Message to Aztlan
by
Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales
Published in 2001
Rodolfo “Corky” Gonzales (1928 - 2005), has been portrayed as a civil rights leader in the media and US history textbooks in public schools and colleges. Nothing could be further from the truth.
While Mexican Americans had legitimate grievances, Gonzales blamed every problem Mexican Americans had on the hated gringos - Anglo Americans. Nothing was their fault.
An examination of Gonzales’s autobiography - Message to Aztlan - proves he was not interested in civil rights - rather he was an ethnic supremacist - a racist who promoted ethnic separation, domination and xenophobia. This is a book of propaganda with many factual errors.
In 1967, Gonzales founded the ‘Crusade for Justice.’ The violence and intolerance preached in his autobiography manifested itself in the organization. Members of competing organizations were violently attacked by Gonzales’s thugs. On March 17, 1973, a gun battle erupted with Denver police that ended when explosives stored in the building occupied by the Crusade for Justice detonated - blowing a second floor wall into the street. One person was killed and 17 people were injured. Gonzales goal was to build a large organization and in collaboration with other militant Chicano groups, reclaim the southwest US for Mexico - which they call Aztlan - or else make it a Spanish state within the US. Their goal is advancing rapidly in California.
The reason for this anger against ‘the gringos’ is his belief that the southwest US was stolen from Mexico after the Mexican American War of 1846-8.(1) Today, 170 years after the war, many Mexicans are still holding a grudge against ‘the gringo.’ There are some Mexican American ‘civil rights’ leaders who want to kick all ‘gringos’ out of the southwest US and some the entire US.
Here are just three racist Mexican Americans who believe this: Mario Obledo(2), who co-founded MALDEF, a ‘civil rights’ organization in 1968, Reies Lopez Tijerina(3), who founded the Alianza Federal de Mercedes organization in 1963 over land grant issues and Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of the Brown Berets.(4) With the exception of Cebada, these men are dead, but it’s important to study these haters from the past because their evil ideas are embraced by millions of gullible Americans today.
Gonzales and others repeatedly claim that Anglo culture stole the Chicanos’ heritage. This is just not true and no other ethnic group has made these bogus claims. Millions of people from Germany, Poland, Italy, Norway and many other countries have come to America, learned English, and did not feel ‘oppressed” or “Culturally deprived.”
The entire Chicano Movement is based on lies, hate and ethnic superiority based on fraudulent history. It’s time to expose thugs like Rodolfo Gonzales who have always been treated with respect they NEVER deserved. Here are some revealing excerpts from Gonzales’ book so you find out about the REAL Rodolfo Gonzales.
Dec 2019
The first part of the book is the poem “I Am Joaquin,” written by Gonzales in 1967 which was highly praised. This poem has sinister sections that are in line with the militant Chicano Movement of the 1960s.(5)
Page 28:
COMMENT:
The first part of this poem is accurate. It took the Spanish 500 years to drive the Moors (Muslims) out of Spain in what became known as the ‘Reconquista.’ This term is used today by radical Mexicans in their belief that Anglos must be driven out of not only the south west United States, but ALL of the United States.
The second part is laughable. The Spanish are Europeans. The Spanish destroyed the Aztec, Mayan and Inca empires and took what land they wanted from the Indians. The Spanish were not under the heal of the lustful Europeans for 500 years - the Spaniards WERE Europeans. If the poem refers to Americans - those evil Anglos - this statement is very inaccurate. Americans had minimal contact with Mexicans until the 1820s.
Every immigrant group from Europe and Asia started at the bottom and worked their way up because of their work ethic and capitalism. But Gonzales blames everything on the gringo instead of examining their failures to advance.
