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Californios

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Californio
File:Jose Antonio Estudillo painting.jpg
Notable Californios
Pío Pico · Andrés Pico · José Antonio Estudillo · José Antonio Carrillo
Regions with significant populations
Alta CaliforniaLess than (92,597) 1850
San Diego(650 pop)1850
San Francisco(56,802) 1860
Languages
Spanish
Religion
Predominantly
Roman Catholic
Related ethnic groups
Mediterranean · Amerindian · Mestizo

Californio's (Spanglish for "Californian") is a term used to identify a Californian of Hispanic and/or Latin-American descent, first as a part of New Spain, later of Mexico, today as part of the USA. The territory of California was annexed in 1848 by the United States following the American invasion and subsequent Mexican-American War.

Californios included both the descendants of European settlers from Spain and Mexico, and also included other European settlers, Mestizos, and local Native Americans who adopted Spanish culture and converted to Christianity. Some Americans, who immigrated to California, learned to speak Spanish, and lived as Mexicans, are also considered Californios.

Spanish, and later, Mexican officials encouraged people from the northern and western provinces of Mexico, as well as people from other parts of Latin America, most notably Peru and Chile, to settle in California, and were welcomed to become Mexican citizens.

Much of Californio society lived at or near the many Missions, which were established in the 18th and 19th centuries. There were 21 Missions under the Roman Catholic church along the fabled route, El Camino Real. The Californio Rancho society produced the largest cowhide and tallow business in North America, trading with the merchant ships from Boston, who would port in San Diego, San Juan (Capistrano), San Pedro, Santa Bonaventura (Ventura), Monterey and Yerba Buena (San Francisco).

Californio invasion

Mexico's Governor in California, Pío Pico, was forced to abandon the Californios at the outset of the American invasion. The Californios then organized a militia to defend themselves against the United States. The Californios defeated an American force in Los Angeles on September 30, 1846, at the Siege of Los Angeles. Several battles were fought in defense of California, but the Californio Lancers were defeated in January of 1847 after the Americans reinforced their army and marines in Southern California. The next year Mexico signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, accepting American sovereignty over California on February 2, 1848.[1] [2]

European and Anglo American settlers in Northern California had already threatened to rebel against Mexican rule in the 1840s. Among them was John Sutter, a land owner from Switzerland and founder of New Helvetia, in present-day Sacramento. That town was made famous by the 1848 California gold rush after miners found gold on the banks of the American River. When thousands of American immigrants came to the conquered lands, long-time Californios helped the newcomers raise livestock and crops.

Key Californio battles

The war campaign in California ended on January 13, 1847, after the signing of Treaty of Cahuenga. Later, the U.S. cavalry seized Pio Pico's adobe in present-day Bell, California, south of Los Angeles, and arrested Mexican-Californio noble Don Antonio Lugo in his adobe near present-day Chino, California.[citation needed]

The end of Mexican rule

In the 1830s Californios differentiated themselves from Mexicanos, migrants from the Mexican interior, by asserting exclusionary land grant laws after the dissolution of the mission lands in 1834. These laws created the conditions for favoritism in the parcelling of mission lands that had been worked by the Mexicans and Indians for many years. Many Mexicans and Indians were able to assert their rights to mission lands, but they were not given official papers documenting these claims.

Following the discovery of gold in 1848, Congress set up a Board of Land Commissioners to determine the validity of Spanish and Mexican land grants in California. California Senator William M. Gwin presented a bill that, when approved by the Senate and the House, became the Act of March 3, 1851,[3] which stated that unless grantees presented evidence supporting their title within two years, the property would automatically pass into the public domain.[4] This proviso was contrary to Articles VIII and X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which guaranteed full protection of all property rights for Mexican citizens.[5][6] The Commission eventually confirmed 604 of the 813 smaller claims they received, but the cost of litigation, surveys, and permits forced most of the larger Rancho Californio land owners to lose their property. This land in turn was parceled out to American immigrant settlers under the 1862 Homestead Act.

Californios after U.S. annexation

The mysterious "disappearance" of Californios after 1850 in state history is debated. Some Mexican Americans and Latinos residing in California claim to have genealogical roots with Californios before the arrival of non-Spanish white Americans. The romantic history of Californios has even fueled the political volatile issues of the La Raza movement by some Chicano activists who depict "Mexican" Californios or Hispanics as the state's original people, instead of the native Coast Miwok, Ohlone, Wintun, Yokuts and other Native Americans who inhabited the region for centuries before European contact. They claim that California was part of a "lost land" of the Southwest U.S., where there was a Latin American culture: some Californios,[citation needed] along with Tejanos of Texas and Chicanos (a 20th century designation), prefer to be identified as Spanish Americans.[citation needed] Other Californio descendants claim their integrated society of Mexicans, Indians, Mestezos, Mulattos and American Immigrants, that evolved over 150 years beginning with the founding of Misión de Nuestra Señora de Loreto Conchó in the California territory in 1697, lost their land, businesses and society to the United States due to the American aggression that propagated the ideals of Manifest Destiny.

