Guadalupe Hidalgo, Treaty of (1848)

Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), the agreement that ended the war between the United States and Mexico. Signed on 2 February and entered into force on 30 May, it transferred to the United States more than half of Mexico's national territory, over 500,000 square miles, including the present states of California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, in return for an indemnity payment of $15 million to compensate for losses inflicted on Mexicans by the Americans during the war. In Article V, the treaty established the Rio Grande as the boundary between the two countries. Articles VIII and IX promised protection of the civil and property rights of former Mexican citizens within the newly acquired territories. Article X, which specifically guaranteed the protection of land grants, was deleted by the U.S. Congress. Article XI provided guarantees that the U.S. government would police its side of the border to prevent Indian raids on Mexican settlements. Article XXI provided, for the first time in any treaty signed by the United States, for compulsory arbitration of future disputes between the two countries.

Mexican and Chicano scholars generally agree that the United States has violated most of the provisions dealing with civil rights and land. Some contemporary Southwestern American Indian tribes, such as the Hopis and Papagos, however, regard the treaty as a document that can be interpreted to protect them.

See alsoBoundary Disputes: Overview; Mexico, Wars and Revolutions: Mexican-American War; Rio Grande; United States-Latin American Relations.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

José María Roa Barcena, Recuerdos de la invasión nortea-mericana, 1846–1848 (1883; repr. 1947).

David M. Pletcher, The Diplomacy of Annexation: Texas, Oregon, and the Mexican War (1973).

Richard Griswold Del Castillo, The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo: A Legacy of Conflict (1990).

                      Richard Griswold del Castillo