The Mexican Americans Coexistence Story - Essay Example

In the 1980s, the government of Mexico encouraged American settlements in Texas. As American immigrants increased in number, they started to demand autonomy (Acuna, 1998). This is because they feared Mexico would outlaw the slave trade or impose taxes on them.

The conflict between the migrants and the Mexican president occurred when the new president, Lopez de Santa Anna put control measures on trade between the United States and the Anglos living in Mexico. Although a peace deal recognized Texas as independent, the president retreated on this agreement on his return to Mexico. The relationship between the Americans in Mexico and the Mexicans remained strained. War broke out between the two states and by the time it ended, Mexico lost 890,000 miles of land to America (McWilliams, 1990).

Later, Mexico sold 30,000 miles to the United States and the American government gave citizenship to Mexicans in these areas within two years, with the signing of the Gadsden treaty formalizing the new boundaries. Between the years 1900-the 1930s however, most migrants went back because of the economic depression experienced at that time – about half of the migrants within the period went back to Mexico. The Mexican government's attempts to reverse the migration trend failed, as they could not match wages and facilities to those offered in the United States of America (Portes, 1985).

In the early years since their migration to America, the Mexicans lived in rural areas. This however changed and in 1920 for example, about 40% lived in cities. This number increased to about 94% in the year 1990. In the year 1990, about 4.7% of American residents were Mexican Americans, most of who were found in the pacific states, which accounted for about 47.8% of the West Central states like Texas, which had 30% of the Mexican Americans (Mirande, 1985). Spanish was for a long time the prominent language among Mexican Americas.

This changed as assimilation by the American culture and systems took place. Today, most Mexican-Americans are used to both English and Spanish and some are accustomed to code-switching from time to time during their conversation (Mirande, 1985).