Not too many films are made about the Mexican-American War, but it is interesting how the events of this war led up to the Civil War. It is also terrible how the United States imposed its will on a weaker nation like Mexico, and on Irish, Blacks, Hispanics, when all they wanted was freedom.
shareYes, gringos are a bunch of barbaric bastards. But we deafeted them at The Alamo (and Pancho Villa at Columbus, and the japanese at Pearl Harbor, and the Viet Cong at Vietnam, and Osama in New York! ha ha ha!)
sharePancho Villa's bandits at Columbus NM: 100+ dead
Americans killed at Columbus: 16-19 dead depending on the sources.
Mexicans were too stupid to realise not to ride their horses up on two prepared machine guns.
So who got whos ass kicked huh?
I'm a hispanic Veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and that comment of your about Pearl Harbor and Osama Bin Laden was so retarted. I hope your not a fellow hispanic. You are a disgrace.
shareI have yet to see this interesting movie. I say interesting because I am a Tejano from South Texas (San Patricio County) as is my father and his grandfather before him. It goes all the way back to the Mexican American War. Our last name Felan is Irish just like Obregon which is actually Spanish for O'brien.
I had to go to Dublin last year for work and saw our family crest for sale at the gift shop in St. Patrick's Cathedral. I was impressed. I teased my friend last name of Deaton who was so excited to be in "his" homeland that I found mine but we couldn't find his! I mean I am a Hispanic CORRECTION a Tejano after all. I am a patriotic American and have never felt like the people of our family just came over but maybe the border jumped over them. It was called Coahuila-Texas after all while under Mexican rule. That is the same state that Pierdras Negras is in. We have family in that city by the name of Lechler? It use to embarrass me that we didn't have a typical Hispanic last name. But in the last 5 years I've embraced it. I love its unique story. Just the other day I found a copy of a ship's manifest dated 17 May 1880 for passage from Liverpool England to New York Harbour and it had 4 Felans on board! Probably by way of Waterford it says their nationality is Irish not British. http://www.immigrantships.net/v2/1800v2/richmondco18800517_1.html
And these names are actually Felan! Not Phelan or Whelan but Felan. The stories of author Michael Hogan intrigue me but I have not read them yet. LINK: www.geocities.com/drmichaelhogan Also if they were anything like me and my brother (both of us served, Dad did too) maybe one of our ancestors had that fighting spirit and was in the St. Patrick's Battalion. Maybe he was an immigrant in the north east like New York or Boston and joined the army and once war with Mexico started he could've been persuaded to behave like a good Catholic and fight for the Mexican side. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Patrick%27s_Battalion Or they could have arrived in South Texas 20 years earlier straight from Waterford, Ireland and just settled in an area nearby my hometown. Corpus Christi used to be in San Patricio County which also borders Refugio County (That's the Spanish for refuge, an Irish Catholic settlement given to the Irish empresarios of 1820). Could one of our ancestors have been in the land grants given to Irish Catholics in the 1820's? http://www.tamu.edu/ccbn/dewitt/irishmcmullen.htm OR http://ireland.org/irl_hist/hist7.htm
I think that I may have pieced together a good bit of possible theories as to the origin of Hispanic no, no Tejano Felans in the USA but I'm not exactly one hundred percent sure.
