"We Didn't Cross the Border, the Border Crossed Us"
dwherstories.com/…ne/we-didnt-cross-the-border- …
Listen
This popular Mexican immigrant rights slogan reminds us that national borders are not natural, but created and recreated to serve the economic and political interests of the elite. In the 1800s, the United States expanded west into lands that were already transformed by many generations of colonial violence. This violence included the reliance on Indigenous women and children as a captive domestic workforce. As historian Ned Blackhawk (Western Shoshone) writes, “Violence both predated and became intrinsic to American expansion.”
Spanish colonization (of what would later become Mexico) and then U.S. invasions, redrew the territorial border. By 1848 the United States controlled most or all of the land that is now California, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and Wyoming. In the process, over 150,000 Mexican citizens and 180,000 Indigenous residents became subjects of the U.S. government.