Michelle Obama Addresses La Raza

The Associated Press (via Breitbart) reports:

The first lady on Tuesday faced immigration _ another new issue for her _ when she delivered the keynote speech in New Orleans at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza. Immigration is one of President Barack Obama's top second-term priorities, as it is for the Latino advocacy group.

Mrs. Obama urged the group's members to stay encouraged and continue to press the House to follow the lead of the Senate and pass an immigration bill.

"Do not give up because I promise you my husband won't give up until a good bill gets on his desk," she said.

It should be noted that Pres. Obama spoke to NCLR in 2008 and  2011 and met with NCLR leaders in February of this year.

"La Raza" means "the Race,"  The National Council of La Raza is generally portrayed as a benign civil rights organization. For instance, the Huffington Post has described it as:

... the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States—[which] works to improve opportunities for Hispanic Americans. Through its network of nearly 300 affiliated community-based organizations, NCLR reaches millions of Hispanics each year in 41 states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. To achieve its mission, NCLR conducts applied research, policy analysis, and advocacy, providing a Latino perspective in five key areas—assets/investments, civil rights/immigration, education, employment and economic status, and health. In addition, it provides capacity-building assistance to its Affiliates who work at the state and local level to advance opportunities for individuals and families.

However, it has troubling ties to other, more radical, groups. In April 2006, Human Events published an article on this topic. Among other things, it noted:

Behind the respectable front of the National Council of La Raza lies the real agenda of the La Raza movement, the agenda that led to those thousands of illegal immigrants in the streets of American cities, waving Mexican flags, brazenly defying our laws, and demanding concessions.

Key among the secondary organizations is the radical racist group Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan (MEChA), one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated U.S. campuses since the 1960s, and continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West.

One of America’s greatest strengths has always been taking in immigrants from cultures around the world, and assimilating them into our country as Americans. By being citizens of the U.S. we are Americans first, and only, in our national loyalties.

This is totally opposed by MEChA for the hordes of illegal immigrants pouring across our borders, to whom they say:

“Chicano is our identity; it defines who we are as people. It rejects the notion that we…should assimilate into the Anglo-American melting pot…Aztlan was the legendary homeland of the Aztecas … It became synonymous with the vast territories of the Southwest, brutally stolen from a Mexican people marginalized and betrayed by the hostile custodians of the Manifest Destiny.” (Statement on University of Oregon MEChA Website, Jan. 3, 2006)

MEChA isn’t at all shy about their goals, or their views of other races. Their founding principles are contained in these words in “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” (The Spiritual Plan for Aztlan):

“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. … Aztlan belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. … We are a bronze people with a bronze culture. Before the world, before all of North America, before all our brothers in the bronze continent, we are a nation, we are a union of free pueblos, we are Aztlan. For La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.”


That closing two-sentence motto is chilling to everyone who values equal rights for all. It says: “For The Race everything. Outside The Race, nothing.”


If these morally sickening MEChA quotes were coming from some fringe website, Americans could at least console themselves that it was just a small group of nuts behind it. Nearly every racial and ethnic group has some shady characters and positions in its past and some unbalanced individuals today claiming racial superiority and demanding separatism. But this is coming straight from the official MEChA sites at Georgetown University, the University of Texas, UCLA, University of Michigan, University of Colorado, University of Oregon, and many other colleges and universities around the country.

MEChA was in fact reported to be one of the main organizers of those street demonstrations we witnessed over the past weeks. That helps explain why those hordes of illegal immigrants weren’t asking for amnesty — they were demanding an end to U.S. law, period. Unlike past waves of immigrants who sought to become responsible members of American society, these protesters reject American society altogether, because they have been taught that America rightfully belongs to them.

MEChA and the La Raza movement teach that Colorado, California, Arizona, Texas, Utah, New Mexico, Oregon and parts of Washington State make up an area known as “Aztlan” — a fictional ancestral homeland of the Aztecs before Europeans arrived in North America. As such, it belongs to the followers of MEChA. These are all areas America should surrender to “La Raza” once enough immigrants, legal or illegal, enter to claim a majority, as in Los Angeles. The current borders of the United States will simply be extinguished.

This plan is what is referred to as the “Reconquista” or reconquest, of the Western U.S.

But it won’t end with territorial occupation and secession. The final plan for the La Raza movement includes the ethnic cleansing of Americans of European, African, and Asian descent out of “Aztlan.”

(More on MEChA and similar groups here).  The NCLR states that it rejects the radical position taken by MEChA. (See also here).

Based on what little I've been able to research, NCLR seems less a front organization for MEChA, than simply having interests and memberships that overlap. Nevertheless, NCLR supports laws that would give preference to Hispanic immigrants over immigrants from other parts of the world, and erode control of our borders. As to its future, who knows? It depends on whether it chooses to be a moderate voice or a radicalizing one; truly independent of the radicals, or a tool for the radicals.