Introduction
2024; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 92; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.5406/26428652.92.1.01
ISSN2642-8652
Autores ResumoThe year 2021 marked the 110th anniversary of the Consulate of Mexico in Salt Lake City. In celebration, the consulate, the Observatory of the Binational Relationship between Mexico and the United States (Observatorio de la Relación Binacional México y Estados Unidos, ORBEM), and the Center for Latin American Studies at the University of Utah collaborated for a special issue of the ORBEM magazine, which was published in August 2022. The main objective is to study the consulate's presence and its work to safeguard the welfare of the Mexican (and Hispanic) community in the region. This issue of Utah Historical Quarterly features translated and revised versions of the anniversary articles.The general purposes of the initiative are to open the space for the collection of historical sources, including those found in the Diplomatic Historical Collection of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Acervo Histórico Diplomático de la Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, AHD), to strengthen the community and cultural relationship between the Mexican Consulate in Salt Lake City and the University of Utah, and to make visible the importance and significant contributions of the Mexican communities in the region.The current territory of the state of Utah was originally inhabited by Indigenous tribes: Utes, Goshutes, Southern Paiutes, and Navajos. The early presence of European settlers was mostly limited to hunters and explorers who traded with the Indigenous populations of the area. One of the first records of Hispanics in Utah dates to the expeditions undertaken in 1776 by the Catholic Fathers Silvestre Vélez de Escalante and Francisco Atanasio Domínguez, the latter originally from Mexico City. With Mexico's independence in 1821, this region became part of Mexican territory, and remained so until the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848, when the now-states of Utah, Oregon, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and parts of Idaho and Oklahoma came under the jurisdiction of the United States. When the first families led by the president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Brigham Young, entered the Salt Lake Basin in July 1847, the Salt Lake Basin was still Mexico.1 In 1849, the Mormon population established the state of Deseret, which was never recognized by the US government. The territory of Utah was established as a formal entity of the United States in 1850 and became a state in 1896.Since its founding in 1911, the Consulate of Mexico in Salt Lake City has been an important institution in the development of the city and the region. However, the historiography of the consulates and that of the state of Utah have not been intertwined. This project brings their historiographies into dialogue on the role of the Mexican Consulate in the region. This issue of UHQ and the essays included enrich our knowledge of how consulates intervene and contribute to the evolution of communities, the state, and the country.2 Together, the writings take up the methodologies of diplomatic history and social history, focusing on specific communities.3While there is a rich historiography on embassies, that on consulates in modern times is more modest. Nevertheless, there are several important studies that serve as interlocutors. The historiography produced in the United States emerges from the strand of Chicano history in the 1980s. Francisco E. Balderrama, for example, highlights the consular work of supporting Mexicans living in Los Angeles.4 Balderrama focuses on the Great Depression economy of the 1930s and the role of the Mexican Consulate in finding housing, providing food, and finding employment for people in need. The consulate also helped to combat racism and discrimination that, while they had long existed, increased during the economic crisis of the 1930s. The consulate was concerned with preventing illegal deportations and facilitated repatriation for those who wished to return to Mexico. Balderrama shows that, although consulates hold that they should not intervene in the internal politics of the host country, there were times in the history of the Los Angeles Consulate when it took actions that could be interpreted as such, such as its support of worker unionization and of protests against civil rights violations and ethnic segregation in public schools.The collection of essays in this volume of UHQ also engages Mexican scholarship on consulates. An early contribution is the study of Mexican consulates in the United States, including a book edited by Fernando Alanís Enciso, Labor consular en Estados Unidos. Siglos XIX y XX, and a series of essays published in the Revista Mexicana de Política Exterior.5 Together, these investigations highlight the importance of consular work as central to bilateral relations, with writings on prominent figures, the repatriation of Mexican nationals in the 1930s, the role of the consulate in protecting labor rights and welfare of Mexicans living in the United States, and the suppression of the activities of Magonista anarchists living in the United States during the years leading up to the Mexican Revolution. The geographic scope of the historiography produced in both Mexico and the United States is limited to the states of Texas and California.Whereas in 1900, before the establishment of the Mexican Consulate in Utah, the US population census recorded only forty individuals of Mexican nationality, today more than 430,000 people of Mexican origin live in the state, while inhabitants of Hispanic descent represent 15 percent of Utah's inhabitants. Approximately 70 percent of the Hispanic population is of Mexican descent. Undoubtedly, the increase in the number of Mexican residents in Utah calls us to deepen our understanding of these communities and make visible such histories in all their diversity and richness.6
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