Undermining Manifest Destiny: Intermarriages in Tucson, 1854–1930

White men married Mexican women at extremely high rates during the first three decades of Tucson’s incorporation as an American town, and intermarriages between the two groups remained frequent well into the twentieth century.  While these marriages were never illegal under Arizona law, they did represent a form of social and cultural transgression because they went against the tenets of manifest destiny that pervaded political and social commentary at the national and state levels.  The discourse of manifest destiny, in fact, explicitly identified Mexicans as a mongrel, undesirable race that threatened the racial purity of whites.  Marriages between whites and other groups, however, were illegal in Arizona until the early 1960s, and while whites almost never entered into unions with blacks and Asians, Mexicans—though legally barred— were, nonetheless, able to marry non-whites either via circumvention of the law or with the acquiescence of local officials.  The racial inbetweenness of Mexicans thus enabled to form families with both whites and non-whites. 

My paper focuses on these two forms of socio-cultural and legal transgression and emphasizes the primacy of the individual prerogative over the national interest.  It also provides substantial quantitative data to demonstrate the extent of the practice of intermarriage and its evolution over time.  It revises current historiography by demonstrating that intermarriages remained highly common in Tucson, especially for specific groups—like foreign white men—and under particular circumstances.  It also complements recent scholarship that challenges the long-held tenet that early intermarriages in the Southwest occurred primarily between enterprising white men and the daughters of the disappearing Mexican elites.