Some Republicans and NumbersUSA appear to be violating the Voting Rights of 1965 and Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
Monday, April 22nd, 2013![New forms of Manifest Destiny via Republican Representatives Steve King an Jim Inhofe. Republicans are introducing legislation that reminds us of the 1855 laws. In 1855 California, the Anglos dominated the state legislature, enacting the tax and laws like the 1855 Greaser Act, which defined vagrants as (quote) "all persons who [were] commonly known as 'Greasers' or the issue of Spanish or Indian blood." The "Greaser" Act. A anti-vagrancy act by the State Legislature Excludes "Diggers" (Indians) but includes persons of mixed Spanish and Indian blood or "Greasers".](http://tucsoncitizen.com/hispanic-politico/files/2013/02/manifest1-229x300.jpg)
New forms of Manifest Destiny via Republican Representatives Steve King an Jim Inhofe. Republicans are introducing legislation that reminds us of the 1855 laws. In 1855 California, the Anglos dominated the state legislature, enacting the tax and laws like the 1855 Greaser Act, which defined vagrants as (quote) “all persons who [were] commonly known as ‘Greasers’ or the issue of Spanish or Indian blood.” The “Greaser” Act. A anti-vagrancy act by the State Legislature Excludes “Diggers” (Indians) but includes persons of mixed Spanish and Indian blood or “Greasers”.
Numbers USA is a well known anti-immigrant organization with questionable anti-semitic ties.
SPLC has this to say with regard to Roy Beck of Numbers USA:
Beck has also written for and edited Tanton’s white nationalist quarterly, The Social Contract. He was still the magazine’s Washington editor in 1998 when the journal published what may have been its most lurid edition ever, “Europhobia: The Hostility to European-Descended Americans.” In 1996, he addressed a meeting of the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist hate group that has referred to blacks as a “retrograde species of humanity.”
The Republican Representatives that Numbers USA constantly highlights and supports are the ones who dehumanize immigrants and Mexicans. With Republicans and their continued use of the derogatory term “wetback” [Russell Pearce has been using that term since 2006] we see them waste tax payer money as they introduce legislation that will outlaw Spanish and other non-English languages from being used in federal documents. Never mind the the American Voting Rights Act of 1965 or the Guadalupe Treaty.
Although the GOP continues to use discriminatory and dehumanizing terms that predates the Civil Rights era, we also see GOP legislators introducing bills reminiscent of 1855.
History seems to repeat itself with bigotry and this is not the first time Mexican-Americans have experienced this sort of thing and types of legislation. We see Republican Representatives Steve King and Jim Inhofe attacking our voting rights with their efforts to outlaw Spanish and other non-English languages from being used on federal documents — to include voting forms.
According to Think Progress:
One major impact King’s bill could have is to stop the decades-long practice of printing non-English ballots in areas where there’s a significant non-English language group. Indeed, Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 currently requires local jurisdictions with a substantial number of non-English speakers to allow them to vote in other languages.
You can parallel what happened to the Mexicans in the 1800′s and their land with what Republicans are trying to do with regard to suppressing voting rights.
Shortly after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed … and according to the United States National Park Service and the U.S. Department of the Interior:
The first major post-war influx of Anglos began, fueled by the discovery of gold in 1848. The 10,000 Californios (pre-conquest Mexican Californians) soon found the territory swamped by Anglo-American migrants and foreign immigrants. …
Northern California received the major thrust of the Anglo gold rush migration, while southern California remained heavily Mexican. This ethnic contrast was one factor in the debate over the possibility of dividing California into two states, as happened in the case of New Mexico and Arizona. However, the coming of the transcontinental railroad to southern California in the 1870s spurred a land boom and the state’s second major population explosion. By the 1880s, Anglo settlers were also numerically dominant in the southern part of the state.
The presence of a Mexican majority in 1848 contributed to a promising start for good ethnic relations in California. Californios participated widely in the early post-conquest government, and provided eight of the 48 delegates to the 1849 state constitutional convention. There they won such transitory victories as a provision that all state laws and regulations be translated into Spanish. In southern California, where Californios remained a majority in some places until the 1880s, they continued to be elected to local and county positions, and a handful held state offices or seats in the legislature.
However, the rapid establishment of a heavy statewide Anglo majority quickly rendered Mexican Americans politically powerless at the state level. As a result, they could not prevent enactment of inequitable and sometimes discriminatory laws. For example, the legislature placed the heaviest tax burden on land, an abrupt and decimating shift from the Mexican system of taxing production rather than land. Although this tax also hurt Anglo landowners, it seriously undermined the Californio economic position, based primarily on ranching. The Foreign Miners’ Tax of 1850, a $20 monthly fee for the right to mine, was applied not only to foreign immigrants but also to California-born Mexicans, who had automatically be come U.S. citizens under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The state anti-vagrancy act of 1855 was so obviously anti-Mexican that it became known popularly as the Greaser Law. Possibly the most blatantly anti-Mexican law was the 1855 act negating the constitutional requirement that laws be translated into Spanish. Finally, there were growing vigilantism and squatter violence against Californio landowners. MORE>>>
There is also no doubt in my mind that these tunnel-visioned and simple-minded Republican politicians forget the PEACE clause between our beloved United States and our soil neighbor via Mexico. Too often these restrictionists forget about the history of the United States, but we are here to remind them.
TREATY OF PEACE, FRIENDSHIP, LIMITS, AND SETTLEMENT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND THE UNITED MEXICAN STATES CONCLUDED AT GUADALUPE HIDALGO, FEBRUARY 2, 1848; RATIFICATION ADVISED BY SENATE, WITH AMENDMENTS, MARCH 10, 1848; RATIFIED BY PRESIDENT, MARCH 16, 1848; RATIFICATIONS EXCHANGED AT QUERETARO, MAY 30, 1848; PROCLAIMED, JULY 4, 1848.
IN THE NAME OF ALMIGHTY GOD
The United States of America and the United Mexican States animated by a sincere desire to put an end to the calamities of the war which unhappily exists between the two Republics and to establish Upon a solid basis relations of peace and friendship, which shall confer reciprocal benefits upon the citizens of both, and assure the concord, harmony, and mutual confidence wherein the two people should live, as good neighbors have for that purpose appointed their respective plenipotentiaries, that is to say: The President of the United States has appointed Nicholas P. Trist, a citizen of the United States, and the President of the Mexican Republic has appointed Don Luis Gonzaga Cuevas, Don Bernardo Couto, and Don Miguel Atristain, citizens of the said Republic; Who, after a reciprocal communication of their respective full powers, have, under the protection of Almighty God, the author of peace, arranged, agreed upon, and signed the following: Treaty of Peace, Friendship, Limits, and Settlement between the United States of America and the Mexican Republic.
