MEXICO CITY (AP) — Historians and observers have accused the Trump administration of trying to rewrite U.S. history to justify its own foreign policy decisions toward Latin America by posting a “historically inaccurate” version of the Mexican-American war.
A White House statement Monday marking the battle’s anniversary described the conflict as a “legendary victory that secured the American Southwest, re-established American sovereignty, and extended the promise of American freedom across our great continent.” The statement drew parallels between the period in US history and its own increasingly aggressive policies towards Latin America, which it said would “ensure the hemisphere remains secure.”
“Guided by our victory on the plains of Mexico 178 years ago, I have left no stone unturned to defend our southern border from attack, uphold the rule of law, and protect our homeland from the forces of evil, violence, and destruction,” the statement said.
In the post, the White House makes no mention of slavery’s central role in the war and glorifies the broader “Manifest Destiny” period, which displaced hundreds of thousands of Native Americans from their lands.
Strong criticism
Alexander Avina, professor of Latin American history at Arizona State University, said the White House’s statement “downplays the large scale violence that is about to expand” to the US on the Pacific Rim at a time when the Trump administration has not seen its hand in Latin American affairs in tens, in Venezuela’s presidential and other countries threatening Maco in military elections.
“American political leaders have since seen it as an ugly side of American history, a very clear example of American imperialism against its southern neighbor,” Avina said. “The Trump administration is actually embracing it as a positive in American history and framing it — historically inaccurately — as some kind of defensive measure to prevent Mexico from invading.”
On Tuesday, criticisms of the White House’s statement quickly spread across social media.
Asked about the statement at her morning news briefing, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum quipped, “We have to defend sovereignty.” Scheinbaum, who has walked a tightrope with the Trump administration, responded to Trump in a balanced tone and sometimes with sarcasm, such as when Trump changed the name of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
Historical sticking point
The Mexican–American War (1846–1848) was a long-standing border dispute between the United States and Mexico that began with the annexation of Texas to the United States in 1845. In the years leading up to the war, Americans slowly moved into then-Mexican territory. Mexico banned slavery and American abolitionists feared that the American land grab was an attempt to add slave states.
After the fighting began and American victories followed, Mexico ceded more than 525,000 square miles of territory—including what is now Arizona, California, western Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah—to the United States.
This moment turned Texas into a key chess piece in the American Civil War, and former President Ulysses S. prompting Grant to later write that the conflict with Mexico was “one of the most unjust ever waged by a strong against a weak nation.”
The Associated Press was formed when five New York City newspapers financed the Pony Express route through Alabama to bring news of the Mexican War—as it was sometimes known in America—faster than the U.S. Post Office could deliver it.
The war continues to be a historic sticking point between the two countries, especially as Sheinbaum repeatedly reminds Trump that his country is a sovereign nation while Trump openly weighs military action against Mexican cartels and pressures Mexico to bend to his will.
Rewriting history
The White House statement is consistent with broader actions by the Trump administration to mold the language of the federal government around its own religion, said Stanford University history professor Albert Camarillo, who described the statement as a “distorted, historical, imperialist version” of the war.
Avina said the statement “serves to rhetorically assert that America is justified in establishing its so-called ‘America First’ policy,” regardless of historical accuracy.
The Trump administration has ordered the rewriting of history on display at the Smithsonian Institution, saying it is “restoring truth and sanity in American history.”
The administration has scrubbed government websites of history, legal records and statistics it disagrees with. Trump also ordered the government to remove any signs that “inappropriately disparage the past or lives of Americans” regarding slavery, the destruction of Native American culture and climate change.
“This statement is consistent with many others that attempt to whitewash and reframe American history and erase a generation of historical scholarship,” Camarillo said.
