The San Andreas Fault is the boundary between the North American and Pacific Plate.  Although it is considered the primary source of California tectonic activity, there are many features of the land forms and fault lines that are clearly the result of east-west compression. Look carefully at any map of the area and you will quickly recognize the patterns that prove this and the specific patterns caused by the Mexican Disconnection.

The Grand Canyon is generally believed have formed through erosion and the gradual change in elevation and slope of the western continent. This analysis shows that it is instead the result of the deep cracking of the crust as a direct consequence of the Mexican Disconnection.  This can be validated by checking for alignment of sediments and how they correspond to other alignments cited here.  Erosion and changing elevation played their parts, but he initial channel was the result of the cracking of the crust and separation due to the Mexican Disconnection.

Below southern Utah the sedimentary rock is shattered. The great layers of red sandstone that were deposited by the Cretaceous Sea were cracked and crushed by the northward thrust of the Mexican land mass. The irregular erosion of the red rocks throughout this region owe their existence to this tectonic action. The map above shows that there had to be a significant compression into this area to achieve today's alignments.

The Rio Grande Rift is the result of the northern portion of the Mexican land mass moving westward.  The northward pressure being applied by the subducting Cocos Plate on the southernmost Pacific coast of Mexico is causing the land mass to pivot on the central highlands heavy-spots.

The Rio Grande Rift is a north-south fracture in the earth's surface extending from Leadville, Colo., to Las Cruces, NM The 450 mile Rift was formed by the sinking of a large block of the earth's crust, creating a trough bounded  by mountains.

Here in the Rio Grande Rift we find much evidence that these pressures are both steady and current. The faults along which this downward motion occurred experience many small earthquakes establishing that the Rift is still actively growing.  Although it began to move upward about seven to ten million years ago, more recent geologic events such as the formation of volcanoes in the last 190,000 years have raised the ante in our bet against dramatic change. These volcanoes have emerged through the middle of the the rift, which has become a significant aquifer. A return to activity could be accompanied by explosive eruptions. In geological terms, the volcanos are recent, occurring in just a fiftieth of the life of the rift.  

The seven to ten million years age of the Rio Grande Rift is similar to the age of the Grand Canyon  and the Gulf of California, both also products of the same set of forces driving the Mexican Disconnection.

The Rocky Mountains form the continental divide and are generally the product of the continent's movement west on the North American plate and its subduction of the sea floor at its western edge. However, the Colorado Rockies are much higher and have younger features that are not easily attributed to the subduction scenario.

There are two issues that suggest that the Mexican Disconnection is the source of the Colorado Rockies difference. The first is the significant volcanism that has occurred in the Colorado Rockies during the last two million years and the second is the type and direction of the  faults in the region of greatest height.  The MD theory would suggest that northward pressure rather than westward pressure caused the most recent rise and that the volcanoes are due to deep fissures allowing lithospheric magma to rise, rather than bubbles of silicate melt from subducted material. Both types are present in the region, but the most recent volcanoes should be lithospheric magma if the MD theory is right.

The Mexican Disconnection Theory requires that the Mexican land mass be relatively monolithic in order to transfer forces from the south to the north. It does appear that this is so, but there are a series of a major faults through the middle of the land mass running east to west from Matamoros to Los Mochis.  None of these faults appear to be major separations or volcanic so we can assume that there is a transfer of forces south to north.

Southern Mexico's Pacific coast from Jalisco to Oxaca is the site of the Middle American Trench where the Cocos Plate is being subducted. It angles south for more than six hundred miles, most of it directly south of Texas. The region experiences almost continual tremors and earthquakes while the subducted plate is the source of numerous active volcanoes there.  The Mexican Disconnection Theory shows that the pressure from this subduction is breaking the Mexican Land mass loose from the rest of North America, but the biggest question is whether it is being done in a catastrophic way with major displacements spaced by thousands or even tens of thousands of years, or in a slow and deliberate way through continuous small earthquakes.

The Gulf of California Deflection is the size of the gulf today compared to what it was when it started.  The red on the map shows how much the land forms were moved in order to create the alignment illustrated. When making this map it is quite apparent that you cannot simply move Baja California south and have it match up in alignment because during its migration north, Mexico has moved east, bent by the pressure from the subduction of the Cocos Plate. The time that the Baja Peninsula has been traveling north and the time that Mexico has been pushed east is consistent with the age of the Grand Canyon and the Rio Grande  Rift.