![]() In April 1846, one John Riley (of Cliften, Connemara), abandoned his post at Matamoros in north-east Mexico. Irish soldiers quickly started to appreciate that they were on the wrong side of this Mexican tragedy. Mexico’s fate was just like Ireland’s, with the USA playing the role of the hated British Empire. The specifics of the case also reminded them of their suffering homeland – an aggressive power stealing the land of a poor, Catholic people and claiming justification in Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy. These men didn’t only see a repulsive imperial self-interest in what they were being ordered to do in Mexico. ![]() The immorality of the US invasion was not lost on the Irish troopers doing the invading. ![]() Thoreau was arrested for refusing to pay taxes to a federal government which would only spend them on this imperial war. Henry David Thoreau and other Northern progressives saw the invasion as an attempt by the Southern slavers to expand their plantation empire into Mexican lands. The Mexican-American War (1846-8) was a poorly concealed land grab by the United States against its southern neighbour. Above: our Easter Rising tea towel, commemorating those who took part in the rebellion against Britain San Patricios, as they were known to Mexicans, were a band of Irish immigrants to the US who had enlisted in the Yankee army which went south to invade northern Mexico in 1846.īut these guys didn’t stay in that army for long. And, organised as the ‘Connolly Column’ (named for Easter Rising hero, James Connolly), Irishmen fought Franco’s fascist army in 1930s Spain as part of the revered International Brigades.īut in Mexico’s case, they’re celebrating another group of Irish freedom fighters – the St Patrick’s Battalion. Irish volunteers (not least from New York) also played a big role in Abraham Lincoln’s Union army as it battled the slave states of the Confederacy. Irishmen, like Bernardo O’Higgins in Chile, were everywhere in the forces of Simón Bolívar and his comrades as they drove the Spanish Empire from South America at the beginning of the 19th century. There, the Irish tradition being celebrated isn’t music, literature, or Guinness – it’s Ireland’s proud history of internationalist solidarity against reaction. ![]() New York and Dublin are both well-known for their Paddy’s Day celebrations – less so Mexico City.ī ut el Día de San Patricio is a big day in the Mexican calendar as well. ![]()
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