Armando Navarro profile

Sharon McNarry of the Press-Enterprise offers "Professor is man of many battles", a profile of UC Riverside's Armando Navarro. Among other gems, it contains this:
Navarro wants every person of Mexican descent in the United States, whether native-born, a legal immigrant or undocumented -- to demand equal rights, and to be granted the legal right to live on land that was once Mexican territory.

Navarro concedes the United States has the right to control its own borders, but claims it fails to accommodate what he says are the historical rights of Mexican people to be here.

"This land used to be Mexico," he said. "No other immigrant group can claim that the Southwest was once their land. The Hungarians, the Irish, cannot make that claim."

Navarro sees people of Mexican descent as a colonized, oppressed, stateless people similar to the Palestinians, but without a single charismatic leader like the late Yasser Arafat.

If they cannot achieve economic and social equality under the current system, then they should seize political control by winning elections, he wrote in his latest book. If that fails, they should carve out a separate nation called Aztlan.
Earlier this month, in a true Duranty-esque move, Rachel Swarns and Randal Archibold of the New York Times gave him three paragraphs without providing any of the information above. (Write public *at* nytimes.com with your thoughts.)

In February, he organized an anti-HR4437 meeting. One who spoke was a Mexican Senator. Another who spoke (via video) is an alleged U.S. politician, California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez. Nunez is, of course, a Democrat. (According to the program, it was held in "Riverside California, Aztlan"). Related: Think Progress, Ezra Klein, AP downplay organizers of illegal immigration marches. There was also a meeting in January organized by Navarro, which featured U.S. Rep. Joe Baca Sr., another Democrat. Audio clips at this page (no permalink, do a find for his name).

In 2005, Mary Sanchez of Knight-Ridder tried to portray him as a moderate.

In 2004, he was part of a group that threatened to sue to stop arrests by the Border Patrol.

Armando Navarro, CHIRLA, CARECEN, NLG, Proposition 187 article from 1995 (187flashback)

"Latino Leaders Rallying Troops" (1995 187flashback)

1996: "Building Aztlan: Chicano Movement Springs Back to Life" (187flashback) More information here and see also a video featuring him and others (WMV file). See also these videos: 1, 2.

Comments

People forget that the natives of what was to become Mexico never had any claim to what is now the American Southwest. The Aztecs, which were the dominant civilization in Mexico when the Spanish came and conquered it, never occupied the southwest. A large number of other, very distinct native tribes occupied this part of the continent, and none of these had any relation to the Aztecs, other than in a racial sense. They had completely different cultures and spoke different languages. On top of that, the Aztecs, who occupied central Mexico, were despised by essentially every other Indian group they had contact with. One of the very reasons that Cortez was able to conquer them so quickly was because so many other Indians wanted the Aztecs destroyed and consequently allied with the Spaniards.

Mexico only came to hold territory in the Southwest because in the late 18th century the Spanish decided to expand their empire and forcibly missionized the territory. Spain was also fearful of acquisition of the land by Russia. At the end of the Mexican war of independence in 1821, which coincided with the end of the missionization era, the victorious Mexicans simply "inherited" that land. Twenty-five years later, the U.S. took that land from Mexico.

Now, Mexicans (representing the descendents of the conquered Aztecs and their European former conquerors) want Americans to think that North America was occupied by one big, monolithic, harmonious "Indian Civilization," and that Mexico therefore has some sort of claim over American territory. Nothing could be further from the truth. These Indian civilizations were about as unified as all the various countries of Europe or Africa or Asia, and the natives of Mexico were among the most isolated and hated.

Why stop even there, George? Since ALL of the original "colonists" of the North and South American continents were from central Asia, why not cede all of both continents to the two countries in that general area - Russia and China.

And then why stop even THERE? Since those areas of central Asia were settled by people from east Africa who left Africa around 80,000 years ago, why not cede all of both continenets AND central Asia and for that matter Europe and SE Asia, and all of the Pacific and Australia, etc. etc. to eastern Africa? It could certainly buck up eastern Africa's prospects!

why not George sounds good to me! why not just handed over this nation to all so called immigrant groups and see what happens? the fact is white's have no will to keep a nation under laws! the so called mexicans want only one thing, and that is what you have without working for it.
the asia's ( read chinese reds helping mexico and bin laden and who are sent here as spy's) want the same and our other brothers what most white's ( read males ) dead.

the people who will be deported in this end game are the whites but not really deported but put in a death camp with the help of our so called government who will do anything to keep peace and power, if you think that is nuts keep watching over the next years if we have that long.

Why not go further. While they weren't recent immigrant groups (they migrated from Asia some 20,000 years ago) the descendants of the Aztecs and Mayans may have priority consideration for claim to the land over Hispanics as an ethnic group. Maybe only Mexicans of Mayan and Aztec blood ought to own Mexican land. All Hispanics without native blood could be excluded from all of Mexico, for that matter. I guess they'd have to be deported.

It looks as though Navarro wants to instigate the same crude tribal strife that occurred before the world developed some semblence of international law.