“You do not find expressions like ‘derived from “Indigenous Savages” and “Cannibal ancestors”’ in any way racist?”
No, and as a matter of fact while they are not sympathetic, perhaps the only criticism is that I left out “Stone Age” from what more accurately should have been “Indigenous Stone Age Savages”.
Probably, the reason we won and the Savages lost was the technology and the nation state versus tribal organization of the Europeans.
Please remember that Columbus described cannibalism and the fattening of humans for food as being practiced by the natives in the islands he first discovered in the New World.
Killing people is one thing. Making livestock of them is another. We disagree on the depth and width of the cultural chasm separating America from what lurks beyond the US/Mexico border.
If you do not understand the full horror of being marched long distances to be used as a slave and then eaten, nothing I can write will make any difference.
No, my problem lies in your assumption that the descendants of people who did those things 500 years ago are still savages. And yet we, whose ancestors killed far greater numbers of people, are completely removed from that, because we just tortured and murdered entire villages before burning them, but we didn’t eat any of the victims, instead leaving them to rot.
And despite the theories of Bernal Díaz, William H. Prescott, Marvin Harris and Michael Harner, there is no great consensus of major, systematic cannibalism, though there is considerable evidence of some cannibalism.
The conquistador Bernal Díaz has one of the few firsthand accounts, though deeply colored because just about every time he and his expeditions met Indians, they tried to take Indians as slaves and ended up fighting them. It was written by him 50 years after the events, to rebut another book written on the subject by someone who hadn’t been there.
Prescott’s assumption of cannibalism was mostly guesswork he made in the 19th Century, and though popular as a lurid theory is not very authoritative.
Marvin Harris was a Marxist-Malthusian, which pretty much kills his credibility right there. Describing the Aztecs in Marxist terms sort of falls flat.
Harner, now head of the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, is seen as the UC Berkeley equivalent of UCLA’s Carlos Castaneda; of the firm belief that a good narrative is far more important than inconclusive facts.
The bottom line here is that you need to reevaluate your prejudices. Mexicans are not heathen cannibals offering to gobble up Anglo babies after cutting out their hearts on stone pyramids. La Raza is pretty much a laughable organization that exists solely for the purpose of getting money from liberals in exchange for condemning America and getting Mexican Americans to vote for Democrats.
For the most part, Mexicans who become US citizens tend to integrate faster than most immigrants, work hard and have an entrepreneurial spirit, and the wealthier they become the more Republican they become.