Did Texas Steal El Paso from New Mexico?

This article examines how the El Paso region became part of Texas in 1850, questioning the conventional narrative that Texas acquired the area honestly and with local support. It focuses on Robert S. Neighbors, a former Texas army officer appointed to organize Texas’s claim over a vast western territory, who succeeded only in El Paso by reportedly holding elections and establishing county government despite significant cultural, linguistic, and political barriers. The article highlights the region’s strong historical, ethnic, and economic ties to New Mexico and the Mexican population’s likely opposition to annexation by Texas, a slave state with a history of hostility toward Mexicans. Due to scant documentary evidence and inconsistencies in Neighbors’s account—such as the absence of a vote on annexation and the election of only Anglo officials in a predominantly Mexican area—the study raises doubts about the legitimacy and ethics of Texas’s acquisition of El Paso, suggesting the possibility that the region was effectively taken from New Mexico without genuine consent.