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Essentially, we are a Chicana and Chicano student movement directly linked to Aztlán. As Chicanas and Chicanos of Aztlán, we are a nationalist movement of Indigenous Gente that lay claim to the land that is ours by birthright. As a nationalist movement we seek to free our people from the exploitation of an oppressive society that occupies our land. Thus, the principle of nationalism serves to preserve the cultural traditions of La Familia de La Raza and promotes our identity as a Chicana/Chicano Gente.
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 Aztlan 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. Aztlan 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
Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner "gabacho" who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. 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 Aztlan.
The concept of title in relation to land is a mythological construct, in which the world view of cultural identity is embedded and perpetuated across generations.
The simple reason is of course that the land is eminence itself, preexisting and outlasting any human society. The relationship with the land, with the material world which emerges from the land, is then defined and evidenced by the traditional systems of inheritance and identity which perpetuate these teachings to the generations of the future. This is universal for all societies, but it is the traditional Indigenous Peoples from around the globe that create identity by ecological relationships to the constellations of families, mountains, rivers, deserts, nations, oceans and stars that define our homelands in the universe.
The societies of the European-American settlers do not.
The present systems of the United States and other governments states of the hemisphere which derive their justifications for jurisdiction over the land on the Divine Right of Kings to Dominion over the Earth and its Peoples, is pure myth. Or better said, it is false myth -- a dead story with no teaching to teach but only a power grab to justify.
It cannot even hold coherence before the science of its own culture, now finally clarified that matter-energy are aspects of relationship to life, with automatic inflection by the world view of each clan, family, tribe, community, nation, and culture.
To claim ownership by land title today in view of the above is the equivalent of proclaiming that the world is flat. It is the position of a lost world, and a false reality. It is an empire with no clothes.
...
Beyond the Battle of Puebla, corresponding in the calendars of the Catholic church named for the Santa Cruz, it is said that these days are traditionally and ceremonially celebrated by the Indigenous Nations of Mexico as the time when a certain constellation appears over the southern horizon in Anahuac for the first time since winter -- the Southern Cross, also spoken of as the constellation of the Confederation of the Condor, Tawantinsuyo. As members of the Indigenous Nations of the Confederacy of the Eagle and the Condor, el 5 de Mayo is thus a commemoration of the ancient Treaty between the North and the South which binds us culturally, politically, and spiritually to each other and the Universe of the Four Directions.
The border established by the Adams Onis Treaty 1819 is many times mistakenly used to identify the northern limits of the territories of Mexico, when in fact it is a purely Hispanic - Anglo colonial franchise agreement, the same as the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
This same political phenomena has a domestic subset, the corresponding state, county, city identities of the so called republics established under colonization continentally. The educational systems of European American colonization would reduce us to the use only of their concepts of geography to define reality, to develop strategy the better to control and subvert the resistance to colonization by the colonized.
I understand indigenous peoples feel mistreated in the take-over of lands in many parts of the world.
*historical note: Before the spaniards came, Mexicans held those areas of land the Aztlan lay claim too.
Mexico's Independence from Spain (1810-1821)
Legend states that the Aztec and other Náhuatl-speaking tribal groups originally came to the Valley of Mexico from a region in the northwest, popularly known as Atzlan-Chicomoztoc. The name Aztec, in fact, is said to have been derived from this ancestral homeland, Aztlan (The Place of Herons). According to legend, the land of Atzlan was said to have been a marshy island situated in the middle of a lake.
Thirty-five years ago, Robert Barlow wanted to discover the elusive Chicomoztoc. The quest was like a pilgrimage, a concerted effort for a sacred shrine. Many others before and after Barlow have searched. Most investigators have concluded that it’s situated in the northern part of the valley of Mexico, or in the valley of Teotihuacan, or towards ancient Tula.
The Historia Tolteca-Chichimeca portrays Chicomoztoc, or the Seven Caves of Aztlán from which the first Chichimec tribes emerged before invading the Basin of México to become the Aztecs. Note the different varities of nopal, organ-pipe and barrel cacti showing that Chicomoztoc was equated with the remote northern deserts. Click on Image for more detail.
Codex Boturini. The Chichimecs journeyed until one day they witnessed a tree being ripped asunder by a bolt of lightning. The seventh and last tribe, more properly called the Méxica, took the event as a sign that they were to divide and follow their own destiny. Their god Huitzilopochtli is shown counseling them. The Méxica continued to wander for many more years, sometimes hunting and sometimes settling down to farm, but never remaining in any one place for very long. After the collapse of Tula, the capital of a Toltec state that dominated Central México from the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, they decided to move south to Lake Texcoco. Click on Image for more detail.
Codex Mendoza. Impoverished and without allies, the Méxica were soon subjected to attacks by local Toltec warlords who forced them to retreat to an island off Lake Texcoco’s western shore where they witnessed a miraculous vision of prophecy; an eagle standing on a cactus growing from solid rock. It was the sign for Tenochtitlán, their final destination. The official date of the city’s founding was A.D. 1335. Click on Image for more detail.
Finding they had little to offer other than their reputation as fearsome warriors, the Méxica had no other choice than to hire themselves out as mercenaries to rival Toltec factions. Eventually they were able to affect the balance of power in the region to such a degree that they were granted royal marriages. The Méxica, now the most powerful of the seven original Aztec tribes, incorporated their former rivals and together they conquered an empire. Eventually, they gave their name to the nation of México, while their city of Tenochtitlán became what we know today as México City. Historians still apply the term Aztec to the archaeological culture that dominated the Basin of México, but recognize that the people themselves were ethnically highly diversified.
Originally posted by DontTreadOnMe
I understand indigenous peoples feel mistreated in the take-over of lands in many parts of the world.
However, I thought these people usually held the belief that the land belongs to no one? Am I wrong in this thought?
Originally posted by AWingAndASigh
One the one hand, MEChA says they're non-violent...
Originally posted by ThunderCloud
Originally posted by AWingAndASigh
One the one hand, MEChA says they're non-violent...
So does the KKK.
MEChA is a racist organization that supports, for all intents and purposes, the destruction of the United States. This "Aztlan" they claim to represent is a mythical place which never existed in the real world, so there's nothing to "reclaim."
MEChA should be put in the same group as the KKK and Black Panthers, and the FBI & CIA should be keeping a close eye on MEChA, building evidence to try certain MEChA members for sedition and/or treason where appropriate under the law.