Chamizal

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Chamizal National Memorial, located in El Paso, Texas, memorializes the settlement of a hundred-year boundary dispute between the United States and Mexico. In 1848, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo had ended the US–Mexican War and established the Rio Grande as the border between the two nations. But in 1864, El Chamizal, privately owned Mexican land that was shifted north of the river because of flooding, remained in dispute for the next century. For one hundred years, political tension ebbed and flowed until US President John F. Kennedy and Mexican President Adolfo López Mateos met in Mexico City in 1962. With the signing of the Chamizal Treaty, the US returned much of the disputed land to Mexico, and Mexico transferred to the United States a piece of undisputed land, a portion of which was set aside as Chamizal National Memorial. Today, the memorial recognizes the sacrifice of more than five thousand US residents of the disputed area who were forced to relocate by the terms of the treaty, and creates a space to build goodwill and share in the mutual respect of the cultures of the borderlands.