The League of Latin-American Citizens was one of several self-protection organizations formed by U.S. citizens of Hispanic heritage in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The end of the U.S. War with Mexico in 1848, and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo afterward, incorporated a large Hispanic population into the United States. Those people, many of them descendants of the original Hispanic settlers, found themselves bound increasingly often by discriminatory practices put in place by Anglo settlers in the area. Within a couple of generations, Mexican Americans began to organize to protect themselves against discrimination.