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Page 32, 33: Here is a partial list of Gonzales’ demands from the Anglo:
“Education: . . .We demand a completely free education from kindergarten to college, with no fees, no lunch charge, no supplies charges, no tuition, no dues.”(a)
“We demand that all teachers live within walking distance of the schools. We demand that from kindergarten through college, Spanish be the first language and English the second language and the textbooks to be rewritten to emphasize the heritage and the contributions of the Mexican American or Indio-Hispano in the building of the Southwest.”(b)
“Economic Opportunities: We demand that the businesses serving our community be owned by that community. . . Instead of our people working in big factories across the city, we want training in our own communities. These industries would be co-ops with the profits staying in the community.”(c)
“Agricultural Reforms: We demand that not only the land, which is our ancestral right, be given back to these pueblos, but also restitution for mineral, natural resources, grazing, and timber used.”(d)
COMMENT:
a. And who is going to pay for all this ‘free’ education?
b. If you live in America, you will be taught in English. Spanish is the second language. Textbooks have already been rewritten to make these racist Mexican American groups look like civil rights groups - which they are not. Now white males are always the bad guys in US history textbooks.
c. Get the money to buy these businesses. Then you will find out what it takes to run a business.
d. Mexicans claim the southwest US is historically Mexican land. This is a NOT true. This land is historically Indian land. The Spanish took it from the Indians and then lost this land to the US after the Mexican American War of 1846-48. Mexicans should keep in mind the southwest US became prosperous because it became part of the US. Had Mexico kept this land, it would be as dysfunctional and poverty stricken as the rest of Mexico. No restitution is owed.
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Page 38: “We are the schizophrenics of this society. We have guys walking around like John Wayne and singing like James Brown. . . . I don’t mind the part about James Brown, because music is universal. The fact is that they are not identifying with their historical roots!”
COMMENT: So James Brown is okay, but not the white guy - John Wayne? So you are disrespecting your historical roots if you watch John Wayne movies? Another example of xenophobia and racism.
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Pages 38-39: “Their historical roots are that they predate any gringo from that side of the Mississippi by nearly 500 years on one side of us and 20,000 years on the other side of us, because we are mestizos. We are “La Raza Cosmica.” We are the only integrated people on these two continents. We’re not a minority. We’re a majority, when you stretch us from here to Mexico to Peru.”
COMMENT: More phony history here. Mestizos are mixed Spanish and Indian and only came into existence when Spanish had children with Native Indians. The first Spanish-Indian baby was born in 1523 to Hernan Cortez and his concubine. So mestizos have been around about 500 years - not 20,000.
Some Mexicans claim that being Spanish and Indian makes you ‘La Raza Cosmica’ - The Cosmic People. This idea came from Mexican ‘philosopher’ Jose Vasconcelos - whose sanity was debatable. Vasconcelos argued that the mixture of Spanish and Indian races created a superior race. Vasconcelos, who became a fascist and Jew hater in World War Two, engaged in stereotyping various races in developing his own racist theory.(6)
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Pages 39-40: When Gonzalez was in California for a speaking engagement he met with a friend, Antonio Salazar. They went to a store in the Los Angeles neighborhood called Hazard, when a patron asked Gonzales:
“Hey, where are you going to speak at? Maybe we’ll come down there tonight.’ Then he told the other barrio guys, “Hey, come here, I want you to meet this cat.”
“We started shaking hands. He asked, “Hey, are you the guy that’s fighting for some land?”
“I told him, “No, I’m from Denver. We support the land issue and we support the farm workers. We support every problem that involves our people, and we have to start to organize our communities to control them ourselves.”
“Ah, he said, no sweat, look there. There is not one gringo nor one black guy in this barrio. We control it.”
“I asked them, “Who runs the store?”
“Ah, some gringo.”
“And who owns that clothing store across the street?”
“Pues un pinche gringo” (That f__ing gringo)
“And who owns that housing project?”
“So what are we going to do, man?” And then Little John says, “Yeah, They are all gringos in there! We’re in occupied country. . .”
“I told him “You guys are already organized. If someone came here from any other barrio and said, “Hey, I’m taking over here,’ you guys would kill him in a minute. You’d wipe him out because you’re organized."
COMMENT: Racism is on full display here.
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Page 44: “They (the gringo Establishment) killed Che (Guevara) at thirty-eight. They killed Malcolm X at thirty-eight and Martin Luther King at forty.”
COMMENT: More fake history from Gonzales. Che was a Marxist revolutionary. He fully supported Castro in turning Cuba into a communist dictatorship. He was Castro’s chief executioner and a murderer of those who disagreed with the communist ideology. In October 1967 the guerrilla group that Che Guevara was leading in Bolivia was almost wiped out by a special detachment of the Bolivian army aided by CIA advisers. Guevara was captured and then shot dead.
