U.S. President Donald Trump has found another way to antagonize Mexicans, releasing a “presidential message” celebrating the 178th anniversary of what he called the United States’ “legendary victory” in the Mexican-American War.
The message was published by the White House on Monday, the 178th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War, and which required Mexico to cede 55% of its territory to the United States.
Trump’s message stated that the U.S. achieved “a legendary victory that secured the American Southwest, reasserted American sovereignty, and expanded the promise of American independence across our majestic continent.”
It mentioned the United States “superior military strategy,” its “series of victories in the Mexican territories of California and New Mexico” and “a triumphant victory for American sovereignty” when U.S. forces “heroically captured the capital of Mexico City in September of 1847.”
Trump also said that in his second term as president, he has been “guided by our victory on the fields of Mexico 178 years ago.”
“I have spared no effort in defending our southern border against invasion, upholding the rule of law, and protecting our homeland from forces of evil, violence, and destruction,” he wrote.
“My Administration is halting the flow of deadly drugs entering our country through Mexico, ending the invasion of illegal aliens along our southern border, and dismantling narco-terrorist networks all across the Western hemisphere.”
The message was released five months ahead of the 250th anniversary of the United States’ Declaration of Independence, and included “America 250” in its title.
José Díaz Briseño, a U.S. correspondent for the newspaper Reforma, described the message as “unusual,” while Ariel Moutsatsos, the U.S. bureau chief for Televisa’s N+ network, noted that the White House didn’t use to issue such statements.
“Trump’s White House literally describing Mexico as a land of conquest, not as a partner,” Díaz wrote on X on Tuesday.
“Yesterday’s unusual press release celebrating the U.S. invasion of Mexico & the forced annexation of Mexican territory. Whoa,” he wrote above an excerpt from the presidential message.
The publication of the message followed an assertion from Trump last month that the United States would start “hitting” cartels on land in Mexico.
Under Trump, the U.S. is playing a far more assertive role in the Western Hemisphere, as demonstrated by the bold military operation that resulted in the capture of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela last month.
Trump’s message on the Mexican-American War also asserted that the United States has “stopped a hostile foreign power from controlling the Panama Canal” and affirmed that “we are aggressively pursuing an America First policy of peace through strength and will continue to reassert the Trump Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine to ensure the Hemisphere remains safe, prosperous, and free.”
Trump has spoken on numerous occasions about his willingness to use the U.S. military against cartels in Mexico, six of which were designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government last year. Last May, he even made an offer to President Claudia Sheinbaum to send the U.S. army across the border.
Sheinbaum declined the offer and has made it clear that her government will never accept any kind of intervention that would violate Mexico’s sovereignty.
Former Mexican ambassador to US describes Trump’s message as an ‘in your face F… You’
Sheinbaum was asked about Trump’s message at her Tuesday morning press conference.
“You already know what my opinion is. We’re not [like] Santa Anna. We always have to defend [Mexico’s] sovereignty,” she said.
Former president Antonio López de Santa Anna is widely blamed for Mexico’s 19th-century territorial losses, although he was not in office when the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed.
Apart from Sheinbaum, various other high-profile Mexicans responded to Trump’s message on the Mexican-American War.
“Never, in the recent annals of Mexico-U.S. relations had we seen anything like this,” Arturo Sarukhan, Mexico’s ambassador to the United States from 2006 to 2013, wrote on X.
“This is not only spiking the ball in the end zone; it’s an in your face F… You,” he wrote.
Well-known political analyst and columnist Denise Dresser also took to X to comment on Trump’s Feb. 2 message.
“The next time Tyrians and Trojans, morenistas [Morena party members and supporters] and no morenistas applaud Trump and celebrate when he speaks well of Claudia Sheinbaum, remember what he said yesterday about the United States invasion in the 19th century,” she wrote.
“He still sees Mexico as territory to be conquered, not as a partner. He will continue to look for ways to intervene,” Dresser wrote.
Trump has offended and antagonized Mexicans on numerous previous occasions, including with his infamous 2015 declaration that Mexicans entering the U.S. are “bringing drugs” and “bringing crime” and “they’re rapists.”
But his message on Monday, as The Guardian put it, “touched a historical nerve in Mexico” as the Mexican-American War “has long been a historical sore spot for Mexico.”
Tony Payan, a Mexico expert at Rice University in Houston, told The Guardian that Trump, with his message, “is rubbing Mexico’s nose in what is essentially a very deep wound in Mexico’s history.”
That, Payan said, despite Mexico being “a country that has done nothing but cooperate with U.S. interests on all levels.”
Historians weigh in
In a report published on Tuesday, the Associated Press wrote that Trump’s statement “makes no mention of the key role slavery played in the [Mexican-American] war and glorifies the wider ‘Manifest Destiny’ period, which resulted in the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans from their land.”
Alexander Aviña, a professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University, told AP that Trump’s message “underplays the massive amounts of violence that it took to expand” the United States to the Pacific Ocean.
“U.S. political leaders since then have seen this as an ugly aspect of U.S. history, this is a pretty clear instance of U.S. imperialism against its southern neighbor,” he said.
In contrast, “the Trump administration is actually embracing this as a positive in U.S. history and framing it — inaccurately historically — as some sort of defensive measure to prevent Mexico from invading them,” Aviña said.
He also said that the message issued by the White House on Monday seeks “to assert rhetorically that the U.S. is justified in establishing its so-called ‘America First’ policy throughout the Americas.”
Albert Camarillo, a history professor at Stanford University, described Trump’s message as a “distorted, ahistorical, imperialist version” of the Mexican-American War.
“This statement is consistent with so many others that attempt to whitewash and reframe U.S. history and erase generations of historical scholarship,” he told AP.
With reports from The Guardian and AP
