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Old 10-17-2009, 09:13 AM
ilbegone ilbegone is offline
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Vigil continued
Quote:
“AZLAN” RECONSIDERED
The wording of the Plan demonstrates ethnic pride in its consciousness of a “proud historical heritage”, but its poetic wording creates great interpretive difficulties. It declared unity in gender based terminology (“brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come”). It spoke of “tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brow, and by our hearts”. But what exactly were these tasks for which our hearts called, and what, exactly, was it time to do?
And what did indigenous nations have to say about this grand plan declared in their absence? They clearly have their own myths, legends, and histories of origin that surpass, equal, predate, or displace Aztlan. What did the Plan mean to the tribal nations of the present day American southwest, if this was where Aztlan was once located, tribal nations who had engaged Spaniards and Mexicans (mestizos) in bloody warfare for encroachment on lands they occupied. Or was their input needed, since Chicanos were really “Indian”, or at least mestizo, anyway?
While declaring the “Independence of our Mestizo Nation”, the Plan says nothing about these peoples and nations, nor about African Americans or the role – if any- that the foreign: "Gabacho” would play in the nation it proclaimed. Its wording implies the solidarity of the Americas, since it does “not recognize capricious frontiers on the Bronze Continent”. But how were Chicanos to commune with their “brothers” across these borders? And what was meant by a “Bronze People with a Bronze Culture”?
The Plan declares, “We are free and sovereign, We are a nation”. Was this to be a new nation called Aztlan? And how would Aztlan relate to Mexico? Or would it? Was the Plan a literal declaration of independence from the United States? If so, where were the limits of these lands, since Mexico's borders were drawn by Spanish imperialists anyway and, at the time of the American takeover, vast regions populated not by Mexican mestizos, but by sedentary or nomadic tribal nations? In what sense did “Chicanos” have “their hearts in their hands and their hands in the soil”? What did this interesting imagery mean?
The verbal and theoretical imprecision of this declaration leaves room for many interpretations. Whatever “Aztlan” meant, the word spread rapidly after the conference. Students, for example, soon adopted the name Moviemento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) – The Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan.
The Plan was, as noted above, a two part document; Gonzales wrote the program, while poet Alberto Urista wrote most of the preamble. The program sees nationalism as an ideology around which Chicanos would rally:
"The Chicano, (La Raza de Bronze) must use nationalism as the key for or common denominator for mass mobilization and organization. Once committed to the idea and philosophy of El Plan de Aztlan, we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural, and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle must be the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, and our political life. El Plan commits all levels of Chicano society: the barrio, the campo, the ranchero, the writer, the teacher, the worker, the professional, to la causa."
Nationalism was so important that a restatement of it served as punto primero (point one): “Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religions, political, class and economic factions or boundaries”. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree on”. Gonzales believed nationalism should, and would transcend those factors that divided Chicanos. Leftists and many intellectuals at the youth conference, however, argued that “La Raza” itself was divided into classes with divergent interests, and that, at its worst, primitive nationalism could be racist. For them, nationalism alone would not transcend class privilege and bias. The Plan did not address these issues.
The resolutions of the crusade's youth conferences of 1969, 1970, and 1971 reflect the prevailing nationalist sentiments of conference participants. Nationalism may not have been a comprehensive political theory, but it prevailed in the conferences' rhetoric, emotion, spirit of unity, and youthful enthusiasm. Philosophical conflict arose between nationalists and those advocating theories based on class, and though the Plan did not cause these conflicts, being merely an expression of pre-existing nationalist sentiment, neither was it an adequate framework to comprehend or resolve them.
For all its conceptual murkiness, and rhetorical quirkiness, the Plan's preamble and program denounce exploitation and advocated liberation and self determination, calling for driving out exploiters and “occupying forces”. It was provocative In its advocacy or “revolutionary acts” by youth and was traditionalist, or conservative, in its defense of culture, morals, and values like “respect” and “family and home”. It was idealistic in advocating “love”, “humanism”, and “dignity”. It criticized and rejected American society and government and served as a radical voice that spoke to many ideas, emotions, visions, and issues within the community.
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