QUE PASO DURANTE LA GUERRA ? MEXICO/ ESTADOS UNIDOS

Museo Salltiloo, Mexico

LA ANGOSTURA, Mexico — On the grassy, windswept hill where soldiers from north and south fought one of the most important battles of the Mexican-American War, the crunch and grind of a sand and gravel mine deafens any attempt at contemplation.
Some wars get no respect. And this one, which Ulysses S. Grant called the most “wicked war” ever waged, has never been held in particularly high esteem. How many Arizonans condemning illegal border crossers want to recall that their homes sit on former Mexican territory? How many Mexicans want to remember the lost battle here, which they should have won?
And yet, there are lessons here in these hills — for Mexico and the United States — that two Mexican history buffs are determined to teach. They have spent years collecting artifacts and are now pushing to preserve the site as historic, though not many seem to care. Their three-room museum in nearby Saltillo, opened in 2006, is usually as lonely as a funeral home between wakes, a tangible reminder of the complicated past many Americans and Mexicans have overlooked.
“People don’t know what happened here,” said Reinaldo Rodríguez, 68, a retired government planner as tall and thin as a torch, pointing to a diorama of the battle in the museum, which sits behind the Saltillo cathedral. “People don’t know that this was the place where the Irish died alongside the Mexicans.”
The San Patricios, or St. Patrick’s Brigade, they called themselves. They were all recent immigrants to the United States who had joined the American Army, then defected to fight with Mexico. Most were in fact Irish. Some came from Germany or England, and historians say they fled in disgust, fed up with one of the United States’ ugliest flaws: prejudice.
“One reason why so many people deserted was that they were Catholic and they felt like they were being mistreated by their Protestant officers,” said Amy S. Greenberg, a historian at Pennsylvania State University.
The Mexican-American War also had much  to do with principle — historians on both sides of the border describe it as little more than a land grab — and desertion was a problem even before the conflict started. As troops massed on the American side of the Rio Grande in 1845, scores of soldiers, including many immigrants, disappeared across the border.

cortesia nyt.com