The Myth of Aztlan

We've now come to the point where some feel that wearing American flag colors on a fake Mexican holiday constitutes a violation of the First Amendment rights of people who don't even give their first allegiance to America. I talked a little bit about this earlier.

American Thinker explains how we got here:

The Mexico-first attitude dominating political discourse has taken years to cultivate, aided primarily by the deliberate misinformation of groups like Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA). MEChA has three hundred chapters on college campuses all over the country and demands "restitution for past economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction[.]" Here is the short version of the MEChA screed:

Chicano is our identity; it defines who we are as people. It rejects the notion that we ... should assimilate into the Anglo-American melting pot ... Aztlan was the legendary homeland of the Aztecas ... brutally stolen from a Mexican people marginalized and betrayed by the hostile custodians of the Manifest Destiny.

This is pure, fabricated nonsense. There is not now, nor has there ever been, any such land called "Aztlan." The American Southwest was never ruled by the Aztecs. And Mexico's jurisdiction over these territories lasted a mere ten years, owing in part to the historic Spanish presence.

But MEChA doesn't stop at propaganda.

Miguel Perez, President of Cal-State Northridge's MEChA chapter, said, "The ultimate ideology is the liberation of Aztlan. Communism would be closest. Once Aztlan is established, ethnic cleansing would commence: Non-Chicanos would have to be expelled -- opposition groups would be quashed because you have to keep power."

Compounding this problem is the fact that Mexican schoolchildren are taught from birth that the gringo stole Mexican land. Mexico has even secured the right to propagate these racial myths in American classrooms. The Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles sent nearly 100,000 textbooks to 1,500 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District in 2006[1].

Far from stealing Mexican land, the United States paid handsomely for the land it acquired, and Mexican President Santa Anna was only too happy to oblige [2]. The consequences of this historical revisionism are alarming: In a June 2002 Zogby International Poll, 58 percent of Mexicans polled agreed that the "territory of the United States Southwest belongs to Mexico."

Perhaps we don't need to stop illegal immigration from Mexico, but should stop ALL immigration from Mexico, at least among those who share these wacky Aztlan beliefs.

And for those who still don't understand, a graphic reminder: