Aztlán

Mexican Americans, or Chicanos, have been trying to popularize the concept of the Republic of Aztlán for roughly 40 years. It is the myth of the legendary ancestral home of the Nahua peoples, one of the main cultural groups in Mesoamerica. "Aztec" is the Nahuatl word for "people from Aztlán." The map shows the basic idea. Large portions of the Western USA would no longer belong to the USA, including Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

I oppose injustice. There is no question that some Hispanics have been treated as poorly by ignorant white Americans as some blacks were in the past.

I support equal opportunity for all children regardless of the economic class of their parents. White trailer park trash children whose parents are addicted to crystal meth, and undocumented immigrants with brown skin, should all have the same opportunities to education and advancement as white kids from upper middle class suburbs. And the laws (in all countries) should be applied equally, whether you are poor and black or rich and white - i.e., rule-of-law.

The house I owned in Holland for many years was built on a piece of land which over the years has been owned by many different countries. For a while it was in the Roman Empire, France, Germany, and Spain. Now it is in the Netherlands, and of course the plot of land hasn’t moved one bit. The house I own now in El Paso is on land near to where the native peoples lived thousands of years ago. Then Spain owned this land, then Mexico, then the Republic of Texas, and most recently the USA.

In the history of mankind this pattern has been the norm.

One native American group conquers a nice piece of territory and kills many of the people already living there. Then a few hundred years later another different group conquers them. When the white Americans came along in the 1800’s many of these Indian tribes which were annihilated had just conquered that land themselves a few scores of decades before.

The Romans did this, so did Charlemagne, the Vikings, Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. It is only in the last 50 or 60 years that mankind has made the collective decision that it is no longer appropriate for one country to take over another country’s territory by force. It was also common for the soldiers of the conquering Army to be partially paid in booty; whatever they could pillage and plunder was their wages. Rape was one of the benefits of the successful warrior, and it resulted in spreading around lots of genetic information. Rather brutally, of course.

Would it be wise to transfer this western part of America to Aztlán? From one barely democratic country mostly ruled by super-rich white skinned people, to another one which is ruled by super-rich brown skinned people? At least at the moment there is an attempt to run this country by rule-of-law. The culture which is in place to the south of America is even more corrupt that what we see in the USA. Rule-of-law is a total joke in Mexico, so what makes one have much confidence things would improve in Aztlán?

If the concept of Aztlán is used to help improve social justice and opportunities for poor folks, then I think it is OK.

But if any of these people who believe in Aztlán are sincere, and they actually think that they are going to start doing horribly violent things like the Basques have done in northern Spain, in order to take away a large piece of land from the USA, then they need to be dealt with harshly. In a lawful and just manner, of course.
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-