Recovering History, Constructing Race: The Indian, Black, and White Roots of Mexican Americans

Chapter 7: Land, Race, and War, 1821 &mdash 1848

7 Land, Race, and War, 1821–1848 This chapter examines the aftermath of the land reorganization laws instituted in the Southwest following Mexican independence. Under the 1824 General Colonization Law the federal government decreed that all heads of households in the Southwest who were citizens of or immigrants to Mexico were eligible to claim land (cited in Laws of Texas, Vol. 1, pp. 97–98; Engstrand 1978:329).This legislation differed from previous Spanish decrees, as people were to be given patent to the land they claimed and not solely occupancy rights. Moreover, no racial group was to be favored in the amount of land received. The aim of the Law of 1824 was to undo the effects of the Spanish land grant system, which had overwhelmingly favored Whites and military officers. Though many commoners obtained property deeds and many Indian villages evolved into Mexican towns, the federal government’s color-blind legislation did not work as expected. People struggled for land, and some individuals were better equipped to validate their claims. In New Mexico the Pueblo Indians had to launch several legal battles to defend their tribal lands because the territorial government alleged that the size of their population did not merit the amount of land Spain had reserved for them. In Arizona and California military chiefs and the governor ’s kinfolk took possession of the best lands. And in Texas the federal government had not envisioned that its color-blind property legislation would lead to the overwhelming concentration of land in the hands of Anglo-American immigrants. Even worse events unfolded, as the United States government was also prepared to launch a war against Mexico as a means of expanding its southern border. 187 Land Reforms in New Mexico and the Pueblo Communities When the racial casta system was dismantled in New Mexico after independence , people in theory were no longer to be privileged or disadvantaged on the basis of race. This threatened the Pueblo land reserves, as Spain’s property agreements were nullified and the Pueblo Indians were to be treated in the same manner as other Mexican citizens. Prior to independence , the Pueblo Indians had a unique legal agreement: they could retain ownership of their tribal lands as long as they were at peace with Spain. The church did not hold title to their lands, as it did to the lands of other Christian Indians of the Southwest. When Spaniards came to New Mexico, the Pueblo Indians already lived in congregated villages; the church did not have to relocate them and create artificial communities as in other parts of the Southwest. Rather, the missionaries moved into their villages and established missions on the edges. The missions basically functioned as parishes with resident priests. David Weber (1982:57) summarizes this unique relationship and land tenure system: In New Mexico, Franciscans never had to entice Indians from scattered villages into artificial mission communities, or congregaciones as they did in California, Arizona, and Texas. The Pueblos already lived in tightly organized towns surrounded by communal lands. The Franciscans established missions on the edge of those communities but never controlled the fields and pastures, which continued to be worked by Pueblos who gave up only modest amounts of land and labor to support a resident priest. . . . Thus, in New Mexico the growing population of land-hungry pobladores had little to gain from secularizing the missions. Because race could no longer be used as the basis of privilege or discrimination after independence, the unique Pueblo jural position was threatened. They possessed excess acreage that was deemed to be vacant by territorial authorities and was eligible for redistribution under Mexican law.This indeed was a problem, as the colonists and genizaros desperately needed land because Spain had failed to grant them land in proportion to their population growth. The colonists and genizaros welcomed the land reforms, whereas the Pueblo Indians saw them as a mockery of their newfound status as Mexican citizens. At the time of independence there were about twenty Pueblo commu188 Recovering History, Constructing Race nities in New Mexico (Carroll and Haggard 1942:87; cf. Hall and Weber 1984:5), including Tesuque, Pecos, Cochité, Santo Domingo, Jemez, Zia, Santa Ana, Sandía, San Felipe, Ysleta, Laguna, Acoma, Zuñi, Santa Clara, San Ildefonso, Pojoaque, Nambé, San Juan, Taos, and Pecuris.1 Land was owned communally, and tribal membership was necessary to retain...