The Other Side: Fifteen Mexicans and an American

Manifest Destiny provided the rationale for American violence, manipulation, and greed during the MexicanAmerican War. This paper argues that Albert C. Ramsey’s The Other Side: or Notes for the History of the War Between Mexico and the U.S., a translation of a Mexican account of the war, Apuntes para la Historia de la Guerra entre México y los Estrados-Unidos, attributed to Ramón Alcaraz, depicts the Mexican perspective on the war to counter the misrepresentations of Mexico by his American peers. Using the critical lens of postcolonial theory, my research method consists of a close reading and comparative analysis of the primary cartographic sources and portraits of historical figures in the English text and the equivalent illustrations from the Spanish text. It concludes that, through the translation of the historical narrative composed by fifteen contributing Mexican authors, the use of the same primary cartographic sources, and the exclusion of the American portraits, Ramsey’s version reveals a conscious effort to illustrate the Mexican perspective.