An Analysis of Images in Mexican-American War Literature

Political and social tensions between Mexico and the United States over land divisions created racial prejudices during the nineteenth century. The Mexican-American War following the annexation of Texas provided fuel for new animosities in depictions of Mexicans in images and narrative literature within U.S. culture. John Frost’s The Mexican War and its Warriors (1848) and other contemporary representations portrayed Mexicans as weak and untrustworthy cowards. My research uses theories of post-colonialism and Orientalism to argue that John Frost’s pictorial images and narratives of Mexicans were used as historical justifications for the intervention into Mexico.