Reconquista (Mexico)


The Reconquista is a term that is used to describe the vision by different individuals, groups, and/or nations that the Southwestern United States should be politically or culturally reconquered by Mexico. These opinions are often formed on the basis that those territories had been claimed by Spain for centuries and had been claimed by Mexico from 1821 until being ceded to the United States in the Texas annexation and the Mexican Cession, as a consequence of the Mexican–American War.

Background

The term Reconquista means "reconquest", and is an analogy to the Christian Reconquista of Moorish Iberia, as the areas of greatest Mexican immigration and cultural diffusion are conterminous with the territories the United States gained from Mexico in the 19th century.

Cultural views

Mexican writers

In a 2001 article on Latin American web portal Terra entitled "Advancement of the Spanish language and Hispanics is like a Reconquista ", Elena Poniatowska said:
In his keynote address at the Second International Congress of the Spanish language held in Valladolid, Spain, in 2003 entitled "Unity and Diversity of Spanish, Language of Encounters", with regards to "reconquista", Carlos Fuentes said:
In another part of his discourse, Fuentes briefly returns to his idea of "reconquista":
Thus, Poniatowska and Fuentes' concept of reconquista can be viewed as a metaphor for the linguistic tendencies by a diverse group of peoples who share a common and historical connection to the Spanish language within the Americas over the course of 500 years, which, incidentally, includes the border region of the Southwest United States.

Nationalist Front of Mexico

The fringe group Nationalist Front of Mexico opposes what it sees as Anglo-American cultural influences and rejects the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, as well as what its members consider the "American occupation" of territory formerly belonging to Mexico and now form the southwestern United States.
On its website, the front states:

We reject the occupation of our nation in its northern territories, an important cause of poverty and emigration. We demand that our claim to all the territories occupied by force by the United States be recognized in our Constitution, and we will bravely defend, according to the principle of self-determination to all peoples, the right of the Mexican people to live in the whole of our territory within its historical borders, as they existed and were recognized at the moment of our independence.

Charles Truxillo

A prominent advocate of Reconquista was Chicano activist and adjunct professor Charles Truxillo of the University of New Mexico, who envisioned a sovereign Hispanic nation called the República del Norte that would encompass Northern Mexico, Baja California, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. He supported the secession of US Southwestern states to form an independent Chicano nation, arguing that the Articles of Confederation gave individual states full sovereignty and thus the legal right to secede.

Truxillo, who taught at UNM's Chicano Studies Program on a yearly contract, suggested in an interview that "Native-born American Hispanics feel like strangers in their own land." He said, "We remain subordinated. We have a negative image of our own culture, created by the media. Self-loathing is a terrible form of oppression. The long history of oppression and subordination has to end" and that on both sides of the US–Mexico border "there is a growing fusion, a reviving of connections ... Southwest Chicanos and Norteno Mexicanos are becoming one people again." Truxillo stated that Hispanics who have achieved positions of power or otherwise are "enjoying the benefits of assimilation" are most likely to oppose a new nation, explaining that
Truxillo believed that the República del Norte would be brought into existence by "any means necessary" but that it was unlikely to be formed by civil war but rather by the electoral pressure of the future majority Hispanic population in the region. Truxillo added that he believed it's his job to help develop a "cadre of intellectuals" to think about how this new state can become a reality.

In 2007, the UNM reportedly decided to stop renewing Truxillo's yearly contract. Truxillo claimed that his "firing" was due to his radical beliefs, arguing that "Tenure is based on a vote from my colleagues. Few are in favor of a Chicano professor advocating a Chicano nation state."

