Aztlan Myths

I guess I'll add what should be an obvious disclaimer here-just because I link a site doesn't mean I agree or disagree with the mission of the site in whole or in part. Nevertheless, some sites are just of enough interest to warrant their inclusion. As such, I have added the Aztlan website on the Myth-ing Links section.

They are an open borders advocacy group, and honestly, I have to tell you, they are quite extreme in some regards. They are also anti-semitic according to most standard definitions of the term, while claiming of course to be merely "anti-Zionist". Some of their posts in this regard are disingenuous at worse, unintentionally hilarious at best. Take this, for example.



This is supposedly a picture of religious Jews in the aftermath of an assault perpetrated on them by Israeli "Zionists", whom the Aztlan site claims are all about taking land from the Palestinians.

Now, admittedly I'm no expert, but unless I'm mistaken, these are probably religious Jews in the aftermath of an assault by Israeli Defense Forces who, in fact, were forcibly removing them from Palestinian lands in the Gaza strip (or maybe the West Bank) that they occupied illegitimately.

In another bit of obviously unintentional humor, the site derides the Zionist Jews as the descendants of Eastern Europeans who converted to Judaism one thousand years ago and who now have immigrated to Israel for "opportunist" reasons. I'm glad I wasn't sipping a slurpee when I read that one.

To be fair, this site has a lot of good (if questionable) articles, and in today's current angst over immigration, it pays to keep up with both sides of the issue. For one thing, I learned something about the term Aztlan itself from reading this site, from this post in particular.

Aztlan is not necessarily a place-it's a state of mind. Aztlan is anywhere it's people are, and the old myth that described the Aztec origins as a group of hunter-gatherers and part time agriculturalists, and their subsequent migrations from Aztlan, their mythical homeplace, to their eventual destination in Mexico, need not be taken to infer a claim on anyplace, including in the United States. It is more accurately, at least according to this site, viewed as a reminder for the people to be true to their roots and culture-wherever they might happen to be at any given time.

I also found out that the Aztlan advocates are quite distinct (though you can expect there would be some overlapping, of course) from the people who make up the group LaRaza. Whereas Aztlan are an all-together open borders advocacy group, LaRaza, contrary to popular belief, actually support border security and strong but compassionate (their words) immigration enforcement.

LaRaza also does not mean "The Race" (although that can be a technically correct definition) but "the people" or "the community". More on them later.

Like I always say, if you have to be for or against something, or even anywhere in between, it never hurts to know what they really stand for-or what they say they stand for, anyway.