Talk:MEChA
From Academic Kids
To explain some of my edits:
MEChA is widely criticized for being a racist and separatist organization,
True, and NPOV.
whose openly stated goals constitute treason to the United States.
The accusation of "treason", is a subset of those who see MEChA as racist/seperatist, it is not a "wide criticism". After all, "treason" is a specific crime that requires more than just words to commit.
Some of the more overtly objectionable, and often deemed treasonous, goals and ideas expressed in El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán include:
To NPOV this, I chose to quote the actual text of El Plan, and to explain the interpretations of MEChA and its critics.
All of these are generally seen as calls to negate and subvert American national unity, equality before the law for all American citizens, and territorial integrity of the nation.
"Generally seen" is misleading. This would imply that this is a widely accepted viewpoint, which is false. Is the existence of native american nations within the US "subversive" of national unity?
There is no doubt that if similar goals were openly published by a political organization of a different ethnicity, such as the Caucasian Americans, such an organization would be immediately, and rightly, recognized as fascist and suppressed.
This is an argument of moral equivalence between, say, the KKK and MEChA. It overlooks the counterargument that the KKK and MEChA are fundamentally different in that one is a majority group of already-privileged members that uses widespread violence to achieve its means, whereas MEChA born during the civil rights era, a minority and underprivileged group (objectively), and HASN'T used violence and in fact eschews it.
Anyways, the use of the terms of "There is no doubt ..." and "immediately and rightly recognized as fascist" is very much non-NPOV, so I am cutting it.
Many mechistas, perhaps including the leadership, may claim that they do not actually espouse such radical notions, especially when they are questioned by conservative media. However, it is notable that MEChA has never officially repudiated any of these declarations. This creates an impression that the organization serves as an umbrella for a wide variety of organization and activists, some of them benign social service or political action groups, and others subversive radical ones.
"perhaps"? "may"? Is wikipedia a dumping ground of rampant speculation now? If the leadership claims that they do not espouse such radical notions, doesn't that contradict the following statement that MEChA hasn't officially repudiated any of these declarations? I'm cutting this until "perhaps" and "may" can be confirmed, and also this discreprancy can be resolved.
People, I have just created articles on Plan Espiritual de Aztlan and Plan de Santa Barbara. I feel that we need to try to distribute the material properly between these, when there is free time at least :). I feel that the tone of the article right now, which by the way was partially inflicted by myself, is probably not-neutral because of a focus on Plan of Aztlan. That being said, I believe that we really should emphasize the separatist nature of the movement, as reflected in the mechista Plan de Santa Barbara and their founding constitution, which also actually deserves its own article. Watcher 02:58, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
Extreme, blatent Bias.
It is interesting that an openly-racist, separatist, hate group like MEChA comes off sounding like a Boy Scout troop for Mexicans. "MEChA is in many ways the modern day Ku Klux Klan of Chicanos...(and) a racist organization that advocates revolution and segregation" http://www.stanfordreview.org/Archive/Volume_XXXI/Issue_2/Editorial/editorial1.shtml
Not a mention here on Wikipedia of the group's OTHER slogan, which is "Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.” [For the race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing.]
Not a mention here on Wikipedia of the numerous violent, racist acts of thuggery the group (aka "The Tan Klan") has engaged in, including a 1996 attack on black and white americans protesting illegal immigration and 1993 protests for a "Chicano Studies" department at UCLA that caused $500,000 in damage as radicals occupied buildings. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,95871,00.html
From vDare.com [1] (http://vdare.com/bevens/041123_jackson.htm)
"In 1995, A Latino INS officer was killed in California. The University of California-San Diego chapter of Mecha published an editorial in its newspaper, Voz Fronteriza, called "Death of a Migra Pig."
Sample:
'We're glad this pig died, he deserved to die . . . All the Migra pigs should be killed, every single one...the only good one is a dead one...The time to fight back is now. It is time to organize an anti-Migra patrol...It is to [sic] bad that more Migra pigs didn't die with him.'"
See also http://www.americanpatrol.com/MECHA/MigraPigPaper-950500.html
The group's literature is peppered with hate speech.
I don't think this article could be more POV if it tried. I literally do not recognize MEChA as it is depicted here. There is no question that it is a separatist group; it is avowedly so.
- Yes, it is a particularly shameful whitewash. Why don't you work to fix it, with sources? Jayjg (talk) 16:37, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
Not a Hate Group
I think the above commentator has made the mistake of taking the actions of a few MEChistas as indicative of the group as a whole. MEChA is a fairly diverse group, and it would be suprising if there weren't a few extremists among them. You can always cherry pick examples, especially if your sources are sites like VDARE and American Patrol, which the ADL and SPLC have both identified as a hate (http://www.adl.org/extremism/arizona/arizonaborder.pdf) groups (http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=106). You don't recognize MEChA as it's depicted here? I doubt you'd recognize MEChA if you went and sat in on their meetings. Have you ever met a MEChista? I don't claim to have known many, but the ones I have dealt with were not radical in the slightest.
If a fraternity member casts racial epithets and sparks a riot, it doesn't follow that everyone in that fraternity shares his views. If Martin Luther writes a treatise entitiled On the Jews and their Lies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther#Martin_Luther_and_Judaism), it doesn't mean all Lutherans are anti-semites. If a pro-life activist bombs an abortion clinic, it does not mean that all pro-lifers condone such activity. And if one webmaster in one chapter of MEChA makes a single link to Voz de Aztlan, it does not mean that Voz de Aztlan is official spokespiece for all MEChA.
MEChA-related acts of violence, while not to be condoned or to be brushed aside lightly, are few and far between; the comparison to the KKK is disingenuous. The Standford Review article (http://www.stanfordreview.org/Archive/Volume_XXXI/Issue_2/News/news1.shtml) you quoted admits as much: "We are in no way suggesting that MEChA is an organization that lynches and terrorizes other races in the manner the KKK has in the past, nor has MEChA been the cause of intimidation, pain, and anguish as has the KKK". For the overwhelming majority of MEChistas, MEChA is the cultural and educational organization for Latinos, and nothing more. Indeed, MEChA has last a great deal of its radical edge over the past decades, and you can clearly see that reflected in more modern documents like Philosophy of MEChA (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/MEChA), which emphsize education as MEChA's first and foremost goal.
Por la raza, todo, fuera de la raza, nada is not a slogan of MEChA, let alone the "other" slogan. It's a quote lifted from El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (and is discussed there). "For those outside the race, nothing" is a misleading translation; the word "those" (aquellos, or la gente, or any synonym) doesn't exist in the Spanish original. The translation of por as "for" is also a bit sketchy (although por can mean "for", it usually means "by").
The damage done in the 1993 UCLA disturbance has been inflated by an order of magnitude of more: the real value was $35,000 to $50,000 (http://www.bruinalumni.com/antonio/villar3.html), not half a million dollars as you'll find in most reports. Again, not to condone or to dismiss lightly, but this is an example of the distortions you find on the internet by sources that have an axe to grind.
-- Cashton 6/1/2005
