February** Dynamic Incentive Program
Why was Mexico, which was able to beat the Spanish colonizers out, to be taken away by the United States?
Millions of square kilometers of territory were annexed by the United States, but Mexico received less than $20 million in compensation.
During its brutal 300-year history of being colonized by Spain, Mexico never gave up the struggle and even gained independence, expanding its territory to an unprecedented extent.
But in the end, Mexico was defeated in the war with the United States and was forced to sell a large part of its territory at a very low rate.
Why did Mexico get into this situation?
Mexico has a long history, with the once glorious "Mayan" civilization originating here. But it is precisely the porcelain and ** products produced by this "Mayan" civilization that aroused the greed of Europeans after being discovered by European explorers and brought back to Europe.
In 1519, the Spaniards quickly broke through the Mexican defenses with advanced **. At that time, the Aztec Empire lost more than 200,000 deaths in just two months, and the entire empire was wiped out.
However, Mexico did not give up its resistance and took advantage of its familiarity with the terrain to establish a guerrilla front.
In 1820, a bourgeois revolution arose in Spain. As a result, the Spanish colonizers seized power in Mexico and declared Mexico's independence.
Although the independence at this time did not solve the problem of internal war in Mexico, it made Mexico's territory unprecedentedly large, reaching an area of a staggering 49250,000 square kilometers.
In the two decades since, Mexico has been politically chaotic and economically depressed, and Spain has attacked it twice, but Mexico's territory has been relatively stable.
Before Mexico's civil strife was resolved, the external enemy was already eyeing it.
The United States in northern Mexico is an emerging country that gained independence as early as 1783. After losing the war with Canada, the United States set its offensive sights on Mexico in the south.
There are also a large number of Native Americans in Mexico, which makes the United States also think of "exterminating the indigenous people and seizing new lands" in Mexico.
As early as 1823, Monroe, the then leader of the United States, put forward the famous slogan: "America is the America of Americans". At that time, the territory of the United States was far from being as vast as it is today, so a strategy of westward expansion was proposed. Mexico, which borders the United States, was naturally targeted.
The "Americans" here naturally exclude the indigenous Indian population, which accounts for the majority of the population of Mexico, after all, after the establishment of the United States, the Americans have exhausted all the indigenous Indians in their territory, which is enough to see that the Americans are very unfriendly to the local residents.
Mexico was expanding to the western United States, and Americans and goods had to pass through Mexico to reach the Pacific. One of the main reasons why the Americans wanted to seize Mexican territory was to gain access to the Pacific Ocean.
At that time, Mexico did not attach importance to the estuary of the Pacific Ocean around California. The leaders of Mexico at the time, who were mainly engaged in the business of churches and large estates, were not keen on doing business with foreigners through the Pacific Ocean, and considered it too risky to be interested.
On the contrary, the Americans are very fond of these ports and often go to sea**. As a result, the United States has become more and more influential in the region, and the proportion of local residents who are white and identify with the United States is increasing.
Mexico's vast majority of population and industry were concentrated in the south, while the north was almost inaccessible, and the slackness of the leaders who did not extend their dominance to the north in time after unifying the country naturally gave the Americans the opportunity to take advantage of the situation.
The Mexican state of Texas is on the move, and its inhabitants are mostly white people who have migrated from the United States to run plantations, and there are few indigenous people left. The local white immigrants were almost overwhelmingly convinced that Texas should belong to the United States.
In 1835, Texas launched a rebellion. As soon as this incident came out, the whole country in Mexico was in an uproar. Mexico immediately mobilized troops to suppress the rebellion, but Texas had the support of the United States, and the Mexican army was outmatched by the American army and retreated step by step.
The United States even took the opportunity to fan the flames and actively negotiated with Texas to support Texas' formal secession from Mexican rule through a referendum.
In 1845, the United States unilaterally incorporated Texas into the United States. At this time, Mexico did not have the confidence to raise objections, and Texas was annexed by the United States for no apparent reason.
This can also be seen as a test of Mexico by the United States. Seeing that Mexico's attitude was so negative, the United States became more and more unscrupulous.
In 1846, the United States officially went to war with Mexico, and a three-year territorial tug-of-war began.
The United States attacked Mexico, and it was not numerically superior. However, Mexico's military equipment is too backward, lacking not only capable generals and mature army establishments, but also a timely and sufficient logistics chain. At this time, the U.S. military was already building up its navy on a large scale, and Mexico did not even have a navy.
