Written through the lens of annexation, John Ross traces an unbroken band of conquest through the centuries and shows how World War II, the Cold War, and now the Drug War have bound Mexico tightly as a U.S. client state.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The border between the United States and Mexico isn't just a boundary between nations; it's a chasm that separates a wealthy global superpower from a poverty-stricken Third World Country. To millions of Mexicans desperate for a better life, it's a finish line-to cross it undetected means to seek prosperity in America. In 1844 the United States annexed Texas and over the next few years took most of the current Southwest United States. Today, the Mexican people south-of-the-border see the benefits of life in the good-old U.S. of A. and according to polls, they're willing to finish things up and give us the rest. Columnist Erik Rush proposes that we take them up on the offer. Erik Rush say, '40% of Mexicans claim that they would move here if they could. Let's save them the effort and bring the U.S. to them.'

Tension between Anglos and Tejanos has existed in the Lone Star State since the earliest settlements. Such antagonism has produced friction between the two peoples, and whites have expressed their hostility toward Mexican Americans unabashedly and at times violently. This seminal work in the historical literature of race relations in Texas examines the attitudes of whites toward Mexicans in nineteenth-century Texas. For some, it will be disturbing reading. But its unpleasant revelations are based on extensive and thoughtful research into Texas' past. The result is important reading not merely for historians but for all who are concerned with the history of ethnic relations in our state. They Called Them Greasers argues forcefully that many who have written about Texas's past—including such luminaries as Walter Prescott Webb, Eugene C. Barker, and Rupert N. Richardson—have exhibited, in fact and interpretation, both deficiencies of research and detectable bias when their work has dealt with Anglo-Mexican relations. De León asserts that these historians overlooled an austere Anglo moral code which saw the morality of Tejanos as "defective" and that they described without censure a society that permitted traditional violence to continue because that violence allowed Anglos to keep ethnic minorities "in their place." De León's approach is psychohistorical. Many Anglos in nineteenth-century Texas saw Tejanos as lazy, lewd, un-American, subhuman. In De León's view, these attitudes were the product of a conviction that dark-skinned people were racially and culturally inferior, of a desire to see in others qualities that Anglos preferred not to see in themselves, and of a need to associate Mexicans with disorder so as to justify their continued subjugation.