What can be made of it? I’d say an illustration of the irony of the perverse nature of claiming national sovereignty and howling jingoistic platitudes when the nation-state is itself based on the unjust dispossession of indigenous communities. Of course, it’s primarily targeted toward the issue of immigration from Mexico, and is Aztec-centric, as its very name indicates.
The point as I conceive it is that illegal immigrants from Mexico and Central/South America are predominantly Native American. In Latin America, there is a different conception of what it is to be an “Indian” than there is in the U.S. While many boast of the smallest percentage of Native American blood here, the population of Central/South America is disdainful of it to a point where the term “mestizo,” designating mixed racial status, is used for those that are predominantly Native American rather than half-breeds, and Native Americans are defined as those who adhere to traditional cultural life, regardless of genetic or racial background. Despite this, the darker-skinned population is still a political and economic underclass, with the ruling class being predominantly white of Spanish descent.
The populist opposition to neoliberalism is often found in indigenous society; the violent insurrection of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (a predominantly Tzotzil Mayan group) was launched in the poorest and southernmost Mexican state of Chiapas on January 1, 1994, the same day that NAFTA went into effect. Moreover, Native Americans are known to have suffered unjust dispossession and violence at the hands of European settlers, relevant today because of the fact that the sins of the dead have created lasting repercussions that manifest themselves in the form of economic inequalities based on race.
There is a perception in the U.S. that Mexican and Central/South American immigrants are foreigners, even among those that welcome them. Whether it’s that they’re hard-working laborers who should be valued as guest workers or illegal invaders that should be deported, they’re regarded as foreigners nonetheless. If this perception is challenged through knowledge that immigrants are predominantly Native American, and there is some association of them with acknowledged U.S. tribes like the Cherokee, Sioux, Navajo, etc., the perception of them as foreigners will be replaced with one of them as unjustly dispossessed natives, perhaps to an extent to shift public opinion. “La Migra” are the shock troopers behind another Trail of Tears…
Well, thats because they are (mostly) foreign to the US proper. A good portion of the true Mexican ‘Indians’ are descendant from tribes in central or southern Mexico. The Indians in the US are completely different ethnic groups; and from what I know of them, they are often hostile to ‘hispanics’.
It was up attracting the ire of every Minuteman groupie long before the movie came out. I do frown on their endorsement of the movie as something parallel to what occurred in America, though; the noble savage is still a savage.
There are certainly important ethnic and cultural differences, but they’re not determined by national divisions. Of the categorical divisions between North American (excluding Mesoamerica and south) Indian societies, national borders do not parallel them. The Mexican Huichol or the Tarahumara, for example, have more in common with the Apache and the Navajo than they do with the Aztecs, despite the practice of classifying “Mexican Indians” as one group. And the Apache and Navajo have more in common with the Huichol and Tarahumara than they do with the Cherokee or the Iroquois.
The most common criticism I envision is that this group improperly ascribes homogeneity to North American Indian society, when there was so much tremendous variation, and that the immigrants that they defend have no true ancestral claim to U.S. territory since their ancestors were Native Americans of Mexico and south rather than the U.S. But again, we usually conceptualize all U.S. Indians as having some common claim to the U.S. as a whole in terms of that argument despite the fact that the Iroquois have no claim over Florida and the Cherokee no claim over Maine due to their lack of ancestral presence there. This group seems to focus on the rather crude categorization of “race.”
What we should also consider, however, is whether peaceable relations that facilitated freer or more libertarian migration without the rigid national divisions we now have would have developed (particularly among societies of the same cultural category), as they did among the European “tribes” of the English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish, Spanish, French, Dutch, Germans, etc. If so, the national boundaries derived from the unjust forcible and fraudulent acquisition of property that the creation of states in America entailed have no ethical basis.
Not as a central focus of the topic. I’m also inquiring about the “irony.” I personally don’t think it poor strategy to incorporate communications from someone who is white and consequently speaks excellent Spanish, and can therefore convey Zapatista ideology to most Mexicans more effectively.
That is correct, he was white like most Argentinians (including our own dear Juan) and had no problem admitting as much. One of my favorite ironies is how often you will see his portrait in a march for Mexican immigrants, when he himself thought they were nothing but a bunch of illiterate indians.
Yes, but using their definition of “with the right to migrate everywhere on ‘our’ continent”, it would therefore be OK if I as an ‘indigenous’ Scotsman (American of Scottish descent) to boot any Chinese, Englishmen, Irish or anyone else out of ‘my country’ - because alot of the radicals in this movement want to expel all Europeons. But if the white birthrate remains low like it is, then Meso-Americans might just depopulate at least southern California by the only non-aggressive means at their disposal.
Except that the US based Indians have a pretty low birthrate, while some white groups such as Southerners (ie me) have at least replacement level birthrates. I can see places like southern California, southern Texas, and most of New Mexico/Arizona becoming dominated by meso-Americans, but not the whole continent (which is what the map was showing - different types of Indians, broadly speaking).
“Southerners” are just a mix of former native Americans with British, Spanish and French settlers.
If you look at the map as a socio-cultural map instead of a racial map, you have pretty much the America of today. It’s funny how climate changes people.