On October 4, 1824, Mexico ratified its first-ever constitution as an independent country, a document known as the “Federal Constitution of the United Mexican States.” Ever since that day, the country’s official name has not been Mexico, but rather, the United Mexican States. Like North or South Korea—The Democratic People’s Republic of Korean, or the Republic of Korea, respectively—Mexico almost never goes by its full and proper name. CNN:
he reality is the official name is used only by Mexican officials who deal with diplomatic protocol and official documents pertaining to international relations. For the rest of Mexicans — and the world — the country is simply known as Mexico.
Apparently sick of living a double life, the Mexican [United Mexican Statesian?] President Felipe Calderon, “sent to the Mexican Congress a piece of legislation to change the country’s name officially to simply Mexico.”
President Calderon, however, is in the last leg of his term—the new President, Enrique Peña Nieto, takes over in a week. With time dwindling, says CNN, it’s not clear if Calderon’s re-naming proposal will go through.
More from Smithsonian.com:
Savoring Puebla
Mexico – History and Heritage
Colin Schultz | | READ MORE
Colin Schultz is a freelance science writer and editor based in Toronto, Canada. He blogs for Smart News and contributes to the American Geophysical Union. He has a B.Sc. in physical science and philosophy, and a M.A. in journalism.
Despite the acceptance by many Americans in the 1840s of the concept of Manifest Destiny—that it was the providential right of the United States to expand to the Pacific Ocean—the future boundary between the United States and Mexico was anything but a foregone conclusion. Great Britain, with whom the United States shared possession of the Oregon Country, was part of the equation. Some influential Americans were convinced that the British were determined to block U.S. expansion to the Pacific by gaining control of California from Mexico. In 1846, however, Britain’s ambitions in the region became clearer when the U.S. and Britain agreed upon the 49th parallel [the present border between the U.S. and Canada] as the permanent boundary between their lands in the Pacific Northwest. Still, U.S. Pres. James K. Polk remained determined to expand the country’s territorial limits.
In 1845 the U.S. Congress voted to annex the Republic of Texas, which had secured its de facto independence in 1836 from Mexico in the Texas Revolution, though Mexico refused to formally recognize its sovereignty. Between independence and annexation, Texas sought to expand its territory in the west, and Mexico sought to reintegrate Texas, resulting in competing land claims and an ill-defined border between the two. Because it refused to recognize Texas, Mexico continued to officially view the boundaries established by the Transcontinental [Adams-Onís] Treaty of 1819 between Spain and the U.S. as constituting the U.S.-Mexico border, though the crux of the border dispute by the mid-1840s was that Mexico held the border to be at the Nueces River, whereas the U.S. considered it to be farther south, at the Rio Grande. When the U.S. annexed Texas, Mexico severed formal diplomatic relations with the U.S. Failed diplomatic efforts by the U.S. to establish agreement on the Texas-Mexico border and to purchase Mexico’s California and New Mexico territories set the stage for the Mexican-American War.
With the land from the annexation of Texas [about 390,000 squares miles [1,000,000 square km]], the division of the Oregon Country [about 290,000 square miles [750,000 square km]], and the cession of Mexican land granted under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo [more than 525,000 square miles [1,400,000 square km]] that ended the Mexican-American War, the United States gained about one-third of its present territory. The border with Mexico would be finalized with the Gadsden Purchase of 1853, under which 30,000 additional square miles [78,000 square km] of northern Mexican territory [now southern Arizona and southern New Mexico] were bought by the U.S. for $10 million.
Unequal Partners: The United States and Mexico
Unequal Partners: The United States and Mexico explores the relationship between two neighboring countries—one highly dependent on the other.
There are other determinants of national attitudes between Mexico and the United States, but historically, dependency/dominance has been a significant influence in the bilateral relationship among these nations.
The importance of each country to the other is not symmetrical; consequently, their responses to each other’s policies have varied substantively and in intensity.
The substance of Mexican public policy and the behavior of individual Mexicans have been powerfully shaped during the past 150 years by the country’s political-economic dependence on the United States. U.S. public policy and the behavior of individual Americans also have been shaped by U.S. dominance over Mexico.
Mexico has had to endure many humiliations from the United States: the loss of about half its territory under the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo in 1848 following its defeat in the Mexican-American War; the interference of the U.S. ambassador in the overthrow of Francisco Madero in 1913 following the Mexican Revolution in 1910 [what is known in Mexico as the Pacto de la Embajada [referring to the U.S. embassy]; and the incursions into Mexico during the administration of President Woodrow Wilson.
Both countries would benefit if this pattern of economic, social, and political asymmetries could be reduced and eventually eliminated. In the interim, making the adverse consequences of dependency/dominance more transparent may have a positive policy effect, because it would make clear how thoroughly this phenomenon affects the behavior of the governments and people of the two countries.
Most Recent
Book
Unequal Partners
March 30, 2010
View all content associated with this program