McKinney v. Saviego

OXFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LATINOS & LATINAS IN CONTEMPORARY POLITICS, LAW & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, Forthcoming

4 Pages Posted: 5 Mar 2012 Last revised: 6 Mar 2012

See all articles by Lauren Gilbert

Lauren Gilbert

St. Thomas University College of Law

Date Written: March 3, 2012

Abstract

In McKinney v. Saviego, the US Supreme Court concluded that the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the US-Mexican War, did not protect the property rights of Pilar Saviego, the heir of a Mexican landowner who fled Texas shortly after the outbreak of hostilities between Mexico and Texas insurrectionists, but before Texas declared its independence in 1836. The landowner’s departure, the Court said, constituted an abandonment of her property, and under Texas law she could not bequeath it to her daughter, also a Mexican citizen. The Court ruled that, because Texas was already a US state at the time the 1848 Treaty was signed, it was not one of the “territories” to which the treaty provisions protecting the rights of Mexican landowners applied.The case is one of many examples of the federal courts construing ambiguous provisions in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in ways that benefited Anglo land claimants while leading to the alienation of the property rights of Mexican landholders. The case is also a profound illustration of some of the ways in which US policy makers at the time took a treaty intended to protect the property rights of Mexican landholders and, through the Senate ratification process, eliminated core protections. This diluted version of the Treaty would later enable the federal judiciary in McKinney v. Saviego and many other cases to interpret its provisions in ways that resulted in the displacement of scores of Mexicans from their lands, thus returning such property to the public domain and fulfilling the United States’ Manifest Destiny. As Guadalupe Luna has pointed out, this alienation of Chicanos/Chicanas from their property transformed many Mexican Americans from landholders into dispossessed farmworkers.

Keywords: U.S.-Mexican War, displacement, land rights

Suggested Citation

Gilbert, Lauren, McKinney v. Saviego (March 3, 2012). OXFORD ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LATINOS & LATINAS IN CONTEMPORARY POLITICS, LAW & SOCIAL MOVEMENTS, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2015485

Lauren Gilbert (Contact Author)

St. Thomas University College of Law ( email )

16401 NW 37th Ave.
Miami Gardens, FL 33054
United States
305-623-2386 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://www.stu.edu/law/faculty-staff/faculty/lauren-gilbert.html

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