Aztlan backers see Hussein capture hoax
Mexican-American separatists
don't believe U.S. has Saddam
Posted: December 18, 2003
1:00 a.m. Eastern
2003 WorldNetDaily.com
The pro-Arab and viciously anti-Israeli organization also sees a spontaneous
uprising of popular support for Hussein throughout Iraq – a phenomenon
unnoticed by news organizations throughout the world, including those in Arab
countries.
According to the site, "extreme doubts have arisen throughout Islam that the
released pictures by U.S. occupation forces of the 'captured Saddam' are of the
Iraqi leader. Thousands of Iraqis, who knew Saddam, are claiming that it is one
of Saddam's many known 'doubles.'"
Why would an American-based website produced by Mexican-Americans be so
committed to the legacy of Saddam Hussein?
The Aztlan movement, which calls for the creation of a separate,
Spanish-speaking state in North America out of much of the Southwest, gets its
inspiration from Yasser Arafat's Palestinian statehood movement.
La Voz de Aztlan, or the Voice of Aztlan, called the capture of Hussein the
"mother of all hoaxes."
Its website identifies Mexicans in the U.S. as "America's Palestinians." Many
Mexicans see themselves as part of a transnational ethnic group known as "La
Raza" – the race. A May editorial on the website, with a dateline of "Los
Angeles, Alta California," declares that "both La Raza and the Palestinians
have been displaced by invaders that have utilized military means to conquer
and occupy our territories."
Hussein, the group's captive hero, meanwhile, paid some $35 million in aid to
the families of Palestinian suicide bombers.
According to a survey conducted in June 2002, a healthy majority of Mexicans
claim that their country rightfully owns much of the southwestern United
States, while most Americans believe Washington should adopt stricter
immigration standards and deploy U.S. troops along the border. The Zogby
International poll found a majority of Mexicans say the U.S. Southwest
"rightfully belongs to Mexico," and that Mexican citizens should be able to
come into those areas freely, without U.S. permission. The poll found that 58
percent of Mexicans agree with the statement, "The territory of the United
States' Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico." Zogby said 28 percent
disagreed, while another 14 percent said they weren't sure.
Activists who quite literally see themselves as "America's Palestinians" are
gearing up a movement to carve out of the southwestern United States – a
region including all of Bush's home state of Texas – a sovereign Hispanic
state called the Republica del Norte.
"There are great similarities between the political and economic condition of
the Palestinians in occupied Palestine and that of La Raza in the southwest
United States," explains an editorial in La Voz de Aztlan in Los Angeles, the
city seen as the future capital of the new Hispanic state – much like
Jerusalem is seen by Palestinian Arabs as their capital.
The editorial goes on to draw analogies between the Arab uprising in Israel and
gang violence in Los Angeles. It's the same thing, the activists claim. This is
not crime and punishment, according to La Raza activists, this is the birth of
an independence movement by young Hispanics.
"The similarities are many," says the editorial. "The takeover of our
respective lands by foreign elements occurred 100 years apart. For La Raza, it
happened in 1848 when Mexico lost the southwest at the end of the
Mexican-American War and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. For
the Palestinians, it occurred in 1948 when the Zionist Jewish People's Council
gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum and signed the 'Declaration of the
Establishment of the State of Israel' on the day in which the British Mandate
over Palestine expired."
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