Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Yes, it is mostly amusing and I put it up for that reason. It is not very serious.
But let's not turn this into a politically correct college course, Victimology 101. The fact remains that nobody fired a shot when Kearny entered New Mexico and the "military occupation" was maintained by a ridiculous few who could have easily been overwhelmed by a concerted uprising. For instance, in how many towns were the troops stationed? Santa Fe. Where else? And when the revolt occurred in Taos, who joined them? Nobody. Nada. A truly oppressive "military occupation".
Yes, people were cheated of land grants and I deplore that -- but they got free public education way before they would have gotten it if they had stayed part of Mexico.
And what is the ratio of federal taxes out to federal money in? Would Mexico be as generous?
To answer your question Devin, as of 2007, we get 2.02 for every dollar out. That's a 2:1 investment ratio. Oh yeah, NM is #1 in the nation in that regard.
You believe wrong, my friend, unless you also believe someone breaking into your home, putting a pistol to your head and making you "sell" your house to them for a price THEY dictate is a legitimate real estate transaction (i.e. fair and square).
The US invaded Mexico and the government that "sold" (15 million for almost the entire Southwest) the land acquired in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was under US military occupation. This is hand-in-glove with the US concept of Manifest Destiny. Later, Santa Ana sold land (Tratado de Mesilla or Gadsden Purchase) in south NM and AZ, a deal that pretty much drove the corrupt General from office.
You'll also find that many land grant claims were ignored if the same property was coveted by US business (think railroads & mining) or govt. interests.
Thanks for the history lesson, I'll be sure to write McGraw-Hill to inform them of their grievous omission in grade school history texts. I don't particularly think anyone here really cares; in hindsight, I don't give a rat's bum about what they advertise in Mexico. It is more amusing than anything else.
The ad was produced in and for the Mexican market, period. It uses imagery that evokes a very long-time and widely held opinion in Mexico that the land was taken or extorted, despite the payment. It likely was designed to appeal to the Mexican popular market, make a slight political commentary and also be amusing (something that is completely lost on irritable, touchy gringos) while garnering publicity.
The negative publicity for Absolut in the US was driven almost entirely by the Michelle Malkin types who use things like this to sell their books, get more airtime on Fox News, and generally grow their own publicity and wallets while flogging faux outrage. They were very successful in this.
Have you ever seen the New Yorker cartoon, a USA map, where New York City is huge, Chicago is a little dot and nothing else appears in the entire country until the west coast? This ad is a similar thing. A perspective joke.
People who take it seriously or CARE how Absolut advertises in another country need to find something more useful to do with their time and energy.
Relax and get over it, people.
Believe me -- if you produced an ad showing the USA had taken over most of Canada, the Canadians would NOT be amused.
Or try making an ad in Greece showing most of Greece taken over by Turkey, or vice versa. It's hardly only a certain type of people who find this kind of thing offensive, it was meant to offend.
Or maybe someone should produce an ad showing Guatemala has taken a huge chunk of Mexico and see how many Mexicans are Malkin-like -- or do you think they would just chuckle and see the humor in it?
The map is hardly showing Mexico taking over the US, it's a map (although somewhat distorted) of what Mexico looked like before the land grap perpetrated by the USA. It's history - might makes right. . . . and I cannot believe anyone could be so upset by it, clearly it's tongue in cheek. We should be able to take a joke.
P.S. Unlike Turkey/Greece, Mexico does not have a history of periodic agression against its neighbor.
Believe me -- if you produced an ad showing the USA had taken over most of Canada, the Canadians would NOT be amused.
Or try making an ad in Greece showing most of Greece taken over by Turkey, or vice versa. It's hardly only a certain type of people who find this kind of thing offensive, it was meant to offend.
Or maybe someone should produce an ad showing Guatemala has taken a huge chunk of Mexico and see how many Mexicans are Malkin-like -- or do you think they would just chuckle and see the humor in it?
