Using San Miguel County in northern New Mexico as a case study, this dissertation explores the ways in which nuevomexicanos sought some measure of control over the terms of their incorporation into the United States after the Mexican War. A reexamination of the Gorras Blancas or "White Caps," a secret society of fence cutters, lies at the core of this study. While they are commonly portrayed as primitive rebels or social bandits struggling against the onslaught of capitalism and modernization in the quintessential expression of nuevomexicano resistance to the American conquest, previously untapped sources reveal otherwise. Rather than trying to overturn the Anglo capitalist order, many of the alleged fence cutters were striving to carve out a better place for themselves within that system. Indeed, they pursued a variety of complex and often contradictory strategies to define the terms of their incorporation.

This dissertation explores the ways in which a group of nuevomexicanos--including alleged fence cutters-- asserted an American identity void of race in order to buttress their claims to land and demand recognition of their rights as legitimate citizens of the United States. They did so by joining the Knights of Labor, organizing a People's Party in San Miguel County, and adopting the symbol of the American flag and the icon of John Brown. The alternative political discourse they offered both preceded and overlapped what other scholars have identified as the emergence of a Spanish-American identity. It was ultimately abandoned, however, because the conflation of whiteness and citizenship was too entrenched in the late nineteenth century for a non-racialized American identity to be accepted.