On the battlefield, many of the guns of the Mexican army were improvized, and some were assembled from parts of different models of guns, which were easily jammed or popped. The battlefield is all about timing, and the gun is not good, even if you aim at the enemy, you can't shoot, and the next second, the enemy's bullet has already been shot in front of you.
Only three months after the war began, Mexico was crushed, and the U.S. military smoothly penetrated into Mexico in accordance with the military strategy that had been formulated. In 1847, the U.S. military captured the Mexican capital.
Mexico** is so weak compared to the civilian self-defense forces that have been organized by the people. In the midst of the shouts of the masses who insisted on fighting, Mexico** raised its flag and surrendered, signing the "Guadalupe-Hidalgo Peace Treaty" with the United States, ceding 2.3 million square kilometers of land to the United States.
These territories are the seven states of the United States, including New Mexico and California. The remaining land area is only 1.9 million square kilometres.
This has devastated Mexico's vitality. And the United States has taken this as a stepping stone to go further and further on the road of economic development.
Today, when the United States talks about the land it has acquired from Mexico, it will call it "acquired" simply because in the contract the United States agreed to "buy the land" for $15 million.
The money is nothing more than a fig leaf to cover up the fact of aggression.
First, $15 million to buy 2.3 million square kilometers of land, an average of less than $7 per square kilometer. This can't be called a cheap sale, it can only be said to be a symbolic payment, which is extremely humiliating.
Second, using the U.S. currency to compensate for the land plundered from Mexico is essentially forcibly binding Mexico to the big ship of the U.S. monetary and financial system, which is ultimately beneficial to the U.S. itself.
It is said that before the outbreak of the Mexican-American War, the then American ** James had made a request to Mexico to buy land for 30 million US dollars, which was only twice as high as the ** in the contract. Speaking of ***, in the end, Lao Mei is the most familiar with the car.
However, Mexico's dismal end to the Mexican-American War also has a lot to do with its underpopulation. As early as the Texas independence referendum, it was clear that the Mexican population in Texas was significantly smaller than the immigrant population in the United States, and in this case, the full Americanization of the economy, culture, and politics was almost inevitable.
In the later wars, a lot of the land that was taken away was sparsely populated, mostly old and young, women and children, and basically there was no decent **.
In this case, the inadequacy of the **, the strategic barrenness and the strength of the enemy's forces have a greater negative effect.
Having tasted the sweetness of the Mexican-American War, the United States also coveted the remaining territories of Mexico.
In 1853, the United States, relying on its growing national power, made a request to Mexico to buy the country. To say that it is a "request" is in fact that Mexico cannot refuse it in the slightest. Not long after Mexico's defeat, the whole country was so demoralized that it could not afford another declaration of war by the United States.
In the end, the United States bought Mexico for only $10 million30,000 square kilometers of territory.
Thus, from 1845 to 1853, the United States either grabbed or bought nearly 2.4 million square kilometers of land from Mexico, spending only $25 million in total, with an average of only $10 per square kilometer.
Since these territories were annexed to the United States, Mexican residents have had to leave their homes and move their families to other Mexican towns and cities to start a new life. Either they can stay in the local area, be forced to change their nationality, and survive in humiliation under the contemptuous eyes of the new Americans who have moved in there.
With such a large area of land being snatched away, Mexico's *** and internal stability are seriously threatened. Along with the plundering of the land, it also included the abundant coal, iron and grain resources of the land.
Indigenous people, who were deported from their original lands to other parts of Mexico, had no land or work, and had to steal their belongings and set up gangs to survive.
In the middle of the 18th century, there was a serious ** in Mexico, with civil wars and serious chaos.
But the United States did not have much energy to continue attacking Mexico at this time, so it chose to restore its strength, which gave Mexico a chance to breathe.
In just seven years, a large area of land with convenient transportation and abundant resources has been taken by the United States, and the border between the United States and Mexico has been greatly shifted southward.
And these are just the beginning of Mexico's use by the United States as a dumping ground for goods, a place for transporting drugs, and a place for production.
Mexico's current industrial imbalance and the rampant use of drugs and guns are inseparable from the "positive actions" of the United States.
Mexico has retreated step by step, in exchange for an even more fierce disguised aggression by the United States, a poisonous snake. Commodity dumping, drug industry chains, financial warfare, every step is weakening Mexico's strength.
The party that initiates a war of aggression is always guilty of the most heinous crimes, which cannot be beautified, still less can it be regarded as just. Think about it, how tragic the fate of those old and weak women and children who have been displaced and lost their land in the war must be?