Is "reconquista" for real? Are there really ethnic separatist movements in the United States today?
Some people scoff at the whole idea, confident that all immigrants will assimilate, and don't want to turn the U.S. into the country from whence they came.
Others write off any talk about reconquista as a right-wing anti-immigrant fantasy.
More people are waking up, however, to see that there is more afoot than simply the isolated rantings of some radical professors (which is certainly part of it.)
Some rather concrete incidents are helping to wake people up. Such as the raising of the Mexican flag at the Montebello High School. Or the signs borne by marchers in pro-illegal alien demonstrations, signs that read "If you think I'm illegal because I'm a Mexican learn the true history because I'm in my homeland", "This is stolen land", "Stolen Continent" and "We are indigenous! The only owners of this continent."
The sheer arrogance and hubris of anti-American irredentists is alerting more and more Americans to the fact that, yes, there are people within our borders who don't want to be part of the U.S., who think they have a better claim on the land than we do, and who aren't too secretive about it.
But, what did we expect? You import millions of people from Mexico, the only country with an irredentist claim on the U.S.A . Then you encourage them not to assimilate. And, when they break your immigration law, you give them an amnesty. Our leaders invited this, and promoted it.
There really are irredentist/revanchist sentiments among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the U.S.A., and this is bound to grow and get worse. It will make Canada's Quebec problem look trivial by comparison.
Nevertheless, there is not, as some people imagine, one reconquista movement. All these revanchists/irredentists are not marching lockstep on the same sheet of music. On the contrary, the various Chicano/Mexican/Hispanic/Latino/reconquista/ Aztlan activists are indeed in agreement that their people (variously defined) are an oppressed nationality that needs liberation. But there are different currents with distinct ideologies. All would break up the U.S. or transform it, but they represent contradictory, even competing, visions of the future.
In fact, Mexico should realize that stirring up things in the U.S. could be counterproductive. Several of these irredentist currents are just as much a threat to Mexican sovereignty as they are to ours!
Let's consider some of the basic separationist movements.
The classic argument for reconquista was spelled out 25 years ago. In 1982, Mexican columnist Carlos Loret de Mola visited Los Angeles, California. He was intrigued by the burgeoning Mexican community there (which was much smaller than today's). Loret de Mola saw beyond the situation, and overcoming the traditional Mexican embarrassment over emigration, saw it as an opportunity for reconquest.
In his Excelsior column entitled The Great Invasion: Mexico Recovers Its Own, Loret de Mola exulted that:
"A peaceful mass of people, hardworking, carries out slowly and patiently an unstoppable invasion…You cannot give me a similar example of such a large migratory wave by an ant-like multitude, stubborn, unarmed, and carried on in the face of the most powerful and best-armed nation on earth. They have marked social and family characteristics, agility for adapting to the environment and for conquering a great region, once primitive and virgin, that belonged to our fatherland, and we lost it. But it seems to be slowly returning to the jurisdiction of Mexico without the firing of a single shot, nor requiring the least diplomatic action, by means of a steady, spontaneous, and uninterrupted occupation….The territory lost in the 19th century by a Mexico torn by internal strife and under centralist dictatorships led by paranoid chiefs, like Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, seems to be restoring itself through a humble people who go on settling various zones that once were ours on the old maps….Land, under any concept of possession, ends up in the hands of those who deserve it.
What Loret de Mola spells out here is a re-conquest of the U.S. Southwest by demography. Other Mexican writers have expressed similar sentiments, more recently Elena Poniatowska, who while visiting Venezuela in 2001, was quoted by a newspaper there:
"The Mexican writer Elena Poniatowska affirmed today that Mexico is presently recovering the territories lost in the past to the United States, thanks to emigration. 'The people of the poor, the lice-ridden and the cucarachas are advancing in the United States, a country that wants to speak Spanish because 33.4 million Hispanics impose their culture' affirmed Poniatowska …"" El Imparcial" (July 3rd, 2001),
In Mexico, it's writers and journalists who promote reconquista. Mexican politicians rarely mention it.
What the Mexican government does, however, is encourage and foster illegal immigration in various ways, and encourage Mexicans in the U.S., even dual citizens and Mexican-Americans, to identify with Mexico, not the U.S. Mexican government activity is not limited to the Southwest. Mexican consulates will meddle just as readily outside the Southwest as in it.
A formal annexation of the Southwest by Mexico is not implausible, but another option would be a form of condominium, in which the U.S. and Mexico share sovereignty. The U.S. would be responsible for maintaining the territory, Mexico would control the immigration policy, most of the people would be loyal to Mexico, and the U.S. would foot the bill.
Aztlan was the homeland of the Aztec people, but there's no consensus over where Aztlan was. In Mexico, they do not refer to the U.S. Southwest as Aztlan. Prominent Mexican archaeologist Eduardo Matos Moctezuma believes Aztlan was in Central Mexico (far from the Southwest) and the state of Nayarit (Pacific Coast) includes Aztlan on its state coat of arms believing that Aztlan was in Nayarit. My Mexican wife never heard of the Aztlan / Southwest identification until I told her about it.
Chicano activists say that Aztlan was in the U.S. Southwest. They may be right about that part. Linguistically you could make a case for it. There are various Indian tribes in the region, including the Comanche, Shoshone and Hopi, who speak languages of the greater Uto-Aztecan language family. Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, was also a branch of that family. (For the perspective of Comanche David Yeagley on the matter, read here).
Even so, that's a flimsy reason to lay claim to the region. In the first place, all Mexicans are not descended from the Aztecs. In the second place, just because a person's ancestors lived or passed through a region, doesn't give his descendents title over it.
