Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880

Title

Mexican Loss of Land, 1850-1880

Description

At the end of the Mexican American War in 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo granted Mexican Californios full U.S. citizenship. At that time, only white males were granted U.S. citizenship, thereby implying Mexican Californios were considered “white.” The Treaty also promised Californios that “their property would be inviolably respected.” However, American political leaders held racist attitudes towards Native Americans and Mexicans, considering them lazy and unproductive in terms of their land use.

Race-based laws, enacted by the state legislature in the 1850s and 1860s, institutionalized discrimination and segregation against Mexicans, Blacks, Asians, and Native Americans. Significantly, the informal nature of land grants belonging to Mexicans, with vaguely drawn diseño maps, made it difficult to prove their claims, and many Mexican Californios lost their lands. Even if Mexican Californios won initially, the U.S. Congress created the Board of Land Commissioners (a result of the Land Act of 1851) in San Francisco. Mexicans gradually sold most of their land during the average 17 years it took to go through the legal process of proving their claims, and resulting funds went to English-speaking lawyers or to pay land taxes.

Mexicans also lost their land to Anglo American squatters. In some cases, such as with the Suñol and Berryessa families, Anglo squatters lynched the Mexican landowners and remained on the land, exercising their “squatters’ rights.” The Peralta family of San José and the East Bay lost all but 700 of their 49,000 acres. With the loss of land holdings during the late 1800s, Californio families worked wage labor jobs, such as in agriculture or in the Almaden mines.

Scholar Talk

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Additional Online Information

Other Californians | Library of Congress

Five Views: An Ethnic Historic Site Survey for California (Mexican Americans)

Identifier

B4SV Exhibit Topic One: Slide 013