According to the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo of February 2, 1848, the boundary between Mexico and the United States was established at the Río Bravo del Norte. Mexico was then required to relinquish its territories of New Mexico and Upper California (the present-day states of California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming) and to accept Texas's incorporation into the United States. As compensation, the United States agreed to pay US$15 million for the territories and to assume more than US$3 million in claims from private citizens of these areas against the Mexican government. Mexico lost more than one-half of its territory as a result of the war with the United States. The territorial losses and the brief but traumatic occupation of Mexico City by United States troops engendered a deep-seated mistrust of the United States that still resonates in Mexican popular culture. Anti-United States nationalist sentiment was a major intellectual current in the Mexican Revolution and continues to manifest itself in some aspects of Mexican society (see Foreign Relations, ch. 4).

Santa Anna's last political venture resulted in the sale of more Mexican territory. In what is known in the United States as the Gadsden Purchase, ratified by the United States Congress in 1854, Santa Anna sold 77,692 square kilometers of land in southern New Mexico and Arizona for US$10 million (see fig. 2). This additional loss of territory alienated a large, reform-minded group of young Mexicans, who then conspired to oust Santa Anna.

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Source: U.S. Library of Congress