A June 2002 Zogby poll of Mexicans found that a substantial majority of Mexican citizens believe that southwestern America is rightfully the territory of Mexico and that Mexicans do not need the permission of the U.S. to enter. 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.1
Pushing a Chicano Agenda in the United States
Latinos in the United States also increasingly learn the Mexican view of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, and, if they go to college, they are likely to be indoctrinated about the Latino "Aztlan" heritage. This is a myth that ascribes the origin of the indigenous people who governed in Latin America before the European conquest to an area comprised of the Southwest of the United States and the Northwest of Mexico. In practice, the calls for the restoration of Aztlan tend to merge with the revanchist theme of recovering the lost Mexican territory. However, the one difference is that the Aztlan movement calls for establishment of Aztlan as independent from both Mexico and the United States. It would become the Republica del Norte (Republic of the North).
An example of this doctrine was attributed in an AP story in 2000 to a University of New Mexico Chicano Studies professor named Charles Truxillo. Terming the Republica del Norte "an inevitability," he described the area as encompassing all of California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and southern Colorado, plus the northern tier of Mexican states: Baja California, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, Nuevo León and Tamaulipas. The professor commented that the new country should be brought into being "by any means necessary," but has modified that to say that it was unlikely to be formed by civil war, and instead would be created through the electoral pressure of the future majority Hispanic population in the region. While Prof. Truxillo's motives and objectives shouldn't be attributed to the Mexican-American community at large, the danger lies in the ability of highly motivated and well-financed radicals to leverage the growing number of Mexicans in the U.S. to achieve their political ends.
It is clear that there is a "fifth column" movement in the United States that professes greater allegiance to a greater Mexico or a breakaway, separatist movement based on a Latino homeland, despite the efforts of Latino politicians to dismiss it as a quixotic idea of rambunctious Latino youth, largely on university campuses. Nevertheless, the size of this movement and its activities do not at present constitute a security concern.
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