Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Many people in the US are unaware that thousands of Mexican American men and women were lynched in the former Mexican territory, now the US Southwest, beginning with the gold rush in Northern California and increasingly in Arizona and New México.15 Violence against Mexicans in Texas dates back to the US slaver settlers who came to dominate the southeast of the Mexican state of Tejas in the 1820s, following Mexican independence from Spain. But it was after the US war against México, annexing the northern half, with Anglo settlers pouring in, that lynching took off. Distinct from the lynching of African Americans, who mostly were individually hung in spectacles with large crowds, Mexican Americans were more often lynched in groups and only occasionally as spectacle.