The above map shows some of the huge land grants that were given out in Texas in the mid-1800's to empresarios. It shows the huge swaths of land that the Mexican government gave out to people who were deemed fitting under its list of requirements. Massive amounts of land were distributed, but American squatters who refused to comply with the necessary requirements moved into the territory anyway. This disregard was a show of disrespect on a multitude of levels.
First, the relationship between the American government and the Mexican government needs to be analysed before the individual experiences of Mexicans can be understood.
In Manuel Mier y Teran's letter to the Mexican war department, Teran writes that there his government should severely limit the movement of American settlers into the Mexican state as soon as possible. He writes that there are settlers that come onto Mexican territory illegally as squatters and show a total disregard for the land disputes and power struggle that Mexico is waging with the United States. Teran acknowledges that the Americans are masters of conquering new territory because they have already conquered Native American and European land. To Teran, the appropriate response is obvious. Mexico needs to limit American settlers, but alas, Mexico does not. Teran and Mexico's experience with the American squatters is indicative of two things. Firstly, the Americans settlers show no respect for the Mexican government and its attempts to set up legitimate national boundaries. Secondly, the squatters incident shows that the American government itself has no respect for the Mexican government. The American government is condoning the actions of its squatters, and as Teran asserts, the American squatters are part of a state sponsored form of conquering in which they infiltrate the area in question, raise questions of rights and freedoms violations, and incite revolution.
Second, though, exists the individual Mexican experience that existed between themselves and Americans. A group of fifty-three California landowners wrote to the US House of Representatives and the Senate about their grievances hoping for, at worst, some feedback, and at best, some change. The landowners write that at first, they were anticipating the new exchange of power from the hands of the Mexican government to the Americans, but soon after the shift occurred they found that their hopes were unfounded. They had to pay unusually high interest rates, and when they found that they were unable to pay, they had to sell their possessions little by little to maintain their land until nothing was left. The American government was able to swindle from these landowners everything they owned in a slow and subtle way that makes the end result, in no way, any less deplorable.
Beyond the policies, though, the American mindset was also largely dictated by a patronizing disposition. Literature and songs typically romanticized war and spoke of gallant, young, and brave American troops who happened to wander across groups of helpless Mexicans that they would then of course assist. This culture introduced and ingrained in the American troops a savior complex that would never entirely be eradicated throughout the war.
Despite all of this though, the actors in the war were, of course, going to be those that supported the war enough to participate in it directly. The non-actors and opposition to the war movement still protested with an increasing vigor as the war effort progressed.
African Americans
"They have used their utmost endeavors to crush the right of speech, abridge the right of petition, and to perpetuate the enslavement of the colored people of this country." -Frederick Douglass
Douglass sums up only some of the experience of what it must have been like to have been an African American living in both the slave holding and free states of America. Through this primary source does it become evident that men and women like Frederick Douglass are fire starters and instigators in that they depend heavily on discord within the political system. They encouraged dissent and argument because only by objecting to the status quo could their political agendas be fulfilled. Abolitionists and proponents of the anti-war movement were pivotal in inciting the dissension that would lead to the civil war.