Posted on 04/16/2006 11:10:23 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
MEChA advisers at Jurupa Valley High School are reviewing the Chicano student club's constitution after the group was criticized by anti-illegal immigration activists.
A student called on the Jurupa Unified School District board to ban MEChA following last month's school rally on immigration legislation by the U.S. House of Representatives that would make it a felony to be in the United States illegally. Senior Josh Denhalter called MEChA a separatist group that advocates a Mexican takeover of the Southwest.
Jurupa Valley is not the only MEChA chapter that is examining itself. Students in the Beaumont High School chapter are debating whether to change their name to avoid any historical baggage.
MEChA advisers at Jurupa Valley plan to review the national constitution with the chapter's officers, and might develop a separate constitution tailored to the high school club, said adviser Enrique Velásquez, an economics teacher at the school.
Name Causes Conflict
MEChA stands for Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlán.
Aztlán is the legendary home of the indigenous Mexican people. The people who founded MEChA in 1969 used the term to describe the southwestern United States.
"Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans," says El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, one of the documents outlining the early goals of MEChA.
Rudy Acuña, a professor of Chicano studies at Cal State Northridge, said critics distort the idea of Aztlán.
"It's pride. It's saying, 'I'm here. I'm not going away. I'm proud of being a Mexican,' " he said.
Some Beaumont High School students said they would rather avoid any misunderstandings by simply changing the name of their club.
"We don't want to be a club that has to sit there and explain itself all the time," said the Beaumont chapter's adviser, Julio Martinez. The club talked about a name change early in the year, and debated the idea again after the issue cropped up in Jurupa.
Some students also want a name that reflects a range of Latino cultures, not just Mexican culture, Martinez said.
Carolina Tamayo, a teacher at John W. North High School in Riverside who was president of MEChA while a student there, said some people in MEChA's early days believed in the idea of a homeland, but the group's main goal was to improve prospects for Mexican-Americans.
Aztlán is "not just about a physical place. It's talking about being a successful people, and that we as Latinos can be successful," Tamayo said.
Seventeen-year-old Cynthia Garcia, vice president of the North High MEChA chapter, said, "A lot of people have this idea that the people in MEChA are the ones that are thinking that California was taken from the Mexicans, and they're hanging on to that grudge.
"I hear it a lot. They're stuck in their own ignorance," she added.
MEChA Helps With Rally
Jurupa Valley set up a microphone in its football stadium to keep students from walking out on March 27, when thousands of other area students left school. MEChA chapter president Estela Rubio read part of the proposed legislation, HR 4437, and urged the crowd of about 1,500 students to show each other respect.
But the largely Latino crowd booed the few students who spoke for tighter immigration restrictions. Friends' accounts of the rally prompted Denhalter to call for getting rid of the club.
In an interview, Denhalter said he would not object to a Mexican-American cultural club, but he said he believes MEChA has no place on high school campuses.
Jurupa Valley Principal Ron Shecklen said school administrators turned to MEChA for help in organizing the rally to let students take the lead. He said he was proud of how Rubio handled the rally.
Rubio, the chapter president, said she sees the references to Aztlán and the "bronze continent" in the documents from the 1960s as a part of the past.
"It was very radical in those days. What we've been doing at school is completely different."
Focus Isn't Politics
Area high school chapters spend little, if any, time on politics, MEChA members and advisers said.
Instead, they work on helping Latino students go to college, and exposing all students to the cultures of Mexico and Latin America.
Other Inland-area high schools with MEChA chapters include ones in Perris, Redlands and San Bernardino.
Student officers of the MEChA chapter at Jurupa Valley spent their lunch period Wednesday talking about scholarship awards, an assembly and dance for Cinco de Mayo, and end-of-the-year parties. The chapter hosts weekly presentations on historical figures, such as Diego Rivera, Cesar Chavez and Martin Luther King Jr.
Advisers at other area MEChA clubs said they focus on education and culture, too. Many members will be the first in their families to go to college, so some meetings at North focus on applications and getting recommendation letters, said Jacqueline Campos, a chapter adviser there.
The immigration demonstrations have come up for discussion lately, but Campos said she tries to steer the club away from politics.
That's a switch from just over a decade ago, when the MEChA chapter at North demonstrated against Prop. 187, which would have denied education and social services to illegal immigrants, and successfully pushed for a Chicano studies class.
