MEXICO CITY (AP) — Historians and observers have accused the Trump administration of trying to rewrite U.S. history by publishing a “historically inaccurate” version of the Mexican-American War to justify its foreign policy decisions in Latin America.
A White House statement Monday marking the anniversary of the war described the conflict as “a legendary victory that secured the American Southwest, reaffirmed American sovereignty, and expanded the promise of American independence across our majestic continent.” The statement compared this period in U.S. history to increasingly aggressive U.S. policy toward Latin America, which it said would “ensure the security of the Western Hemisphere.”
“Guided by our victory on the battlefields of Mexico 178 years ago, I have worked tirelessly to defend our southern border from invasion, uphold the rule of law, and protect our homeland from the forces of evil, violence and destruction,” the statement said.
In the post, the White House made no mention of the key role slavery played in the war, instead glorifying the broader Manifest Destiny period that displaced hundreds of thousands of Native Americans.
spark criticism
Alexandre Aveña, a professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University, said the White House statement “downplayed the amount of violence required for U.S. expansion to the Pacific Rim, and the Trump administration has intervened in Latin America in ways not seen in decades, deposing Venezuela’s president, interfering in elections and threatening military action against Mexico and other countries.”
“Since then, U.S. political leaders have viewed this as an ugly side of U.S. history, a very clear example of U.S. imperialism directed against its southern neighbor,” Avegna said. “The Trump administration actually viewed this as a positive in U.S. history and portrayed it (historically inaccurately) as some sort of defense against a Mexican invasion.”
Criticism of the White House statement spread quickly on social media on Tuesday.
Asked about the statement at a morning news conference, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum laughed and quipped, “We have to defend our sovereignty.” Scheinbaum, who has close ties to the Trump administration, struck a balanced and occasionally sarcastic tone in her responses to Trump, such as when Trump renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
historical crux
The Mexican-American War (1846-1848) was triggered by a long-running border dispute between the United States and Mexico and the U.S. annexation of Texas in 1845. In the years leading up to the war, Americans gradually made their way into what was then Mexican territory. Slavery had been banned in Mexico, and American abolitionists feared that the United States was grabbing land in part to add slave states.
After the war broke out and the United States won successive victories, Mexico ceded more than 525,000 square miles of territory to the United States, including what is now Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah
The moment made Texas a key pawn during the American Civil War and led former President Ulysses S. Grant to later write that the conflict with Mexico was “one of the most unjust conflicts ever waged by a powerful power against a weak one.”
When the Associated Press was founded, five New York City newspapers funded a pony express route through Alabama to carry news of the Mexican War (sometimes called the Mexican War in the United States) north faster than the U.S. post office could deliver it.
The war remains a historical sticking point between the two countries, especially since Sheinbaum has repeatedly reminded Trump that her country is a sovereign nation whenever Trump publicly considers military action against Mexican cartels and forcing Mexico to bend to his will.
rewrite history
Albert Camarillo, a history professor at Stanford University, said the White House statement was in line with the Trump administration’s broader efforts to shape the language of the federal government around its own creed, which he described as a “distorted, ahistorical, imperialist version” of the war.
Avegna said the statement was intended to “pay lip service to the justification of the United States’ pursuit of so-called ‘America First’ policies throughout the Americas,” regardless of historical accuracy.
The Trump administration has ordered a rewrite of the history on display at the Smithsonian Institution, saying it is “restoring truth and sanity to American history.”
The government has removed historical, legal records and data it deemed inappropriate from government websites. Trump also ordered the government to remove any signs that “inappropriately demean Americans past or present,” including those that reference slavery, the destruction of Native American culture and climate change.
“This statement is consistent with many others that have attempted to whitewash and reshape American history and erase generations of historical scholarship,” Camarillo said.