Who was this Irish guy who braved Mexican lands that where foreign to him? What drove him to marry into Hispanic culture? No doubt those beautiful great-grandmothers of ours probably helped! But anyways I want on my next visit to Ireland to befriend a Whelan or Phelan or hopefully an O'Felan and get some answers. I was watching the history channel and seen where they swabbed the mouths of two men with the same surname. One in England and one in North Carolina and discovered without a doubt that these two men shared a common ancestor 300 years ago. I'll be a bit shy to ask a stranger a question like "Hey bro can I swab your mouth?" But hopefully we can at least talk family history over a pint of Guinness and a shot of tequila. I know that there are barely if any traces of Irish blood in me but I wonder why these Hispanic descendants of "John Q. Irish" Felan kept their last name the same? Well I'm glad that they did. In the meantime I will celebrate both check this link. http://www.hispanicmagazine.com/2001/mar/Panorama/irish.html
Many Felans have started some of their own San Patricio Societies. Most of us in the family are Hispanic war vets and we're still Catholic so we celebrate Saint Patrick's Day, Cinco de Mayo, and Fourth of July with a religous, cultural, and patriotic zeal like no other! Like I said, I haven't seen the film "One Man's Hero" but I intend to. You never really hear of this Irish Mexican connection. It would be nice to get the word out there though. I mean we are from the 2 demographics most looked down on in our nation's society Mexican and Irish and yet we are the ones who have practically built this country on our ancestor's backs! It's history repeating itself. Everyone in America has seen either "Gangs of New York" or "Far and Away" and seen how oppressed the early Irish Catholics settlers were. Now all you have to do is look at CNN or Fox News and see the same thing with Mexican immigrants. These guys are today's so called "Irish Plague" and yet every one of us has let them clean our car, serve our food or maybe even watch over our kids. Some of us have them in the family!
I'm damn proud to be from these two cultures. There's an impressive track record 2 Mexican Presidents Vicente Fox and Alvaro Obregon (O'Brian) and actor Anthony Quinn. Even the "real" Zorro William Lamport was a San Patricio. I know that we all here have felt the same. Sometimes you're not American enough and sometimes you're not Mexican enough. But, if you actually learn where we come from and finally celebrate and embrace it then we can move forward. If I am mistaken please let me know. I am young and have gotten most of my info on this subject from books, internet and trips to Mexico (thanks for letting me see your family's meat market Dad) and Ireland. I know it cannot be all accurate. I guess what I'm hoping for is to find the link of a Felan to Texas or Mexico by way of Ireland. Take care.
Couldnt have said it better myself. And I too have Irish blood,(my paternal grandmother was Irish and her last name was Lamb). I have seen many connections between the Irish and the Mexican cultures. They both are beautiful.
shareAnyone ever read Jeff Shaara's "Gone for Soldiers"? It covers the Mexican War. It's a little cheesy, but has some GREAT potential.
shareI like this movie but it's a bit one sided in the depiction of the San Patricios.
They were deserters...yet the great majority of the Irish in the United States Army did not desert.
Personally I'd only consider this movie OK.
While the female love interest was certainly very gorgeous, I don't think a love story subplot was needed in this movie. As it's been noted, most Catholics in the US Army at the time served loyally.
Even though the San Patricios were depicted as an Irish unit and had a name referencing Ireland, in reality it wasn't an all Irish unit.
In the movie the unit is all Irish except for a token German, if I remember right. In reality the unit was not quite half Irish, not quite half German and the remainder were a smattering of other Catholic immigrant nationalities and some native born Americans.
Wrong. There is also a Polish deserter in the film. Yes, there was many other European-Immigrant nationalities represented, but the majority were Irish.
I keep hearing this stupid argument trying to debunk the history of the San Patricios. If they "supposedly weren't even half Irish" then why the hell would they call themselves the "Batallion de San Patricio (Saint Patricks Brigade)" and adopt the Harp of Erin go Bragh on a personal battle flag to fight under??
By the way, the Irish consul to Mexico is present every year at the commemoration of the San Patricios around Mexican Independence day in September (and during Saint Patricks day).."Not even half Irish"...yeah, right...
Americans love to hate...
Read this: http://www.irlandeses.org/sanpatriciosB.htm
Viva los San Patricios!!
The fact is and the proof is in the muster rolls of the battalion.
They were 'Irish' because the 'fire' that led the battalion to its heroics was provided by the Irish minority of the unit.
They were also 'Irish' because it was great propaganda for the Mexicans to entice further desertion from American ranks of Irish soldiers. It did not succeed as planned.
Riley may have been touted as the unit's leader in the movie (and perhaps utilized as "the face" of the unit in fact) but THE REALITY is that the unit was under the command of a Mexican officer, to which Riley was his 2nd in command.
