American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States (American Crossroads) (Volume 49) - Softcover

Lozano, Rosina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0520297075 ISBN 13: 9780520297074

Publisher: University of California Press, 2018

Synopsis

"This is the most comprehensive book I’ve ever read about the use of Spanish in the U.S. Incredible research. Read it to understand our country. Spanish is, indeed, an American language."—Jorge Ramos

An American Language is a tour de force that revolutionizes our understanding of U.S. history. It reveals the origins of Spanish as a language binding residents of the Southwest to the politics and culture of an expanding nation in the 1840s. As the West increasingly integrated into the United States over the following century, struggles over power, identity, and citizenship transformed the place of the Spanish language in the nation. An American Language is a history that reimagines what it means to be an American—with profound implications for our own time.

About this title

About the Author

Rosina Lozano is Associate Professor of History at Princeton University.

From the Back Cover

“Original and provocative, beautifully written and argued, An American Language tells a story of our nation’s past that brilliantly illuminates our present: that the United States of America was born multilingual.”—John Mack Faragher, Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus, Yale University
 
“In this timely and important book, Rosina Lozano reveals that little is as all-American as the Spanish language. An American Language opens up a whole new way of envisioning the century that followed the U.S.-Mexican War and introduces a powerful new scholarly voice.”—Karl Jacoby, author of The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire
 
“Lozano has given us an original and imaginative story of contests over power, governance, and belonging that places language—and the Spanish language in particular—at the center of her analysis. In so doing, she offers a new and rich perspective on the development of the American Southwest since the middle of the nineteenth century, on the deeper meanings of American culture and politics, and on the complex ways in which citizenship is constructed.”—Steven Hahn, author of A Nation without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910
 
“This deeply original history explains how Spanish speakers in the United States interacted with government power in the century after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. An American Language has something novel and urgent to say about identity, pluralism, and the state. Lozano has written an ambitious and important book.”—Brian DeLay, author of War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War
 
“This book is a tour de force with powerfully important implications. It definitively refutes reigning assumptions that the United States has always been a monolingual Anglophone nation and that recent and current immigration poses an unprecedented threat through its language diversity. Lozano presents detailed accounts of the historical role of Spanish as a state-sanctioned language and demonstrates how this was an important crucible of identity and power in the U.S. past. An American Language reveals a hidden history of the Spanish language in the United States.”—George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place

From the Inside Flap

“Original and provocative, beautifully written and argued, An American Language tells a story of our nation’s past that brilliantly illuminates our present: that the United States of America was born multilingual.”—John Mack Faragher, Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus, Yale University
 
“In this timely and important book, Rosina Lozano reveals that little is as all-American as the Spanish language. An American Language opens up a whole new way of envisioning the century that followed the U.S.-Mexican War and introduces a powerful new scholarly voice.”—Karl Jacoby, author of The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire
 
“Lozano has given us an original and imaginative story of contests over power, governance, and belonging that places language—and the Spanish language in particular—at the center of her analysis. In so doing, she offers a new and rich perspective on the development of the American Southwest since the middle of the nineteenth century, on the deeper meanings of American culture and politics, and on the complex ways in which citizenship is constructed.”—Steven Hahn, author of A Nation without Borders: The United States and Its World in an Age of Civil Wars, 1830–1910
 
“This deeply original history explains how Spanish speakers in the United States interacted with government power in the century after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. An American Language has something novel and urgent to say about identity, pluralism, and the state. Lozano has written an ambitious and important book.”—Brian DeLay, author of War of a Thousand Deserts: Indian Raids and the U.S.-Mexican War
 
“This book is a tour de force with powerfully important implications. It definitively refutes reigning assumptions that the United States has always been a monolingual Anglophone nation and that recent and current immigration poses an unprecedented threat through its language diversity. Lozano presents detailed accounts of the historical role of Spanish as a state-sanctioned language and demonstrates how this was an important crucible of identity and power in the U.S. past. An American Language reveals a hidden history of the Spanish language in the United States.”—George Lipsitz, author of How Racism Takes Place

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

An American Language

The History of Spanish in the United States

By Rosina Lozano

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Copyright © 2018 Rosina Lozano
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-520-29707-4

Contents

Illustrations, 
Introduction, 
PART ONE. A LANGUAGE OF POLITICS, 1848–1902, 
1. United by Land, 
2. Translation, a Measure of Power, 
3. Choosing Language, 
4. A Language of Citizenship, 
5. The United States Sees Language, 
PART TWO. A POLITICAL LANGUAGE, 1902–1945, 
6. A Language of Identity, 
7. The Limits of Americanization, 
8. Strategic Pan-Americanism, 
9. The Federal Government Rediscovers Spanish, 
10. Competing Nationalisms: Puerto Rico and New Mexico, 
Epilogue, 
Acknowledgments, 
Abbreviations, 
Notes, 
Select Bibliography, 
Index, 

CHAPTER 1

United by Land

Los habitantes de California no habiendo tenido otra cosa à que dedicarse mas que à la vida campestre y pastoril, ... oyeron con sorpresa y desmayo que por una acta del Congreso, se nombrò una Comision con la facultad de examinar todos los títulos, confirmar ò desaprobar ... ha producido el efecto mas desastroso.

