On Wed, 22 Sep 2010 11:33:10 -0700 (PDT), Jonathan Cook
wrote:

On Sep 22, 11:47*am, wrote:

The only people who may have
called themselves (a variant of) "Mexican" would not have been anywhere near DC
or even in what is now the US.

I don't know about all the rest and I didn't read the speech you
pointed at, but long before Jefferson picked up his pen the Camino
Real ran through "what is now the US", a couple of miles away from my
house...and the generations of folks born here by then were I'm sure
already thinking of themselves as "not Europeans" (i.e, some "variant"
of Mexican).

Um, "not Europeans" does not translate into "some 'variant' of Mexican." AFAIK,
there were not substantive numbers of those people who would have called
themselves the Nahuatl variant of "Mexican" near Santa Fe. I'm not a scholar of
the Nahua or the Nahuatl languages, but from what I understand, even those that
are such cannot agree on the exact origins of where the transliterated word
"Mexico" came, beyond that it comes from some Nahuatl word, poss. "Mexica" or
similar, in use around what is now the State of Mexico - the _State_, not the
country - in what is now the central area of the country of "Mexico." It is
clear, however, that calling all citizens from the post-independence country of
"Mexico" (United Mexican States) "Mexicans" is a 19th century and later thing.
Simply put, people with no Spanish contact could not have called _any_ place
"Mexico" (or themselves "Mexicans") because it is a Spanish word created by
transliteration.

IAC, Jefferson's pen being picked up was as a _result_ of the idea of a/the
"United States of America" (the US-centric idea of "America") rather than him
doing so was the germination of the idea. And the idea of "America" - the "New
World" idea of all of N. and S. America - was Spanish, and Jefferson's writings
are more in contrast to the Spanish "New Spain"/"America" idea and certainly
could not have influenced it.

HTH,
R

http://www.santafe400th.com/

HTH,

Jon.