A wonderful and important refresher course in U. S. History.
Introduction by Morgan Freeman – 14:24 minute video
History refresher: A reading of The Declaration of Independence
Leave a reply
Category Archives: Immigration
Happy Birthday America – July 4, 2013
HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA! Keep the faith; hold on to the “American idea” of liberty for all.
lib·er·ty n
1. the freedom to think or act without being constrained by necessity or force
2. freedom from captivity or slavery
3. any of the political, social, and economic rights that belong to the citizens of a state or to all people (often used in the plural)
See also civil liberties
civ·il lib·er·ties npl
the basic rights guaranteed to individual citizens by law, for example, freedom of speech and action
Watch A Teacher Make Her 3rd-Grade Kids Hate Each Other For The Best Reason Imaginable
A Teacher Makes Her 3rd-Grade Kids Hate Each Other For The Best Reason Imaginable
The payoff at the end is brilliant and a perfect metaphor for what we deal with and face every day in our society.
1:30: This teacher begins a study that will be talked about for 40 years.
3:00: She re-creates segregation and racism in her classroom.
7:45: Mrs. Elliott flips the entire class on their heads.
10:00 Jane Elliot makes the most profound discovery about us all
11:43: The students learn something that the world is still struggling to.
3:00: She re-creates segregation and racism in her classroom.
7:45: Mrs. Elliott flips the entire class on their heads.
10:00 Jane Elliot makes the most profound discovery about us all
11:43: The students learn something that the world is still struggling to.
There are too many great moments to point out. Just watch.
Arizona border lands article
This from STRATFOR 2011 – “In the first half of the 19th century, it was not clear whether the United States or Mexico would emerge as the dominant power in North America. The U.S. had a sliver of land on the east coast and a vulnerable, export-dependent economy. Control of New Orleans (and Florida) would be the key to a new economic foundation: Until the Mexican-American War, it was not clear whether the dominant power in North America would have its capital in Washington or Mexico City.Mexico (which gained independence from Spain in 1821) was the older society with a substantially larger military.
The United States, having been founded east of the Appalachian Mountains, had been a weak and vulnerable country. At its founding, it lacked strategic depth and adequate north-south transportation routes. The ability of one colony to support another in the event of war was limited. More important, the United States had the most vulnerable of economies: It was heavily dependent on maritime exports and lacked a navy able to protect its sea-lanes against more powerful European powers like England and Spain.
The War of 1812 showed the deep weakness of the United States. By contrast, Mexico had greater strategic depth and less dependence on exports. “The American solution to this strategic weakness was to expand the United States west of the Appalachians, first into the Northwest Territory ceded to the United States by the United Kingdom and then into the Louisiana Purchase, which Thomas Jefferson ordered bought from France in 1803. These two territories gave the United States both strategic depth and a new economic foundation. The regions could support agriculture that produced more than the farmers could consume.
Using the Ohio-Missouri-Mississippi river system, products could be shipped south to New Orleans. New Orleans was the farthest point south to which flat-bottomed barges from the north could go, and the farthest inland that oceangoing ships could travel. New Orleans became the single most strategic point in North America. Whoever controlled it controlled the agricultural system developing between the Appalachians and the Rockies.
During the War of 1812, the British tried to seize New Orleans, but forces led by Andrew Jackson defeated them in a battle fought after the war itself was completed. Jackson understood the importance of New Orleans to the United States. He also understood that the main threat to New Orleans came from Mexico.
The U.S.-Mexican border then stood on the Sabine River, which divides today’s Texas from Louisiana. It was about 200 miles from that border to New Orleans and, at its narrowest point, a little more than 100 miles from the Sabine to the Mississippi. (Jackson earlier had realized, as James Madison had before him, that Spain controlled both sides of the vital Florida straits, i.e. Florida and Cuba, and so threatened U.S. interests with possible blockade of the straits, choking off American trade from New Orleans seeking the ports of the Atlantic; hence the botched Patriot War of 1812 and Jackson’s incursion into West Florida in 1819 before its eventual purchase. Ed.)
Mexico therefore represented a fundamental threat to the United States. In response, Jackson authorized a covert operation under Sam Houston to foment an uprising among American settlers in the Mexican department of Texas with the aim of pushing Mexico farther west. With its larger army, a Mexican thrust to the Mississippi was not impossible – nor something the Mexicans would necessarily avoid, as the rising United States threatened Mexican national security.
