Remembering Conquest in Texas

This presentation draws from Dr. Valerio-Jimenez\u27s larger project, Remembering Conquest: Mexican Americans, Memory, and Citizenship, which explores the influence of collective memories of the U.S.-Mexico War (1846-48) on struggles for social change among Mexican Americans. It examines the collective memories disseminated among ethnic Mexicans through families, publications, and organizations. These memories offered alternative views of the war that not only challenged the dominant versions, but were invoked by Mexican Americans to remind the nation of the war\u27s continuing legacies. The war instigated immediate intergroup conflict between European Americans and ethnic Mexicans that bore long-term effects by shaping the ways that the latter remembered the aggression and the promises of equality in the treaty that ended the war. The failure of the U.S. government to enforce the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo led to some of these legacies, namely the consequences of Mexican Americans\u27 status as second-class citizens. Remembering Conquest in Texas explores how various groups in the state held different war memories, and examines the multiple ways in which these memories of the war and its aftermath inspired Mexican Americans\u27 civil rights struggles over several generations.https://scholarworks.utrgv.edu/rdavidson/1011/thumbnail.jp