Banning the American Flag and 'Reconquista'

A federal court has ruled that an American school student has a right to free expression -- unless that American might be threatened for that expression by others, in which case state officials have the right to quash the offending expression to appease potential aggressors.

The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled upon the constitutionality of a decision by the administration at Live Oak High School in 2010. On May 5th of that year, student Daniel Galli and his friends had the unmitigated gall to wear shirts emblazoned with that offensive symbol that we call the American flag. Fearing that the unruly ex-denizens of another country would be infuriated at the mere sight of it on a day they hold in reverence, the vice principal asked him and his friends to turn their shirts inside out.

First, there is the obvious specter of the notion of “Reconquista” inherent in all of this. When speaking with my parents just a few weeks ago about Republicans’ wild-eyed and crazily misguided efforts to make the legislation of amnesty their political white whale, my father (an Anglo-American of English/Irish descent) asked me to make future efforts to remind Americans that the concentrated campaign to re-define the American Southwest as a sub-jurisdiction of Mexico, with social and economic benefits provided by American taxpayers, amounts to little more than an invasion. My mother (of immediate Mexican descent) took it upon herself to agree, reminding us that as a teenager in San Antonio, Texas, that this very aim was openly discussed among her Hispanic classmates. “We’re gonna take it back,” she recalls as a common theme of conversation. “We’re gonna hang around and eventually, we’re gonna get it back.”

Revisiting this situation, several things are true.

1) The school was initially at fault for holding a Cinco de Mayo celebration in the first place. Cinco de Mayo is almost exclusively celebrated in the US, not Mexico, except in one state, where it is called “El Día de la Batalla de Puebla”. It is *not* Mexican Independence Day, which is celebrated on September 16.

It can properly be called “The Mexican-American equivalent of Kwanzaa”, another contrived and meaningless holiday. It exists mostly as an excuse for bars and clubs to offer pseudo-Sonoran Mexican food and drink specials to party goers.

2) This being said, the school was doubly at fault for sponsoring what is essentially an exclusionary, ethnic group event, celebrating a foreign country. This reinforces the idea that their students, even those who are legally American, are somehow still Mexican citizens, not fully Americans. It is even insulting to those children who are illegal aliens, as it suggests that they will always be Mexicans, that they will never be, can never be, Americans.

3) Only in this context of two inappropriate actions by the school does it make sense to make the third inappropriate action, by banning displays of American patriotism. But this issue is actually *not* about the white students showing their patriotism; but what about the ethnically Mexican students who want to show their American patriotism?

Even many years ago, there was a minority of ethnically Mexican students who vehemently denied they were Mexicans instead of Americans. Their families had worked very hard to become Americans, and they did not want to be dragged back to Mexico in any way. They rejected groups like La Raza and MEChA, and resented efforts to hound them into such racist and anti-American organizations. They found the notion of Aztlan to be horrific, and would have moved out of the area deeper into America instead of having to live within such a place.

So the bottom line is that those who celebrate Mexico should live there. American schools should be for Americans, and at least those who want to become Americans. And while ethnic Mexicans who are now Americans may want to enjoy their ethnic heritage from “the old country”, this should be no different than all the other immigrants are to their ancestral country. But it certainly does not mean they still hold loyalty to those places.

“The True History of the Southwest,” by Matthew Bracken

The fallacies surrounding the history of the Southwest are staggering, chief among them the “Aztlan” fairy tales. What is the truth? How did the Spanish Europeans conquer the Southwest? The “conquistadores” (that means “conquerors”) did it with the lance, and the lash.

For example, in 1541 Coronado entered present-day New Mexico (which included present-day Arizona during the Spanish era) searching for the “lost cities of gold.” One of his first actions upon meeting the natives was to burn hundreds of them alive in their dwellings, for not handing over suspected horse thieves. That is how Spain conquered the natives of the present US Southwest—not with hugs and kisses. It was certainly no love-fest between long-lost brown-skinned soul-mates, as it is often portrayed today by the delusional Aztlaners, who spin the “new bronze race of Mestizos” toro-mierda fable.

