El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán
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El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán ("Spiritual Plan of Aztlán")[link] is a manifesto advocating Chicano nationalism and self-determination for Mexican Americans. It was adopted by the First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference, a March 1969 convention hosted by Rodolfo Gonzales's Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado.
Background
The Chicano Movement was one of many movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, like the Black nationalism movement of the United States or the Black Consciousness Movement of South Africa, in which people of colour in white-ruled societies adopted the ideas of nationalist liberation movements that had successfully overthrown colonial regimes in Africa and Asia.In an area of the United States that had been purchased from Mexico by the United States after the Mexican American War, where Mexican American history was neglected in education, and where discrimination against and segregation of Mexican Americans was common, the idea of a program of decolonization had special resonance for young Mexican American activists, who called themselves "Chicanos" as a mark of pride. The reconfiguration of the mythic idea of Aztlán was an important part of this movement, and El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán was an extension of that idea.
Origin and adoption
During the conference, a young poet named Alurista, born in Mexico but raised in San Diego, took the stage. To a captive audience, he read the words,In the spirit of a new people that is conscious not only of its proud historical heritage but also of the brutal "gringo" invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
The poem, El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán, became the title of the manifesto, and the poem became its preamble. Alurista went on to become the "poet laureate of Aztlán".
Criticism
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán contains several controversial statements which have led some conservative commentators to criticize MEChA as a racist and separatist organization. These criticisms are similar to those made against many similar cultural and political movements in the United States and around the world. Some of those who lodge these criticisms appear to be motivated by a general anti-Mexican agenda (as in the virulently anti-Mexican American Patrol [link]), while others may support Hispanic civil rights more narrowly within the framework of US citizenship and its market-based economic system, but oppose nationalist rhetoric they view as separatist, radical or anti-capitalist. Statements that have generated controversy include:
- Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent
- Not only the idea of Aztlan a myth, this statement, together with the previous statement that "we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlan" might be interpreted as the statement of colonization by Native Americans in the United States, who may not consider Chicano as indiginous ('indígena').
- [L]ove for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner "gabacho" who exploits our riches and destroys our culture ... [E]conomic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by driving the exploiter out of our communities, our pueblos, and our lands and by controlling and developing our own talents, sweat, and resources.
- Some commentators have interpreted this as a call to summarily label non-Chicanos "exploiters" and to expel them out of the Chicano community. Another view is that this is a call to recognize exploiters when and where they exist, and to actively work towards independence and self-reliance rather than expecting problems to be solved from the outside.
- Education must be relative to our people, i.e., history, culture, bilingual education, contributions, etc.
- Some view this statement as an unpatriotic rejection of the common history and values shared with the nations of the United States and Mexico. To others, this was a reasonable response to an educational system which tended to ignore Chicano history. A parallel might be in the famous example of people in Francophone countries who uniformly learned history with a book that began "Our ancestors, the Gauls" [link]--the kind of problem that especially interested and infuriated anti-colonialists all over the world.
- Self-defense of the community must rely on the combined strength of the people ... For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.
- Since it is not specified from what entity defense is required, some read this as self-defense from the police and legal authorities, and the justification of juvenile deliquency as a "revolutionary act". It could also be read as a call to defend the civil rights and economic livelihood of Chicanos on the legal battlefield, and the abandonment of juvenile delinquency in favor of progressive political action.
- A nation autonomous and free - culturally, socially, economically, and politically- will make its own decisions on the usage of our lands, the taxation of our goods, the utilization of our bodies for war, the determination of justice (reward and punishment), and the profit of our sweat.
- This appears to be a call of outright secession. But other parts of El Plan seem to advocate working within the system, such as "the creation of an independent local, regional, and national political party." In 1999, MEChA adopted a document entitled The Philosophy of MEChA, which affirmed that "all people are potential Chicanas and Chicanos", and that "Chicano identity is not a nationality but a philosophy".[link] "Nation", as understood within MEChA, refers to Chicanos as a politically empowered ethnic group -- but not necessarily one with a sovereign territory and government, a model similar to Canada's First Nations.
Response to criticism
The ideas of the document can also be seen through the lens of the ideas of thinkers like Franz Fanon, who wrote about the psychological effects of colonization on the colonized, and understood the process of achieving self-determination not only as a process of gaining political power but of attaining pride in one's national and cultural identity. In this analysis, the identity which had been the target of colonization or racism (for instance, being an Algerian under French rule, or a black person under South African apartheid) would have to be built up not simply by attaining legal rights but through a process of psychological reclamation of pride. That is, if people did not believe in the legitimacy of their own claim to power, they would not take power even when they could.Whether from the direct influence of Fanon and other intellectuals, the examples of those who adopted these ideas like Che Guevara, or simply through their own convergent analysis of their local situations, a wide range of movements struck similar stances in the same historical period. Thus, a more nuanced criticism of El Plan might see this document and the movement it represented as an example of the promise and peril of a widely-employed political and cultural strategy.
See also
External links
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