Letter to the Editor

Note: This was received by the L. A. Times. They declined to run it, however.

June 22, 2006

To L. A. Times op-ed editor Nicholas Goldberg:

Gustavo Arellano's opinion piece on MEChA (L.A. Times, June 15) illustrated his mastery of spin. Painting MEChA as a benign group of Chicano students helping others, he omits much, distorts some, misrepresents the rest, and cleverly obfuscates.

Read more about MEChA, some old, some recent, all radical. Their national constitution lauds the "bronze continent" and calls for the "liberation of our land". Anti-American literature is published on multiple campuses, including El Popo, AZTLAN News, Chispas, UCLA's Gente de AZTLAN (heroes are Che Guevara, Augusto Cesar Sandino, Simon Bolivar and Salvadoran Stalinist Farabundo Marti), VOZ FRONTERIZA (UC San Diego) that celebrated the death of a Border Patrol agent, La Voz Mestiza (UC Irvine) that identified conservative U.S. representatives as "Nazi Pigs" and referred to AZTLAN (U.S. Southwest) as "This land is ours and always will be", and LA VOZ BERKELEY that referred to the United States as AMERIKKA.

San Diego City College MEChA declared the five U.S. southwestern states were no longer part of the U.S., lowered the American flag and raised the AZTLAN flag in its place. In 1971, UC Santa Barbara MEChA was asked to work with the campus police to avoid violence. Their reply: "... we view the campus police as an integral part of this whole repressive system ... we cannot accept this 'kiss of death' ... que viva la revolucion (long live the revolution)".

In May 1993, MEChA at UCLA started a riot that caused heavy financial damage to that campus when they occupied the student union building and demanded full department status for Chicano Studies. A MEChA student spokesperson stated at a March 1997 rally at Los Angeles City Hall, "When the people in this building don't listen to the demands of our community, it's time to burn it down!"

At a statewide conference at Cal State University Northridge (CSUN) in 1996, a few hundred students with their parents and younger siblings, furious at the passage of propositions 187 and 209, chanted - screaming for several minutes - "Viva la revolucion", "Chicano Power", "We didn't cross the border, the border crossed us", and "Esta es mi lucha, esta is mi tierra (This is my fight, this is my land)." CSUN MEChA advisor Professor Rudy Acuna (author of Occupied America) told them, "Right now you are living in Nazi USA ... we can't let them take us to those intellectual ovens." I was one of two Anglo reporters forcibly removed, though we both were admitted that morning with press passes from a local cable TV producer.

CSUN Mechistas instructed high school students how to participate in walkouts throughout Los Angeles during the recent demonstrations, showing them the film "Walkout" produced by Chicano war-horse activists of the 60's. The same old war-horses are still active MEChA mentors, including Acuna, others at UCLA and other local and out of state universities. One of the most radical is Chicano Studies Professor Armando Navarro of UC Riverside. Navarro tells Mechistas, "You are like the generals who command armies ... we're in a state of war!" and demands "a nation within a nation - even the idea of an AZTLAN" for Chicanos and Latinos.

MEChA advisor Professor Jose Angel Gutierrez (University of Texas at Arlington) was the founder of La Raza Unida Party and UMAS (United Mexican American Students) which morphed into MEChA. Gutierrez still instructs Mechistas that Latinos have the right to migrate freely throughout the Americas, to be radical and prepared to govern when White America disappears. These antiques still groom new radicals aligned with the Brown Berets - uniformed street soldiers of the AZTLAN brigade.

At the MEChA national conference at Michigan State University in April 1997, a drawing of Emiliano Zapata holding a rifle was on the face page of their program. "Ch" was replaced by "X", i.e., Chicano was now "Xicano", MEChA was now "MEXA", etc. Their program included the following statement: "National revolution is the theme for this year's MEXA conference ... an emerging XICANO nation."

Arellano writes he is proud to have helped striking janitors. The "Justice for Janitors" campaign, with Jesse Jackson at the helm, was composed of illegal aliens who had displaced American janitors by undercutting their wages and then marched through Los Angeles demanding the higher wages of those they had replaced. They couldn't read the signs they carried.

Arellano is crafty. A few months ago he appeared with Minuteman Founder Jim Gilchrist on the Orange County TV cable channel - a cordial discussion about immigration. They shook hands and agreed to disagree on issues. A few days later Arellano was a guest on a Pacifica Radio program titled, "The Pocho Hour of Power". Questioned on his appearance with Gilchrist, Arellano called him "a truly evil person". He couldn't know someone heard both programs!

Yes, Gustavo, RECONQUISTA is alive and thriving. Yes, Gustavo RAZA is racist.

Evelyn Miller

| |