The shared history of California & Mexico, why anti-ICE protestors were waving Mexican flags

Indian Express

18-06-2025

Amid the Trump administration's sweeping crackdown on illegal immigration, which critics say specifically targets Hispanics, cities across the United States have witnessed massive anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protests this month.
These protests began on June 6 in Los Angeles after military-style ICE raids resulted in the detention of 44 people, mostly of Mexican heritage. California, especially the city of Los Angeles, has been the epicentre of these protests.
This is in no small part due to almost 40% of Californians being Hispanic, and more than 30% tracing their ancestry to Mexico, with whom the state shares a border as well as deep historic, cultural, and economic ties. Here's a brief history.
The Spanish colonisation of the New World began in the late 15th century and continued till the end of the 19th century. At its peak, Spanish territory in the Americas touched Alaska in the north and extended to Tierra del Fuego in the southern tip of South America.
The southern tip of the Baja peninsula (today the Mexican states of Baja California and Baja California Sur) was spotted by Conquistadors in the 16th century. They erroneously likened their 'discovery' to the mythical island of Californias mentioned in the Spanish novel Las Sergas de Esplandián (The Adventures of Esplandián) written in 1510 by Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo.
Upon venturing inward, the conquistadors realised that the region was not an island as previously imagined. The peninsular region came to be called Baja California, while the territories to its north, which today make up the American state of California, were called Alta California.
Another two centuries would pass before the Spanish colonial project, driven by the edict 'gold, God and glory', would claim the Californias for the empire. There are a few different reasons for this.
* One, Spaniards were kept busy elsewhere. The Viceroyalty of New Spain was formally established in 1535 with its capital in Mexico City, and would swell to include territories ranging from the Philippines to the Caribbean and northern parts of South America.
* Two, the discovery of gold and silver deposits in Mexico, central America and South America, as well as the lack of (known) deposits in California, discouraged conquistadors from making the difficult, often deadly journey.
Spanish interest in the region picked up when Russia looked to settle in the Californias in the mid-18th century. While Jesuit missionaries had been proselytising in the region for decades at that point, King Charles of Spain formally ordered the colonisation of California in 1761.
Junípero Serra, regarded today as the patron saint of California, would go on to establish 21 missions which 'developed' the region. The Californian economy would be defined by agriculture and livestock-rearing.
But colonisation was also devastating for Native Americans, who had been inhabiting the region for many millennia. 'Mission Indians' were forcefully converted to Catholicism and forced to work as farm labour. Demographer Sherburne F Cook estimates that the population of indigenous Californians fell from 310,000 in 1769 to only 25,000 in 1910. (The Population of the California Indians 1769-1970, Sherburne F. Cook, 1976)
The Spanish empire saw a steep decline in the 19th century. As Napoleon Bonaparte pummelled Spain in Europe, the Bourbon monarchy struggled to suppress revolutionary tendencies across its colonies.
Growing resentment over Spanish rule, stemming from rampant economic exploitation and social inequalities, set the stage for the Mexican War of Independence in 1810. Mexico would formally secede from Spain in 1821. But the new republic was far from politically stable, and witnessed 40 different governments before 1848.
The undivided Californias province had been split into two — Alta California and Baja California — in 1804. While the new Mexican republic retained this division, the territories immediately witnessed a host of changes.
For one, all restrictions on trade with foreigners were eased, allowing the Californian settlers or 'Californios', to trade in commodities, finished goods and luxuries. Trade with Anglo-Americans helped initiate the economic detachment of Alta California from central Mexico, as ships transported Californian hides and tallow in exchange for English and American manufactured goods. The Mexican government struggled to assert control over these territories, which grew closer to the US economically.
Foreigners in the Californian territories were also given land-holding rights after converting to Catholicism, spurring immigration by hordes of US citizens between the 1820s and the 1840s. As American interest in the Californias surged, the US and Mexico signed the Treaty of Limits in 1828, recognising the borders between the two nations according to the 1819 Adams-Onis Treaty between Spain and the US (in which the Spanish Crown ceded Florida to the US).
This treaty was further amended in 1836 when the Republic of Texas became independent from Mexico.
The concept of 'Manifest Destiny', a belief that the expansion of the US throughout the American continents was both justified and inevitable, drove the United States' westward expansion in the 19th century. And it was this belief, along with ever-growing Anglo-Saxon connections to erstwhile Spanish territories in the American West, that set the stage for the Mexican-American War of 1846-48.
In 1845, Texas became the 28th state of the US, prompting Mexico to sever all ties with Washington. But US President James K Polk wanted more territory, including Alta California and present-day New Mexico. When his offer to purchase these territories was rebuffed, he moved US troops into Texas and Mexican territory, and claimed all land between Nueces and the Rio Grande rivers in January 1846.
Mexico retaliated in April, causing 16 casualties among the American troops, triggering a wave of nationalism in the US, and a declaration of war by the Congress. The 16-month-long war saw the US military leverage strategy, brutality and luck, eventually capturing Mexico City. When the war ended in 1848, the US acquired present-day California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Colorado and Wyoming from Mexico for only $15 million.
That said, even before the war had completely ended, the discovery of gold in 1848 at Sutter's Mill in Sierra Nevada, California, had set off what was known as the California Gold Rush. More than 300,000 people moved to California over the next four years, hoping to, quite literally, strike gold. California was officially given statehood by the US in 1850.
Seeing the Mexican flag waved during anti-ICE protests was an affront for many, a rejection of the United States and American identity. But ask the protestors and they will tell you a different story.
'It's about refusing to be erased,' Mexican journalist Enrique Acevedo wrote for The Washington Post. '…Mexican identity isn't foreign [in Los Angeles]. It's foundational. This was Mexico once and remains part of the memory, culture, street names, food and families who never crossed a border because the border crossed them. In that context, the Mexican flag isn't necessarily a symbol of separation or rejection. Sometimes, it's a claim: We are both. We are Mexican and American, not divided but layered…,' he wrote.