This all started nearly 200 years ago with the Americans of The United States sounding a few bugles, beating a few drums and figuratively crashing a few swords on a few shields, along with a bribe here and whole lot of money there, and the Spanish Cession of East and West Florida, a small part of what is now Louisiana and an itsy-bitsy piece of present day Colorado in 1819 just happened. How about that?

Then came the Texas Annexation of 1845, the Mexican Cession in 1848, topped off by the Gadsden Purchase in 1853. The Mexican Cession of 1848 netted the US California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Western New Mexico and the southwestern part of Wyoming. California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico got the US lots of gold and control of the water from the Colorado River. Wyoming produces oil and gas, now, but then it was Indians and trouble.

Gold mining is a great way for the ignorant to go broke, but even the ignorant have to eat. Middle way through the gold fever, German immigrants flocked to Colorado to "mine." They registered claims, not in the mountains but out on the prairie and they farmed. High prices and "shoddy practices" transferred the gold from miners pokes to farmers pocketbooks. To protect the land from ranchers the Germans built fences, paid a few bribes to government land agents, proved up on "mining" claims, dug wells, and started buying each other out or marrying the only child (daughter) of their neighbors. Fairly soon a few German farm owners began to realize that well-water wasn't going to last forever. Even after just a few years wells were drying up; the water-table was shrinking. Irrigation was the way to go.

Geographically, Colorado is neat...from the mountains in the center of the state all the way to the eastern border of Kansas it's down-hill and water flows down hill. Every winter it snows in the mountains...as much as 120 FEET a year... every spring the snow gradually melts and runs....Yup! Down hill. Snow melt can be devastating, so no one objected to a few farmers digging a few ditches to transfer some of that melt to farmland. Eventually those ditches were hundreds of miles long and irrigated millions of acres.

The original canal builders the Germans introduced were Chinese, who almost immediately posted claims and started farming themselves. Then the German land barons started importing Mexican labor to finish building the irrigation canals from the Colorado Rockies east to the high prairie. The railroads produced a few "ice box" cars and the melons were shipped east, much to the delight of city dwellers. The money started as a trickle and became a flood.

The Mexicans were cheap labor, nearly serfs in their own country, uneducated, uninterested in owning land and plentiful. After the canals were finished they hired on to work the melons. Over the years the young men came in the spring, worked the land, got paid and went home to Mexico. Year after year they came: sure a few stayed, kept to themselves, married Mexican women and had American kids.

The American way...immigrate, find yourself a place, learn the language, make something of yourself, become citizens, have citizen children, vote, maybe even politic a bit, get elected, take a few bribes, get medium rich, and make a better life for your kids.

The problem is the Mexicans were here first and got run out and when they finally got back all the good places were gone. Some of them weren't happy about that. That's the problem with growing up in a poor country across the border from a rich country. When that rich country was yours to begin with, getting locked out by a government that had a different slant on immigrants, wasn't a good thing.

Partly, it's Religion. At the time America was run by WASPs, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Germans were Lutheran and good old Martin Luther didn't have much good to say about Catholics. The Germans followed the American way, my grandfathers grandfather said it best, "Ve leif in Amerika, now. Ve spek enlish." They "fit in." The Mexicans, on the other hand weren't interested in "fitting in." Catholic, Spanish, and proud, Oh how they were Proud. The poor have nothing except their pride. The few who stayed lived together...married each other, spoke spanish, and began to hate.

By now, Mexico had schools and teachers. The teachers had a different slant on the "purchase" mess. "Stealing! The American Government, the American People, made a practice of stealing Spanish/Mexican Lands and we, the people, got nothing." They conveniently forgot or ignored the fact that the people who sold the land to the Americans were the God given Rulers of the day...and they needed to money to fight a few more wars. "The sport of Kings." Kill off a few million or so of the serfs in exchange for a few acres of land...big deal. What are the lower orders for if not for the royals to play with? Eventually the Kings were replaced with presidents who sometimes became dictators who took over large tracts of land and reduced the peasants to serfs to produce wealth for their masters. "We might have to shoot a few to put the fear of God in the rest."

Oops! We're back to God. The original masters of the Mexican Catholic Church were all European and they had an agenda. "Convert the Savage to our way of thinking or kill him trying. If he's not Catholic he's of the Devil." After the conversion make sure the Church gets the booty...and then kill him. Kill him to save his soul and prevent him from backsliding. Three hundred years of performing their "God Directed Murder for the Glory of the Church" denuded the land of booty. There's nothing left...it's time to pack up and go..God in Europe has His Golden Domes, solid gold ten foot high Crucifixes, and priceless art and it's time we moved on. A few Mexicans were educated in Europe and returned to the people...and the people, poor, downtrodden, and miserable began getting Priests from their home country. Mexican Priests who suddenly remembered that North of the border there are riches and We, the Church, need our cut! The Priests began plotting.