I.

Introduction

Mexican War, conflict between the United States and Mexico, lasting from 1846 to 1848. The war resulted in a decisive U.S. victory and forced Mexico to relinquish all claims to approximately half its national territory. Mexico had already lost control of much of its northeastern territory as a result of the Texas Revolution (1835-1836). This land, combined with the territory Mexico ceded at the end of the war, would form the future U.S. states of Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah, as well as portions of the states of Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Wyoming. See United States (History): War with Mexico.

Mexico’s territorial losses signified the end of any likelihood that Mexico, rather than the United States, would become the predominant power in North America. As the first conflict in which U.S. military forces fought almost exclusively outside of the country, the Mexican War also marked the beginning of the rise of the United States as a global military power.

Many Mexicans, meanwhile, deeply resented their loss to the “Colossus of the North,” viewing the conflict as an unnecessary war that had been thrust upon Mexico by a land-hungry United States. This nurtured a fear of the United States—sometimes bordering on hatred—among some Mexicans that has been kept alive and popularized through corridos, the folk ballads of Mexico. More positively, the war also generated a new feeling of patriotism and national pride in the young nation, evidenced today by the pilgrimages to Chapultepec Park in Mexico City every September 13 to honor the young military cadets (Niños Héroes) who chose to die rather than surrender to U.S. troops at the end of the war.