Debating American Identity: Southwestern Statehood and Mexican Immigration

Introduction

3 Today’s Americans struggle with the meaning of American identity as they debate how many immigrants to admit, the extent to which civil rights and benefits should apply to newcomers, and whether or not there should be a guest worker program or a path to legalization. To those who study the history of immigration and national identity, these questions are eerily similar to those of a century or more ago when Americans like Theodore Roosevelt grappled with earlier variants of these same questions: who was an American, who could become one, and who should enjoy the full rights of citizenship. In June 1899 during the first anniversary celebration of the Battle of Las Guasimas, Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York, gratefully accepted a diamond and gold medal from the Rough Riders of New Mexico to commemorate his leadership in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. Roosevelt was reportedly so moved that he extemporaneously proclaimed his regiment and the gathered audience of 10,000 plus to be Americans , just like himself: “I am an American, as you are Americans.” In his enthusiasm, he went further still and added: “All I shall say is if New Mexico wants to be a State you can count me in, and I will go to Washington to speak for you, or do anything you wish.” But a few years later, as the newly anointed U.S. president, Roosevelt had apparently forgotten his spontaneous pledge and become more circumspect in his allegiance to New Mexico. Nearly four years later, in May 1903, Roosevelt returned to New Mexico for the christening of his eponymous godson, Theodore Roosevelt Armijo, Introduction 4 · Introduction who was the offspring of Sergeant George Washington Armijo, a New Mexican of Mexican descent and one of Roosevelt’s illustrious Rough Riders. In contrast to Roosevelt’s previous visit, in which he had toured the territory for three days, the president did not spend the night, making only a hasty trip to attend the baptism, lunch with the governor, and deliver brief speeches in Santa Fe and Albuquerque. While Roosevelt remained popular in the region, the invitation may have been designed to remind him of his former promise since statehood advocates wasted no time in subtly reminding him of New Mexico’s uncertain status. Situated directly across from Roosevelt’s podium, at the Alvarado Hotel in Albuquerque, stood a tableau of forty-five girls—each representing one of the states in the Union—while an “Uncle Sam” prevented a forty-sixth girl from joining the assembled group. Upon noticing the display, Roosevelt allegedly remarked that once New Mexico developed a more extensive system of irrigation , the forty-sixth girl need not stand alone. Roosevelt’s earlier speech in Santa Fe likewise reflected these sentiments, but his private remarks conveyed that he had serious reservations about New Mexico’s Spanishspeaking population and its denizens’ readiness for statehood. A few years later, Roosevelt supported the creation of one enormous state by merging the New Mexico and Arizona territories—which neither territory had called for or desired—thereby reducing the political power of the area’s Spanish-speaking population. Regardless of this proposal, neither territory became a state, combined or otherwise, during Roosevelt’s presidency. According to one newspaper account, Roosevelt’s new godson, Theodore Roosevelt Armijo, behaved very poorly at his christening, “emitting yells of rage and disapproval.”1 Perhaps his anger—and the newspaper ’s telling of it—reflected displeasure that the newborn Armijo would be nearly ten years old before New Mexico became a state. Roosevelt’s ambivalence about the prospective inclusion of New Mexico was part of a larger debate in the United States over who could be an American, and what the boundaries of that America should be.2 At the very same time that Americans weighed statehood and belonging for the residents of Arizona and New Mexico, they were entangled in debates over immigration: between 1865 and 1900 at least 15 million immigrants legally entered the United States, and the stream of entrants showed no signs of slowing. Moreover, the annexation of Hawaii in 1898 and the subsequent treaty with Spain for the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam exacerbated tensions over the meaning of American and how national unity might be achieved if all the new peoples were to be included.3 While many Americans of the era then believed that a homogeneous population Introduction · 5 was necessary...