That was just before the blight appeared in earnest and began wiping out the potato crop. Combined with the fumbling attempts by the "Brits" to patch up the situation with as little expense to themselves or humanity shown to the starving masses, disaster ensued.

Here, of course, many horrific accounts of starvation, desperation, and madness generally are given room to testify. "The Great Hunger," as it is known, was vast and too much, really, to begin to contemplate in a post not entirely focused solely on that topic. But your heart sinks low when you come upon a chapter heading called "Coffin Ships."

As the history books tell it, Ireland's terrible famine took about twenty-five percent of the entire population. On the way, people fled. People made journeys to find food. To find land where you they once again could feed themselves and their family. And of course, this reaction to hunger is something we all share. This need to eat and what one will do and how far one will go to satisfy this need is something lying at the bottom of every human's belly. Fences, valleys, deserts, oceans, we will go there. Even if it means breaking up the family, even if it meant sending younger or stronger family members across first.

As a rule, families en masse did not emigrate, younger members of it did. So much so that emigration almost became a rite of passage [...] The emigrant started a new life in a new land, sent remittances "reached £1,404,000 by 1851"[87] back to his/her family in Ireland which, in turn, allowed another member of the family to emigrate.

—Wikipedia, The Great Hunger: Emigration

And what (and how) did the Irish do when they finally reached this land of opportunity? For they were hardly celebrated and welcome. They were hardly (yet) part of the US that now looks down on the new THEM.

Upon arrival in America, the Irish found the going to be quite tough. With no one to help them, they immediately settled into the lowest rung of society and waged a daily battle for survival.

The roughest welcome of all would be in Boston, Massachusetts, an Anglo-Saxon city with a population of about 115,000. It was a place run by descendants of English Puritans, men who could proudly recite their lineage back to 1620 and the Mayflower ship. Now, some two hundred thirty years later, their city was undergoing nothing short of an unwanted "social revolution" as described by Ephraim Peabody, member of an old Yankee family. [...]

Proper Bostonians pointed and laughed at the first Irish immigrants stepping off ships wearing clothes twenty years out of fashion. They watched as the newly arrived Irishmen settled with their families into enclaves that became exclusively Irish near the Boston waterfront along Batterymarch and Broad Streets, then in the North End section and in East Boston. Irishmen took any unskilled jobs they could find such as cleaning yards and stables, unloading ships, and pushing carts.

And once again, they fell victim to unscrupulous landlords. This time it was Boston landlords who sub-divided former Yankee dwellings into cheap housing, charging Irish families up to $1.50 a week to live in a single nine-by-eleven foot room with no water, sanitation, ventilation or daylight.

—The History Place, The Irish Potato Famine: Gone to America

Hunger. Exodus. Families breaking up. Othering and ridiculing. Claiming lineage on a piece of land as superiority and reason for human rights you deny others. Exploiting the poor. Enclaves of huddled scared communities.

How quickly we forget what it means to be hungry, and how forgivable (and understandable and human and brave) it is to do something as small as cross a sea or a desert to feed yourself, and to live. How easily we overlook the very same patterns taking place in almost the very same order. How tenacious we US citizens are in our trajectories of ignorance. How unfeeling it seems to me, now that we are mostly fatty and faraway from such days, to be locking up families, children and all, in prison camps for following their hunger.

For those on the "lowest rung," there are few options. There is stealing, begging, working jobs most people avoid, and joining the army. Many of these Irish immigrants did just that, they enlisted in the USA's army in order to gain citizenship. And promptly were sent West, where they would be ensnared in America's attempt to possess half of Mexico's land in what US citizens call "The Mexican American War," and what some others call the Invasion del Norte or La Intervención Norteamericana.

Unfortunately, many US Citizens do not know much about the Mexican American war. I don't say "unfortunately" from any ethnocentric stance, but because we give up the biggest lessons when we do not record and remember history properly.