On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was assassinated by three black members of the Nation of Islam. Gringos had nothing to do with this.
King was assassinated by James Earl Ray, an Anglo and a racist. No US government involvement in this crime has ever been proven although this conspiracy theory was investigated for decades without any proof being found.
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Page 50: "The schools in our community are our schools. The service agencies are our agencies. The recreation centers and the parks are ours. If they are in our community, then we should run them. That is what El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan (7) is all about; community control and controlling our own destiny, controlling ourselves."
COMMENT: Xenophobic Gonzales only wants Mexicans in Mexican areas. No gringos allowed.
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Page 53: “We are strangers in our own church. We do not control who comes into our church. The time will come when we will, and we must. These are ideas based on El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,(7) to control our own destiny."
COMMENT: More xenophobia by Gonzales. Now it is the fault of the church - who they let in.
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Page 55: “As I told many young radicals five or six years ago, and I tell Blacks today, with whom we are friendly and have mutual respect, that until they are organized and they are doing their thing, and until we are organized, there will be no international coalition. There will be no international coalition until we have made Aztlan a reality and the Chicano has become a concentrated organized force. QUE VIVA LA RAZA!” (Long live The Race)
COMMENT: Speaks like Adolf Hitler here.
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Page 64: “Nationalism transcends all boundaries: religious, financial, social, political, and class. Nationalism becomes our common denominator to teach about our Movement. While recognizing nationalism, we cannot be blinded to the vendidos, the right-wingers, the TioTacos, the exploiters, and the Malinches of our nation. They will have to suffer the same distinctions as any other enemy or oppressor.”
COMMENT: Racist to the max. Again, sounds like Hitler.
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Page 80: “We are all heirs to the land. We, the mestizo, the Indian, and of Spanish birth, owners of the Southwest by precedent and by legal title.”
CORRECTION: Here another Mexican racist uses the Treaty of Tordesillas to declare legal title to the Southwest U.S. This treaty was signed in 1494 - over 500 years ago and gave Brazil to Portugal and Spain got all the rest of the New World. This is why many Mexicans believe they have the right to ignore the border between the US and Mexico and force Anglos back to Europe!
Reies Tijerina, a very influential Mexican-American racist from the 1950s til his death in 2015, referenced the Treaty of Tordesillas to justify forcing all Anglos to move back to Europe!(3)
Mario Obledo, who co-founded MALDEF, supposedly a ‘civil rights’ organization in 1968 declared that Anglos “ought to go back to Europe."(2)
Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of the Brown Berets declared: “. . .we claim this land as ours, it's always been ours, and we're still here, and none of this talk about deporting. If anyone's going to be deported it's going to be you!”
“You old white people, it is your duty to die. Even their own ethicists say that they should die, that they have a duty to die. They're taking up too much space, too much air.” “Right now we're already controlling those elections, whether it's through violence or nonviolence. . .’
Mexican legal claims to any part of the US are fatally flawed.
Since only Portugal and Spain signed this Treaty, no other country was obligated to obey it. In addition, Mexicans ignore all subsequent treaties after the Treaty of Tordecillas - the Adams-Onis Treaty of 1819 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo - which Mexico signed to end the Mexican American War in 1848. Mexico signed away their rights with these treaties. Therefore, the U.S. has legal ownership of all the U.S. CASE CLOSED.
Racist Mexicans believe if you have Indian blood in you - Mestizos - you don’t have to obey the border between the US and Mexico. This is all a scam because nearly all mestizos originated in Mexico, not the Southwest US. Also, being part Indian doesn’t make you superior or above the law. It means you’re part Indian. Millions of Americans are part Indian. Can Americans who are part Indian ignore the Mexican border?
Many Mexicans consider the southwest U.S. stolen Mexican land, believing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was too harsh. So the real issue today is this: Even if Mexico is 100% to blame for starting both the Texas Revolution and Mexican American War - which they were - did the US have the right to take almost half of Mexico’s territory? The answer is ABSOLUTELY YES!! Here’s why:
Mexico was determined to conquer Texas and was looking for an excuse to start this war because they were certain they could defeat the US. But Mexico lost every major battle. To have beaten Mexico as badly as we did, conquered most of their country including the capital city, and then told them they must accept Texas as part of the US, which it already was, and then retreated back to the U.S. would not have been fair to us. This would have been an unforgivable disgrace to the men who died and the rest who went through hell to attain victory - and we would be inviting another attack.
