Guadalupe Hidalgo

Long Term Effects of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1948, ended the Mexican-American War. The treaty doubled the size of the United States and halved the size of Mexico, as it stated that Mexico give the United States Texas and accept the Rio Grande as Texas’s boundary, as well as sell New Mexico and Upper California to the United States for fifteen million dollars. Conditions of the treaty included that any Mexicans currently living in the territories that were now owned by the United States could become U.S. citizens and gave the U.S. power to deal with any “problematic” Native Americans on the U.S. side of the border. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo sparked many lasting controversies and political/social issues still present today. Some of the effects of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo are the end of slavery in the United States and the negative stereotypes of Mexicans held by Americans. After the
In addition to the land and troops during the war, Mexicans and Tejanos, Mexicans who live in Texas, became US citizens. These new American citizens became the victims of large-scale racial prejudice. With the war just ending, feelings of hatred were prominent and tension between Mexico and America was still high and these intense feelings were projected onto the Mexicans and Tejanos. When gold was found in California and the Gold Rush began, tensions merely grew. Thousands of people traveled west in search of the riches and took the homes of many Natives and Mexicans who had just become U.S. citizens, whose rights were being neglected. The large wealth discovered in California, if found just a few years beforehand would have belonged to the Mexicans, this only increased negative relations between Mexico and America. The negative, baseless stereotypes and racial divides created in this post-war time can still be seen, though they have decreased