James Fox

In the news recently there has been the sad tale of over 200 retired Americans who leased in good faith from, at that time, the recognized property owners beachfront property and built their retirement mansions. The leases were to be for 99 years, but the new government ruled that the former owners were not the rightful owners, so the Americans must pay the rightful owners $125,000 or get out within one week.

Many would say that it served them right for investing their life savings in Mexico, but before you get too self rightuous and thinking it couldn't happen to you; I think you should read Article VIII of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Our federal government did almost the same thing to the new settlers of California as the Mexican government did to the retirees......

" The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican War, was signed on February 2, 1848, by Nicholas P. Trist for the United States and by a special commission representing the collapsed government of Mexico. Trist disregarded a recall to Washington, and negotiated the treaty in violation of most of his instructions. The U.S. Senate reluctantly approved the treaty.

"Under the treaty, Mexico ceded to the United States Upper California and New Mexico (including Arizona) and recognized U.S. claims over Texas, with the Rio Grande as its southern boundary. The United States in turn paid Mexico $15,000,000, assumed the claims of American citizens against Mexico, recognized prior land grants in the Southwest, and offered citizenship to any Mexicans residing in the area.

"ARTICLE VIII (Note the parts I've boxed in parenthesis having to do with property ownership and title transfers via heirs.)

"Mexicans now established in territories previously belonging to Mexico, and which remain for the future within the limits of the United States, as defined by the present treaty, shall be free to continue where they now reside, or to remove at any time to the Mexican Republic, (retaining the property which they possess in the said territories), or disposing thereof, and removing the proceeds wherever they please, without their being subjected, on this account, to any contribution, tax, or charge whatever.

"Those who shall prefer to remain in the said territories may either retain the title and rights of Mexican citizens, or acquire those of citizens of the United States. But they shall be under the obligation to make their election within one year from the date of the exchange of ratifications of this treaty; and those who shall remain in the said territories after the expiration of that year, without having declared their intention to retain the character of Mexicans, shall be considered to have elected to become citizens of the United States.

"(In the said territories, property of every kind, now belonging to Mexicans not established there), shall be inviolably respected. (The present owners, the heirs of these, and all Mexicans who may hereafter acquire said property by contract, shall enjoy with respect to it guarantees equally ample as if the same belonged to citizens of the United States.)" In other words, from 1848 on as California was settled, any land claimed under the Homestead Act or any land transaction that wasn't cleared with Mexico, where the records were kept, was a violation of the treaty -- an illegal land grab from the rightful owners as guarenteed by the United States Federal Government.

So really Mexico, in defeat, out-smarted us and California was doomed to never become a sovereign state. And who knows who owns what property?

For the curious or with a love for history CLICK HERE for the complete text of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.