By Fred Reed and cross-posted from The Burning Platform
To understand many Mexican attitudes toward the United States and immigration, you have to go back to the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, of which most Americans have never heard. The United States attacked Mexico in a war of territorial acquisition, occupied Texas, California, New Mexico, and Arizona, and drove south to conquer Mexico City. It did it because it could.
The attitude of Americans who have heard of the war is usually, “Get over it.” Mexicans have not gotten over it. People get over things they have done to others more easily than they get over things others have done to them. Tell Americans to “get over” Nine-Eleven, or Jews to get over Germany.
There is in Guadalajara a large and prominent monument to Los Niños Heroes, the adolescent cadets who marched out to defend Chapultepec as the Americans conquered Mexico City, much as the VMI cadets tried to defend Virginia in the Civil War. Countless Mexican towns have a street called Niños Heroes. They remember.
The base of the monument to Los Niñoes Heroes in Guadalajara. It reads, “Died for their country.” You know, like Iwo Jima and all.
This does not make for a keen appreciation of the Exceptional Nation. Nor does memory of the conquest arouse sympathy about immigration–or, as Mexicans see it, emigration. It explains the occasionally heard phrase, “La Reconquista.”
Throw in the drumbeat from racist sites to the effect that Mexicans are stupid, filthy, criminal, and parasitic, and Trump’s asserting that they are rapists and what all, which resonates in Mexico as Hillary’s Deplorables speech did in Middle America. And of course there was the bombardment of Veracruz, of which Americans have never heard, and Pershing’s Incursion, and Washington’s history of attacks, invasion, installation of dictators in Latin America and support for others…
