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."
------------------------------------------
With Presidents Clinton and Bush both supporting the idea of handing the Serbian province of Kosovo-Metohija to the illegal Albanian Muslim immigrants, why should these people think they can’t steal a chunk of the US, too?
Of course, this will probably result in all of them then leaving Aztlan in search of jobs in areas still run by “Europeans”! LOL!
There’s something wrong. Every one of these cartoons is in English. Why aren’t they in Spanish? Or better yet, in Nahuatl or Mayan?
I don't believe this for an instant.
Yeah, like Santa Anna's 8,000 troops giving no quarter against some 200 men in an old mission called the Alamo...
If the "Europeans" hadn't won a legal war for the land and then settled and developed it, you wouldn't want to migrate to our country. If it weren't for the "Europeans," the land that is now the United States would just be an extension of that cesspool south of our borders.
The Spanish came along, kicked their asses, and legitimately stole Mexico from them---just as THEY had stolen it from the original people.
You need to add what they did to the men at Goliad.
Even if you were right - which you're not - the ground rules for this movement, and the basis for Aztlan, is "(A) Movement, which advocates on behalf of 'indigenous Americans,' or those people without European ancestry."
That would exclude Mestizo, and that would be more like 97% of the population.
Sorry, I make the way too common mistake of always forgetting the Goliad Massacre of James Fannin's force of about 350 men about 3 weeks after the fall of the Alamo. Though "Remember the Alamo!" was the battlecry most remembered down through the ages, the Texicans at San Jacinto also screamed "Remember Goliad!" as they routed Santa Aanna.
And the Elite in Mexico may be 90% European. Many of them look Spaniard with no Indian influence whatsoever.
Mexico is a very racists country. All of their politicians and TV personalities look Spanish while the poor are Indian.
Check your facts before saying I’m not right (and see post #30). Spaniards are much paler than these guys; they are American Indian who happen to speak Spanish, like our full-blooded Indians speak English. However, I agree that if they had to prove NO European blood whatsoever, that would be hard to do.
And if they think they're going to take it from us they have no idea how bloody the fight will be. They'll be running across that Mexican border with their tails between their legs.
This is what happens when you get 20 million peasants from a lawless country invading the USA. Sooner or later, they will riot, and they will lose.
Spaniards are often blond or red haired and blue eyed (not always). Since they pretty much run the place, there is a kind of color hierarchy there as well as there is in the Caribbean (and Asia, truth be told).
Original people are either same as American Indians or, much less common, strikingly distinct from them or from either of the others. The Apache in our movies were largely from Mexico, further, the border splits many 'natural' tribal boundaries between the two countries - that's a real problem with stopping ALL cross border traffic (see To'hono Odam etc). Think of the many variants on 'American Indian' that suggest Bering bridge origins versus all those pre-Colombian statues at the museum.
By far most Mexicans are Mestizo, European (Spanish) and Indian mix; hence the raised hackles over calling themselves 'La Raza'. The 'average Mexican' isn't in charge of a whole lot within Mexico and most of 'our' illegals come from that class.
Like every other place in the world, just about everyone there was an invader at one time or another but in Mexico it's hard to find the 'absence of European blood'. (PS: LONG time ago I had an interest in Arizona indians, the locals imported dancers etc. from Mexico for their festivals - saying it was a form of charity for lower class indians south of the border; class consciousness isn't limited to any particular group)
Y’OK We’ll take back our super markets, malls, vehicles, houses, modern medicine, plumbing, electricity, printing press, radio, TV, cell-phones, welfare, education, civil rights under the Constitution, modern medicine and obstetrics and hospitals, heat and AC, and of cource the wicked European internet and computers...
Good luck with your lean tos, skins and spears...and drum communication system...
Go practice your lovely human sacrifice to ensure a good harvest this year...
No this is not like “the same stunt that the Maori pulled off in Austrailia?”
Why would the Maoris from New Zealand (an island group in Polynesia) go 2,000 miles to the island continent of Australia and “pull a stunt” ?
The Aboriginies in Australia would not like that one bit....
Just how ignorant are you?........
They may be 90% indian, but try telling the Apache and Comanche and Navajo that the southwest should belong to mexikindians.
REG: They’ve bled us white, the b*****ds. They’ve taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers’ fathers.
LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
REG: Yeah.
LORETTA: And from our fathers’ fathers’ fathers’ fathers.
REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don’t labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
XERXES: The aqueduct?
REG: What?
XERXES: The aqueduct.
REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that’s true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.
LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
REG: Yeah. All right. I’ll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
MATTHIAS: And the roads.
REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don’t they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads—
COMMANDO: Irrigation.
XERXES: Medicine.
COMMANDOS: Huh? Heh? Huh...
COMMANDO #2: Education.
COMMANDOS: Ohh...
REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
COMMANDO #1: And the wine.
COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah...
FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that’s something we’d really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
COMMANDO: Public baths.
LORETTA: And it’s safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let’s face it. They’re the only ones who could in a place like this.
COMMANDOS: Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES: Brought peace.
REG: Oh. Peace? Shut up!
Good point, but would the Apache et al prefer mexikindians to European Americans? I suspect that the chicanos have no designs on the reservation lands.
That’s right, it was in NZ that they pulled this crap. Thanks for pointing that out, NOOB.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.