MEXICO 201
Rejón’s fears concerning the treatment of Mex-
ican citizens in the newly annexed territories were
soon justifi ed. The gold rush in California caused a
wave of attacks by Anglo-American miners against
native Californians. In his reminiscences, Antonio
Coronel, from Los Angeles, described “stabbings,
extortions, and lynchings as commonplace Ameri-
can reactions to native Californios, whom they
regarded as interlopers.” Even worse was the fate
of indigenous Californians, who were considered
full Mexican citizens under the constitution of
- Denied the protection specifi ed in the treaty
of Guadalupe Hidalgo, they “became the victims
of murder, slavery, land theft, and starvation.” In
two decades the indigenous population of the state
declined by more than one hundred thousand.
“Genocide,” writes Richard Griswold del Castillo,
“is not too strong a word to use in describing what
happened to the California Indians during that pe-
riod.” In New Mexico, which became a territory
rather than a state, Hispanic inhabitants did not
gain citizenship status until New Mexico achieved
statehood in 1912, and its native peoples were de-
nied the vote until 1953.
Violation of their land rights, the protection
of which was promised by the treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo, was and remains a major grievance of many
Mexican Americans. Claiming that the great major-
ity of Mexican land grants in the ceded territory were
“imperfect,” American courts ruled that the U.S.
government had inherited the right to complete the
process of land confi rmation. In California and New
Mexico, this process, creating for Mexican Ameri-
can landowners an immense expense of litigation
and legal fees, aggravated by usurious interest rates
and falling cattle prices, resulted in the loss of their
land by most rancheros. Even the few who survived
the confi rmation process came under great pres-
sure from squatters, mostly wealthy and infl uential
Anglo-Americans, to surrender their land. In New
Mexico, a fraternity of predatory lawyers and poli-
ticians, the so-called Santa Fe Ring, “used the long
legal battles over land grants to acquire empires ex-
tending over millions of acres.” Here, the struggle of
Mexican Americans to regain the lost lands of their
ancestors, based on the claim that the United States
violated the articles of the treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo that guaranteed the citizenship and prop-
erty rights of Mexicans, continues to this day.LA REFORMA, CIVIL WAR,AND
THE FRENCH INTERVENTION
The disasters suffered by Mexico under conserva-
tive rule had created widespread revulsion against
conservative policies and stimulated a revival of
puro liberalism. In 1846, during the war, liberal
administrations came to power in the states of
Oaxaca and Michoacán. In Michoacán the new
governor was Melchor Ocampo, a scholar and sci-
entist who was profoundly infl uenced by Rousseau
and French utopian socialist thought. In Oaxaca,
a Zapotec lawyer, Benito Juárez, became governor
and earned a reputation for honesty, effi ciency,
and democratic simplicity.
Ocampo and Juárez were two leaders of a ren-
ovated liberalism that ushered in the movement
calledLa Reforma. Like the older liberalism of the
1830s, the Reforma sought to destroy feudal ves-
tiges and implant capitalism in Mexico. Its ideology,
however, was more spirited than the aristocratic,
intellectual liberalism of Mora. Puros like Ponciano
Arriaga and Ignacio Ramírez transcended liberal
ideology with their attacks on the latifundio, the
defense of labor and women’s rights, and other
advanced ideas. Meanwhile, Santa Anna returned
to power in 1853 and, accompanied by a terrorist
campaign against all dissenters, proclaimed him-
self “His Most Supreme Highness.” This spurred
a gathering of opposition forces, including many
disgruntled moderados and conservatives. In early
1854, the old liberal caudillo, Juan Alvarez, and
the moderado general Ignacio Comonfort issued a
call for revolt: the Plan of Ayutla, which demanded
the end of the dictatorship and the election of a
convention to draft a new constitution. Within a
year, Santa Anna, seeing the handwriting on the
wall, went into exile for the last time, and a puro-
dominated provisional government took offi ce.
Alvarez became provisional president and named
Benito Juárez as minister of justice and Miguel
Lerdo de Tejada as treasury minister.