Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo Promises Land Rights Then Enables Systematic Theft from Mexican Americans

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed February 2, 1848, ends the Mexican-American War by forcing Mexico to cede 55 percent of its territory—including present-day California, Nevada, Utah, New Mexico, most of Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming—to the United States for $15 million plus assumption of American citizens’ claims against Mexico. The treaty includes provisions granting U.S. citizenship and land rights to Mexicans living in the newly acquired territories, with Article IX guaranteeing civil and property rights of Mexican nationals within the new U.S. boundaries. However, when the Senate reluctantly ratifies the treaty (by a vote of 34 to 14) on March 10, 1848, it removes Article X, which had guaranteed the protection of Mexican land grants awarded throughout the Southwest by the Spanish crown and Mexican government. This deletion establishes the foundation for decades of systematic land theft from Mexican Americans despite explicit treaty promises.

The version that Congress ratifies omits the previously agreed-upon Article X protecting land grants. A subsequent protocol attempts to confirm the legitimacy of land grants pursuant to Mexican law, stating that the original Article IX, although replaced by Article III of the Treaty of Louisiana, would still confer the rights delineated in Article IX. However, the United States later ignores this protocol on grounds that U.S. representatives had over-reached their authority in agreeing to it. This bad-faith rejection of negotiated terms exemplifies institutional corruption: the U.S. government makes promises during treaty negotiations to secure Mexican acceptance, then unilaterally abrogates those promises once the treaty is signed and Mexico has no recourse.

Despite treaty assurances, Mexican Americans face systematic challenges in retaining their land due to legal and political maneuvers that undermine their rights. Lands along the Rio Grande owned by Mexican families for centuries suddenly fall under U.S. jurisdiction when the treaty moves the border over them. In the decades following the treaty, Mexican landowners are slowly pushed out as Anglo farmers and ranchers come to dominate the region. Mexican Americans are treated as foreigners on their ancestral homeland and the overwhelming majority live as second-class citizens. Despite the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo securing the equality of Mexican Americans, given Americans’ history of dishonoring treaties (particularly with indigenous peoples), the treaty’s terms are not respected. Significant social, political, and economic discrimination is levied against Mexicans, even where not explicitly legal. A prime example is the de facto segregation of schools in Texas, where school boards regularly create separate schools for Mexicans for the purpose of teaching them how to “assimilate” to society.

During the 1960s, descendants of the Tierra Amarilla land grant and other land grants in New Mexico attempt to reclaim their properties, highlighting the continuing legacy of land theft. The Mexican American experience has a legacy of inequality, inequity, and poverty that starts with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and its unequal treatment of Mexican Americans and the lack of enforcement of its terms, which subjugated Mexican Americans to second-tier standing. The treaty demonstrates kakistocracy through deliberate treaty violation, institutional racism codified into law, and the subordination of property rights and human dignity to Anglo settler interests and land speculation.