Mexica Movement: Worldview and Agendas

By John Perazzo
Discover The Networks
April 2006

The Mexica Movement (MM) derives its name from "Mexica" (Meh-shee-kah), which is purportedly the original Aztec way of pronouncing "Mexican."

MM calls itself "the Nican Tlaca (Indigenous) rights educational organization for the people of Anahuac [Ah-nah-wahk]." Anahuac is what the Mexica Movement calls "the true name of our nation," which it says European "invaders" unjustly "stole," carved up, and renamed. MM rejects the legitimacy of all North and Central American nations named or established by Europeans -- including not only the U.S., but also Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Belize. "All of these are false and invalid labels created by trespassers," says MM. "…These artificial divisions of our continent and our people are the result of the last 500 years of European colonialism, Genocide, forced relocations, and other crimes."

The Mexica Movement takes pains to distinguish itself from what it terms "the Spain-centric and error-filled 'Aztlan' … agenda," which calls for Mexico's "re-conquest" of the American Southwest. MM's aims go much farther, seeking "the total liberation of our Anahuac continent ('North America') not just to where the European Spaniards drew their colonial borders on our continent." According to MM, this includes every portion of what are currently called Canada, the United States, Mexico, and Central America.

MM views existing borders as the arbitrary constructs of "illegal squatter descendants" of "pirates" who are illegally occupying land that is not rightfully theirs. "This whole continent is our homeland," says MM. "We are not bound by the colonial illegal boundaries of the Europeans … We have no obligation to be foreigners in our own land, on our own continent." In MM's calculus, the entire North American land mass should be open to the unfettered migrations of all its indigenous inhabitants -- who constitute "one Anahuac nation" whose far-flung, disparate populations are linked by "historic[al], cultural, linguistic, and racial factors." By this reasoning, white Americans (like their ancestors before them) are the real "illegals" -- intruders in a land where they do not rightfully belong.

MM describes itself as an "Indigenous rights educational organization for the Nican Tlaca people of the occupied lands of our continent." The ultimate objective of this "education" is to render Europeans "shamed and forced to acknowledge that they are collectively thieves of our continent, Genocidal murderers, and that they are in a criminal occupation, possession, and exploitation of our continent and all of its wealth."

MM summarizes the white European influence in North America as follows: "Terrorism is European colonialism's main tool against Non-European people all over the world. … This first attack was by the pirate-terrorist Columbus and his raping criminal racist thugs. … Colonialism is the European parasitic habitual crime of invading other people's land, stealing their resources, destroying their society, committing genocide against the majority of the people … enslaving the remaining population, and culturally annihilating them."

In MM's view, the only equitable resolution to this horrific legacy is for Europeans to make "full reparations for our people," "return the continent to its rightful heirs," and "go home to their homeland: Europe." "We are only asking unwelcomed guests to leave our home," explains MM, which likens Europeans to "parasites" and "a cancer" which must "be removed" from Anahuac. Not absolving modern-day Europeans of shared guilt for the crimes of their ancestors, MM says, "These crimes ... are collective European crimes because you have all benefited from these crimes. We will not let you weasel yourselves out of your past crimes or allow you to continue in your current parasitic behavior."

MM's ultimate objective is to restore Anahuac (North America) to the glory it supposedly knew in pre-Columbian times: "We were once a great civilization of large cities, large towns …We were once the greatest astronomers, the greatest mathematicians, a people dedicated to science and logic, law and justice … We were once architects, engineers, doctors, men and women of books, of cities … a people of tremendous industry, vast commerce, men and women of great intellect … morally and ethically superior to any European." "The European Genocide of our people," laments MM, "destroyed our Einsteins, Shakespeares, Newtons, and all of the other possibilities for greatness that our nation had in the last 500 years."

Lamenting further that its ideal of racial purity has been somewhat compromised by the interbreeding that has occurred during the "European colonialism and racism that has enslaved us for over 500 years," MM nonetheless declares: "Being Mixed-blood ... does not stop us from being Nican Tlaca, no matter how 'white' one looks. The shades and physical looks of our Mixed-blood people are just scars from the rape of our nation. These scars do not define us! Our core blood, our Pre-European history, our heritage, and our land are all what define us!"

