User:LaloEsp/California Land Act of 1851

LAND GRANTS PAST
Article X of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, drafted by Bernardo Couto, Miguel Aristáin, and Luis Cuevas, was intended to protect the ownership rights of the land grants given during both the Spanish and Mexican administrations in Alta California [California as known today]. The article establishes that "All grants of land, made by the Mexican Government... will be respected as valid, to the same extent as they were granted". However the Congress if the United States eliminated this article after its revision on March 10, 1848.

The implications of the elimination caused conflict in validationg all the land grant drove the government of the California to launch the California Land Act of 1851. Moreover, James Crawford required that official proceedings in California be printed ONLY in English, the first “English only” rule in the US that lasted until 1966. This is a state (restate the state "CA" OR "Alta CA") that had almost no English speakers until the 1848 Gold Rush. The situation of language barriers now imposed by the previous rule meant a challenge for the land owners who desperately would start rushing to sell parts of their land to pay for assistance in the procedures of the Grant validation. "Legal battles have continued into the 21st century over the ownership of the land grants" and the problem remains as an unsolved injustice to native people to the land as a direct consequence of the Treaty of Guadalupe HIdalgo, which itself was the outcome of the Mexican-American war.

Today, the land where the famous cities are, like San Francisco, San Jose, and Palo Alto; the land history has in common a strong and capable woman who made it possible for the place to thrive in the early ages of its formation. This woman is not other tham Juana Briones ; whose early life started with her selling milk in Yerba Buena [today San Francisco], later on, Juana became the owner of Rancho La Purísima Concepción in Santa Clara County. The rancho had been part of Mission Santa Clara and was granted to Gorgonio, a well-respected Indian of that mission. Juana was a friend of Gorgonio and his family bought the 4,400-acre rancho from Gorgonio in 1844. The rancho took in what is today Sunnyvale and Los Altos. Later, she was one of the founding members of Mayfield (today's Palo Alto), where she lived until she died in 1889.