The New York Times has just published an op-ed article saying that Mexico may give up its rightful claim to ownership of Texas, California and the entire Southwest of the United States, but only if the U.S. government gives the hugely valuable prize of U.S. citizenship to many millions of Mexicans — plus citizenship for all their kids and grandkids, on and on, forever.

The infinitely valuable compensation is justified because today’s Americans must wipe away the moral stain of war crimes committed in the 1840s by the U.S. military and government, says the op-ed by a Mexican historian and author, Enrique Krauze, who notably declined to forswear a alternative Mexican reconquista of the Southwest.

MEXICO CITY — The United States invasion of Mexico in 1846 inflicted a painful wound that, in the 170 years that followed, turned into a scar. Donald Trump has torn it open again… … some Mexicans are proposing to remind Mr. Trump exactly what country was the first victim of American imperialism. They are calling for a lawsuit that would aim to nullify the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (signed on Feb. 2, 1848), in which Mexico — invaded by American soldiers, its capital occupied, its ports and customs stations seized — was forced to accept the American annexation of Texas and concede more than half the rest of Mexican territory, now including most of the states of Arizona, New Mexico and California… For us Mexicans, this is the chance for a kind of reconquest. Surely not the physical reconquest of the territories that once were ours. Nor an indemnification that should have been much greater than the feeble amount of $15 million that the American government paid, in installments, for the stolen land. We need a reconquest of the memory of that war so prodigal in atrocities inspired by racial prejudices and greed for territorial gain. But the best and most just reparation would be American immigration reform that could open the road to citizenship for the descendants of those Mexicans who suffered the unjust loss of half their territory.

The entire article is here.