This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
From YKTTW Working Title: Mexico Called They Want Texas Back
Twin Bird: What is this ad trying to say, exactly? "In an Absolut world there would have been no Spanish-American war?" "In an Absolut world there would be no American cowboys?"
Satanic Hamster: This wiki article
, explains that ad a bit better. If you live in country with a history of losing territory that big, I'd think getting it back would seem like a great idea.
The title seems a bit iffy, then again the idea of "Mexican Reconquista" might really annoy Rush Limbaugh types. The idea of Reconquista seems to give this trope it's power.
Wascally Wabbit: Where the Mexicans actually using that land, or where they laying claim to it in the abstract while it was still controlled by the Native Americans?
Earnest: It wasn't integrated into the national whole due to distance, lack of trains and a sparse population compared to the heavily populated center. However, cities like San Francisco and Colorado and basically any Spanish named city in the mid west and west coast got it's name from Mexican settlers (or rather, Spanish settlers, this all happened so shortly after our independence it's more their work). The post independence government had more pressing issues than clearing out the native americans, developing and populating these huge tracts of land... like fighting France and avoiding (well, trying to avoid) a civil war. So while it wasn't a big loss of population (like losing 6 of the 13 colonies to England would have been for the US), it was a huge loss of potential material wealth. The cultural/psychic scarring did sting for a few centuries. So what the ad is basically positing is either we won/stalemated the Mexican-American war, or it didn't happen. Or we took it back by force. Either way it rebounds badly in both American and Mexican audiences because it attacks national pride. For us it's basically a big downer because it remind us we just don't have it; and in the US it implicitly attacks the morality of stealing all that land during Manifest Destiny. All water under the bridge now, but it still made me flinch a little in disbelief when I first saw the ad.