— Antonio Ma. Pico et al., Petition, "Al Honorable Senado y Casa de Representantes, de los Estados Unidos de America," February 21, 1859

When José M. Gallegos, the first nuevomexicano terrritorial representative elected to Congress from New Mexico, took office in 1853, he resembled the vast majority of the citizens he sought to represent, in that he spoke only Spanish. Upon Gallegos's reelection in 1856, Miguel A. Otero, his bilingual and U.S.-educated opponent, appealed the results to Congress. Otero emphasized his ability to speak English, noting his willingness to address the legislature "in the language of its laws and its constitution." Gallegos's impassioned self-defense was translated and read from the floor by Georgia representative Alexander H. Stevens. Gallegos protested the "sneers and jests" of "certain honorable members of this body" inflicted simply because he wished to "be heard by counsel (because of [his] inability to make a formal discourse in English)." He noted the "painful disappointment at these exceptions to the generous spirit which [he] had been encouraged to expect from all the representatives of a free and magnanimous people." Otero emerged victorious from his appeal and began a five-year run as New Mexico's congressional representative.

Gallegos, like other nonindigenous Spanish-speaking nuevomexicanos, had been granted citizenship in the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. As a member of a new class of treaty citizens, Gallegos had expected better treatment, both for himself and for his constituents. His treatment by Congress, however, suggests that those in the federal government had a more limited understanding of treaty citizens' rights and obligations.

In California, new treaty citizens encountered even more limits to their participation in political life. Nevertheless, they overwhelmingly chose to remain on their land after the U.S. takeover. As landowners, the treaty citizens — the majority of whom were Spanish speakers — required access to the language of power. Their desire to retain their privileges deepened their investment in the U.S. territorial or state system even as the English dominance of such a system led to loss of land and disrespect from Anglos.

Never before had the U.S. government offered so much power to people who did not speak English or whose whiteness was in question. With the end of the U.S.-Mexican War, the United States acquired 525,000 square miles encompassing deserts, mountains, and canyons and populated largely by autonomous Indians. In New Mexico, nuevomexicanos comprised almost the entire settler population. In Northern California, californios found themselves overrun by Anglo settlers, whereas in Southern California they made up most of the settler population. The United States needed these treaty citizens to maintain control of the vast new territories it had acquired. These conditions permitted treaty citizens to establish social and political institutions that operated in Spanish — sometimes exclusively so.

This chapter explores the logic and limitations of treaty citizens' claim to Spanish through their fights to retain their land — a proxy for power. But because an understanding of their claims depends on their legal status, the chapter opens with a brief account of how the situation of Spanish-speaking citizens differed from that of other persons living in territories acquired by the United States. Even within the category of treaty citizens, however, landowners' experiences varied dramatically between California, which became a state immediately after its incorporation into U.S. territory, and New Mexico, which remained a territory until 1912. Treaty citizens in both California and New Mexico went to great lengths to retain their holdings, but their attempts to do so under different federal land confirmation criteria produced markedly different results.

A NEW KIND OF CITIZEN

The presence of a Spanish-speaking citizenry who preceded Anglos remains obscured in many stories of westward expansion. Rather than a "triumphant" story of inevitable national homogenization, that the United States set up territorial governments suggests regional fragmentation and disconnection. Granting citizenship through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo to former Mexican citizens is one major example of this diversity. This result was not predetermined. Uncertainty ruled all aspects of former Mexican citizens' lives as the war ended. What would happen to their land and possessions? Would they receive rights under the new government? How would they function in an English-speaking society? The nation could have imposed an English-language mandate as a prerequisite for holding office or for statehood. Instead, Congress legally incorporated former Mexican citizens based on geography.

