“Victims of American westward expansion… accommodation or resistance? » Looking at a map of the country of Mexico before American westward expansion, it was actually larger than the United States had been at the time. that time. Some lands that Mexico lost in the Mexican–American War under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo are Texas (the second largest state in the present-day United States), California (the third-largest state in the present-day United States ) and New Mexico (the fifth largest state in the United States). in the present-day United States). Because of this defeat, Mexico lost half of its national territory. Half of Mexico's land disappeared and half of the Mexicans were displaced, making them Americans and no longer Mexicans. This happened without their approval or consent. In the book "My History Not Yours" written by Genaro M. Padilla, there are stories of men and women living on the lands of Texas, California and New Mexico during this unruly period of loss and loss. unknown. The pages of this book contain the written accounts of Mexicans and their sense of outrage, sadness, and anger over the insurrection in their homeland. Feelings of accommodation and resistance are present among the authors of Padilla's book, but some lean one way and others the other. All humans are different and the people of Mexico experienced and felt the loss of their land differently. Some believed that the taking of their land by the Americans was unacceptable and they resisted and were unhappy with the presence of the Anglo-Saxons who now occupied their territory. While others possessed a more accommodating outlook. That being said, they saw the Americans as a potential asset to develop the land and that the United States was more powerful than them, so it would be better to move... middle of paper ...... brief part of feelings that accompanied the loss of land for California, New Mexico, and Texas. As noted, some were passive while others were aggressive. All felt and had similar but different experiences once America took over half of Mexico's territory in 1848, after twenty-one months of war between the two nations (Padilla, 14). Whether accommodating or resistant to Americans in former Mexican lands, Mexicanos and Tejanos alike felt uprooted, afraid, and uncertain of what the future held for them. But one thing in common that Juan Bautista Vigil y Alarid, Cleofas M. Jaramillo, Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, Eulalia Perez de Guillen Marine and Juan Nepumuceno Sequin shared was that they told their stories and that, through this, the world will forever have the stories of these people. and their legacies told through their own stories.