July 4, 1776 — the birth of our nation. Independence from England is proclaimed. We are free. Well, the east coast colonies are free from the oppression of England. In the west, our nation-to-be and not-quite-yet-born is still under the hegemony of Spain. Six days before the English colonies' Declaration of Independence, the Spanish Franciscan missionaries establish Mission San Francisco de Asis near the arroyo of Our Lady of Sorrows (Nuestra Senora de los Dolores) in San Francisco. This is now known as Mission Dolores, located on 16th and Dolores Streets. America was not yet America, but part of the Americas.

On July 4, 1776, Mexico was not yet a nation. It did not gain liberty from Spain until September 16, 1821.

The Fourth of July has another little known significance for citizens of the United States and for the citizens of Mexico.

July 4, 1848, is the date on which President James K. Polk proclaimed that Congress had ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo between the United States and Mexico. This treaty was supposed to be the finalization of the terms governing territory, property, citizenship, juridical, cultural, and language rights of the residents (Mexican citizens, U. S. citizens and Indians) of the Southwest Territory at the end of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848).

The war was over, but the conflict between a rapacious United States and a corrupt Mexico was barely begun. The conflict involves bitter disputes not only between the United States and Mexico, but also between the pro-slavery expansionist Democratic Party and the anti-slave Whig Party in the United States, and between corrupt and traitorous Mexican parties in Mexico which more often removed a president by coupe than by elections.

The conflict involves erroneous maps, secret negotiations and self-serving compacts on the part of both Mexican and U. S. commissioners, the very real fact that Polk sent U. S. troops into Mexican territory on the belief (pretext?) that Mexico had violated the uncertain border of the Texas Republic, and addenda and amendments and deletions to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo that were not agreed upon by both sides.

It involves the massive immigration to the Alta California territory by Anglo-Americans who became squatters on Mexican land grants which The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo guaranteed ownership to the Mexicans who held the grants and who became U. S. citizens by virtue of the Treaty, the Queretaro Protocols, and the Gadsden Purchase (Treaty of Mesilla).

The conflict involves the imported racism of Anglo-American gold seekers in 1849 and the ejection of Mexican Californios whose land was to be protected by Treaty and the U. S. Constitution, the ejection of Mexican Tejanos from their lands in the Texas Republic, and the removal of property rights from Mexican land owners in the New Mexico territory.

It also involves the oppression of Indians by both Mexico and the United States, as well as the failed Mexican and U. S. commitments to defend their citizens against Indian attacks in the Southwest Territory.

Just one example from the many disputes: the southern border of the Texas Republic, according to the U. S., was the Rio Grande. Mexico understood it to be the Nueces River, to the north of the Rio Grande. Official maps from the late 1700s showed this boundary between the Mexican State of Coahuila and the Mexican department of Texas. Stephen Austin's land-grant maps also confirmed this boundary. Most historians say that the Mexicans were right. Therefore, when Polk accused Mexico of invading Texas by crossing north of the Rio Grande, but remaining south of the Nueces, he was in error. They were within their own territory. When Polk, with great bravado (whoops, I used a Spanish word that sneaked into our English dictionary), sent troops under General Winfield Scott south past the Nueces River, he was invading Mexico. To avoid the incrimination that this fact would bring upon Polk, the United States steadfastly refused to accept any boundary after the war that did not coincide with the Rio Grande to the south. We fashioned our invasion of foreign land into a legal occupation of our own land, by fiat, after the fact.

So many patriotic Americans today are outraged that poor Mexicans cross the historically uncertain border into the United States to find work. They call them criminals for having done so. None of us remember, or perhaps we were never taught in our history classes, that Polk criminally crossed into Mexican territory, again over an uncertain, poorly surveyed, and disputed border. But we are not outraged, nor shamed, nor repentant for the crimes of our forefathers. It is no musical fantasy that the modern day award-winning Mexican band, Los Tigres del Norte, based in San Jose, California, and known by every Mexican and Mexican-American in Mexico and the United States, sings "We did not cross the border. The border crossed us."

The whole complicated and complicitous history of United States–Mexico boundary disputes and of the Mexican–American War is recounted in Richard Griswold del Castillo's research entitled The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: a Legacy of Conflict. Well worth reading this history published by the University of Oklahoma Press.

For now, suffice it to say that our patriotism on this day of the Fourth of July should be free of arrogance and nativism; that we should be celebrating the ideals of freedom, justice, and equality which our English forefathers' blood gained for the east coast by revolution against England and which our Mexican forefathers' blood gained for the southwest by revolution against Spain; that we should support the legitimate revolutionary movements of the poor in the Third World against their modern day oppressors; and that we should express our gratitude for our freedoms by building bridges, not walls, between us and the oppressed.

Oh say, can you see ... ?
José, can you see ... ?
Joe, say, can you also see ... ?