“Survival of the Fittest”: Populationist Influence on U.S. Colonial Expansion

This essay follows the historical and ideological veins of U.S. biopolitical violence against Mexican bodies, drawing on Michel Foucault’s theory of biopolitics and the legacy of Malthusianism. I analyze how nineteenth-century figures like Josiah Strong fused racist pseudoscience, religious rhetoric, and populationist discourse to legitimize colonial expansion, which necessitated the disciplining of racialized bodies. These frameworks persist in contemporary practices, such as the forced sterilization of Mexican women in 1960s Los Angeles and the ongoing War on Drugs, which disproportionately harms Mexican and Latinx communities. Drawing on scholars like Jade S. Sasser and Oswaldo Zavala, the paper argues that U.S. governmental policies continue to be informed by a logic of “survival of the fittest” and Anglo-Saxon exceptionalist theology, constructing Mexican populations as threats. This rhetoric is used to justify state violence as a project of security and progress, ultimately obscuring the ongoing project of extermination.