The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo legally identified as the Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits and Settlement concluded the United States–Mexico war in 1848. Escalating war expenditures and sacrifices pressured both nations to conclude the war. In yet another attempt of peace, in 1847 President Polk sent Nicholas Trist with a projet of a proposed treaty under an injunction of secrecy to Mexico. During the Treaty’s negotiations, nonetheless President Polk recalled Trist to the United States and thus stripped him of legal authority to broker an agreement. Trist nonetheless continued negotiations with Mexican Commissioners Luis P. Cuevas, Jose Bernardo Couto, and Miguel Atristain, and on 2 February 1848, in the Villa of Guadalupe Hidalgo, Querétaro, Mexico signed the treaty. Notwithstanding his anger toward Trist, on 23 February 1848, President Polk submitted the proposed treaty to the Senate for ratification. Ratification incurred with ensuing amendments and removal of Article X of the treaty that would have protected landholders who had not perfected their interests of ownership but for the interruption of military hostilities. With a final vote 38 to 14 on 16 March 1848, the Senate forwarded the treaty to Mexico. During its ratification, the Mexican Congress objected to the removal of Article X, causing the United States to respond with the Protocol of Querétaro that confirmed its removal was not intended to violate any property rights of those remaining in the annexed territories. Mexico ratified the treaty on 30 May 1848, with its final transfer between both nations occurring on 30 July 1848. The treaty pledged to establish peace and friendship with reciprocal benefits to both nations and to reside as good neighbors. The treaty annexed approximately 525,000 square miles to the United States, incorporated those remaining and contractually tethered the United States and Mexico. Several treaty articles protect the property, liberty, and religious rights of those incorporated in the territories. Several articles expedite commerce and military withdrawal, Indian incursions, and recognition of Indian pueblos. Additional articles established geographical boundaries and compensated Mexico fifteen million dollars for war expenditures. Yet others exempt duties from military supplies and provide for the protection of citizens in the event of military excursions in both nations. The treaty’s historiography remains sporadic but its relevancy remains vibrant encompassing property rights, natural resources, American Indians, religion, and numerous additional issues with consequences extending beyond the present period.
The treaty’s historiography is intermittent, and at its centennial the war and treaty also failed to receive attention. Comparative studies of the treaty are also infrequent with non-Mexican authorities dominating scholarship such as Peter Harstad. This lack of sustained scrutiny promotes a legacy mired with misrepresentations authors employing secondary and imprecise sources that fault Mexico for the war and its territorial losses. It also fails to recognize how the treaty is supported or criticized in Mexico such as De La Peña y Peña 1989. Since its ratification and into the present, land use activists, scholars, and others criticize the United States for failing to honor its contractual obligations under the treaty. The rapid dispossession of property with legal historian Malcolm Ebright and others asserting fraud, conflicting legal rulings that transferred communal access to private landholders, land rings, and attorney actions obligate accountability. Acuña 2010 reports that many remaining in the annexed territories thereafter confronted violence and discrimination and did not garner the constitutional rights promised in the treaty. Weber 1976 further asserts that more sophisticated questions on the treaty encompassing race, class, and gendered studies, and the treaty’s impact on the entirety of annexed territories remains unaddressed. Against such considerations the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo has witnessed interest from newer generations of scholars in historical studies employing critical theoretical constructs including Griswold del Castillo 1990 (cited under Textbooks). In legal studies newer treaty interpretations are also employing critical jurisprudential methods, and through archival records, historical documents, correspondence, recording property documents, or case law, they offer new directions of inquiry on the treaty’s application and the consequences on those remaining in the annexed territories such as Luna 1998 (cited under Property and Land in Article VIII and Article IX). This scholarship challenges prevailing dated norms of the treaty’s history and long-ignored judicial rulings harmful to its communities. The treaty’s sesquicentennial anniversary also witnessed renewed interest seeking acknowledgement, accountability, and a more precise interpretation of its provisions. Congressional hearings and the US General Accounting Office also produced reports offering a few options for the aggrieved. The reports nonetheless relied on faulty reasoning in declaring the treaty was not self-executing and that the United States did not breach the treaty underscore the Benavides and Golten 2008 analysis of the report. Such characterization is inconsistent with international and domestic case law as well as early land grant law employed in the former Spanish territories that included Florida. The report further failed by promoting flawed reasoning that declared the treaty was not self-executing and as such the United States had not violated the rights of the former property owners. Countering congressional reports with primary evidence, community scholars and activists repeated their pleas for accountability and restitution over losses of communal lands. With rare exception the treaty is again threatening to lapse into obscurity, but its legacy of discrimination, causal linkages to property, human rights, the environment, natural resources, and other issues disallow its disappearance long into the future.
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