The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo in
Spanish) is the peace treaty, largely dictated by the United States
to the interim government of a militarily occupied Mexico, that
ended the Mexican-American War in 1848. The treaty provided for the
Mexican Cession, in which Mexico handed over 525,000 square miles
of its pre-war territory, (not including Texas) to the United
States in exchange for US$15 million (equivalent to $313 million in
2006 dollars) and the ensured safety of pre-existing property
rights of Mexican citizens in the transferred territories.
Despite assurances to the contrary, property rights of Mexican
citizens were often not honored by the United States as per
modifications to and interpretations of the treaty. The United
States also agreed to take over $3.25 million ($68 million in 2006
dollars) in debts Mexico owed to American citizens. In Mexico, this
is sometimes referred to as the War of North American Invasion (La
Intervención Norteamericana). Mexico had controlled the area in
question for about 25 years since the finalization of its
independence from the Spanish Empire in 1821 following the Mexican
War of Independence. The Spanish, and later the Mexicans, had
conquered part of the area from the Native American tribes over the
preceding three centuries, but there remained powerful and
independent indigenous peoples within the northern regions.
The Treaty took its name from what is now the suburb of Mexico
City where it was signed on 2 February 1848. The cession that the
treaty facilitated included parts of the modern-day U.S. states of
Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, and Wyoming, as well as the whole of
California, Nevada, and Utah. The remaining parts of what are today
the states of Arizona and New Mexico were later peacefully ceded
under the 1853 Gadsden Purchase, in which the United States paid an
additional $10,000,000.
. What you'll find near here is one of the original border markers
from 1889.