The principal (though not only) organization teaching the Aztlan doctrine is MEChA, acronym for Movimiento Estudiantil de Chicanos de Aztlan.
This organization exists and has received tax dollars on university campuses and high schools in the Southwest—and even outside the region.
MEChA has gained notoriety in recent years, as its first generation has come of age politically. California politicos Antonio Villaraigosa and Cruz Bustamante were MEChistas during their college days, and have publicly refused to repudiate their connection.
Defenders of MEChA claim that it is not irredentist; it's just a pro-Chicano organization. Yet, its philosophical statement presents it as an organization "founded on the principles of self-determination for the liberation of our people…" See the infamous
In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent
Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlán.
This has never been repudiated. Why not?
This scheme is the brainchild of University of New Mexico Chicano Studies Professor Charles Truxillo, who calls it an inevitability.
Professor Truxillo doesn't want Mexico to reconquer the Southwest. He does want the Southwest to secede from the U.S. He also predicts that the northern states of Mexico will secede from Mexico. Then the ex-U.S. southwest and the ex-northern Mexico will together form the Republica del Norte (Republic of the North), with its capital at Los Angeles.
Truxillo foresees these changes happening peacefully, through demographic and political reasons. In 2000, he predicted it would come about by 2080. "I may not live to see the Hispanic homeland, but by the end of the century my students' kids will live in it, sovereign and free." To further the development of the new republic, Truxillo is developing a "cadre of intellectuals" to work out the details in the plan. [Southwest shall secede from U.S., prof predicts, by Frank Zoretich, Albuquerque Tribune, January 31, 2000]
Truxillo also predicts that eastern Mexico will also secede to form the "Mayan Republic". So in Truxillo's scenario, not only will Mexico not gain territory, but it will actually wind up considerably smaller than it is now.
Here's a map of Professor Truxillo's prediction .You might file it away to refer to in 2080!
Truxillo foresees more breaking up throughout the continent: Quebec breaking off from Canada and the U.S. breaking up into various pieces. Truxillo envisions Mexico breaking up into three pieces: the northern part, that will join the Republica del Norte, the eastern part, which will secede and be called Mayaland, and central Mexico, which will remain part of Mexico.
Another interesting point. Remember the outcry about Samuel Huntington? Well, Truxillo agrees with Huntington, and, like others, views the conflict between Mexico and the U.S. being a continuation of the conflict between Elizabethan England and Spain of the Spanish Armada days.
The Mexica movement doesn't fit into any of the previous categories I have mentioned. They're not into the Aztlan stuff, they don't support the Republica del Norte. And they don't want Mexico to reconquer the U.S. Southwest, because they don't like Mexico either.
The Mexica claim to speak for all the indigenous people of North America—from Alaska to Panama—whom they refer to as the "Nican Tlaca" and the continent as Anahuac.
The movement's leader is Olin Tezcatlipoca (born Leo Guerra, but he wanted a more indigenous-sounding name). This movement rejects the labels "Hixpanic" and "Latino" as being European based.
This movement does not recognize any borders on the North American continent, and they reject the legitimacy of any of the 10 governments on the continent, including the U.S. and Mexico. They consider all of them to be European transplants and thus illegitimate.
"We totally reject all illegal European colonial squatter occupation borders on our continent" say the Mexica, and "No European borders on our continent".
Another quote: "We are not illegals anywhere on our continent. Europeans are illegals everywhere on our continent." "Europeans can call themselves 'Canadian' or 'American' but they are still trespassing on our continent."
The reject the legitimacy of the Mexican government as being white-ruled, calling Mexico's leaders "Mexico City Criollos [White people]"
The Mexica movement exhorts readers of its website to
"remember that Mexico, 'Central America' and 'South America' are still controlled by whites (European descent people). And don't tell us to go back where we came from, this whole continent is where we came from, Europeans came from Europe, so if you want to disrespect us, you should go back where you came from and take your white supremacy there."
And, unlike some other protestors, you don't see Mexica demonstrators brandishing posters of Che Guevara—they reject Guevara as being too European.
The Mexica solution is to work to develop indigenous consciousness. By indigenous they mean descendents of the people who were here on the continent before Europeans arrived, including mestizos. Since the movement doesn't recognize any North American borders, it teaches that any person defined as indigenous has the right to go anywhere he wants in North America. White people, meanwhile, must go back to Europe.
One more thing about the Mexica folks—they want to leave the U.S. Constitution intact while they go about their plan. Another example of how seditionists use our own constitution against us!
That's what Univision's Jorge Ramos predicts will take place in about 2100. Other activists who don't subscribe to a specific doctrine (reconquista, Aztlan, Republica del Norte or Mexica movement) seem to be thinking along these lines also.
In other words, instead of working to secede from the U.S., why couldn't unassimilated Hispanics just immigrate and multiply until they could just take over the whole country?
Under that scenario, the borders of the U.S.A. wouldn't change. The U.S. would just be transformed into a Latin American country.
Yes, these movements and the sentiments they reflect are real. But of course the future may not turn out exactly how these movements envisage it.
What about the historic white, English-speaking majority of the United States of America? Does that majority have any say in the matter? I mean, if all these Mexican, Hispanic and Indigenous activists can boldly plan our nation's future, what about the historic majority of the country? Or has it already been bypassed by history? Will it speak?
Given current political, social and demographic trends, the future of the nation, and its nature, will be up for grabs in the next few years.
American citizen Allan Wall (email him) resides in Mexico, with a legal permit issued him by the Mexican government. Allan recently returned from a tour of duty in Iraq with the Texas Army National Guard. His VDARE.COM articles are archived here; his FRONTPAGEMAG.COM articles are archived here his "Dispatches from Iraq" are archived here his website is here.
