Takaki Chapter 7

Chapter 7 is about the Mexicans and their immigration. It all started when Spaniards started to move to California from Spain. Upon getting here they started to marry mostly blacks and Indians. After some time they started to establish work as farmers cultivating the land making it another place in America where they would export goods to other parts of the world like China. They also seemed to also have very large families, with each child having a servant of there own. After a while the Americans started to immigrate west with out the approval of the Mexicans mostly in Texas. This then became a struggle for land and the Mexicans seemed to be losing. They ended losing Texas and New Mexico. After while the Americans started to destroy cattle leading to the loss of the Mexican farmers’ jobs. Al this leading up to the Mexican American War, the Americans were moving west to take the territory from the Mexicans forcefully. Most of the immigrates were slave owners coming from the south to find more land for cotton. This was stopped by the Mexican government in 1826 when they outlawed slavery and stopped all movement from the east. The Americas seemed to have won the war and enlarged the US/Mexico border thus putting some of the Mexicans in America.

I have to say, after reading this chapter (or most of this book) I see that what I thought about America before hand was almost exactly right, because this chapter is basically showing who we bullied Mexicans out of their land. It’s also showing that the Mexicans are a very hard working and kind race. But it really shows that when America wants something, they usually take it by force, but my question is, "Why didn’t they take the land before the Spaniards started to migrate to California? But there is one part that I didn’t understand, where they were talking about the servants going to each member to the family, were they talking about the Mexicans or were they talking about another race being the servants? My thoughts on the whole thing are that the Mexicans were always a really strong race. I really think that if we hadn’t taken over the Mexicans they would have been a force to be reckoned with. The only thing is that they really didn’t do anything to stop the migration of the Americans until the war it seemed, it might just be me over-reading something but it seems that they should have tried a little harder to keep them out of their territory.