Northern Mexican territorial residents encountered two distinct paths to U.S. citizenship. Tejanos, former Mexican citizens who had lived in tenuous settlements along the Río Bravo since 1749, received citizenship when Texas became a state in 1845. By this point, however, the tejanos made up only one-tenth of Texas's population. The empresario system — which aided tejano economic ambitions and ensured their safety from autonomous Indians — brought an influx of Anglo and European settlers in the 1820s that left tejanos greatly outnumbered. Tejanos nevertheless survived through a set of rapidly shifting national allegiances to the Spanish Empire, Mexico, the Republic of Texas, the United States, the Confederacy, and finally the United States again. Upon its founding in 1836, the Republic of Texas swiftly dismantled Spanish and Mexican land grants, redistributing land based on length of occupancy. Many tejanos received the maximum allotment only to sell their properties to secure cash from speculators or rebuild after the war.

Tejano appeals for the republic to recognize Spanish as a language of governance ended in frustration. The republic's governing structure included some tejanos — including three signatories to its constitution — who sided with Texas over Mexico. During its second legislative session, a joint resolution requested that the Spanish language be used so as to accommodate "our fellow citizens" who were left "wholly ignorant" of laws for "which their obedience was required." By the time the U.S. government ratified Texas statehood in 1845, the republic had experienced ten years of English-language rule disrespecting tejanos and their land rights. The following year, the state legislature allowed Spanish translations of certain laws selected by the governor. These realities of landownership and language separated the experience of tejanos from other residents of the Mexican northern territories.

A year after Texas joined the nation, the United States began its military quest to take over Mexico's land. The campaign targeted a twenty-five-year-old nation whose adult citizens had lived through a major shift from the Spanish Empire to the Mexican nation. In the generation following Spanish rule, land passed from Catholic missions to settler ranches that often extended beyond initial Spanish settlement. Californios received larger land grants, but female mission workers and neophyte Indians also received small grants. In New Mexico, land grants clustered around access to waterways, with select individuals receiving large parcels that also housed non–grant holders. The Spanish crown and the Mexican government also deeded communal land grants to settlers and genizaros (culturally more Spanish Indians). The best and safest land often went to male settlers of higher status, though genizaros and women received grants too.

In 1846, when U.S. general Stephen Kearney entered New Mexico, he placed a couple of nuevomexicanos in positions in the military government — a decision that appeased residents and foreshadowed future U.S. policy. His first public speech to residents reinforced the validity of an official use for Spanish. To assuage nuevomexicano fears, Kearney promised that "el fuerte, y el debil; el rico y el pobre; son iguales ante la ley[;] protegeré los derechos de todos con igualdad" (the strong and the weak; the rich and the poor; I will protect the rights of all with equality). At first, New Mexico accepted the military occupation without armed resistance, but its residents reconsidered within a year. Nuevomexicano Pablo Montoya and Taos Pueblo member Tomás Romero led a revolt in 1847 resulting in the execution of Governor Charles Bent, his brother-in-law Pablo Jaramillo, Taos sheriff Stephen Lee, Judge Cornelio Vigil, attorney J.W. Leal, and a youth, Narciso Beaubien. The presence of both Anglo and Spanish surnames among the dead shows how quickly nuevomexicano elites had become symbols of the new U.S. leadership system. Similarly, Southern California fought into 1847 as californios defended their autonomy. Both efforts ultimately failed.

On February 2, 1848, Mexico ceded its northern region, which would become the U.S. Southwest, in the process creating a new class of U.S. citizens. Congress ratified the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on March 10, with Article IX stipulating, "The Mexicans ... in the territories aforesaid, shall not preserve the character of citizens of the Mexican Republic, [but] shall be incorporated into the Union[,] ... [with] enjoyment of all the rights of citizens of the United States." This was hardly the first time that the United States had absorbed another empire's citizens in the process of its own territorial expansion — the Louisiana Purchase had, after all, offered U.S. citizenship to "inhabitants" (as determined by Congress) who lived in the 828,000-square-mile territory. The administration of the treaty and its use by the former citizens differed drastically, however. Louisiana had a brief, twelve-year territorial status. Louisiana's state constitution only gave white male residents full political and voting rights. As citizens of a fully incorporated state, Louisiana's white residents had no need to secure their rights through a treaty and those deemed nonwhite by the state had little recourse. For those granted citizenship by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, even those deemed white often held an ambiguous racial status. U.S. government and elected officials portrayed the vast majority of treaty citizens as mixed race rather than white. The 1790 Naturalization Act limited naturalization to "free white" individuals, suggesting that treaty citizens sidestepped a more fraught naturalization process by being legally categorized by the federal government as white. Treaty citizens became the first group of people considered ambiguously white to gain collective citizenship in the United States.

