- - - continued - - -
[i]
-----------------------------------------------
Charles Truxillo, a professor of "Chicano Studies" at the University of New Mexico, believes that Los Angeles will one day be the capital of "La Republica del Norte" -- a Hispanic nation straddling the border between the southwest United States and northern Mexico.
The new polity won't appear "within the next 20 years but within 80 years," predicts Truxillo.
"I may not live to see the Hispanic homeland, but by the end of the century my students will live in it, sovereign and free."
While Truxillo maintains that the new country should be created "by any means necessary," he insists that it is "unlikely" that it will be born out of a civil war.
Instead, he foresees that "La Republica del Norte" will be created "by political process, by the ‘electoral pressure' of the future majority Hispanic population," observes the Albuquerque News.
What does Truxillo mean when he invokes the familiar revolutionary refrain, "By any means necessary"?
One clue can be found in how Truxillo reveres Reies Lopez Tijerina, a bloody-handed 1960s Chicano agitator.
It was from Tijerina, states Truxillo, that he learned "I was a member of a people with a country that had been taken from them by war, a land that was our own by treaty."
Tijerina's chief claim to infamy was his role in leading a June 1967 guerrilla assault on the courthouse in Tierra Amarilla, New Mexico.
During the two-hour assault, Tijerina and 150 terrorist thugs killed Deputy Sheriff Nicainor Saizan, pistol-whipped Undersheriff Dan Rivera, and shot 63-year-old jailer Eugolio Salazar.
The Tijerina-led mob also took 20 local citizens hostage in the courthouse before fleeing town. Although Salazar survived the initial assault, he was beaten to death before he could testify at Tijerina's trial.
With the jury and material witnesses intimidated by the possibility of another outbreak of violence, Tijerina -- who had shot Salazar point-blank in the face -- was given a two-year sentence, of which he served six months before being paroled.
------------------------------------------------
Historically, immigrants to the United States were expected to assimilate our language, customs, and public culture.
However, as the border between the United States and Mexico erodes, we are witnessing what could be called "[red]assimilation in reverse[/red]" as the public institutions of the affected communities are required to accommodate large, undigested masses of Mexicans.[/i]
[b]Comprende me?[/b]