Matias Romero arrived in Springfield, Ill. on the evening of Jan. 18, 1861. Though late in the day, he figured it would be easy to find a room in this sleepy midwestern town. But there were no rooms available at his first choice, the American Hotel, or anywhere else: all the hotels in town were full of friends, patronage seekers and the merely curious who had come to meet President-elect Lincoln. Travelers packed into guesthouses three to a room with strangers sharing beds, while others settled for sleeper cars parked in the rail yard.
Matias Romero: Fortunately, the manager of the American quickly recognized that the 23-year-old Oaxacan was no ordinary petitioner. Romero’s refined manner and dapper three-piece suit distinguished him from the homespun westerners in their hickory shirts and pantaloons tucked into boots. Romero was provided the last “very dirty bed” and the promise of his own room for the next evening. He was thankful just to get some rest; the following day Romero met with Lincoln to deliver the hearty congratulations of his president and an olive branch from the neighboring Republic of Mexico.
Despite four decades of rancorous relations with her northern neighbor, no other nation welcomed the Lincoln presidency with more hope and sincerity than Mexico. The Mexican leadership remembered the Congressman from Illinois who questioned President James Polk’s belligerency in the Mexican-American War by challenging whether the conflict’s first bloodshed took place on American soil. They noted the similarities between the Kentucky-born president-elect and their own Benito Juarez, two wise men of North America who had risen up from poverty on the force of profound intellects.
Yet the Mexican fondness for the Lincoln Republicans ran far deeper than personal narrative and goodwill. By December 1860 Mexico had emerged from its own civil war, and the liberal victors who came to power had long believed the path to modernization ran through economic integration with the United States. This dream had been impossible under the annexation-obsessed Democrats who dominated American national politics in the 1850s. With the ascendancy of the free-soil, free-labor Republicans, Mexico’s leaders believed they had a natural ally who would respect Mexico’s territorial integrity and, in future Secretary of State William Seward’s words, “value dollars more, and dominion less.”
Juarez did not wait for the inauguration to open a dialogue with Lincoln. On Dec. 22, 1860, the day his forces smashed the remnant opposition in the last battle of the Reform War, Juarez dispatched instructions for Romero, his protege in Washington, to proceed to Lincoln’s home in Illinois.
Sensing Lincoln was little informed about the situation in Mexico, Romero gave the president-elect a partisan account of Mexican politics since independence from Spain. Romero explained how the “machinations of the clergy and the army” had been “entirely responsible for the constant revolutions that had devastated Mexico.” Through attempts to preserve their traditional privileges, the conservatives had “overthrown every constitution and maintained the country in constant turmoil”, but now, he assured Lincoln, “the causes of past turmoil had been radically removed.” The Reform Laws, combined with Juarez’ wartime decrees, had stripped ecclesiastic and military exemptions from civil courts, nationalized extensive church land holdings and separated and subordinated church from state. Romero stressed the common principles of the two governments, as well as the liberals’ desire “to maintain the most intimate and friendly relations with the United States…and to concede every form of facilities towards developing the commercial and other interests of both republics.”
These were dramatic offers in the wake of decades of poor relations. After all, just 13 years prior Mexico had lost half its territory after its war with the United States. The humiliation had galvanized a new Mexican nationalism based largely on anti-Yankee sentiment. In the United States, the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo merely whet the appetites of the Southern expansionists, and every succeeding American ambassador to Mexico up to the Lincoln administration had proposed further annexation. Though the Gadsden Purchase for the Mesilla Strip of northern Sonora was the only deal consummated in that time, Ambassador James Gadsden had settled for a fraction of the territory originally sought by the Pierce administration: the northern frontier states of Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua, Sonora and Baja California.
Jose Maria Mata, a Mexican envoy to Washington during the Buchanan administration, summed up his country’s collective fear and frustration over its neighbor’s territorial drive. It “borders on mania,” he wrote. “I have proposed to make it clear … that if we are disposed to make fair and profitable concessions for the development and security of American interests, in no case and for no reason would we agree to alienate a single foot of territory.” And the liberals had a good idea of where the drive came from: they blamed American territorial aggressions on Southern slave interests in the Democratic Party bent on expanding the limits of the peculiar institution.
Forces outside the American government also cast manic eyes on Mexican territory. If Manifest Destiny was the mantra of expansion, its heroes were the filibusters, the private military adventurers who sought to conquer territory in Latin America for colonization, the extension of slavery and eventual annexation by the United States.
These agents of conquest provided the public face of Southern territorial aggression. William Walker, the most famous filibuster of his day, led his first disastrous campaign to Baja California and Sonora in 1853 and may have indirectly pressured Santa Anna to yield in concurrent negotiations with Gadsden. Nor did the adventurism end with secession: after a colleague of Walker’s, John Pickett, became the first Confederate ambassador to Mexico, he threatened to send “30,000 Confederate diplomats” across the Rio Grande.
