• The Whiteness of Statehood: A Review of Arizona and New Mexico 1848–1912
• Justine Hecht (bio)

In 1848, thousands of miles away from the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo negotiations that would end the Mexican-American War, Senator John C. Calhoun, famous for his insistence on slavery and white supremacy, argued that the United States must not incorporate too much Mexican territory:

[W]e have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race. To incorporate Mexico would be the first instance of the kind of incorporating an Indian race; for more than half the Mexicans are Indians, and the other is composed chiefly of mixed tribes. I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sirs, is the Government of the white race.

(Congressional Globe 1848: 98; Nieto-Phillips 2000)

Calhoun was arguing that Mexican people were not white, and that their incorporation into the U.S. could threaten the freedom of the white race. As such, the freedom to govern was reserved for whites, while nonwhite others must submit to governing. This logic, rooted in U.S. colonialism and white supremacy, would continue to haunt the nation as territories in the Southwest began the arduous process of applying for statehood.

Sixty years later in Arizona, a predominately white crowd rallied at the Phoenix fairgrounds to voice their objection to joint statehood with New Mexico. One protestor exclaimed that 95 percent of the people of Arizona, who were Americans, opposed this venture because the people of New Mexico were of Spanish descent, and thus racially different from the people of Arizona (Biggers 2012). Yet, several years later, on the eve of statehood in 1912 for New Mexico, Judge Lebaron Bradford Prince declared that “July 12, 1598, may be considered as the birthday of European settlement in New Mexico; and its anniversary should be celebrated in the southwest, as the date of the landing of the Pilgrim [End Page 709] Fathers on Plymouth Rock…is annually observed wherever the memory of the founders of New England is venerated” (Gómez 2007). In Arizona, people of Spanish descent were identified as nonwhite others and yet in New Mexico, the Spanish colonization of the region was identified as a moment connecting the territory’s history directly to the rest of the nation’s history of European colonization. How is it that those of Spanish descent could be at the same time nonwhite others and inheritors of a colonial lineage—and why was this so important to the issue of statehood?

Statehood formations have so often been discussed as a linear chain of events that mark progress in the United States (Pry 1995; Nieto-Phillips 2000; Gómez 2007; Noel 2011). Yet when we take into account the integrated nature of race, gender, and class formations, alongside the development of the U.S. as a settler colonial racial capitalist state, we can better understand statehood as an extension of these systems. Indeed, although Arizona and New Mexico became states only a month apart, their Mexican American populations shared similar and yet quite different experiences. Amidst widespread racial discrimination, nativos in New Mexico were able to claim a Spanish American identity that justified their positionality in government and as landowners, while the working-class Mexican American population in Arizona was subject to domination by white workers and their employers. As this review of Arizona and New Mexico statehood literature will reveal, the vulnerability of Mexican American populations at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848 drew upon various formations of white identity to further the U.S. settler colonial project.

Mark Pry (1995) argued that movements for statehood, in general, were often about the dissatisfaction that territorial governments had with colonial status and federal supervision. Territorial governors, secretaries, and supreme court justices were appointed by the U.S. president, and Congress had substantial power over territorial economies through mechanisms of appropriation. He noted that the territorial system was very much like the British system of colonialism, except that U.S. territories were promised eventual admission on equal footing with other states. Both Arizona and New Mexico entered the U.S. as territories around the same time...

• 建国的怀抱：回顾1848年至1912年的亚利桑那州和新墨西哥州
• 贾斯汀·赫希特（生物）

1848年，以坚持奴隶制和白人至上而闻名的参议员约翰·C·卡尔霍恩（John C. Calhoun）距《瓜达卢佩·伊达尔戈条约》的谈判结束了数千场路程，该谈判以墨西哥和墨西哥战争结束而告终，他坚持认为美国绝不能加入太多的墨西哥人领土：

除了白人种族-自由白人种族，[W] e从未梦想过将其纳入我们的联盟。并入墨西哥将是并入印第安人种族的第一个实例。因为一半以上的墨西哥人是印第安人，另一半主要由混合部落组成。我抗议那样的联盟！先生，我们是白人种族的政府。

（《国会环球》 1848年：98；涅托·菲利普斯（Nieto-Phillips 2000））

卡尔洪在争辩说，墨西哥人不是白人，他们融入美国可能会威胁白人的自由。这样一来，执政的自由就留给了白人，而非白人的其他人则必须服从于执政。这种根植于美国殖民主义和白人至高无上的逻辑将继续困扰着美国，因为西南地区开始了艰苦的申请建国程序。

60年后，在亚利桑那州，一个以白人为主的人群在凤凰城集会上集会，表示反对与新墨西哥州建立联合州。一名抗议者称，亚利桑那州95％的美国人反对这一冒险活动，因为新墨西哥州的人是西班牙血统，因此在种族上与亚利桑那州的人不同（Biggers 2012）。然而，几年后，在1912年新墨西哥州建国前夕，勒布朗·布拉德福德·普林斯法官宣布：“ 1598年7月12日，可以被视为欧洲在新墨西哥定居的生日；它的周年纪念日应该在朝圣者登陆西南的日子[End Page 709]每年都会纪念普利茅斯岩上的父亲，无论他们对新英格兰创始人的敬意有何尊敬”（戈麦斯，2007年）。在亚利桑那州，有西班牙血统的人被确定为非白人，而在新墨西哥州，该地区的西班牙殖民地被确定为将该地区的历史直接与该国其他欧洲殖民历史联系起来的时刻。西班牙血统的人怎么可能同时又不是白人，又是殖民地血统的继承者？为什么这对于建国问题如此重要？

人们通常将国家地位的形成看作是一系列线性事件，这些事件标志着美国的进步（Pry 1995； Nieto-Phillips 2000；Gómez2007； Noel 2011）。然而，当我们考虑到种族，性别和阶级形成的综合性质，以及美国作为定居殖民地种族资本主义国家的发展，我们就可以更好地理解国家地位作为这些系统的延伸。确实，尽管亚利桑那州和新墨西哥州相隔仅一个月，但他们的墨西哥裔美国人有着相似但完全不同的经历。烟雨广泛的种族歧视，nativos在新墨西哥州，墨西哥人能够声称拥有西班牙裔美国人的身份，这证明了他们在政府和土地所有者中的地位是正当的，而亚利桑那州的工人阶级墨西哥裔美国人则受到白人工人及其雇主的统治。正如对亚利桑那州和新墨西哥州立大学文献的回顾所揭示的那样，1848年墨西哥裔美国人战争结束时，墨西哥裔美国人的脆弱性利用各种白人身份认同来推动美国移民殖民计划。

马克·普里（Mark Pry，1995）认为，总体而言，争取建国运动通常是指领土政府对殖民地地位和联邦监督的不满。领土州长，秘书和最高法院法官由美国总统任命，国会通过拨款机制对领土经济拥有强大的权力。他指出，领土制度与英国的殖民主义制度非常相似，不同之处在于，美国答应与其他国家平等地最终接纳美国领土。亚利桑那州和新墨西哥州几乎同时进入美国领土。