ABSTRACT
Between 1848 and 1928, mobs lynched an unknown number of Mexicans. Comprehensive data are hard to obtain, but we have strong, specific, and reliable evidence for 547 cases (as well as probable evidence for many more incidents). Western historians have portrayed extra-legal violence as the result of rapid economic and population growth, which outpaced the development of legal and governmental institutions and forced frontiersmen to take the law into their own hands. However, the lynching of Mexicans occurred in areas where there was a fully operating legal system and often involved the collusion of law officers themselves.