If the Southern filibuster came to personify the mania for annexation, the Republicans presented Mexico the face that approximated the ideals they sought to emulate. The Juarez government was steeped in 19th century liberalism, and viewed unfettered access for American manufactured goods, technology and investment capital as the fuel for economic modernization. (It didn’t seem to matter that Republican economic policy was far from the ideal of free trade.)
The Mexican liberals did not expect an equal partnership. Indeed, Romero made the liberals’ case for economic dependency: “We are willing to grant the United States every commercial facility that will not be derogatory to our independence and sovereignty. This will give the United States all possible advantages of annexation without any of its inconveniences.”
Lincoln told Romero he would treat Mexico “with sentiments of the highest consideration and of true sympathy,” and he kept his word. Lincoln made the prompt choice of Tom Corwin, the renowned orator against the Mexican War, as ambassador. Lincoln also approved the terms for a loan Corwin sent back to Washington, the first ever proposed to a foreign nation.
Sadly, the vision of United States-Mexico relations that Romero brought to Springfield was only half-realized. The United States was not ready for the scale of commercial penetration that Romero and his colleagues desired; in fact, the country would not be a net exporter of investment capital until the close of the 19th century. Mexico needed far more in 1861 than the Republicans could provide. After years of civil strife, Juarez inherited a country whose infrastructure lay in tatters. The treasury was empty, and there was no hope of keeping pace with debt service on past European loans, let alone funding the functions of state without new financing. And, time and again, fear of European reaction would mute Union wartime policy to Mexico: Congress refused Lincoln’s loan plan on the grounds that it might provoke a European reaction.
But international politics is rarely straight forward, and the next few years would see the United States and Mexico nevertheless even closer. The Juarez government had no choice but to default on its European debt in July 1861. A joint English, Spanish and French expedition arrived in November to seize of the port of Veracruz. The tripartite scheme proved to be the beachhead for the French invasion the following year, an intervention that would bind Mexico’s fate even closer to that of the Union.
Sources: Matías Romero, “Diario Personal 1855-1865″; Thomas Schoonover, “The Mexican Lobby”; Matías Romero, “Addresses on the Causes of the Mexican Revolutions”; Thomas Schoonover, “Dollars Over Dominion”; Donathon Oliff, “Reforma Mexico and the United States”; Ralph Roeder, “Juarez and his Mexico”; Jay Monaghan, “Abraham Lincoln Deals with Foreign Affairs”; Harold Holzer, ed., “The Lincoln Anthology.”
William Moss Wilson teaches at Columbia State Community
College in Columbia, Tenn.
Sent by rgrbob@earthlink.net
The University’s explanation for its decision to cancel César Chávez Day as an institutional holiday is that the state limits institutional choices to only 12 holidays. As reported by Adriana Gómez Licón in the El Paso Times, Vice President Richard Adauto added “We just cannot take every holiday.”
"Albuquerque journalist and author John Flores wrote "When
The River Dreams: The Life of Marine Sgt. Freddy Gonzalez" over
a period of about 10 years while working as a newspaper reporter.
The biography was released in fall 2006, with book signings at the
Echo Hotel, the Museum of South Texas History, both in Freddy's
hometown of Edinburg, also at Marine Corps Base, Camp LeJeune, and
Marine Base Hawaii, among other locations. Flores signed a contract
to have the book expanded and re-published in 2011 by Texas Tech
University Press for national distribution.
Sixty-six years ago my uncle, Louis B. Flores, was a paratrooper serving with Easy Company (alternately with HQ Company) in the 101st Airborne Division during the D-Day invasion at Normandy--later at the Battle of the Bulge and he had more than 50 jumps in combat conditions. He was with the same group depicted in the Hollywood version
"Saving Private Ryan" starring Tom Hanks. His former commanding officer was Lt. Dick Winters, an inspiration for
the Stephen Spielberg hit HBO series "Band of Brothers." Winters
died a few days
ago, and the news of his death was just widely released today. And a few years ago, he spoke about my uncle during an interview. They
were together in some of the most intense fighting of the war. 
A molar from an early human species called Denisova is shown in this image
released on Dec. 22. David Reich et al./Nature/Reuters
Pascual Rivas Jr. was as American as apple pie. Known as
"Pat" to friends and family, he grew up in Tustin, was captain
of the football team and student body president at Tustin High, and
didn't speak much Spanish at all. 
Two
items of vaqueros clothing that have endured over time are the
cowboy hat cowboy boots. The botas (boots) first arrived as high
bucket leather boots secured above the knee with leather thongs or
tassels. 
Like
the noble and proud Spaniards of yesteryear, to this day we make
fashion statements about our station in life by donning exquisitely
made boots of the most expensive and exotic leather.
Because it is so functional, comfortable and stylish, it is still
virtually the same boot that arrived with the Spanish settlers and
was adapted and perfected by the Mexicans.
Men stand in front of a barbershop in Spanish
Harlem in 2009.
Latinos in the so-called Puerto Rican
quarter in 1953.