NOTE: PLEASE say if you DON'T want your name and/or email address published when sending VDARE email.

08/22/10 - A Takoma Park MD Reader Finds Himself Living In "New Mexico North", Has Some Suggestions

From: A Californian (Email him)

Re: An American Doctor Comments On Mexico's "Claim" To The Southwest

I am a fifth generation Californian, a direct descendent of people who came to California before it was a state.

A VDARE.COM reader wrote recently:

"The Southwest was never of value until the Colorado River was dammed and irrigation was brought to Arizona and California. There were no people living there other than the Indians including the Hopi and others. The Indians as the original 'owners' of the land came with the land to the US. I doubt any of the Indian tribes would vote for Reconquista as opposed to staying right where they are in the US. The Aztecs were never far enough north to ever get close to the present day US border."

He is mostly correct, but I would like to add a few extensions/points to his comments:

1)    By today's standards, even when places like California that were virtually unpopulated (before statehood I have read some estimates that put the total population at as high as 30,000, typically lower—the size of a small to medium sized town today), it was never populated by central American Indians like the Aztecs (because Comanche, Apache, and other North American tribes would have surely stopped them at their borders). After the Spanish took control, there were none of the current Central American Indians who now claim ownership (i.e., claiming that they were pushed off the land by whitey). In fact, they were never there. The claim is beyond mythology, it's just plain silly. Pre-Spanish history makes a mockery of leftist claims that it is historically part of some make-believe "Aztlan" or other happy human-sacrificing Disneylands of horrors.

2)    Furthermore, not only weren't there any Central American Indians inhabiting those lands, it was mostly white (i.e., ignoring the California Indian tribes at the time). The Spanish were almost desperate to get Europeans to move to California; but they had several problems.

First and foremost, not enough Spanish wanted to come (even newly-minted Spanish like the Aztecs did not—my, how times have changed).  Furthermore, they tended to favor Catholics, hated the English, etc. I can remember as a child hunting on my father's friend's family property in Marin County (yes, that's right loopy, hot-tubbing Marin) whose family had been given a large Spanish land grant. (They came about the time my family had arrived—no land grant for mine being from Germany).

My father's friend's last name was Murphy. The full name at the time was something like Don Timoteo Murphy (Irish/English translation, Timothy Murphy). He was actually Protestant Irish who converted to Catholic in order to get the land grant. (By the way, when I met the descendents they were Protestant Irish again).

Timoteo's, I mean Timothy's, story is and isn't such an unusual story. The fact he wasn't even Spanish shouldn't be much of a surprise. After the Spanish took control of places like California, their control was nominal at best. In fact, when California became a state, there was little question that the residents, including most of the Spanish, wanted it to be part of the United States. Thus, the claims that we (i.e., Americans) somehow "stole" the land from Spain or Mexico is absurd. The fact is, the Spanish were first to settle it and couldn't get their own people to inhabit it. Those that inhabited it (most of the Spanish included) didn't want to be part of a corrupt and backward Mexico.

I will leave you with a true story and my own feelings on the matter. When I was a boy, we went to what I believe was the last roundup at the Murphy Ranch (again, yes, in loopy hot tubbing Marin County). Actually, it was probably the last roundup at Point Reyes itself. The ranch was taken over by the Federal government largely by eminent domain and turned into part of the Point Reyes National Seashore.

Now in retrospect, at that roundup I remember looking over at the people, and I can tell you not one was "Mexican".

There were Portuguese Americans, Irish Americans, German Americans, English Americans, etc. But I didn't see one "Mexican" (i.e., a Central American Indian or even part-Indian). Those were the people that built California. They were the ones that made it so that people wanted to move there in such numbers that they would mostly become displaced persons in their own state.

Those were the people that raised families, built, fought in our wars, and generally made positive contributions to the country—not the interlopers and useful idiots who would try to brainwash us to believe that history is their made-up fantasies that they just need to keep repeating to make true.

No, it isn't a "Reconquista" it's simply a conquista/conquest—and a silly one at that.