The Mexican government ratified the treaty on May 19 without seeking clarification on whether the treaty applied to all of its citizens or merely all white persons. Mexico included indigenous peoples in their designation of citizenship, but the United States did not. The ramifications of this choice emerged quickly when federal officials actively discouraged Pueblos from participating in territorial elections in exchange for allowing them to retain their culture and customs. The United States consistently refused to view the Pueblos and autonomous Indians living in the region as worthy of citizenship, despite their arguable inclusion in the treaty as Mexican citizens. In contrast, the 1850 federal census categorized Spanish-speaking treaty citizens as "white." For Mexicans in the northern territories, language and culture served as the major markers of race and citizenship. U.S. officials likely followed these conventions when they chose whom to label "white."

Many of the treaty citizens had deep ties to the land that extended back centuries. For example, Santa Fe, founded in 1610, is the oldest capital city in the United States. The 1850 census counted approximately 100,000 Mexican citizens divided between New Mexico, Texas, and California. New Mexico's 61,547 inhabitants, 95 percent of whom were born within the territory, represented the largest U.S. territorial population in 1850. The majority of these nuevomexicanos lived rural and modest existences (the census recorded farmer, laborer, and servant as the top three occupational positions) in small settlements (fewer than 1,000 inhabitants) clustered along traditional Pueblo village sites where there was better access to water and developing trade routes. Santa Fe, the largest town and a major center of trade, claimed just under 5,000 inhabitants. Native-born californios clustered in small farming and ranching communities in southern counties like Los Angeles (the largest settlement, with 3,500 people) and Santa Barbara (1,185), far away from the mining regions to the north that were rapidly filling with Anglos.

Elite treaty citizens wrote a mutually intelligible Spanish and shared their Catholicism and other cultural customs inherited from Spain. While the presence of Spanish colonial authorities had increased the range of Spanish used in governance and trade over the centuries, Indian phrases and customs remained in use throughout the region into the Mexican period. The historical record obscures much of this multilingual reality by privileging European language sources over indigenous ones. The absence of major cities and limited transportation options — when compared to those in central Mexico or the eastern United States — left the region's residents with few opportunities to form a common identity. As late as 1864, J. Ross Browne claimed it was simpler to execute a voyage from San Francisco to China than to Santa Fe. While this was an exaggeration, the future states of California, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas developed in isolation, forming their own sense of identity and cultural customs. If united, citizens of the future Southwest might have learned from one another as their exposure to an English-speaking world occurred on different timetables.

RETAINING SETTLERS IN NEW MEXICO TERRITORY

When New Mexico became a U.S. territory, nuevomexicanos comprised almost the entire settler population. Without their leadership and aid, control of the territory would revert to the autonomous Indians who had led raids in the period leading up to and following the U.S.-Mexican War. The prospect of losing settlers in New Mexico provided a strong incentive for the United States to acquiesce and support nuevomexicano cultural demands — including creating a political system in Spanish. The Mexican government's attempt to recolonize its former citizens magnified the threat.

Treaty citizens in New Mexico included those who owned no land, found no reason to learn English, or chose culture over the new form of government. As Francisco Ramírez of Los Angeles's El Clamor Público wrote, Mexico offered its former citizens a lot; after all, it was "donde están su idioma, sus costumbres, sus esperanzas ... donde, en fin, van a gozar de los derechos del ciudadano libre" (where your language, your customs, your hopes reside ... where, in the end, you will enjoy the rights of free citizens). New Mexico's second governor, Donaciano Vigil (1847–48), embraced U.S. rule, but his correspondence with other elite nuevomexicanos lamented the loss of culture and language. At least one individual planned to avoid the loss by leaving for Mexico. Countless others considered — and some actually attempted to move to Mexico immediately following the war — but they soon found that the federal government had no intention of encouraging mass resettlement. The United States chose retention when confronted with a decreasing number of treaty citizens.

Mexican president José Joaquín de Herrera — aware of former Mexicans' potential dissatisfaction — issued a recolonization plan in August 1848 promising economic resources and land for any former Mexican citizens who moved to Mexico. Mexico employed three commissioners to recruit voluntary repatriates in California, New Mexico, and Texas. The New Mexico commissioner, Father Ramón Ortiz, a Santa Fe native, encouraged resettlement by focusing attacks on nuevomexicanos' new inferior status as treaty citizens. He claimed, "Aunque sabían que, no obstante las garantías del tratado de paz, perderlan todas sus propiedades, querían perderlo todo más bien que pertenecer a un gobierno en el cual tenían menos garantías y eran tratados con más desprecio que la raza de África" (Although they knew they would lose all their property, notwithstanding the guarantees of the peace treaty, they preferred to lose all rather than belong to a government from which they had fewer guarantees and were treated with more disregard than the African race). Ortiz received incredibly high support from nuevomexicanos in many villages — especially from San Miguel del Vado County, where 90 percent signed resettlement papers.

(Continues...)

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Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520297075
• ISBN 13: 9780520297074
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 376