My commentary on "El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán"

My commentary on El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán

I have often been told that this document is one of the "foundations" of the Chicano Movement. Its folklore claims that one of its main writers is the poet Alberto Baltazar Urista, better known as Alurista. It was presented at the Denver Youth Conference in 1969. The conference, organized by the Crusade for Justice, a group headed by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzalez, is credited as being the "official" start of the Chicano Movement.

In my opinion, the Plan is a reflection of the times and its writers. The times were turbulent to the status quo. The Viet Nam War had split public opinion and the middle class youth had voted with their feet. Civil rights, codified into law by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, were demanded by Mexican American youth who saw as fruitless the efforts of their elders. The politics of liberation (aka Marxism-Leninism with a sprinkling of Maoism) and the movements it had spawned (Cuba, China, Viet Nam) were the hot topic of the day in college campuses across the US. Student protests were routine all over the world (Mexico and Paris, for example). Against this background, calls for the "liberation" of the Mexican American people from the opression of the Anglo became the theme of the Conference.

Because of their need for an independent self-definition, the authors appear to have drawn on their Mexican background while shaping the Plan. References to a "culture" different to that of the US mainstream are repeatedly made. The language employed implies that such a culture is communal in nature and is a direct descendant of the way of life of the indigenous people of Mesoamérica, never mind the fact that the Aztec empire had ceased to be a subsistence society from the time it became master of other groups in Mesoamérica.

However, any one not familiar with this model would associate such language with Marxism, or its derivatives, Leninism and Maoism. Given the easiness with which red-baiting is employed in the US, it is not surprising that most casual observers react strongly to the separatist language employed. The deepest fears of the Anglo population - that of secession of the formerly Mexican lands - gets a good dose of paranoia in the last paragraph where an independent governmental authorithy in Aztlán, similar to that existing in Indian reservations, is called for.

In my opinion, some of the points listed in the Plan should still serve as overall goals of the Mexican American population. However, the language should be restated to take into account the lessons learned over the last 28 years. I will attempt to make a coherent critique of the Plan in the paragraphs below. This essay, then, is an attempt to find common ground between me and those activists that I have come to think of as mere grillos.

Lastly, an acknowledgement: the text reproduced here was kindly made available by M. E. Nares (Chicanismo@msn.com), and, with the exception of the preamble, it is identical to that found in pamphlets originally produced by small publishing houses but now available in the Web.

Original text Commentary

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 Aztlán 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.

Here is the essence for the Chicano Movement as predicated by MEChA: the land taken from México after the Mexican-American War is claimed to be the ancestral land of the Aztecs. Therefore, Mexicans can claim the land just like the jews claimed Palestine, now Israel. The problems with this position is that:

These lands were already inhabited by other indigenous groups before the Spaniards and then the Mexicans laid claim to it,
Assuming that the old tales are true, the Aztecs left the area because they had been promised, by Huitzilopochtli, a "promised" land where they would prosper. Hence, they gave up their claim to this land, and
No leyend says that the Mexica would return to their lands.
The entire paragraph is a distillation, in my view, of a common Mexican belief: we will not recognize the border because it was put there under duress (even I used to cling to this belief in my youth). It is simply put in a more poetic language that harkens to the days of the Aztec empire ("children of the sun,'"our inevitable destiny"). Given that Alurista was exposed to this iconography while growing up in México, it does not surprise me that it found its way into this document.

We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán 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. Again a very common Mexican motif, this one based on Zapata's demand that "the land belong to those that work it" (tierra para el que la trabaja). Of course, it ignores the fact that the Indigenous empires and city-states indeed did have borders.

Brotherhood unites us, and love 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. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. 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 Aztlán.
For La Raza to do[sic]. Fuera de La Raza nada.
Very stirring call to brotherhood. It is an echo of the "libertè, egalitè, fraternitè" cry of the first revolution fought for the underclass. The reference to the agrarian background of most MexicanAmericans is meant to remind them that they belong to the land. The "bronze" motif was lifted from the teachings of José Vasconcelos, respected Mexican educator and philosopher, who is the author of La Raza Cósmica (1948). However, Vasconcelos theorized in his book that the raza de bronce owed its best aspects to the Spaniards, which is diametrically opposite to what this document proclaims.
The last line is a paraphrase of Fidel Castro's pronouncement about the Cuban revolution: Con la revolución todo, contra la revolución nada.

El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán sets the theme that the Chicanos (La Raza de Bronce) must use their nationalism as the key or common denominator for mass mobilization and organization. Once we are committed to the idea the philosophy of El Plan de Aztlán, we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle then must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture, and political life. El Plan commits all levels of Chicano society - the barrio, the campo, the ranchero, the writer, the teacher, the worker, the professional - to La Causa. The opening paragraph echoes a Mexican myth: that the Mexican is a new race, bronze colored because of its Indian and Spanish roots. The basis of this philosphical view,as mentioned above, is the book La Raza Cósmica. Vasconcelos, because of his serving as Secretary of the Education Department during part of the Calles period (1920-1938), may be credited with the practice of the Mexican government of honoring the Indigenous past and ignoring the influence of the Colonial period on Mexican concioussness. During his tenure, the UNAM was established and he is the author of its slogan: Por mi Raza hablará el Espiritú. This slogan has also been made a part of the Chicano Movement.
The root of all evils aflicting Mexican Americans is then placed at forces outside the community. To root out such evil a total independece is then called for. In my view, this is impractical because we are no longer isolated in barrios or professions. Many of us have diffused into the rest of society. Access to higher education, a central part of the Plan de Santa Bárbara, has opened many avenues to the brightest ones. To continue to call for such independence would be economic suicide for many and economic isolation for the rest.