José Ángel Gutiérrez

In an interview with In Search of Aztlán on 8 August 1999, José Ángel Gutiérrez, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, stated that:
In an interview with the Star-Telegram in October 2000, Gutiérrez stated that many recent Mexican immigrants "want to recreate all of Mexico and join all of Mexico into one. And they are going to do that, even if it's just demographically ... They are going to have political sovereignty over the Southwest and many parts of the Midwest." In a videotape made by the Immigration Watchdog website, Gutiérrez is quoted as saying, "We are millions. We just have to survive. We have an aging white America. They are not making babies. They are dying. It's a matter of time. The explosion is in our population." In a subsequent interview with The Washington Times in 2006, Gutiérrez backtracked and said there was "no viable" Reconquista movement, and blamed interest in the issue on closed-border groups and "right-wing blogs".

Other views

Felipe Gonzáles, a professor at the University of New Mexico, who is director of UNM's Southwest Hispanic Research Institute, has stated that while there is a "certain homeland undercurrent" among New Mexico Hispanics, the "educated elites are going to have to pick up on this idea and run with it and use it as a point of confrontation if it is to succeed." Juan José Peña of the Hispano Round Table of New Mexico believes that Mexicans and Mexican Americans currently lack the political consciousness to form a separate nation, stating that "Right now, there's no movement capable of undertaking it."
Illegal immigration into the southwest states is sometimes viewed as a form of reconquista, in light of the fact that Texas statehood was preceded by an influx of US settlers into that Mexican province until United States citizens outnumbered Mexicans 10–1 and were able to take over governance of the area. The theory is that the reverse will happen as Mexicans eventually become so numerous in that region that they can wield substantial influence, including political power. Even if not intended, some analysts say the significant demographic shift in the American Southwest may result in "a de facto reconquista."
A May 2006 Zogby poll reported that 58 percent of Mexicans believe that the southwestern US belongs to Mexico.
The American political scientist Samuel P. Huntington, a proponent of the widespread popularity of Reconquista, stated in 2004 that:
The neoliberal political writer Mickey Kaus has remarked,
Other Hispanic rights leaders say that Reconquista is nothing more than a fringe movement. Nativo Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Association in Los Angeles, when asked about the concept of Reconquista by a reporter, responded "I can't believe you're bothering me with questions about this. You're not serious. I can't believe you're bothering with such a minuscule, fringe element that has no resonance with this populace."
Reconquista sentiments are often jocularly referred to by media targeted to Mexicans, including a recent Absolut Vodka ad that generated significant controversy in the United States for its printing of a map of pre–Mexican–American war Mexico. Reconquista is a recurring theme in contemporary fiction and non-fiction, particularly among far-right authors.
The National Council of La Raza, the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, has stated on its website that it "has never supported and does not endorse the notion of a Reconquista or Aztlán."
In an editorial written in Investor's Business Daily, it said efforts by past Mexican government officials to influence the 2016 election was a form of "reconquista". This view was not shared in an editorial in the American Thinker, which pointed towards Californio independence from Mexico in the mid-19th century.

Real approaches

Historical

In 1915, the capture of Basilio Ramos in Brownsville, Texas, revealed the existence of the Plan of San Diego, which stated goal was to reconquer the southwestern United States in order to gain domestic support in Mexico for Huerta. However, other theories point that "the plan" was created to push the US into supporting Venustiano Carranza, a major leader of the Mexican revolution.
In 1917, according to the intercepted Zimmermann Telegram, in exchange for joining Germany as an ally against the United States during World War I, Germany was ready to assist Mexico to "reconquer" its lost territories of Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Modern

For Chicanos in the 1960s, the term, although not invoked, was understood as taking back "Aztlán", by spray painting as many Mexican images as they could on any wall or sign they could find.
In the late 1990s to early 2000s, as US census data showed that the population of Mexican Americans in the Southwestern United States had increased, the term was popularized by contemporary Mexican intellectuals, such as Carlos Fuentes, Elena Poniatowska, and President Vicente Fox, who spoke of Mexican immigrants maintaining their culture and Spanish language in the United States as they migrated in greater numbers to this area.
In March 2015, at the midst of the War in Ukraine, when the US was planning on supporting Ukraine to fight against Russia,, the speaker of the Chechen parliament, threatened to arm Mexico against the United States and questioned the legal status of the territories of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming.