CHAPTER 7 MESOAMERICANS IN THE NEOCOLONIAL ERA 289In 1879, the liberals passed laws that made it possible for coffee owners to acquire ad-
ditional lands from the Indian communities. Even though the Nonualco area largely
fell outside the coffee zone, its native inhabitants were adversely affected by the new
laws, and so they joined in widespread Indian rebellions in 1885. The center of native
rebellion, however, had begun to shift to the western Izalco area, where Indian unrest
there would again turn into a major conflagration in 1932 (as explained in Chapter 8).U.S. MEDDLING AND OTHER
ANTECENDENTS TO THE MODERN ERA
U.S. interference in the affairs of Mexico and Central America has a long history, ex-
tending back to the last decades of the colonial period and continuing on into the
twentieth century. As early as 1786, Thomas Jefferson expressed the official U.S. at-
titude toward the region: “Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest, from which
all America, North and South, is to be peopled” (Cockcroft 1983:49). Late in the
eighteenth century, U.S. merchants and contrabanders broke through the Spanish
trade monopoly to sell their wares at huge profits in Mexico and Central America.
U.S. commercial representatives began to appear in the major ports of trade of the
region, and U.S. political agents engaged in military intrigue, pressuring the colonies
to cast aside Spanish control.
No sooner had Mexico and Central America achieved independence than U.S.
(along with British and other European) merchants were aggressively maneuvering
to monopolize trade with these countries at the expense of British and other mer-
chants. Political meddling immediately increased as well: The first U.S. ambassador
to Mexico referred to the Mexicans as “ignorant and debauched,” and correspond-
ingly tried to tell them how to run their government. In Central America the postin-
dependence federation was based on the U.S. model; and on one or two occasions,
states like El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua went so far as to request admission
to the U.S. union.
Despite President Monroe’s warning to the European powers in 1823 to stay out
of the region, Mexico and Central America were repeatedly invaded during the nine-
teenth century by European powers, especially England. The other major offender
was the United States. Texas was annexed in 1845, and in 1846 the United States in-
vaded Mexico with the excuse that it was collecting debts owed to its citizens from the
time of the independence wars. U.S. soldiers succeeded in occupying Mexico City,
at the cost of some 50,000 Mexican lives, and forced the Mexican government to
cede almost half of its territory (in the “Treaty” of Guadalupe).
In Central America William Walker, the filibusterer from California, invaded
Nicaragua in 1855, and ruled it as a slave state for two years with U.S. official recog-
nition. In 1861, at a time when the United States was preoccupied with its Civil War,
Spain invaded Mexico, only to be replaced in 1862 as invaders by the French. The
French occupied the country until 1867, when they were driven out by Benito Juárez’s
nationalist forces. Veterans of the U.S. Civil War aided the Juárez forces, and Juárez
offered important concessions to the United States in exchange for its recognition
of the new Mexican government.