Thanks for making this point. This is something that always has irked me. We stole this land from Mexico and people bitch about basically Mexicans going back to their native lands. It's absolutely insane to me.
The true history behind how we "acquired" Texas and Cali from Mexico is also horrifying and usually completely whitewashed to the point of insanity. Americans started the fight each and every time. Mexico had outlawed slavery back in 1829, but these fucking american gringos kept coming into Texas with their slaves, err I mean indentured servants, and Mexico begrudgingly allowed it. Of course that wouldn't stop the fears of the colonials, who really really really loved slavery and white supremacy.
There's some evidence that tejanos, or Mexicans in Texas, acted as "conductors" on the southern route by helping people get to Mexico. In addition, Hammack has also identified a black woman and two white men who helped enslaved workers escape and tried to find a home for them in Mexico.
Mexico abolished slavery in 1829 when Texas was still part of the country, prompting white, slave-holding immigrants to fight for independence in the Texas Revolution. Once they formed the Republic of Texas in 1836, they made slavery legal again, and it continued to be legal when Texas joined the U.S. as a state in 1845.
Enslaved people in Texas were aware that there was a country to the south where they could find different levels of freedom (though indentured debt servitude existed in Mexico, it was not the same as chattel slavery). Hammack has discovered one runaway named Tom who had been enslaved by Sam Houston. Houston was a president of the Republic of Texas who'd fought in the Texas Revolution. Once Tom got across the border, he joined the Mexican military that Houston had fought against.
"I have come across abolitionists from the north who were going to Mexico to petition Mexico to allow them to buy land to establish colonies for runaway slaves and free blacks," Hammack says. In the early 1830s, Quaker abolitionist Benjamin Lundy "was actively petitioning the Mexican government to allow for colonies to be established for, I guess what we would consider now, refugees."
Lundy's plan to start a free colony in Mexico's Texas region was thwarted when it separated from Mexico and legalized slavery. Later, in 1852, Seminole groups that included runaway slaves successfully petitioned the Mexican government for land. "It still belongs to their descendants and they still live there to this day in Mexico," Hammack says.
These and other refugees fleeing slavery through the southern "underground railroad" all benefited from Mexico's willingness to give them a safe haven.
Fuck America. We're the proto-nazis. It's why I'll never be surprised at how much racism is concentrated in positions of power, especially in this particular era. We've never had to face the sins of our past. I mean really face them.
Instead we lionize our evils and excuse them. Bioshock Infinite's satire works well because it's not far off from reality.