All this territory below the bold black line used to be part of Mexico, prior to the Mexican-American War. But don't be mistaken and think there were lots of Mexicans living there. Over a hundred years ago the 1900 Census record found that, out of 100,000 residents in the city of Los Angeles, only 319 to 619 were "Spanish" or "Mexican". Going back even further: "In 1821, Mexico gained its independence from Spain, and Alta California became one of the three interior provinces in the First Mexican Empire north of the Rio Grande, along with Texas and New Mexico. The Mexican government was unstable, leading to the annexation of California by the United States in 1846. During Mexican rule, California was sparsely populated, with only a few thousand Mexican residents, compared to tens of thousands of Native Americans, and a handful of Yankee entrepreneurs. At the time of the annexation, foreigners already outnumbered Californians of Spanish ancestry 9,000 to 7,500." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispan..._in_California At the time of the 1840's, California and the Southwest were already majority white by a large margin (with the exception of Santa Fe and El Paso), and this only continued with the Gold Rush. But it seems like, in more recent decades, Mexicans are intent on "reconquering" their nation's former lost territory. Mexican Consul General Jose Pescador Osuna said ''Even though I am saying this part serious and part joking, I think we are practicing 'la Reconquista' in California'' (1998, article in New York Times) Mario Obledo, director of the California Coalition of Hispanic Organizations, who served as California State Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Governor Jerry Brown, and was also awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton, said "California is going to be a Hispanic state. Anyone who doesn’t like it should leave." (confirmed in an interview on NPR) Numerous parts of the Southwest are now 40% populated by people of Mexican origin (these are almost all people of more recent Mexican origin, rather than people that were living there since before the annexation). This represents a huge shift from what things looked like 35 years ago. It can also be pointed out that cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco were named by the Spanish, not Mexicans. The territory was only a part of Mexico for 27 years between Mexican independence from Spain and the annexation of the territory to the U.S.
That is correct is partly correct. As we discussed in an earlier thread, the land from California to the Rockies and all points south were part of the Aztlán empire. This was not "Mexico" as it was Native American. It was not Spanish, nor Mexican as Spanish was not the Native language. Instead, Nahuatl and other Uto-Aztec languages were the predominant Indigenous languages. Your map also equates Florida with part of this empire. That is incorrect as Arawak and other Indigenous people were predominant.
You do realize there are now more Mexicans just within the county of Los Angeles than there were pre-Columbian natives inhabiting the entire present-day area of the United States? Compared to modern population numbers, just compared to modern-day immigration numbers from Mexico, the continent of North America was pretty sparsely populated. Numerically, there is not even a comparison between the movement of people that is happening now and the number of Nahuatl or Uto-Aztec peoples who once lived in the American Southwest.