Mexico’s strategic problem was the geography south of the Rio Grande (known in Mexico as the Rio Bravo). This territory consisted of desert and mountains. Settling this area with large populations was impossible. Moving through it was difficult. As a result, Texas was very lightly settled with Mexicans, prompting Mexico initially to encourage Americans to settle there (in part, as a buffer against the Comanche). Once a rising was fomented among the Americans, it took time and enormous effort to send a Mexican army into Texas. When it arrived, it was weary from the journey and short of supplies. The insurgents were defeated at the Alamo and Goliad, but as the Mexicans pushed their line further east toward the Mississippi, they were defeated at San Jacinto, near present-day Houston.
The creation of an independent Texas served American interests, relieving the threat to New Orleans and weakening Mexico. The final blow was delivered under President James K. Polk during the Mexican-American War, which (after the Gadsden Purchase) resulted in the modern U.S.-Mexican border. That war severely weakened both the Mexican army and Mexico City, which spent roughly the rest of the century stabilizing Mexico’s original political order.” (George Friedman, Arizona, Borderlands and U.S.-Mexican Relations0
Mexican Immigration – Paul Rodriguez video
In doing research for the Mexican Immigration video, I Googled across this video viewpoint by Paul Rodriguez on the topic. The explanatory text comes from the YouTube link.
New America Foundation, December, 2007 — CA Event: Mexican Immigration and the Future of Race in America
In the recently published, Mongrels, Bastards, Orphans, and Vagabonds, Gregory Rodriguez takes an in-depth look at the largest immigrant group in American history. Rodriguez examines the complexities of the heritage and the racial and cultural synthesis–mestizaje–that has defined the Mexican people since the Spanish conquest in the sixteenth century. Vis-a-vis the present era of Mexican American confidence, Rodriguez argues that the rapidly expanding Mexican American integration in to the mainstream is changing not only how Americans think about race but how we envision our nation.
Gregory Rodriguez is an Irvine Senior Fellow and Director of the California Fellows Program at the New America Foundation. Rodriguez has written widely on issues of national identity, social cohesion, assimilation, race relations, religion, immigration, ethnicity, demographics, and social and political trends in such leading publications as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, The Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times, where he is an op-ed columnist.
I hope you enjoy the watching … and the pondering. It seemed to fit very well with the video I just posted Mexican Immigration Through New Mexico And The Southwest. Please feel free to leave your comments; I’d love to know who’s out there listening/reading/watching.
New video: Mexican Immigration
I just put the finishing touches on this video overview of Mexican Immigration through New Mexico and the Southwest and uploaded it to YouTube at http://twurl.nl/gmqs07 . This was about a month in the making, what with the researching, scripting, recording, editing and all, but it holds together pretty well. It’s a nine-minute summary or overview “from 30,000 feet,” so it covers quite a lot of ground in a short time.
It follows the 600-year period from 1400 to 2009 covered by the Albuquerque, New Mexico Historical Timeline, and correlates historical events in Mexico, New Mexico and the Southwest. It begins with the thousand years of native populations trading from New Mexico into Mexico and over to the coastal areas that would become California. It covers the northward pull of silver mining from Mexico City to Zacatecas and Chihuaha in the 1500s, and Oñate’s extension of El Camino Real an additional 700 miles northward, establishing the first permanent settlement in Nuevo Mexìco in 1598. Other events affecting Mexican immigration in this period include:
• The 1803 Louisiana Purchase
• 1821 Independence from Spain and the Mexican Republic period
• Creation of the Lone Star Republic of Texas in 1835
• The 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo’s massive land transfer
• Railroads arriving in the 1880s
• The Mexican Revolutionary period from 1910 to 1930
• The Great Depression and the Mexican Repatriation Program
• The Bracero “guest worker” program from 1942 to 1964
• Operation Wetback in 1954
• The Maquiladora Program from 1964 to now
• 1994 NAFTA
• Corporate globalization
• The 2005 California Apology Act for the 1930s Mexican Repatriation Program
• The effects of the current economic downturn
In these events, you can see a “we want you – we don’t want you” pendulum swinging for over 150 years, and some acknowledged racial profiling of U.S. citizens of Mexican descent in the Mexican Repatriation Program of the ‘30s and Operation Wetback in 1954.
The intent of the video is to bring some hopefully neutral historical information and perspective to the current discussion of immigration. If you have comments or observations, I would appreciate your sharing them with me on this blog post so interested individuals may see and appreciate them.
If you’d like to know more about the Timeline itself, click on 5 Perspectives On Albuquerque or Creating The Timeline.