Senor Malamute...you make my point. All the instances you cite explain why Mexicans are so PO'ed about the USA invading and taking part of their country. Actually I shouldn't say Poed, because it was a long time ago, but there is a historical memory of aggression and injustice that is very real.
I'm not sure, Devin, how a lack of resistance or "they're better off being Americans" makes it morally OK to take the land, or why it would make a Mexican citizen feel better about the whole thing.
I'm not trying to find fault with the US....it was a different time, and certainly not the only time we went to war to aquire land and natural wealth. But, thru the lens of THIS age, it was as bad as many of the countries we now condemn for similar acts.
My reaction to seeing the ad was to laugh...and I think that's pretty much what the ad agency intended. The spit-flying outrage in the US is the truely interesting part of this Kind of like "Freedom Fries"......
"And when the revolt occurred in Taos, who joined them? Nobody. Nada. A truly oppressive "military occupation"."
By the way, Devin, if you reread my post you'll see that my reference to a "military occupation" referred to the defeated Mexican government in Mexico City, the one that signed on to the treaty of GH, NOT Taos, Nuevo Mexico. Maybe I could have written it a bit more clearly...sorry bout that.
I'm not a politically correct person, but I am a bit interested in history and know enough about it not to take things at face value. The victors write the books.
Senor Malamute...you make my point. All the instances you cite explain
I'm not sure, Devin, how a lack of resistance or "they're better off being Americans" makes it morally OK to take the land, or why it would make a Mexican citizen feel better about the whole thing.
It's a good question and I don't think that it will make Mexican citizens feel better -- it will probably make them feel worse. But it is historically accurate -- No one was particularly interested in remaining part of Mexico because the government was ineffective and unconcerned and because US merchants outcompeted the Mexican merchants. Of course, that will make them feel bad.
And I feel terrible when I read of the US treatment of the Indians or of slavery of Blacks and segregation and lynchings. But I can deal with painful truth and I don't want anyone to rewrite history to make me feel better.
I dislike this current trend of distorting history to portray Anglos as the invariable bad guys and try to get everyone else to see themselves as victims. Yes, Americans have been guilty of terrible injustices -- but we don't need to use creativity to add to the list.
It's a good question and I don't think that it will make Mexican citizens feel better -- it will probably make them feel worse. But it is historically accurate -- No one was particularly interested in remaining part of Mexico because the government was ineffective and unconcerned and because US merchants outcompeted the Mexican merchants. Of course, that will make them feel bad.
And I feel terrible when I read of the US treatment of the Indians or of slavery of Blacks and segregation and lynchings. But I can deal with painful truth and I don't want anyone to rewrite history to make me feel better.
I dislike this current trend of distorting history to portray Anglos as the invariable bad guys and try to get everyone else to see themselves as victims. Yes, Americans have been guilty of terrible injustices -- but we don't need to use creativity to add to the list.
I seriously doubt any Mexican citizens stake their national pride or identity on whether Mexican merchants were outcompeted by American ones in the mid-1800s or whether New Mexicans cared to be part of Mexico. Mexico was trying, as Spain had tried before Independence, to maintain monopolies for well connected merchants in Mexico for trade to the northern colony. This clearly was a failure, as it should be, and as it was when Spain tried the same thing.
England did the same before our Revolution...thus the Boston Tea Party and the war to follow. Without onerous restrictions on trade it's very doubtful that our Colonies could have roused the populace to rise up and throw off the restrictions and thus, foreign rule. Similar events preceded the war of independence in Mexico.
But what does that have to do with my point? I'm not trying to make Mexico or Mexicans victims or the USA into a villain.....just pointing out the equally "historically accurate" reasons why a simple advertisement has traction in the country it was designed for. The fact that, apparently, nearly all the folks upset about this ad know little or nothing about the historical context is demonstrated by the cries of "Reconquista", invasion and similar nonsense. There is a very real, historically correct reason for the ad to have been created for the Mexican market, period. The modern day immigration issue is a minor part of the joke, I think.
