionality of the 
Interment order. The united states census bureau 
assisted the internment efforts by providing 
confidential neighborhood information on Japanese 
Americans. Those that were as little as 1/16 
Japanese could be placed in internment camps. 
Following this, and not to be out done in 1950, 
President Truman’s Administration instituted 
operation Wetback and deported one million two 
hundred thousand Mexicans. To name the 
deportation act “Wetback” was a racist 
vilification of our people. The attacks on the 
Mexican community continued. In 1994 after 
campaigning for proposition 187 in California, 
Governor Pete Wilson was reelected on the 
anti-Mexican wave that was created by 
proposition187. This proposition prohibited an 
education for the children of undocumented 
immigrants, as well as denied them of all social 
services. This law was later rescinded as it was declared unconstitutional.

Proposition 187 was the new wave of repression 
that was unleashed by the fascist sector in the 
United States against the Mexican people. Prior 
to this in 1985, California passed the English 
only law that was also aimed at the Mexican 
community. This English only movement was 
spearheaded by the Federation of American 
Immigration Reform (FAIR), an organization headed 
by John Tanton - an individual known for his 
anti-immigrant views. FAIR received funding in 
the amount of $1.3 million from the Pioneer Fund. 
This fund was established in 1937 and was based 
on the Nazi philosophy of Eugenics. In 1996 the 
Bill Clinton Administration picked up on the 
California proposition and signed into law the 
Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility 
Act [IIRIRA], which did two things. It expanded 
the number of deportable crimes; and made 
noncitizens who were subject to removal to be 
detained without being able to post bond. This 
was followed by Operation Gatekeeper. Operation 
Gatekeeper created the new corridors that would 
eventually build the first walls on the San Diego 
and Texas side, while pushing migrants to cross 
through the Sonora Dessert. It is estimated that 
4,000 to 12,000 migrants have lost their life 
since the passing of Operation Gatekeeper.

In 2003, the Department of Homeland Security, 
ICE, and the Office of Detention and Removal 
(DRO) met to develop a document entitled Endgame. 
Endgame is a 10-year strategic plan to pursue, 
arrest and deport every undocumented person in 
the country by 2012 that according to the 
National Network For Immigrant and Refugee Rights 
report entitled “Injustice for All: The Rise of 
the U.S. Immigration Policing Regime” developed 
the infrastructure for a future “Immigration 
Policing Regime” and repression in the form of 
Raids, Racial Profiling, 287(g) Police/ICE 
collaborations, the creation of more Detention 
and Deportation facilities, and the Secure Communities program.

In 2005 the U.S House of Representatives approved 
the Sensenbrenner law [HR 4437] that criminalized 
not only undocumented immigrants but also anyone 
who offered them moral or material support. It 
should be noted that Sensenbrenner had a business 
investment in the Olive Branch Restaurant chains 
that employed undocumented workers. Senate Bill 
1070 was passed in April of 2010 by the 
legislature of the state of Arizona. 1070 was 
introduced by Republican state Senator Russell 
Pearce. Russell Pearce has ties with Neo Nazi 
organizations, and also attends rallies while 
conducting speeches before many of their groups. 
The main author of SB 1070 is Kris Kobach. Kobach 
is a law professor at the University of 
Missouri-Kansas City. Kobach also works for FAIR. 
Kobach has a long history of involvement in 
Kansas politics, as he was once a Republican 
candidate for congress in 2004. According to 
several newspaper articles, many contributions to 
his campaign came from white supremacist groups. 
Kobach and his cronies, all legal conspirators, 
made the concept of “rational suspicion” a 
standard for determining who is or isn’t an 
undocumented immigrant. Let us apply this concept 
to them and see where it leads us. Senate Bill 
1070 violated the U.S. Constitution, the Treaty 
of Guadalupe Hidalgo, [United States / Mexico 
1848] and the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Alabama’s H.B 56 was passed on June 16th 2011. 
Five things we should understand about this law: 
H.B.56 requires police to stop anyone who they 
suspect may have possibly broken a law and 
inquire about their immigration status. Secondly, 
the new law makes it illegal for undocumented 
immigrants to enroll in or attend public 
colleges. Thirdly, the new law makes it illegal 
for undocumented people to apply for or solicit 
work. Subsequently, this new law makes it illegal 
to rent property to those who are undocumented 
and lastly and perhaps most shockingly, the new 
law requires employees of public schools to 
determine and report approximately how many 
students-children or teenagers- are undocumented, 
regardless of how much proof may exist. According 
to a report titled “Shattered Families” a report 
from the Applied Research Center, the Obama 
administration has deported 46,000 parents of 
children who are U. S. citizens within the first 
six months of 2011. In that same time period, 
government data shows a total of 397,000 
expulsions in the fiscal year 2011. This means 
that “almost one in four people deported is the 
parent of a United States citizen child,” said 
Seth Freed Wessler, the reports chief 
investigator and author. After parents are 
deported, the researchers found that families 
remain separated for long periods, with child 
welfare agencies and juvenile courts often moving 
in to terminate the parental rights of deported 
immigrants. Children who don’t have other 
immediate family are then put up for adoption. 
The deportation of undocumented immigrants in 
2011 has left 5,100 children languishing in 
foster homes. The researchers concluded that 
controversial federal programs such as Secure 
Communities, which allows federal authorities to 
screen fingerprints of those arrested by local 
police in order to detect undocumented 
immigrants, has turned parts of the country into 
deportation hot spots “where families are being torn apart.”

All of the previously mentioned actions were 
taken against people of color. As we traverse 
through the door of United States history we 
should be able to have a clearer picture of our 
future in this country. In seeking reform we have 
allowed the ultra-right wing of the Republican 
Party, and the government in its totality, to 
criminalize a social working class movement by 
creating the term Illegal Alien. We have to 
respond to the fascist alliance that has been 
formed by the ultra-right wing of the Republican 
Party, the Democratic Party, neo Nazis, the 
KKKlan and the tea party. Let us begin to build a 
movement of our people that can defend our future generations.


In conclusion, we pose this question: are the 
Mexican people affected by the question of Genocide?


On December 9th 1948, Resolution 260 {III} A of 
the United Nations General Assembly adopted 
“Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of 
the Crime of Genocide.” declared entry into force 
on the 12th of January 1951, stating:

In the present Convention, genocide means any of 
the following acts committed with intent to 
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, 
racial or religious group, is genocide, as such:

A) Killing members of the group
B) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group
C) Deliberately inflicting on the group 
conditions of life calculated to bring about 
itsphysical destruction in whole or in part;
D) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
E) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

***

M.L.N.M.




Freedom Archives
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415 863-9977

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