Mexican Americans and the Memory of the US-Mexico War

Realms of Memory

Fears of the border are reaching fever pitch in the lead up to the 2024 US presidential elections. Much of the alarm hinges on the forgetting of the US-Mexico War (1846-1848). University of Texas at San Antonio historian Omar Valerio-Jiménez reminds us that it was the United States that invaded and annexed half of Mexico. In Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory and Citizenship, Valerio-Jiménez reveals how the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that ended the war, and its unfulfilled promise of full citizenship rights, has never been forgotten by Mexican Americans. Since the mid-nineteenth century, memories of the US-Mexico War and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo have inspired successive generations of Mexican Americans to fight for their civil rights.