What the movie left out at the end was that Riley stayed with the unit after the war was over. Unfortuantely (but typical for Mexico at the time) once the war was over political factions armed themselves with elements of the Army and began to fight one another rather than repair the country. The Patricios ended up backing the wrong politicos, and when those politicians lost the unit was dissolved "for supporting a rebellion".
lol, history is made up of an uncountable number of episodes of one people imposing their will on another. The US at this time was not unique in that respect.
The sad truth of it all (that many don't like to face) is that Mexico couldn't get its act together to prevent the war nor wage it once it was declared (nor even prevent the subsequent civil war that followed the Mexican War's end).
Unfortunately true. The Mexican-American War, like almost any conflict, is not as simple as good vs evil. Part of it was over Texas which Mexico lost but could not get over and yet part of it was also a US land-grab since the US could have simply defended Texas rather than invading Mexico et al. What is also true is that Mexico was not the poor, little weakling being picked on by the big, bad USA. The Mexican forces had the US troops outnumbered in virtually every battle and European observers had rated the Mexican cavalry as being far superior to the US troopers. Mexico's biggest problem all throughout her history has been a lack of unity; a lack of stability. For an extremely long period (or periods) of time Mexico has been unable to progress because there is never enough time to get anything done in between the constant coups, civil wars and revolutions.
Mexico has been independent for less time than the US and yet has had like over a hundred presidents, most of whom were not elected and did not leave office peacefully, as well as two emperors, both of whom were shot. However, for those who cling to the idea that Mexico was the weakling and America was the superpower, I would have to ask just how wise it was then for Mexico to piss off the US and threaten war instead of just admiting the fact that Texas was gone for good and concentrate on holding on to California and the rest of the southwest?
As for the general trend of expansion, "Manifest Destiny" etc, I have to agree that it was simply how the game was played back then. If Mexico had been able to I am sure she would have expanded as well. Emperor Maximilian, for one, wanted to absorb Central America and build a navy to dominate the gulf -two good reasons for the US backing the President who shot him. The prevailing wisdom for countries at that time was that you were either growing and expanding or you were nobody.
If the Irishmen in this movie really switched sides because they were being religiously persecuted then I can sympathize with them. They would probably get a little more credit were it not for the fact that they willingly came to the US and willingly volunteered to join the army (there was no draft in the USA until the Civil War). It also does not look so good when they guy they switched sides to fight for was Santa Anna, a man known for massacring prisoners (in Mexico and Texas), betraying his allies and at the end of that same war sold out his own country. Not exactly a "noble" cause in that regard.
"I AM Jerusalem"
They didn't know that about Santa Anna at the time, who claimed if he had a few hundred more fighters like the Irish battalion then he would have won easily. And when it came to executing prisoners the battalion got the worst of it off the yankees.
Also, If I was to go to a foreign country, join their army, then get abused and demeaned by my peers and superiors for being a "potato head irish catholic scum" as they were so graciously called for offering their services then damn right im going to desert. im not fighting for a country who doesn't see me as one of their own. the mexicans did,and honored them for it, so the battalion fought for them.
A man who switches sides that easily isn't to be trusted. Maybe they should've put more thought into deciding which army to fight for.
shareWhat the Irish and Spanish/Mexicans had most in common is their religion (the Pole, too).
Irish had been mercenaries for the Spanish in the New World; the fellow who founded the presidio of Tucson (my home town) was Irish mercenary for Spain Hugo Oconor (O'Connor) -- in 1775.
Tucson was an outpost in Pimeria Alta and then Sonora and is now Arizona after the US paid Maximillian for southern Arizona in the Gadsden Purchase in 1853.
"Tucson was an outpost in Pimeria Alta and then Sonora and is now Arizona after the US paid Maximillian for southern Arizona in the Gadsden Purchase in 1853".
The US did not pay Maximilian anything in 1853, because he became emperor of Mexico only in 1864. Even then, I don't see the US doing deals with him, since they were on the whole more sympathetic to his rival Benito Juarez.
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