Shecklen, Jurupa Valley's principal, said he's gotten more than 50 e-mails and letters over the past few weeks criticizing his support of MEChA. He said critics should take a look at how MEChA operates on high school campuses.
"I think it's unfair to judge my students when you haven't met my students," he said.
MECHA membership is indicative of nothing more or less than the failure to assimilate.
You are quite right. These professors aren't telling the student in MEChA that they are planning the Peoples Republic of Atzlan.
Many of the Conquistadors including Juan Bautista de Anza who killed Indians and was responsible for the subjugation of California were Basque as was Elkano, the commander of the first ship to sail around the world and the Jesuit Missionaries that accompanied them. Simon Bolivar was a Basque as was Che Guevara.
So, you are saying that NO public school graduates can read, write, or add?
Nah, only 50%
Azatlan update: All North America to be a Mexican-only Marxist state (including Canada) Whites to be deported. Not a joke - they are serious.
http://mexica-movement.org/timexihcah/KNOWLEDGELIBERATION.htm
Europeans should voluntarily and willingly want to go home to their homeland, Europe, so that we can be completely free from Europeans.
TOTAL END TO EUROPEAN
OCCUPATION OF OUR CONTINENT
IN A GRADUAL NON-VIOLENT TRANSITION
OVER SEVERAL GENERATIONS
We are also not part of the Spain-centric and error-filled "Aztlan" ("Southwest" liberation) agenda because we are for the total liberation of our Anahuac continent ("North America") not just to where the European Spaniards drew their colonial borders on our continent.
They've expanded their goals - All of North America is to be a Marxist state for Mexicans only. Whites will be deported.
These are "White" people who are on our continent. Europeans can call themselves "Canadian" or "American" but their homeland is still Europe and they are still trespassing on our continent.
Europeans have a homeland!
It is called Europe.
Yes they have a homeland.
It’s called Europe.
It's not like they have nowhere else to go.
Free from Europeans.
Our continent,
free from Europeans.
Our people free from Europeans.
The name of our nation is Anahuac.
We are the Anahuac nation.
Anahuac is this whole continent.
We are the
people of Anahuac.
We must learn the truth
The truth of our ownership
of this continent
They’ve stolen our continent.
That means they’ve stolen our wealth.
Remember
that our numbers are growing
in “The United States of America”.
We were only 4% in the 1970 census.
We were 14% in the 2000 census.
We are projected to be 25% in 2020.
We are projected to be over 50%
of the population of the “Western USA” in 2050.
We will easily be the majority
of the population of the "USA" in 2100.
Liberation is collective, not individualistic
Individualism is treason.
If it's good enough for the Jews to regain their land after 2,000 years and return (mixed in blood for the most part), then it's good enough for us who only lost our continent 500 years ago.
we should be teaching the Europeans on our continent their proper shame.
These European squatters-illegals have carved borders on our continent that deprive us of our collective ownership
of our all of our land and all its wealth!
The real border of these European squatters-illegals is at the Atlantic Ocean. Their homeland is Europe.
WHOSE LAND IS THIS? OURS!
WHOSE CONTINENT IS THIS? OURS!
WHO ARE THE REAL ILLEGALS? EUROPEANS!
From this knowledge, justice should move to full reparations for our people.
I knew they were all Basques. Their last names give it away.
My last name didn't?
Did you know that MEChA promotes a Stalinist/Maoist form of communism?
Workers in the fields don't own the land. And the whole idea of 'Aztlan' is a crock. I think the Native Americans in the Southwest might take an exception to the idea that Mexicans have more of a right to America than they. The only Spanish speaking peoples who ever lived in the Southwest in great numbers early on were SPANIARDS; descendants of the original Spanish explorers. Even when Mexico declared its independence from Spain, its citizens never moved to the Southwest in great numbers. The Spaniards remained, but were not helped much by Mexico when it came to raids on their villages and towns.
And OZ is the legendary home for short folks.
I knew you were Basque. You even said so. If you had not said it, I would of thought French. :)
Turns out that last name was imposed on my ancestors on Mar 10, 1340. Before that we had no surname.
Interesting!
BUMP
Medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas said of Pride “inordinate self-love is the
cause of every sin and stands in the way of one's connection to God.
Confidence in one's abilities and self shouldn't be confused with pride.
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