Posted on 07/03/2007 7:57:50 AM PDT by SJackson
Left-Wing Extremists Want to 'Reconquista' Southwest
By Jeff Golimowski and Katherine Poythress
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer and Correspondent
July 03, 2007
(CNSNews.com) - A webpage featuring pictures of Uncle Sam in a 15th century suit of armor with the words "I want you to come back to Europe!" is one of the worst nightmares of the anti-immigrant movement.
"We're angry enough to say the problem is that Europeans forced their way into our continent, maybe they should go home," said Olin Tezcatlitoca, who runs the site. "This is outrageous for us who are indigenous people to be told we cannot migrate on our own land."
Tezcatlitoca is the leader of a tiny group called the "Mexica Movement," which advocates on behalf of "indigenous Americans," or those people without European ancestry.
"Kind of like the Jews wanted to take their land back after 2,000 years," said Tezcatlitoca. "We're saying we lost this land 150 years ago in a clearly unjust war, in a clearly racist war against our people."
Groups like Tezcatlitoca's are taking fire from mainstream pro-immigrant groups such as the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) and from observers of the immigration debate.
"It's a red herring, it's a logical fallacy," said Devin Burghart of the Chicago-based Building Democracy Initiative (www.buildingdemocracy.org).
The BDI mission statement says the group "counters organized racism, anti-immigrant activity, and other forms of bigotry through strategic research, community organizing, education and training around the globe." It means addressing extremists on either side of the debate and debunking what the group calls myths.
"Racist conspiracy theories permeate virtually entire anti-immigrant movements," said Burghart.
He said groups like the Mexica Movement are so small and so far out on the fringe that they are not worth talking about. But another group, Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), does get talked about, often in the context of a conspiracy to "reconquista," or reconquer, the Southwestern United States.
Born of left-wing radicalism in the 1960s, MEChA's constitution refers to continuing "the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlan."
Aztlan refers to a legendary homeland for those of Mexican descent in the Southwestern United States and Northern Mexico. Other MEChA documents refer to plans for mobilizing Chicano youth for "self defense against the occupying forces of the oppressors."
Yet, according to observers on the left and the right, the modern MEChA movement is run by college students and focuses mainly on encouraging Latino high school students to go to college and the retention of Latino students already enrolled in universities.
Indeed, the group is so decentralized that Cybercast News Service could not even locate a national spokesperson. Several messages for campus organizers to comment on this article went unreturned.
Burghart said MEChA is being used as a bogeyman by the anti-immigrant movement.
"It's clear that what's happened is from whatever remnants [of 1960s radicalism] may have existed ... the idea has been racialized and blown up to the point that all brown skinned people have become co-conspirators," he said.
The problem has become so acute that NCLR includes a statement on its website distancing itself from the idea of Aztlan and the more radical elements of MEChA, or any separatist Hispanic movement.
Adding gasoline to the fire - sometimes literally - is the presence of ultra-leftist anarchist groups at many of the major demonstrations on the West Coast. These groups may lack a coherent political agenda, but they often refer to police and state authorities as rightists or fascists.
"It puts a great deal of pressure on law enforcement" when these groups show up, said Rick Eaton of the anti-racism Simon Wiesenthal Center.
"They've been taking advantage of both sides. They showed up at the Echo Park [pro-immigrant] rally... they've shown up at white supremacist rallies," said Eaton. "There's almost no talk about that ... but you can clearly see them if you look at the tapes."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a liberal advocacy group that tracks fringe groups - and whose methodology has at times been called into question - said that the number of extremist pro-immigrant groups is a fraction of those espousing neo-Nazi and white supremacist ideology.
The center does concede, however, that the fringe has a disproportionate impact, especially in the anti-immigrant movement.
The SPLC's Mark Potock claimed that "conspiracy theories" about Aztlan originated among far-right "hate groups" and later worked their way into the wider debate.
For his part, Mexica's Tezcatlitoca said he'll continue to try and get his group's agenda into the national debate on immigration. He describes NCLR as a "mainstream organization which isn't working in the interests of the people" and views MEChA as being "more like college party clubs."
"We want to reframe this whole question, not about our people being illegals but about Europeans being illegal," said Tezcatlitoca. "It's something that European people should be ashamed of ... when they say 'Okay, how can we right this?' then we can have a real discussion."
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WE ARE NICAN TLACA!
The Indigenous People of This Continent!
We Are The True Owners of This Continent!
We Have The Human Right
To Struggle To Be Free
From European Colonialism!
WE ARE NOT OUR IDENTITY IS EUROPEANS WILL NOT DEFINE WHO WE ARE OR WHAT IS OUR LAND OR WHAT OUR RIGHTS ARE! THIS IS A TERRORIST, A CRIMINAL, AN EARLY NAZI DON'T CALL US ILLEGALS ON OUR OWN LAND Your 1492 Illegal Borders On Our Land Do Not Divide Our People Or OUR CONTINENT!
To cover up a crime is equal to the original crime. This pope is participating in the Genocide and the enslavement of our people
HISPANIC OR LATINO!
NOT AS MESTIZOS
NOT AS "RAZA"
YAWN ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
Sure, and al-Qaeda is just a college fraternity.
National Council of La Raza ...the Klan with a Tan
WTF?!?!
They had to get their shot in at the catholic church, I see.
Spanish speaking Mexicans want to migrate back to Spain it seems?
Well if Tezcatlitoca is 100% pre-columbian aborigine let him say it, but if he is typical of almost all Mexicans then he is at least 1/3 european, and if that’s the case what third of himself would he like to send back
Their land?? We won it fair and square- the Mexicans should have fought harder...
First the Amerinds let the Europeans in without documentation, now they want to reverse process? Pretty amusing, really....
I have yet to see a Spanish-English dictionary that does NOT define "raza" as "race."
The elite in Mexico may be 1/3 European, but the peasant stock coming in as cheap labor are 90% indian.
If Mexico still controlled California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, those states would be called:
Corruptona
Povertinia
Nuevo Diseasos
and
Trashes.
If Mexico still controlled those four states, they would be poverty stricken, disease ridden, corrupt, trashy hellholes and the Mexican government would be sending their under-educated poverty cases our way to the remaining 46 states.
DOES ANYONE DOUBT THIS???
...,,,,,And, oh, by the way, when I mentioned under-educated - I put the blame for that ON THE MEXICAN GOVERNMENT.
LOL
“We’re angry enough to say the problem is that Europeans forced their way into our continent, maybe they should go home,” said Olin Tezcatlitoca, who runs the site. “This is outrageous for us who are indigenous people to be told we cannot migrate on our own land.”
So really, they should be tossing out all the people of Spanish decent from Messico......Fox, Calderon, and all the rest of the euro-elites.
That’s great, they’re entitled to have their own little civil war down there....have at it.
What do the ...err...."native American Indians" have to say about this? Didn't they "invade" from the land bridge?
I love all those red Xes, by the way.
ping
This must be something that they don't teach in Mexican schools.
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