Now put yourself in Mexico’s shoes. Your army has been repeatedly defeated, nearly the entire country has been conquered, and the consequences are - nothing!! Just be nice and don’t threaten Texas again! In a machismo society like Mexico, would they sit back and say ‘OK’ or would Mexico think we Americans are unbelievably gullible. Mexico would hold Americans in contempt for conquering their country and not making them pay a price for their warmongering. The reality is that once Mexico attacked the US, losing the land north of the Rio Grande became necessary to repay the US for the cost of the war in blood and money and to repay US citizens for monetary damages Mexico refused to pay.
If the US could change history, what could we change so Mexico would love us today? If we only kept Texas and didn‘t take California and New Mexico, would Mexico still hate us for keeping Texas? Absolutely yes. If we gave Texas to Mexico, would they love us? No, Mexico would still be bashing America and sending in drugs and illegal aliens into all parts of our country. They already are. Giving Texas and the southwest US to Mexico would gain us nothing.
After the loss of Texas in 1836 and Texas becoming a state in 1845, Mexico repeatedly declared that war was inevitable. In 1846, General Mariano Parades overthrew the existing government with one stated objective - start a war with the United States and retake Texas. On April 25, 1846, 1,600 Mexican troops crossed the Rio Grande and ambushed a force of 80 American troops. Eleven men were killed and the rest taken prisoner. The U.S. declared war on Mexico.
Mexico owed the US about $1.7 million which they refused to pay. President Polk refused to go to war over money, but once Mexico attacked the US, Polk decided that Mexico must pay for the cost of the war plus the $1.7 million. Since Mexico was always broke, the only way to settle their debt to the US was with land. New Mexico and California were lightly populated and most citizens had little loyality to the inept Mexican government.
Mexico from its independence was dysfunctional with constant revolts. Many Mexicans recognized the superiority of the American form of government. Lorenzo de Zavala, the principal writer of the Mexican Constitution of 1824 traveled through America and wrote a book in 1831 entitled “Journey to the United States of North America.” The book is similar to de Tocqeville's "Democracy in America", and the two men - from very different backgrounds - hold similar views about the United States.
Zavala wrote: "What will be the final outcome of its greatness and prosperity? ...it is a new social order, brilliant, positive; a political system that has excluded all privilege... Standing before this political phenomenon statesmen of all countries, philosophers, economists have stopped to contemplate the rapid march of this amazing people, and agreeing with one accord on the never before seen prosperity of its inhabitants side by side with sobriety, love of work, unlimited liberty, domestic virtues, a creative activity, and an almost fanatical religious feeling. . ." (p 189)
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Page 81: "Chicanos must take their place in the new world as liberators of the people, not the exploiters of the people. NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT TO OPPRESS THE PEOPLE, AND ALL OPPRESSED PEOPLE HAVE THE RIGHT TO REVOLUTION."
COMMENT: Mexicans are NOT oppressed. Mexicans are allowed to vote. They are free to attend school and free to drop out of school. If Mexicans wallow in victimhood it is because evil people like Gonzales have pushed this mentality onto them.
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Page 85: "The Declaration of Independence states that we the people have the right to revolution, the right to overthrow a government that has committed abuses and seeks complete control over the people. This is in order to clean out the corrupted, rotten officials that develop out of any type of capitalistic systems. Now, if they had done that, they would have never gotten to the point of having Watergate, they would never gotten to the point of having criminals like Nixon and Agnew and fifty-five in the administration found to be guilty as crooks in this society, in this free democracy."
COMMENT: Since change in America comes through voting, calls for violent revolution is treason. Gonzales claims oppression by the gringos and then says America is a ‘free democracy.’
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Page 88: "We have to destroy capitalism, and we have to help five-sixths of the world to destroy capitalism in order to equal all people’s lives. We have to support our Indian brothers, who are the indigenous people of this country. We have to support the Asians, who are indigenous, and the Africans, who are indigenous, and the South Americans, who are indigenous. People should have the right to liberation and the right to control their own destiny, and the only way to do that is to have a formulated plan to say that some of us will learn."
