Why Texans Should Care about Diez Y Seis de Septiembre

SAN ANGELO, TX — Mayor Brenda Gunter declared the 4 weeks starting Sept. 15, 2020 until Oct. 15, 2020 as Hispanic Heritage Month in San Angelo. She was flanked by the Lake View High School Mariachi Band on the steps of City Hall Wednesday morning as the month-long observance began after the mayor read the proclamation.

“Hispanic” is a broad term covering multiple nationalities. However, with the Texas-Mexico border nearer to us than other nations, much of the Hispanic heritage here originates in Mexico.

Wednesday was Diez Y Seis de Septiembre, a celebration of Mexico’s independence. Why should citizens in the U.S. who are not of Mexican descent care? Well, Mexico’s independence impacted U.S. and Texas history in a very big way. Please, stay with me and read on!

The founder and creator of what is now called Mexico was Hernando Cortez (1485-1547). 

The Aztec Empire he liberated in 1521 was about the size of Kansas, some 80,000 square miles.  Over the next 200 years, viceroys appointed by the King of Spain expanded the colony of Nueva España, or New Spain, which a part of eventually became modern-day Mexico and then some, by twenty times, through appropriating land from Indian tribes primarily, to 1,650,000 square miles.

Back in Europe, when the French lost the Seven Years’ War, by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, they ceded their territory of Louisianne (named after Louis XIV), much of the North American land mass west of the Mississippi, to England which then awarded it to Spain for being England’s ally in the war. This added another 828,000 square miles to the Viceroyalty of New Spain.

When Napoleon seized power in France after the French Revolution, he wanted Louisianne back for France.  So he made a secret deal in 1800 with King Charles IV of Spain (actually, he made the deal with his wife Queen Maria Amelia and her lover Manuel de Godoy, for Charles was mentally challenged) to trade via a “retrocession" all of it for control of Tuscany in Italy.  This was called the Treaty of Ildefonso.

Meanwhile, for the U.S., President Thomas Jefferson’s spies in Paris found out about the secret treaty by 1801, and also learned that warmongering Napoleon needed some fast cash.  He had lost his cash cow of Haiti and its sugar exports in a rebellion and might be open to a deal over Louisianne, Jefferson strategized.

It worked!

The negotiations between the U.S. and Napoleon were concluded on May 2, 1803. The deal grew the territory of the U.S. by 828,000 square miles and U.S. taxpayers paid only $15 million, or about three cents an acre.  This was called The Louisiana Purchase.

Meanwhile, back in Spain, Charles IV abdicated his throne in 1808 in favor of his son Ferdinand VII, who was so pro-British/anti-French that Napoleon invaded Spain and replaced him with his older brother Joseph Bonaparte as King. 

The people of Spain quickly rebelled, which left the Spanish government in chaotic breakdown.

The turmoil back in the Spanish motherland by 1810 gave the people of New Spain cause to rebel against their European colonial rulers.

By the time Ferdinand VII regained the throne in 1814, he was desperate for money to finance suppressing the rebellion in New Spain.  His government had challenged the legality of the entire Louisiana Purchase, claiming France had no right to sell it and never owned it anyway, since the secret Ildefonso treaty was invalid.  

Like his predecessor Jefferson, President James Monroe saw more opportunity.

By 1819, at Monroe’s instructions, U.S. Secretary of State John Quincy Adams concluded a deal with Ferdinand’s emissary, Spanish Foreign Minister Luis de Onis, called the Adams-Onis Treaty.  The U.S. paid Spain $5 million for the 70,000 square miles of Spanish Florida, and Spain recognized the validity of the Louisiana Purchase, thus settling the US-New Spain border.Here’s the map of the treaty (the area of the Louisiana Purchase is called the Missouri Territory):