I'm not sure whether you're implying, in your last paragraph, that I'm "distorting history" or portraying Anglos as the bad guys, but if you are you're living at a little too high an altitude.
My country has both a proud and shameful heritage, as all other countries do in one way or another. No "creativity" is needed to add to a shameful "list" that is long enough as it is....but denial doesn't make that "list" any shorter, either.
Have you read Blood and Thunder? A wonderful book, with some coverage of the Mexican American war in the Southwest by way of telling the amazing story of Christoper "Kit" Carson (a Taos resident), a guy who certainly embodied both the best and the worst of the American character in the 1800's. I even recommend this book to people who don't like history. What a tale...and it's true. If a screenwriter made it up, no one would believe it all happened to one guy.
By the way....I live in Mesilla, a town established by Nuevo Mexico residents who didn't want to be US citizens when the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty ceded all land in South New Mexico east of the Rio Grande. They all packed up and moved to a high spot (Mesilla = little tableland) on the West bank that had been used for many many years as a stop-off encampment on the Camino Real. Of course, a year or so later the Rio flooded and, when the water subsided, the town found itself on the East side of the new river course and back in the USA. Just proving that God has a wicked sense of humor. The Gadsden Purchase ceremony was performed 3 blocks from my house, in the Mesilla plaza.
I seriously doubt any Mexican citizens stake their national pride or identity on whether Mexican merchants were outcompeted by American ones in the mid-1800s or whether New Mexicans cared to be part of Mexico.
You raised the question of how the Mexicans would feel. Now you say they don't care.
Why raise the question, then? If you hadn't asked it, I wouldn't have answered it. Would have saved me time.
I will read the book you recommended -- Kit Carson was an amazing person and a type this country doesn't seem to appreciate that much anymore. Contemporary Americans are more interested in someone like the killer in No Country for Old Men. I got interested in the period and area because the Bent brothers are distant relatives. They were amazing people in a very different way.
You raised the question of how the Mexicans would feel. Now you say they don't care.
Why raise the question, then? If you hadn't asked it, I wouldn't have answered it. Would have saved me time.
I will read the book you recommended -- Kit Carson was an amazing person and a type this country doesn't seem to appreciate that much anymore. Contemporary Americans are more interested in someone like the killer in No Country for Old Men. I got interested in the period and area because the Bent brothers are distant relatives. They were amazing people in a very different way.
Jeez Louise, Devin....you're stretching a bit to find something to dispute with my post. Read it again, if you can afford the time.
What I said was that I doubted that neither being outcompeted by American merchants or a lack of resistance to Kearny (as you suggest) has anything to do with Mexican resentment about being invaded, conquered and having land extorted from Mexico.
If the Bents are relatives you'll particularly enjoy Blood and Thunder. They were involved with Carson, who hunted and traded at Bents Fort, for decades as well as Gov. Bent being married to Carson's sister-in-law. Gov. Bent's murder in Taos is covered in great detail as is the more wild and wooly (buffalo hunting, selling booze and guns to the Indians, smuggling trade goods in and out of New Mexico, the huge Bent's Fort adobe compound, etc.) aspects of the Bents as traders in the early west.
And, people DO care....Blood & Thunder by Hampton Sides was a best seller not long ago and, I'm told, may be a movie before long. No plans, as of yet, for a Kit Carson video game , so teenagers might not be in the loop.
Note to lurkers: the aforementioned book is one of the best books I've ever read about New Mexico and western history. Not a dry recitation of facts, but extremely well researched and written. Check it out if you're interested at all in the early days of our state and the yin/yang story of a widely misunderstood American iconic figure (Carson).
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
. 
.
Kind of like "Freedom Fries"......
Painful truth
They don't care
.
. Would have saved me time.
, so teenagers might not be in the loop.