In many classes and books the invasion into Mexico and subsequent land grab is either omitted or given the usual treatment, which is propaganda heavily slanted in an attempt to lead children to believe that the invasion into Mexico and subsequent "purchase" of half of the country for 15 million dollars was a righteous American deed. Much like the government attempts today with the invasion, occupation, and theft of Iraq('s resources). We do not delve into President Polk's machinations—much as the current "President," george w bush hopes that his agenda and motives leading up to the war will be somehow glossed over by a citizenry he thinks foolish and unable to stop suckling televsion sets that repeat the standard talking points. We do not dwell on the parts of the Tratado de Guadalupe Hidalgo (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo) that our own government saw fit to renege on, or edit to its liking (after signing), much as today's US government hopes that nobody is paying attention to the joke being made of Iraq's "autonomy," of their fledgling and "independent" government process.

But the new US Army recruits, those Irish immigrants of yesterday, fresh from the cold grip of colonization and English cruelty and terrible bouts of hunger from which the powerful over them only ignored or reasoned away, recognized oppression when they saw it.

These Irish soldiers noticed many similarities between their treatment by England and what the United States was trying to do to Mexico. Additionally these Irish soldiers were treated poorly by their Protestant officers and never really liked the idea of fighting a Catholic country like Mexico. The US army would not allow Irish soldiers to attend mass and many began to cross over into Mexico on Sundays to attend religious services. Soldiers who had fought against each other all week quickly became friends after realizing their common religious bond and struggle from oppressive actions of primarily English countries.

Led by Captain John Riley, approximately 800 soldiers left the US army to join the Mexicans in their fight against the United States. Irish soldiers who left to fight for Mexico before war was officially proclaimed were considered deserters while those who left after were labeled defectors by the United States Army. To the Mexicans they were considered heroes and called “Los San Patricios”, the Saint Patrick’s Brigade or “Los Colorados” because of their red hair.

The San Patricios were fierce fighters who knew they would be put to death by US troops if captured. Knowing their fate they refused to surrender and were responsible for large numbers of casualties to the US Army forces.

—Mexican St. Patrick’s Day. No Pot of Gold for the Irish.

This bears underlining. Irish immigrants who by every right ought to have been happy to eat three meals a day, to not watch each other waste away and starve before each others' eyes, to be in a new powerful land not under the grip of a colonizer—left their new benefactor. Of course they risked death, and found it, but imagine that.

All because they did not want to be in the house of the conqueror, even well-fed. They did not want to join the new oppressor, risking life and a full belly (the latter only seeming to be a smaller thing to risk to those of us who are well fed) in order to join up with their conscience. And the Mexicans!

These were Los San Patricios, and I write today not only to underline the similarities in these oppression and war stories; not only to underline these patterns in those seeking salvation in the Free Market, greed, and subsequent reaction by the People, but to recognize on this St. Patrick's day, the fine spirit of the Irish, and especially those who came to the aid of Madre México and her own people on the verge of invasion and domination, and what those Irish must surely have seen as the all-too familar shape of oppression.

After the war was lost, Mexico ceded half of its land to the United States. Captured members of the St. Patrick’s Battalion who deserted the US Army before war was officially announced had their faces branded with the letter “D”. Those who left the US Army to fight for Mexico after war was announced were considered traitors and hung. Over a two day period the US Army lynched 50 members of the St. Patrick’s Brigade in what is considered to be the largest lynching in US military history and an example of national intolerance to the Irish.

Mexicans honor the San Patricios or St. Patricks Brigade with celebrations on September 12, the anniversary of their lynching by the US Army and March 17th. In San Angel, a suburb of Mexico City, a plaque lists the names of the Irish San Patricios who died while fighting to prevent United States domination of Mexico.

—Proud to Live in America, Mexican St. Patrick’s Day. No Pot of Gold for the Irish.

Beware. Beware of the thing that is coming. Beware of the risen people, who shall take what ye would not give. Did you think to conquer the people? Or that law is stronger than life, or than man's desire to be free?

—Padraig Pearse's, The Rebel, sombrero tip