The agricultural economy of California allowed many Californios to continue living in pueblos alongside Native peoples and Mexicanos well into the 20th century. These settlements eventually grew into many modern California cities, including Santa Ana, San Diego, San Fernando, San Jose, Monterey, Los Alamitos, San Juan Capistrano, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara, Arvin, Mariposa, Hemet and Indio.

From the 1850s until the 1960s the Californios (either of Spanish, Mexican and native Californian origins) lived in relative autonomy, practicing some acts of social segregation by custom, while maintaining Spanish language newspapers, entertainment, schools, bars, and clubs. Cultural practices were often tied to local churches and mutual aid societies.

At some point in the early 20th Century the official modes of record-keeping (census takers, city records, etc.) began lumping together all Californios, Mexicanos, and Native ("Indio") peoples with Spanish surnames under the terms "Spanish", "Mexican", and sometimes, "colored". Thus the unique history and identity of the Californio people has been absorbed into that of the greater Hispanic community in the area.[dubious – discuss]

Californio identity in the 20th century

Until recently, especially within long-standing Mexican communities in Southern California, a number of people who claimed Native Californian and Californio ancestry could be found. However, in the 1970 and 1980 US census reports less than 1,000 Americans of Mexican descent in California called themselves Californios. It is often believed that these communities have become extinct, or that they have become absorbed or integrated with the more recent immigrants from Mexico and Central America over the recent decades.[7]

Historically many cultural differences have existed between Californios and Mexicanos. In the 1910s and 1920s, when a large wave of Mexican immigrants poured into Californio communities in California and the Southwestern U.S., social friction took place between the two Hispanic groups,[citation needed] as the older generation felt more "American" and "Spanish" than the recent arrivals from Mexico since the settlers of northern New Spain (which is now California, most of the present-day Northern Mexican states and the rest of American Southwest) during the colonial period and before it became part of newly formed country of Mexico were Spaniards and identify with Spanish history while the central or south Mexicans who came to California since Mexican Revolution were mostly of Native American blood or mestizos and identify with Mexican history.[citation needed]

Nevertheless, strong historical ties exist between Mexicanos, many of whose families immigrated to the U.S. between 1900 and World War II, and the Californios and Native Californians. There has been a constant exchange of culture and language between Mexico and these enclaves of Mexicano/Californio/Indio culture, evidenced by marriage, migratory trends, and linguistic evolution in the region. As a result, the cultural dividing lines separating Californios from the descendants of more recent Mexican immigrants have blurred considerably over the years. [citation needed]

In the 20th century descendants of southern Spanish (Andalusian, Granadan or Valencian) pineapple and sugar cane workers who first settled Hawaii and northern Spanish (Asturian, Galician or Leonese) skilled workers in the beginning of the century settled California and they are the newest Californio and Spanish American populations in the state.

Remnants of the so-called Californio people are in the small Central Valley town of Hornitos located in Mariposa County. The majority of its 500 residents claimed both Spanish and Native American descent, but would use the term "Californio". [citation needed]

Notable Californios

Californios in literature

Richard Henry Dana, Jr., recorded his 1834 visit as a sailor to California in Two Years Before the Mast. Other Americans such as Joseph Chapman, a land realtor hailed the first Yankee to reside in the old Pueblo de Los Angeles in 1831, described Southern California as a paradise yet to be developed. He mentions a civilization of Spanish-speaking colonists, "Californios," who thrived in the pueblos, the missions, and ranchos.

The Squatter and the Don by Maria Amparo Ruiz de Burton, a novel written and set in 1880s California, depicts a very wealthy Californio family's legal struggles with immigrant squatters on their land. The novel was based on the legal struggles of General Mariano G. Vallejo, the author's good friend. While the novel is by no means representative of the majority of Californios' lives and standard of living, it is truthful in its depiction of the legal process by which Californios were often "relieved" of their land.[verification needed] This process was long (most Californios spent upwards of fifteen years defending their grants before the courts), and the legal fees alone were enough to make many Californios landless.[citation needed] Californios felt confused about having to pay land taxes to American officials, because they opposed the idea on paying for land ownership that wasn't in Mexican law. In some cases Californios had little fluid capital because their economy had operated on a barter system, and they often lost their land because they were unable to pay the taxes.[clarification needed] They could not compete economically with all the European and Anglo-American emigrants who arrived in the region with large amounts of money.[not specific enough to verify]

The end of Californio culture is depicted in the novel Ramona, written by Helen Hunt Jackson in 1884. The fictional Zorro has grown to become the most identifiable Californio due to short stories, motion pictures and by the 1950s on television; although the historical truth of the era is sometimes lost in the story-telling.

See also

References

  1. ^ [1]
  2. ^ [2]
  3. ^ Robinson, p. 100
  4. ^ House Executive Document 46, pp. 1116-1117
  5. ^ Center For Land Grant Studies - Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
  6. ^ Center For Land Grant Studies - Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
  7. ^ A History of Mexican Americans in California
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