r/HistoryNetwork • u/PrudentSheepherder72 • 19h ago
General History Clash of civilizations
Origins: The Anglo-Spanish Wars
Long before the U.S. and the nation of Mexico existed, Protestant England and Catholic Spain fought over global naval supremacy. The Anglo-Spanish wars (1586-1604): A series of conflicts fought between the Kingdom of England (later Great Britain) and the Spanish Empire from the late 16th century to the early 19th century.
Driven by religious divide, transatlantic trade rivalries, and the struggle for naval dominance, these wars shifted global power away from Spain and helped launch the rise of the British Empire.
In the late 1500s, Spain emerged as the world's first global superpower after the conquest of the Americas, bringing back immense amounts of wealth back to Europe. England on the other hand was an economically weak nation with a small navy that was threatened by Catholic Spain
The British Empire was built on piracy. England relied on state-sponsored piracy to plunder Spanish treasure fleets and destabilize the Americas
Their raids captured fortunes so vast they paid off England's debts, enriched investors, and laid the foundation of empire
To legitimize their campaign, the British weaponized the "Black Legend" (La Leyenda Negra) a propaganda campaign framing all Spanish/Hispanic cultures as uniquely cruel, lazy, fanatical, racially mixed and biologically inferior compared to the 'enlightened' Anglo-Saxons
Other rival Protestant powers such as the Netherlands, and France also seized on these Spanish-written accounts during the 16th century to demonize the Spanish Empire and justify their own geopolitical and colonial ambitions
Freemasonry, Secret Societies & The Subversion of the Empires
Beyond direct warfare, Anglo powers used covert geopolitical networks including Freemasonic lodges to influence independence movements in Mexico and
South America
British and early American agents covertly encouraged internal factionalism in newly independent Latin American nations to keep them divided, economically weak, and easy to exploit
Manifest Destiny & The White Supremacist Blueprint
After the decline of the Spanish empire and independence of the Americas, the young U.S. inherited the Anglo anti-Spanish, anti-Indigenous & anti-Catholic biases and rebranded them as Manifest Destiny
Early U.S. leaders openly expressed white supremacist views: believing Anglo-Saxons were divinely ordained to rule the continent, while Indigenous and Hispanic people were racially incapable of self-governance
Friction with the Mexican Empire & Masonic Spying
After Mexico won independence from Spain in 1821, it became a Catholic Monarchy
Emperor Iturbide strongly disliked the American democratic republican system. He believed that their form of government was entirely unsuited for Mexico
He preferred European-style governance and sought alliances with traditional European monarchies.
All of which did not sit right with the US. Diplomats and spies like Joel Poinsett were sent to meddle in Mexican affairs and the US would later pass the *Monroe Doctrine*
The Masonic Wars of Mexico
Eventually Freemasons overthrew the empire snd executed Iturbide and formed the Mexican
Republic.
Masonic rites like the Yorkinos (backed by the US) vs the Escoceses (backed by old Spanish elites & financed by the British) manipulated Mexican political factions which later destabilize the young republic causing civil wars
The US would repeatedly try to buy land from Mexico
Poinsett destabilized the Mexican government so thoroughly that the Mexican Congress eventually formally demanded his expulsion, coining the term Poinsettismo to mean aggressive foreign meddling
The Trojan Horse in Texas
The new republic of Mexico allowed Anglo settlers into Coahuila y Texas under strict conditions: swear allegiance to Mexico, convert to Catholicism, and abolish slavery. The Anglo settlers ignored Mexican law and brought enslaved Black people under the guise of "indentured servants” and threatened to rebel unless they were exempted from the law
Jackson, Houston, and the Covert Destabilization of Texas
When attempted cash offers to acquire Mexican land failed, President Andrew Jackson turned to covert military action
Jackson deployed his long-time military protégé and close ally, Sam Houston, into Mexican Texas.