MM's intent is to "win our continent and our lands back through a disciplined united educational liberation war." Toward this end, MM teaches what it calls "the truth of Columbus: thief, murderous savage monster." It condemns "the crimes of the Europeans, genocidal users of biological weapons [that] killed 95% of us." "Smallpox," says MM, "was their favorite weapon. … They also enjoyed doing torture, mutilation, rape, massacres. … We must learn the truth … of the holocaust that happened here to us: 23 million of us killed in Mexico and 'Central America,' 10 million more of us killed in Canada and the 'U.S.' … Genocide. Our Holocaust." In another section of its website, MM says, "In the whole of the Western Hemisphere ('the Americas'), 70 to 100 million of our people were killed, mostly using biological warfare in the form of smallpox."

Characterizing "the white man" as "the thief," "the occupier," and "the enslaver," MM views the legalization of all illegal immigrants as a crucial step in the Nican Tlaca quest to regain "control" of Anahuac. As MM explains, this is simply a matter of demographics: "The white man's days on our continent are limited. … Remember that our numbers are growing in 'The United States of America.' We were only 4% in the 1970 census. We were 14% in the 2000 census. ... We will easily be the majority of the population of the 'USA' in 2100. … This is our continent … it will be ours again, in our control."
While working toward that long-range goal, MM counsels its people to steadfastly eschew any impulse to assimilate into America's illegitimate society or to embrace its inherently corrupt values. "We are educating our people against the ignorant suicidal assimilation into European blood and culture," says MM. "… Assimilation is the slow motion kill. Assimilation means marrying white to kill the brown in us, to kill the heart of us. Assimilation means the end of us. Assimilation sucks us down into the white race. Assimilation kills our race. Assimilation is the death of us. Assimilation is racism. Assimilation is Genocide."

Just as the Mexica Movement rejects the validity of American borders, so does it reject Western-imposed "racist colonial" labels such as "Hispanic" and "Latino" -- terms MM claims were designed to "'kill off' our people's true identity, history, independence, and our rights to our land and its wealth."

MM advocates a form of socialism / communism as an economic ideal, but rejects "European people's Eurocentric Marxist … social agendas [that] ignore or minimize … the ongoing racist crimes of the Europeans." Claiming that Karl Marx himself derived his "best solutions" from "research[ing] … our Nican Tlaca societies," MM says, "We don't need the European Karl Marx interpreting the success of our ancestors' collective societies to us. With proper study, we can interpret ourselves to ourselves a lot better than Mr. Karl Marx."

"But worse than the Marxist approach for our people," says MM, "is the suicidal embrace of individualism, materialism, capitalism, 'Christianity' … Each of these approaches offer us the 'opportunity' to work within colonialism -- and the guaranteed extermination of our people. ... We are today in the process of being digested by the worldwide European empire that has been built on massive piracy, exploitation, lies, oppression, racism, slavery, cultural destruction, and genocide."

MM denies that it is a racist organization. "Racism only comes in when one race oppresses another because of their race," explains MM. "We are not now capable of oppressing Europeans, nor do we intend to oppress Europeans. We intend to educate Europeans on the crimes of their ancestors. We want to show them the injustice of our enslavement to their interests and the ongoing theft of our wealth of the natural resources of our continent."

The Mexica Movement does not confine its activism solely to the goal of returning North America to its pre-Columbian "owners." It is also a staunch supporter of Palestinian militarism and terrorism. MM is a member of the bitterly anti-Israel "Free Palestine Coalition," along with such organizations as the American Arab-Anti-Discrimination Committee, Ramsey Clark's Marxist-Leninist International Action Center, Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES), the Socialist Workers Party, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the National Lawyers Guild, the Palestinian American Women Association, Veterans For Peace, the Humanitarian Law Project, Coalition in Solidarity with Cuba, the Chapter of the Committee of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism, the All African People's Revolutionary Party, Friends of Sabeel, the Black Radical Congress, the Freedom Socialist Party, Radical Women, and the Islamic Association for Palestine.