By 1821, Mexico City was strong enough to overthrow the even more decrepit and ineffectual Spanish colonial rule. However, the distant provinces of the current U.S. Southwest were far beyond the reach of the authority of the independent but strife-torn new government in Mexico City. These distant northern provinces received neither military protection nor needed levels of trade from the south. Under Spanish colonial rule, trade with the USA was forbidden, but at least Spain provided trade and Army protection from hostile Indians. Under Mexican abandonment and neglect, the Southwest received neither trade nor protection from Mexico City.

For example, Comanches and Apaches ran rampant in the 1830s in the power vacuum created by Mexican neglect, burning scores of major ranches that had been active for hundreds of years and massacring their inhabitants. Mexico City could neither defend nor keep the allegiance of its nominal subjects in these regions. Nor did it provide needed levels of trade to sustain the prior Spanish colonial era standard of living. Mexican governmental influence atrophied, withered and died at the same time that American pathfinders were opening up new routes into the region.

Increasingly, a growing United States of America was making inroads into the Southwest, via ships into California, and via wagon trains of trade goods over the Santa Fe Trail from St. Louis. The standard of living of the Spanish inhabitants of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas subsequently increased enormously, which is why they did not support Mexico City in the 1846-48 war. In fact, the Spanish-speaking inhabitants of the Southwest never considered themselves “Mexicans” at all, ever. They went, in their own eyes, from Spanish directly to American. To this very day, if you want a punch in the nose, just call an Hispanic native of New Mexico a “Mexican.”

So how long did Mexico City have even nominal jurisdiction (in their eyes) over the American Southwest? For only 25 years, during which they had no effective control, and the area slipped backwards by every measure until the arrival of the Americans. The Spanish inhabitants of the Southwest never transferred their loyalty to Mexico City, because all they received from the chaotic Mexican government was misrule, neglect, and unchecked Indian raids.

Since then, how long has the area been under firm American control? For 150 continuous years, during which time the former Spanish inhabitants of the region, now American citizens, have prospered beyond the wildest dreams of the Mexicans still stuck in Mexico. To compare the infrastructure, roads, schools, hospitals etc. of the two regions is to understand the truth. The Mexican government has been mired in endemic graft, corruption, nepotism and chaos from the very start until today. The ordinary Mexican peons have been trampled and abused, while only the super-rich elites have thrived. This is why millions of Mexicans want to escape from Mexico today, to enjoy the benefits of living in America that they can never hope to obtain in Mexico.

And because today Mexico is a corrupt third-world pest-hole (despite having more millionaires and billionaires than Great Britain), we are supposed to let any number of Mexicans from Chiapas, Michoacan or Yucatan march into the American Southwest, and make some “historical claim” of a right to live there?

From where does this absurd idea spring?

At what point in history did Indians and Mestizos from Zacatecas or Durango stake a claim on the American Southwest? Neither they nor their ancestors ever lived for one single day in the American Southwest. The Spanish living in the Southwest in 1846 stayed there, and became Americans by the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. There were no Spanish inhabitants of the Southwest who were marched to the border and driven into Mexico. It didn’t happen. The Spanish in the Southwest welcomed American citizenship, which brought stability, protection from Indian raids, and a vast increase in their standard of living with the increase in trade with America.

In summary, no current inhabitants of Mexico have a claim on even one single inch of the American Southwest. Not one single citizen of Mexico is sneaking into the United States to reclaim property their ancestors were deprived of. Not one. They are criminal invaders and colonizers, pure and simple.

It’s time Americans learned the true history, as a counter to the currently prevalent “Aztlan” fairy tales put out by “La Raza” (The Race), “MEChA” (the Chicano Student Movement for Aztlan) and other radical anti-American groups.

I have done a lot of historical research on Texas/Mexico for a master’s degree and found lots of interesting facts. Among them are:

1.The Mexican legislature of Cohuila was the actual governing body for the province of Texas during the years between the Mexican Revolution and the Texas Revolution. This legislature authorized and invited colonization by Americans in land grants in order to provide a human buffer between the raiding Indians from Texas and Mexico below the Rio Grande.

2. The Spanish and “Mexican” population of Texas was never very large and by the time of the collapse of Spanish rule the province was actually in a population decline according to an official who traveled the province to make a report on its status. There were only three towns, San Antonio, Gonzalez, and Nacogdoches and the population totaled less than 2000, including soldiers stationed in the towns.

3. By the time of the first census under the American government (1850), the largest town in Texas, San Antonio, actually had more native Germans than persons claiming Mexican roots.

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