I guess I should be more specific. During slavery time in the USA, did they ever sold, trade and enslave the Mexicans? You hear a lot about black people and the slavery history but you never hear if Mexican had any rights or were also treated like property. (Not good with words)
Even in the early 1900s, you hear about African Americans living in segregated communities but I never heard if Mexicans were also segregated. Tried getting info on Google but I couldn't find anything.
Bonus and last question. How did the USA become the only "America" with foreigners and literally anyone in the USA? To provide more context: People in the USA consider themselves as Americans and anyone from the rest of the Americas is not? (Hopefully this is not controversial)
Thanks!
Well, ´Mexicans´ is a rather complicated term, as it mostly refers to citizens of modern-day Mexico, consisting of both native-American peoples and those who arrived later. Regarding the term ´America´, technically this term applies to all people living in North or South America, but with one particular country calling itself ´The United States of America´, refering to ´a collection of states located in the continents of America´, people often also began to use the term to shorten the name of that country. Since that same country is also by far the most powerful country in all of the Americas and therefore the most talked about this usage of the name began to dominate the other, but there are definitely people in the rest of the America´s who feel that the term ´Americans´ refers to them as well.
When the Europeans arrived in the Americas (first in Central America and the Caribbean), they most certainly did enslave the native American peoples they met there, in both North and South America. However, partly due to the spread of deadly diseases to the native peoples, there were simply not enough slaves for the European´s needs, and they quickly began to bring enslaved people from Africa to the America´s. Over time, the relative proportian of native American slaves declined compared to that of African slaves. In interesting footnote here is that there was a legal difference between slavery in Latin America (South America plus Central America and Mexico) and slavery in ´British America´, since slavery was technically not allowed in Latin-America - not that it made much difference.
From here on, it gets a little bit more complicated.
In Latin America, before the arrival of the Europeans, the native peoples largely lived in big sophisticated, centralized societies resembling those in Europe, while this was less the case in the northern parts of the America´s. The result of this was that the Europeans had very little difficulty in taking over the native peoples in Latin America and ´integrating´ them into their empire. In the British colonies, however, this was not the case and instead the Europeans often tried to eliminate the native populations or expel them away from their ever-expanding colonies.
Because of this, the native peoples in ´British America´ were much more ´other´ than those in Latin America. In Latin America, the Casta system emerged, a hierarchy based on ´European-ness´. In the British colonies, the equivalent, based on ´African´/´Native´/´European´, was more simple, but also a lot more rigid as in that there was a less miscegenation (the mixing of different racial groups) and there was a bigger difference in legal standing between the groups. I.e., Latin America societies were based on a ´spectrum´ between ´European´ (white skin colour) and ´less European´ (non-white skin colour), while in the USA, society was based on a system consisting of three groups: native Americans, African-Americans, and European-Americans.
Now we finally arrive at the answer to your main question. As I explained, we cannot really use the term ´Mexicans´ here as it would include ´Europeans´ too. However, assuming you meant to refer to native Americans, this was absolutely the case. As the British colonies and later the USA continued to expand, the native Americans were often forced to live in reservations, which still exist today.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 required that Mexicans in the new American southwest be enumerated as "white" for census and legal purposes. While they did suffer discrimination from "Anglo" culture, Mexican Americans could not be bought and sold as slaves under law and technically had the same legal due process rights as other free citizens. Many in Latin America today consider themselves to be "American" as well as citizens of their country and find the United States expropriation of the word to be anything from amusing to irritating.
I know of one. After the Texan defeat of Santa Anna's army at the Battle of San Jacinto, Texas leaders did not know what to do with Mexican prisoners of war, so they started leasing them out to any local family who would clothe and feed them. One leasee was the Governor of Mississippi John Quitman, who had come to Texas to buy land. While the rest of the POWs were eventually released, Quitman apparently wanted to keep one of his laborers so he sent him home to Mississippi to be a stock drover on his plantation. I don't what happened to him after that.
Source: Torget, Andrew. Seeds of Empire: Cotton, Slavery, and the Transformation of the Texas Borderlands, 1800-1850. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2016, 180-183.