Who are ‘Mexican Americans?’ The history of Mexican Americans extends over more than four centuries and is one that is very colorful. It is also one that is filled with anguish and loss. Mexican- Americans have an identity forged over almost a century; their history is one that is filled with loss and that has called for great perseverance. There are different categories of Mexican Americans: there are those who have just recently immigrated into the United States and those who are first or second generation Americans because their parents settled in America decades back. Then there are the Mexican Americans whose ancestors settled in America when that part of the country was still under Spanish or Mexican rule. Mexican Americans fall under the Hispanic or Spanish ethnic minority groups. The conflicts in regards to Mexican property ownership One of the reasons why there were and still are problems with the land that was granted to the Mexicans in America when their country ceded territory to the U.S, is the conflicting ideas that the two sides have towards land ownership; the Mexicans lay emphasis on the ‘informal’ system of land ownership where on connections and patronage while the Americans are more concerned with the differentiation between public and private ownership where an individual is entitled to absolute control over a piece of property (Montoya, 2002 ). The United States legal system failed the Mexicans living in America because it did not comprehensively try to incorporate Mexican approach of land ownership into the system. Because the Mexican system of granting land was based not strictly on formal written contracts but on mutual trust, the unspecific documents that have been presented by Mexican Americans in courts of law have been dismissed as not being able to stand on their own (Montoya, 2002). The Mexican land grants were to be best understood if they were looked at in the historical, social and cultural context under which they were drawn. In the 1800s, the Mexicans’ way of business was based more highly on mutual trust than on formal documents. Rarely were these even drawn up; the agreements between two individuals or groups conducting a transaction would be verbal because the one’s given word was as good as the written one. However, the American legal system was and still is unwilling to understand this aspect of the Mexican culture. While the Mexican land grant system has its roots in the Spanish civil law system, the more formal ad rigid American one originates from English common law. Perhaps this can help explain why the two are so incompatible and why the jurists and property owners of today find it so difficult to understand this system (Montoya, 2002). The reason why the United States government was so unwilling to recognize the Mexican systems of land ownership were at times rooted in ulterior motives. While the Mexican usufructuary rights allow land owners to exploit the resources on common land at will, the American fee simple absolute dictates the opposite. If the U.S legal system would have awarded land owners their usufructruary rights as dictated by the Mexican system, it means they would have been denied an opportunity to use the resources on