The relationship between the United States and Mexico has evolved and has been shaped through the occurrence of many different events throughout history. By investigating the complex relationship, one can look at it from several lenses, viewpoints, and situations. Making sure that knowledge of the relationship is learned from a variety of sources depicting how numerous events influenced the relationship is crucial to understanding how the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico evolved into an unbalanced and ever-changing negative relationship.
Society is heavily influenced by what we read, see, hear and experience. Mexico, in the U.S., is commonly associated with negative, biased, and racially motivated sentiments. Through exaggerated headlines, political agendas, and racial thoughts, the relationship between the society of the U.S. and Mexico has increasingly gotten worse throughout its history. It is necessary to realize the negative feelings towards Mexico from the U.S. have existed for a long time and will take education and open mindedness to deconstruct and rebuild.
Through this historiography I want to stress the importance of looking at the development of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico through secondary sources that use a variety of methodologies. By looking at the relationship through Dr. Jeremy Popkin’s approach of “different aspects of the problem”[1] I hope to construct the history of the relationship in a well-rounded and complete manner. “Annexation of Independence: The Texas Issue in American Politics” by John Schroeder explains the beginning of the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico in the context of a historical event; “Mapping the Good Neighbor: Cartography and American Tourism in Mexico” by Mette Flynt depicts the relationship through mapping and the representation of regions; and H.P Dick in her article “’Build the Wall!’: Post-Truth on the US-Mexico Border” looks at the relationship in the context of a highly polarized topic that carries this historiography and my research question into the present. The comparison and contrast of these three methodologies for looking at the history of the relations of U.S. and Mexico reveal that the negativity of the matter is contributed by an array of issues that span across many different aspects of the same problem.
In the piece “Annexation or Independence: The Texas Issue in American Politics” the start of the relations between the U.S. and Mexico are investigated by John Schroeder in the viewpoint and time of the annexation of Texas. By using this event as his foundation, Schroeder depicts the relationship of the U.S. and Mexico being one of imbalance and one-sidedness. John Schroeder is a professor and historian at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where he focuses on U.S. history in the 19th century.[2] With Schroeder’s historical focus on the U.S. it is possible that he tells the relationship of the two countries from only the side of the U.S. Although this is somewhat true in his writing, he makes sure to note occasionally the relationship from the side of Mexico. Schroeder’s evidence of relations between the U.S. and Mexico is the annexation of Texas. The dispute over Texas forced the U.S. and the recently independent Mexico to interact and caused the first inklings of a negative relationship between the two.
Schroeder’s argument that the U.S. viewed Mexico unfairly during the entirety of the Texas Annexation is one that I agree with. Schroeder sets up his argument by beginning with the evidence of how Mexico treated Americans when Mexico still had control of the land of Texas. When it comes to the situation surrounding the annexation of Texas and Schroeder’s analysis of it I am in agreement with the fact that the Mexican government began the relationship with the U.S. by being welcoming, accommodating, and generous to Americans and yet when it came to Texas’ independence those same Americans believed that they had been treated oppressively and tyrannically. I believe this shift and twist of the relationship from the side of Mexico to the side of the U.S., as Schroeder displays in his writing, had racial undertones, and predicted what the relationship between the two countries would come to be. Through the use of the Texas Annexation as his vehicle, John Schroeder makes a convincing and well backed up argument that Mexico began the relationship with generosity and fairness and the U.S. twisted that into the complete opposite. Because Schroeder’s writing is focused mainly on the sentiments from the U.S. his writing does match up with other secondary sources about the same topic but lacks in mentioning the sentiments from Mexico.
Mette Flynt works out the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico through cartography in “Mapping the Good Neighbor: Cartography and American Tourism in Mexico.” Flynt’s angle and approach of the influence and evidence of the negative relationship between the U.S. and Mexico is conveyed through describing that it is common for cartographers to physically make Mexico smaller on maps which translates to a viewpoint that Mexico is inferior to the U.S. and other countries. This argument is stands out because maps are everywhere and to have maps demonstrating this false representation of Mexico can fuel even more negative and unfair feelings towards Mexico.
Flynt teaches history at Oklahoma State University and specializes in America in the 20th century.[3] She is a public historian and in addition to writing “Mapping the Good Neighbor” she has also written about the environment in the U.S.[4] Just like Schroeder, Flynt specializes in American history with no specialization in Mexican history. Although her article explains an aspect that contributes to the negative and unbalanced relationship between the U.S. and Mexico her argument is based off what American cartographers are doing and not how it is received in Mexico. Using maps to explain the negative relationship is unique and offers a very different viewpoint. However, I wonder how influential maps have truly been to fuel the unbalanced and superior view towards Mexico. No matter the country, on a map it should be represented as its true size but how much has making Mexico unproportionally small, affected society’s viewpoint of the country.
“’Build the Wall!’: Post-Truth on the US-Mexico Border” by Hilary Parsons Dick is a dive into the campaign to build a wall separating Mexico and the U.S. and how the perception of Mexican immigrants as criminals has been used as a push for the wall to be built.[5] This article brings the relationship into the present with the polarizing and extreme ambition to build a wall keeping Mexican migrants out. H.P. Dicks is professor at Arcadia University where she teaches International Studies.[6] Her focuses include Migration and Latin America.[7] Unlike Schroeder and Flynt, H.P. Dicks does have a background in Latin America which is evident in her article. She uses policies and political agendas as her evidence. Since the topic of the wall is so polarized there are many sources who agree with her and many that don’t. Being able to see her piece as one side to the debate and one viewpoint of the relationship is crucial for understanding the use for this secondary source in your learning of the relationship between Mexico and the U.S.
[1] Jeremy Popkin, “Hints for Writing a Historiographical Essay” 2 http://www.uky.edu/~popkin/650%20HolocaustSyl_files/Historiographical%20Essay.htm
[2] “John H. Schroeder,” Wikipedia 11 March 2019: “https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Schroeder
[3] The College of Arts and Sciences, “Dr. Mette Flynt,” https://cas.okstate.edu/department_of_history/faculty_bios/flynt.html
[4] The College of Arts and Sciences, “Dr. Mette Flynt,” https://cas.okstate.edu/department_of_history/faculty_bios/flynt.html
[5] Dick, H.P. (2019), “Build the Wall!”: Post-Truth on the US–Mexico Border. American Anthropologist, 121: 179-185. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13189
[6] Arcadia University, “Hilary Dick,” Arcadia University https://www.arcadia.edu/faculty-and-staff/hilary-parsons-dick/
[7] Arcadia University, “Hilary Dick,” Arcadia University https://www.arcadia.edu/faculty-and-staff/hilary-parsons-dick/
Sources
Jeremy Popkin, “Hints for Writing a Historiographical Essay” 2 http://www.uky.edu/~popkin/650%20HolocaustSyl_files/Historiographical%20Essay.htm
“John H. Schroeder,” Wikipedia 11 March 2019: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_H._Schroeder
The College of Arts and Sciences, “Dr. Mette Flynt,” https://cas.okstate.edu/department_of_history/faculty_bios/flynt.html
Dick, H.P. (2019), “Build the Wall!”: Post-Truth on the US–Mexico Border. American Anthropologist, 121: 179-185. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.13189
Arcadia University, “Hilary Dick,” Arcadia University https://www.arcadia.edu/faculty-and-staff/hilary-parsons-dick/