Submissive

It all started sometime around 1846. His fifth great grandfather on his father’s side of the family had fled the area around Mexico City to escape the political and social unrest that threatened to erupt into a full-scale shooting war with the United States. Taking his share of the family’s considerable wealth in gold, he resettled on land that the family owned north of the Rio Grande River, near the small town, which would eventually become Tucson, Arizona. Twelve years later that area, from the eastern border of California, across the future state of Arizona and part way across New Mexico, would be transferred from Mexico to the United States, in a transaction known as the Gadsden Purchase. With the stroke of a pen and the transfer of ten million dollars, the United States acquired a much-coveted railroad route around the mountains between the southeast and the Pacific Ocean and, almost overnight, tens of thousands of Mexican citizens became residents of the United States. His ances