Why is it that all those who try to stick up for MEChA come off so ... unconvincing? The latest attempt to defend MEChA comes from Los Angeles Times Associate Editor Frank del Olmo: Mechistas? It's Mucho Ado About Nada [registration required. There is also a copy here]
It shouldn't surprise anyone who reads this column that I was active in the again-controversial Latino student group MEChA during my college days.He claims that as a student and MEChA activist at UCLA and Cal State Northridge all he wanted was to "help get more Latinos into college" and that turning the Southwest United States into a Chicano homeland was not on his agenda. Fair enough.
But that has not stopped some folks from trying to equate MEChA with hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Some of these claims are based on genuine confusion, such as attributing offensive political slogans once used by other Chicano groups ("For the race, everything. Outside the race, nothing") to MEChA.Is he seriously denying that MEChA has ever used the "For the race..." slogan and that any overblown MEChista rhetoric is only from the past.Of course, the rhetoric some then-Mechistas used was overblown.
A quick peak at, say, the website of the MEChA chapter at Del Olmo's alma mater, Cal State Northridge, reveals a page of links to documents under the heading:
All Nationally recognized MEChA chapters understand that our founding documents are the fundamentals to MEChA. They not only guide us through difficult every day conflicts but they are also useful tools that help define our role in institutions of higher learning.These documents include El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, which contains the phrase: Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada, along with a bunch of other bizarre stuff such as "We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent". So maybe it's easy to see why so many would be genuinely confused into attributing the "offensive political slogan" and "overblown rhetoric" to today's MEChA instead of to some other organizations from the 1960s.
Frank del Olmo is the Associate Editor of the Los Angeles Times. From his prominent listing in the editorial directory, I assume that's a fairly responsible position. How does one explain that such a senior journalist would make statements that are both central to his argument and so blatantly and verifiably false? Either he lied, he wasn't observant enough to pick up on what was happening around him in MEChA, and/or he failed to do the most basic research. Whatever the cause, it's a pretty sorry reflection on MEChA, del Olmo and the Los Angeles Times.
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 12, 2003 07:00 AMOne thing that you can definitely say about MEChA is that you can't generalize about the organization based upon the experiences of any one person. Syndicated columnist Ruben Navarette thought of an interesting way to calm the fears of "nativist conservatives". He characterized MEChA as ". . . a rickety organization that is totally ineffective and irrelevant in the modern day." He describes meetings as including a lot of in-fighting, sometimes sparked by disputes over who is "more Mexican" than someone else in the group. He characterizes the concept of a homeland called Aztlan as "Absurdia" and attributes the fears of the "nativists" to demographic changes.
The work of bloggers may have prompted a change in attitude by another MEChA defender, however. Juan Esparza Loera, editor of Vida en el Valle, wrote a September 8 puff-piece in the Fresno Bee on a high school MEChA chapter ("MEChA not radical club of old"). He commented on September 22 ("Radical language a disservice") concerning a troubling discovery about MEChA. The manifesto "El Plan de Aztlan", the document most often quoted by "ultra-conservatives" in branding MEChA as racist or separatist, is easily available on MEChA websites! Surprise! Esparza pointed out AGAIN that MEChA is now a well-meaning student organization which does much good work in encouraging Latino students to stay in school and in promoting community service.
He states, ". . . as long as MEChA clings to documents with inflammatory and racist writing, it is letting down the very students it tries to help. . . Removing divisive language from its Web sites would be a good start for MEChA."
A step in the right direction, perhaps. But he reported in the second article talking to someone who seemed reluctant to remove MEChA's "historical documents" from a website. If most current Mechistas aren't interested in the concept of Aztlan any more, why don't "mainstream" MEChA chapters JUST CHANGE THE NAME of their organizations so they don't have to worry about what other MEChA chapters do? Wouldn't this be simpler than trying to defend all 300 or so MEChA chapters? It is hard to predict what kinds of things will make the news concerning an "organization" as loosely organized as MEChA with such militant "founding documents" and with some faculty advisors justifying their existence by promoting activism.
Take for example the Cal State Northridge MEChA chapter's reaction to the Fidel Castro's jailing last spring of non-violent journalists, human rights activists, owners of several independent home-based libraries and other dissidents. After summary trials, many were reportedly given sentences of up to 28 years in the notoriously horrible Cuban prison system. Amnesty International alerted the world to the "unprecedented crackdown on the dissident movement" and many organizations, even in Europe, officially condemned Castro's actions.
Daniel Weintraub of the Sacramento Bee pointed out that the Cal State Northridge chapter of MEChA planned, instead, to join a summer trip to Cuba. The president of the club said, according to The Militant, "I want to go to Cuba because I have heard a lot about Cuba as a socialist country and I want to see for myself and understand how communism contributes to a better way of life." The trip was said in El Reportero to have been coordinated by an organization "designed to defend and promote Cuba's sovereignty."
Cal State Northridge Chicano Studies Professor, MEChA Advisor and Castro defender Rodolfo Acuna was apparently ineffective in sensitizing MEChA students to the plight of Cuban dissidents who have been imprisoned or exiled for speaking their minds or distributing information. But Acuna has reportedly warned Chicanos that they are living in a "Nazi U.S." where they are in danger of being taken to "intellectual ovens".
I have not heard any recent report of a Chicano being thrown in prison in the U.S. for sharing political literature with friends. I must be missing some important principle which explains why the "Nazi U.S." is a greater threat to free-thinking Chicanos than Castro's regime is to free-thinking Cubans.
Links to Navarette and Weintraub articles:
http://www.sltrib.com/2003/Sep/09132003/commenta/commenta.asp
http://www.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/insider/archives/000508.html