COMMENT: More false history. Asians and Africans are NOT indigenous. Spanish in South, Central and North America are NOT indigenous. Only Indians are indigenous. Everyone being ‘equal’ has been tried many, many times in communist dictatorships as well as hippie communes without success over the centuries. Equality can only happen when everyone has equal amounts of initiative and intelligence. In other worlds, this will never work.
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Page 89: "People are loyal to corporations for the check. People are loyal to the Mafia for the payment. They kill for money. But our people, I have to say, liberate themselves for love of each other, and that is the most important thing that we can have. Nobody can destroy that; nobody can destroy the spirit of our people. And they can kill individuals, they can shoot us down in the streets, and they have. They can throw us in their jails, but they cannot destroy an idea of a philosophy, and they can never destroy love, because we’re going to win. We’re going to beat them, whether it takes this generation, the next generation, or the next generation. We’re going to win. Viva La Raza! Viva La Raza Libre! Viva Aztlan Libre!"
COMMENT: More false history as well as extreme racism. Mexico, since it’s independence in 1821 has seen one revolution after another and killed tens of thousands of fellow Mexicans. The US has a stable society which is why Mexicans come here. Mexico has always been dysfunctional. Mexico today is essentially run by drug cartels and has a horrific crime and murder rate. Mexico’s contribution to winning World War Two and the Cold War was minimal.
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Page 90: (Speech given at the Crusade for Justice in 1978)
“We marched, we protested, we resisted, we demanded, we conducted an overt war on a minor scale and a covert protracted guerrila operation in some situations. Those who acted were punished by the police, the courts, and the penal institutions. They paid the heavy price in blood, time, fear, demoralization, and, in some cases, death.”
COMMENT: Apparently it is acceptable to break the law.
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Page 91: “The single most important act was our nationalism and the identification struggle produced through the cultural, political, and social forces which brought the masses of our people together. This presented a forum for the organizers, the philosophers, the artists, the educators, and, most important, the revolutionaries, to instruct, teach, and inspire our students, our grassroots people, our workers, our parents, and our children.”
COMMENT: More calls for nationalism and supporting revolution against the United States.
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Page - 93: “Long-range goals deal with: the philosophy of self-determination and total liberation, the building of confidence and independent action, the right to make decisions that affect our children and their future, the right to select our allies, the choice to pick our friends and determine our own political direction, to control our economic resources and human values. We must support and advance our collective nationalism . . .”
"We must begin to think, plan, and organize, not on terms of days, months, or years, but on terms of generations. Each generation must provide a positive step forward . . ."
“We have the choice of simply having existed like a bedbug in the colchon (mattress), or to having contributed to the part of the most exciting rewarding adventure in life . . . the Chicano Movement!”
COMMENTS: A delusional nut job. All these ‘rights’ Gonzales claims to want are already available. Gonzales exhorts each generation to advance the Chicano Movement - which REALLY is xenophobia, ethnic supremacy and total racism.
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Page - 174: “Using nationalism as a base upon which to build our education, we create cultural awareness and reinforce pride in our language and way of life. . .”
COMMENTS: More blatant racism. Teaching hatred of ‘Anglos” by fabricating history. (8)
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3. http://americanaction.us/index.php/other-matters/book-reviews/king-tiger-by-reies-tijerina/
“The Jews are fleeing to their land since 1947. And if the Anglo helps us, one day he’ll have to do the same, because we have roots here and the Anglo doesn’t. We have roots of blood and land. The Anglo has none - no blood root nor land.”(p39)
“A delegation of Anglos came to see me and reminded me that I was committed to fraternal harmony. They asked that I speak to the youth and urge them not to use violence.” “The Anglo, with his psychopathic mentality and his bloody and violent history, has to repent and change. Repentance means doing what the Jews are doing, and that is to return to their ancestral lands.”(p198)
4. Augustin Cebada, Information Minister of the Brown Berets declared:
“. . .we claim this land as ours, it's always been ours, and we're still here, and none of this talk about deporting. If anyone's going to be deported it's going to be you!”
“You old white people, it is your duty to die. Even their own ethicists say that they should die, that they have a duty to die. They're taking up too much space, too much air.” “Right now we're already controlling those elections, whether it's through violence or nonviolence. . .’