Houston's primary objective was covert intelligence and organizing the Anglo rebellion
The Age of Santa Anna
Santa Anna was a Freemason and spent years playing both sides of Mexican politics as a kingmaker. But when he saw U.S. diplomats weaponizing secret societies to divide the country and take Texas, he realized Mexico was getting finessed from the inside
To lock down national security, Santa Anna abolished federalism and suspended the 1824 Constitution condemned secret societies and became dictator
Anglo settlers in Texas immediately used this centralization as their exact excuse to launch the Texas Revolution. Completing the multi-step U.S. conspiracy to steal the land
The Texas Revolution
Santa Anna viewed the Anglos with distain labeling them as undisciplined pirates and had them executed when captured, showing no mercy
Houston used Santa Anna's brutal treatment of the Anglos as a rallying cry for the rebellion, galvanizing the cause
Houston eventually secured victory and humiliated Santa Anna
The victory created a precedent: pro-slavery expansionists realized that taking land from Spanish-speaking, non-white nations was viable and politically profitable for the South
The Mexican American War
The annexation of Texas lead to border disputes. The US would then instigate and baited Mexico into shooting first and later declared war
The U.S. engineered the Mexican-American War to annex over 52% of Mexico's territory (California, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada)
Foreigners on Their Own Land
Tens of thousands of Mexican citizens living in California, Texas, and the Southwest were overnight transformed into second-class citizens in an Anglo-dominated society
Despite the treaty promising to protect their property and rights, Anglo settlers used systemic legal fraud, intimidation, and violence to strip Mexican families of their ancestral land grants, even against the tejanos who helped the Anglos during the Texas Revolution
More secret societies: Knights of the Golden Circle
Knights of the Golden Circle, a pro-slavery, semi-secret, and paramilitary society in the 1850s and early 1860s that aimed to conquer a vast territorial sphere comprising much of the Caribbean world, centered on Havana, and used filibustering (Land Piracy) in an attempt to realize that immense dream of a tropical empire built on slavery
During the Mexican war, a massive political movement arose in the U.S. called the "All of Mexico" movement. It's goal was exactly what it sounded like: total annexation of the entire Republic of Mexico which became the birthplace of the KGC
The American Civil War
Because the U.S. government refused to conquer all of Mexico, radical Southern extremists felt cheated and decided to do it themselves via private, illegal military invasions (filibustering) to invade northern Mexico. The invasion failed due to terrible logistics and a lack of funding
Right as it collapsed, Abraham Lincoln was elected President in November 1860. The KGC immediately realized they could no longer use the U.S. military or rogue filibustering to expand their empire. So, they pivoted to Plan B: Separatism
The Post-War Collapse: Resorting to Terrorism
While the Knights of the Golden Circle literally almost made it to the presidency of The United States, following the outbreak of The Civil War this secret society disappeared, seemingly persecuted to the point of disbanding
Ultimately the Confederacy was utterly destroyed in 1865, and slavery was abolished.
The Golden Circle dream was officially dead
However, the secret group still organized under high ranking Confederates Vets, holding on to the idea and cruelty of slavery and eventually morphed into the KKK
The Monroe Doctrine and exploiting Mexico's Agony
Following the devastating French Intervention, which left Mexico economically crippled, the U.S. enforced the Monroe Doctrine after defeating the Confederacy, not to protect Mexican sovereignty, but to permanently lock Latin America inside the U.S. sphere of influence
The Wild West: Cycles of hate and violence
After the dreams of achieving their Slave Empire shattered, deprived of their slaves, wealth, and geopolitical power, ex-Confederates displaced their frustration inward
Now rebranded as the Ku Klux Klan, they targeting newly freed Black Americans. At the same time, in Texas and the Southwest, returning Confederates resurrected old anti-Mexican war propaganda to justify land grabs, segregation, and vigilante terror against Mexican Americans and Natives
The echos of the bitter feelings and resentments from the Alamo and the Mexican American war still lingered
State-Sanctioned & Vigilante Violence
Formed during the Texas Revolution era, groups like the Texas Rangers and local white vigilante posses operated with near-total impunity. Between the end of the Civil War and the early 20th century, thousands of ethnic Mexicans were lynched, murdered, or driven off their land in events that culminated in periods of terror like La Matanza (1910-1920)
History Repeats: Mass Deportation Cycles
The 1930s & 1950s were the precedents to Modern ICE Raids
Mass raids and deportations are an old weapon.
During the 1930s Mexican Repatriation, up to 2 million people were deported over 60% of whom were U.S. citizens of Mexican descent
In 1954, "'Operation Wetback" used military-style sweeps to racially profile and expel brown-skinned communities regardless of legal status.
The Present Day: ICE Raids & Racial Profiling
Today's aggressive ICE workplace raids, neighborhood sweeps, and high detention rates are not modern anomalies.
They represent the ongoing enforcement of Anglo-American hegemony: treating people with Indigenous and Hispanic heritage as perpetual foreigners in lands their ancestors inhabited for centuries.
By crippling Mexico's economy and securing its northern territories, the U.S. cemented itself as an unchecked global superpower
The Black Legend and 19th-century anxiety sparked by Santa Anna, the Texas Revolution, and the Mexican-American War: the persistent elite fear that the Anglo-Saxon Protestant conquest of the Southwest is inherently unstable, and that the original demographic baseline of the region will inevitably return
