Jewish World Review May 9, 2006 / 11 Iyar, 5766

How to lose immigration debate

By Bridget Johnson

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | "Unless you've lived under a rock for the last 15 years, you should make a note of this: The southwest is already Chicana/o-Latina/o!" proclaims the Web site of the California State University, Sacramento, chapter of MEChA.

MEChA — the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan — has been one of myriad Chicano-rights, pro-immigration or social justice groups that have plunged into the immigration debate. But just as a sea of fluttering Mexican flags at the rallies, the "Nuestro Himno" Spanish-language take on the national anthem, and Mexico's "Nothing Gringo" campaign timed to coincide with May Day boycotts and walkouts in the U.S. have generated anger and suspicion about demonstrators' motives among many Americans, some forces within the immigration-rights movement will also tarnish more moderate activists.

MEChA is just such a group.

There are an estimated 400 loosely organized MEChA branches on college and high school campuses across the country. Established in 1969, the group has pressured institutions to establish Chicano studies programs, protested Columbus Day and held Chicano graduation ceremonies. Some chapters' Web sites are peppered with shots of Subcomandante Marcos — the masked figurehead of Mexico's Marxist Zapatista guerillas — or Che Guevara, and the MEChA logo boasts a bird with a lit stick of dynamite in one claw and maquahuitl — an Aztec weapon — in the other. "Through a philosophy of Chicana/o Nationalism, MEChA has not wavered from its original goal of Chicana/o control at the University," states UC-Berkeley's MEChA site.

MEChA has been in the thick of the latest immigration protests, from San Diego State University members trying to avert arrests of marching high school students, to "mechistas" organizing a rally at an Albuquerque high school at which signs bore the now-familiar refrain: "We didn't cross the border. The border crossed us."

With a line in its "El Plan de Aztlan" introduction that translates to "for the race, everything; for those outside the race, nothing," MEChA's belief in the "liberation" of Aztlan — southwest territory acquired by the U.S. for cash and debt in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo — and ethno-exclusive views continue to disturb. "Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans," reads "El Plan de Aztlan," required reading for chapters as noted in MEChA's national constitution.

MEChA has proven to be a political liability, too. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who was president of the MEChA chapter as a University of California, Los Angeles, student in the 1970s, renounced his MEChA ties after pressure from a UCLA alumni group in his second stab at the mayor's office. Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, who lost the 2003 recall election to Arnold Schwarzenegger, didn't renounce his affiliation when his MEChA past at California State University, Fresno, was raised by opponents. State Sen. Gil Cedillo, who was also in MEChA in the 1970s at UCLA, has been trying to pass legislation to grant driver's licenses to illegal immigrants with such single-focus that he's been dubbed "One-Bill Gil."

At a time when immigrants-rights groups should be trying to present a persuasive, less-strident case to the American people, several groups with radical agendas have instead taken to in-your-face activism against tighter immigration laws:

• The Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund, whose co-founder Mario Obledo said in 1998 that California is going to be a Hispanic state, and those who don't like it "ought to go back to Europe."

• The Mexican-American Political Association, which mapped out its demands in a flier for the May 1 boycott: "Immediate legalization without conditions, no border walls, no criminalization." MAPA President Nativo Lopez has stated his desire for Spanish to be the state's primary language. MAPA also called for a campaign of non-cooperation with Los Angeles County law enforcement last year when the sheriff's department flirted with a Department of Homeland Security partnership to better identify criminal aliens in county jails.

• Carlos Montes, a co-founder of the original Brown Berets in 1960s Los Angeles, is helping put together an August demonstration — sponsored by MAPA and endorsed by MEChA — against a border fence and the Minutemen, as well as against the war in Iraq. He lauds Venezuela and Cuba as "examples of the possibilities for humankind."

The involvement of separatist, militant or controversial groups in a movement for illegal immigration can only backfire. By building the issue into "them vs. us," by painting tolerant Americans as racists, by sowing separatist seeds among youth in the name of cultural identity, these activists will alienate Americans who may have sympathized with the plight of immigrants but find few moderate voices left to back.