A Factual Look at "Occupied Aztlan"

Let's take a factual look at the outlandish beliefs propagated by Aztlan groups like MEChA and the Brown Berets (and even college professors!)

Although it is a clever turn of a phrase, the popular motto, "We didn't cross the horder, the border crossed us", has no valid meaning unless "you" are over 150 years old.

Despite his marxist-inspired gobbledygook, the lands encompassing the states of Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Colorado haven't been a part of Mexico since 1854.

Following the Mexican-American War---which America won in 1848---the United States of America graciously PAID the government of Mexico for all of that land. America then established it's current sovereign southern border in 1854 through The Gadsden Purchase.

Per the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo and the Treaty of Mesilla---and the payment of millions of dollars to the Mexican government---all the lands and resources in those purchased territories were no longer under the governance of Mexico, and became part of the sovereign United States of America.

In America, sovereignty means that the citizens of America---through their duly elected government---determine the "laws of the land" within their national borders; including those laws that determine which foreign-born individuals may enter and/or legally remain within those borders. They're called our immigration laws.

none of these people look over 100 years old---let alone 150!

The fact that "you" may have had distant ancestors that once migrated through a foreign country does not give you any legitimate claim upon "the land" in a foreign country; nor does it mean that you have a "human right" to simply enter or live in that foreign country if you want---unless that is the law of that land. In America, however, THAT is not the law of the land; nor should it be. National borders are not simply arbitrary lines on a geographical map.

Everyone's ancestors were conquered and/or oppressed by someone at some time: that's simply the history of conquest and nation-building throughout the world. That doesn't mean that anyone owes you anything now. The Aztec empire---which was later conquered by Spain---had also been created through conquest, oppression, and enslavement of other indigenous tribes.

Unless it can be documented that America has been directly responsible for the abject poverty and government corruption in Mexico---since 1929---then Mexican citizens should be addressing those problems from within their own borders. America already gives billions of taxpayer dollars in humanitarian and foreign aid to the Mexican government every year.

Foreigners who come to America as legal immigrants---and assimiliate themselves into the American culture within one or two generations---become "successful" Americans. But if you intentionally embrace a word like "Latino" or "Chicano" or "mexican-american" to describe who you are, then you really haven't assimilated yet: You are still identifying yourself as being something "different"---and "apart"---from other Americans.

If you want the same respect and acceptance that any law-abiding, patriotic "American" gets, you should abandon your divisive sense of "foreign identity" and "ethnic-solidarity", and simply become an assimilated "American" like the rest of us.

If you do NOT want to adopt and embrace our traditional American cultural values as your own, then you probably shouldn't "immigrate" here to begin with.