From the September 2001 Idaho Observer:

Amnesty -- or plot to further destabilize our cultural chemistry?

By Don Harkins

While 2,000,000 Americans languish in jail, a full half of which were either convicted of non-violent statutory crimes or are innocent of the crimes for which they are imprisoned, the Bush administration has announced that it intends to give amnesty to some 3,000,000 Mexicans who became criminals the moment they set foot in this country without the proper documentation. On September 6, 2001, Mexican President Vincente Fox and U.S. President George Bush Junior reportedly addressed the amnesty issue, in Spanish, to a crowd of Mexican flag waving hispanics. President Fox told President Bush that he should forgive the fact that millions of his people became criminals the moment they set foot in our country. He indicated that Bush should let the American people feed them, clothe them, educate them, provide them with medical care, help them to preserve their native culture by providing a bilingual environment. Viva La Raza. Bush, the “leader of the free world,” seemed to agree with Fox's plan. A recent Gallup poll showed that 6 percent of the American people were in favor of the amnesty deal that President Fox would like to see hammered out by the new year.

Let us take a look at how well this amnesty will serve the interests of the “conservative” voters that allegedly put him into office last fall:

Viva La Raza!

On some college campuses, published at public expense, are newspapers called La Raza. The message? Violently and militantly taking back the southwestern U.S. that militant hispanics refer to as Aztlan.

There is an organization called Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) that has chapters in universities throughout the nation, including Yale, Cornell, Oregon State University and Washington State University. The organization, which promotes education and defends the rights of hispanics living in the U.S., also has chapters in high schools all over the nation. The high school level is pretty tame -- dances and car washes -- but high schoolers are encouraged to attend college-level get togethers where the message gets more militant. One indication of MEChA militancy is found in the following statement attributed to the organization: “For the very young, there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.”

Between La Raza, Aztlan and MEChA, there is an obvious overtone of radical racism that is directed at non-hispanics who live in California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado -- regions that came under U.S. control in 1846 after winning them in a war with Mexico.

Go to www.angelfire.com/pq/altacalifassur/EPDSB.html. There you will find El Plan de Santa Barbara which is a founding document for militant pro-Aztlan activity in the U.S. Go to the same site but type in EPEDA to see El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan. The document sets the general theme that hispanics must use their nationalism as the key for mass mobilization toward social, cultural, political and economic independence as, “...the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation and racism.

“Our struggle, then, must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture and our political life.

“Those institutions which are fattened by our brothers to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as acts of liberation and for La Causa. For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.”

Art reflects culture

We have already experienced the angry and militant lyrics found in “Gangsta Rap.” Following are a few lyrics which express the cultural angst of militant latinos:

They Move in Silence

American, I am at the top of the food chain
Scared again, beat you down, feel the pain
I hold the key and you're feeling my power
Smile with delight now -- I see you scream and cower.

Killing Season

Sit back and listen to this tale
I'm talking about the country from which you all hail
Built on the bodies of Indians and slaves
A story of destiny and the land it craves
It happen to be genocide in the first degree
Live large in the United States
So you wonder why we want to smash the state
Well the answer is in the Zapatista wind
It lies in the facts we are about to begin
But to the real revolutionary we're waiting for the hour
to annihilate the rich, spread back the poor
Terminate the pigs til it exists no more.

Lemon Pledge

Red stripes against white foundation
Really means glory to the white man's nation
You won't admit it and it don't mean shit
Cuz know we will never submit to this flag rag of foreign oppression
The gringo system and the snakes of oppression....
And in the preservation of this neocolonial slave hunting, red-killing militias were reborn.
We must disinfect and decontrol
Decolonize our minds and regain control
Decolonize our minds to save our soul.

Population explosion

The population of California has increased by 4 million in the last decade and is projected to exceed the 2000 population of the western U.S. by 2050. Most of California's population growth is from an explosion of hispanic immigrants. The influx of hispanics has caused an exodus of caucasians to move north to Oregon and Idaho. Idaho's population, which is currently 1.3 million, is projected to double to 2.25 million by 2025 as whites move to north Idaho and hispanics resettle in the arid climes among the farms of southern Idaho.

The impact on infrastructure (roads, bridges, power, utilities) is tremendous. More tax dollars will need to be spent upgrading the infrastructure as more tax dollars are going out to support, educate and medicate impoverished hispanics who, as citizens, will qualify for government benefits programs.

Two million California students are in temporary classrooms. The state has passed $17 billion in school bonds in the last five years. Over 1 million California students can barely, if at all, speak, read or write English. Tremendous resources are spent accommodating the native tongue rather than insisting that the students learn to communicate in English. While some say it is their right to preserve their native tongue and traditions, the language issue is further undermining American culture and tradition. Plus, the bilingual issue drastically compromises the quality of education for all students, especially the English-speaking students.

Free trade

The overall agenda appears to be a dissolution of the U.S./Mexican border. The end result being the American working class standard of living is to be lowered to that of the Mexican working class. Allowing unlicensed, uninsured, unregulated, substandard Mexican trucks to cross the border as if it were interstate commerce presents a myriad of problems and accomplishes this end nicely: Tons of illegal narcotics will be brought into the country to further pollute the minds and bodies of Americans. The policy will create an unfair advantage for foreign truckers over the heavily regulated American truckers who will have little choice but to compete with the Mexican truckers.

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Editor's note: Hispanics who have thrown themselves into the melting pot as productive members of society are no less American than the Europeans, Asians and Africans who have helped to create the greatest nation of self-governing people the world has ever produced.

However, the Bush administration's amnesty plan cannot help but to further compromise an already embattled American culture and further tax an already tax-overburdened society. The amnesty in no way benefits the “conservatives” who voted him into office.

The Bush administration must know that its proposed amnesty could remove the last stitch from the quilt of American cultural integrity -- next stop chaos. If that is the case, the Bush administration will be committing treason as it will be an act specifically intended to compromise the civic and national security of the United States. (DWH)

With thanks to Barbara Vickroy for supplying the heads up on this story.