Abraham Lincoln and New Mexico on Independence Day

When Great Britain abandoned its American colonies in the late 1700s, those newly independent colonies turned to the world for guidance and understanding by doing the one thing other countries might be hesitant to do at the time: bring new people to the colonies to expand and defend their territory. This process was not easy and took a long time, due to the fact that inviting people meant bringing new ideas and opening themselves to new forms of thinking and change. As the population of the colonies grew and the ideas of the world and its changes began to take hold, two things happened: 1) Abraham Lincoln and the civil war of the colonies that would succumb to the creation of the United States as we know it and 2) the land grab of New Mexico by such force that the people would suffer for generations.

Abraham Lincoln lived in a time of socialist ideas, though not yet known as such. The social contract that had begun in the so-called Enlightenment of Europe had transformed into the struggles of the working class against the backdrop of the rich and wealthy trying to conquer and obtain all land and resources without regard to the people living in it.

Lincoln, in an address to a working men’s association on November 21st, 1864 said, “The strongest bond of human sympathy outside the family relation should be one uniting all working people of all nations, tongues and kindreds” (See Life of Lincoln by Coffin, P. 395). If we proclaim that Lincoln had begun to see socialism as a United States idea for progress and expansion then we get to the modern idea of capitalism as anathema to the interests of the people in the country and the world.

Again we hear Lincoln say in November 1864, “As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people, until ALL WEALTH IS AGGREGATED IN A FEW HANDS, and the Republic IS DESTROYED!

I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. GOD GRANT THAT MY SUSPICIONS MAY PROVE GROUNDLESS!” (See Shibley, p. 282).

In the New Mexico territory, because of Lincoln’s death and the corruption of the corporations, the people that had been granted their lands by law after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 would be under attack as the newly formed United States began to expand. The era of the railroad would bring about the destruction and re-creation of the Southwest as we know it today. With the movement and expansion of the railroad, people from the eastern United States came to grab and conquer land that was not theirs. This began around 1878 where skirmishes between new colonists and those already living in the Southwest had sparked resistance particularly by three brothers, Juan José, Pablo, and Nicanor Herrera, who organized a resistance in February 1889 to protect half a million acres of land from Yankee encroachment of the east. The “gorras blancas”, as they became known, tore up railroad tracks, burned buildings, and cut barbed wire to reclaim common lands..

For the July 4 celebrations in 1890, a series of processions, speeches, and other festivities were planned. Among the messages on the banners carried by the protestors were:

“Free schools for our children,”

“He who touches one of us answers to all,”

and “We seek protection for the worker against the monopolist.”

In November 1890, Partido del Pueblo Unido (the unofficial political party of the gorras blancas) candidates made a strong showing at the ballot box in San Miguel County. As the new year dawned in 1891, it seemed that the activities of Las Gorras Blancas had translated into an effective political movement. However, the expansionist ideas of the new United States and the corporate money-making schemes pushed further into the land and minds of the new people from the east began to systematically dismantle the southwestern land and ideas of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in the name of modernization by the Homestead Act of 1862.

The expansion and usurpation of the land became the center of the struggle for the working people and farmers, as corporations attacked the people in the region as “terrorists” and “dissenters” and began to grant land to the easterners coming in that would support the corporate railroads and the newly formed corporatist alliances that would form a new southwest based on profit and not people

This 250th anniversary of the abandonment of the colonies by the British Empire, the ending of the Civil War, and the expansionist corporatist ideals of the time and the resistance those ideas sparked must be remembered for the lessons they embed in American history, that the people, not corporations, are the driving force of resistance and change necessary to preserve our government formed and fomented by the people and for the people, and to never forget that many forms of resistance can be found in every part of this United States and its history. We must never forget, then, that The People, not the corporations with a mailing address in its geographic boundaries, are the United States. Lincoln made that clear; generations of New Mexicans have made that clear; and we must continue to do the hard work of making it clear today!

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Red Rose, any individual editor, Albuquerque DSA, the Democratic Socialists of America, or any individual therein.

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