In February 2023, José Gerardo Rodolfo Fernández Noroña, a member of the Mexican parliament for President Claudia Sheinbaum’s ruling Morena party, stood on the floor of the Congreso de la Union and calmly declared that California, Texas, and New Mexico were, among other parcels, “occupied territories.”
He went on to say that Mexico “should review this dispossession and once again demand the recovery of these territories” from America. These outlandish statements certainly did not hurt his career. In fact, they helped him. A year and a half later, he was elected president of the Mexican Senate. Noroña is not alone.
Many pillars of the Mexican elite embrace the notion of Reconquista—the “reconquest” of the land ceded to the United States by Mexico during the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, achieved through mass migration and political action. There are many in positions of power who share some version of that vision.