Nationalism
Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class and economic factions or boundaries. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree upon. But which nationalism? Mexican? US? Chicano? If the authors meant that to the racist Anglo a Mexican is a greaser regardless of class, color, politics, etc., then yes, it is a common denominator. However, not all Anglos are so monolithic in their thinking. To reduce all "white" people to such a stereotype is simplistic and ultimately unfair.

Organizational Goals
   1) Unity in the thinking of our people concerning the barrios, the pueblo, the campo, the land, the poor, the middle class, the professional - all committed to the liberation of La Raza. My question is who is going to decide what we think. Given the freedom to think for ourselves, I am sure that not every Mexican American will feel obliged to follow the political orthodoxy demanded by the writers of this plan. Especially since a communal utopia, reminiscent of Chinese communes, is called for.

    2) Economic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by driving the exploiter out of our lives and our communities, our pueblos, and our lands and by controlling and developing our own talents, sweat, and resources. Cultural background and values which ignore materialism and embrace humanism will contribute to the act of cooperative buying and the distribution of resources and production to sustain an economic base for healthy growth and development. Lands rightfully ours will be fought for and defended. Land and realty ownership will be acquired by the community for the people's welfare. Economic ties of responsibility must be secured by nationalism and the Chicano defense units. I have great difficulty accepting this paragraph. I base my objection on two observations. Firstly, the exploiter can be defined as any one, whether white or brown, that profits from commerce, trade, or hiring within the community. As such, it is reminiscent of the "people's tribunals" set up in Mao's China during the Cultural Revolution where many were denounced as leeches of the people. This impression is reinforced when a "cultural background" that eschews the profit motive is invoked. To my knowledge, this model is only possible in a subsistence society and utterly impractical in an industrial one such as the one we live on. Whether indigenous societies prospered under such a model is inmaterial since we cannot possibly go back to that edenic time.
Secondly, to claim that any land belongs to Chicanos is ludicrous in light that such ownership is traceable to Spanish King's or Mexican Governor's land grants. This mechanism of land acquisition did not give a damn about the indigenous population, a number of whom still live among us. It is extremely hypocritical to call for justice while trampling the rights of others.

   3) Education must be relative to our people, i.e., history, culture, bilingual education, contributions, etc. Community control of our schools, our teachers, our administrators, our counselors, and our programs. No quarrel from me. But there is a fly in the ointment: who is going to say what is our history and culture? Where is the mechanism that allows for a fair representation of all the ethnic groups that make up our roots? What I have seen of the historical interpretation by Chicanos (basically what has appeared in the pages of La Gente de Aztlán, the Chicano newspaper at UCLA, over the last 20 years) is, for the most part, a whitewash of Mexican history, not much better than what the PRI-Gobierno has created in México.
Community control of our schools is something to be desired. All my support for this goal.

   4) Institutions shall serve our people by providing the service necessary for a full life and welfare on the basis of restitution, not handouts or beggar's crumbs. Restitution for past economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction and denial of civil and human rights. Institutions in our community shall belong to the people. This is nothing but a bargaining ploy. Restitutions from where and based on what? Arguably, the claims made do have a basis of fact, but I do not see where one can extract these moneys. The US government? We will end up paying for it in the forms of increased taxation overall. Corporations? Doubtful since they will hide behind legal barriers. This is nothing but a pipe dream. We might as well spent our energies doing something more worthwhile, like educating our people so that institutions that serve them actually do so.

   5) Self-defense of the community must rely on the combined strength of the people. The front lines of defense will come from the barrios, the campos, the pueblos, and the ranchitos. Their involvement as protectors of our people will be given respect and dignity. They in turn offer their responsibility and their people do so out of love and carnalismo. Those institutions which are fattened by our brothers and sisters to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as an acta of liberation and La Causa. For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts. I would like to think that our communities are not under the constant assault that would require this type of response. It could be argued that police forces are armies of occupation in the barrio and/or ghetto. But they are there because some members of the community have given them a ready-made excuse: gangs and drug-running. If these two activities were not there, what reason could the police have to continue randomly (and sometimes not so randomly) trampling the rights of citizens? If indeed the Chicano community is united in carnalismo, why then the focus is made on gangs and their fratricidal conflicts? Why haven't the veteranos been able to channel the frustration of the homies?
Indeed, there was a time that active resistance to the powers that be was meted out with force. The actions called for in this paragraph were necessary. But I would like to believe that we have moved to a different plane where we can use the resources marshaled by Chicano professionals over the last 25 years.

   6) Cultural values of our people strengthen our identity and moral backbone of the movement. Our cultura unites and educates the family of La Raza towards liberation with one heart and mind. We must insure that our writers, poets, musicians, and artists produce literature and art that is appealing to our people and relates to our revolutionary culture. Our cultural values of life, family and home will serve as a powerful weapon to defeat the gringo dollar value system and encourage the process of love and brotherhood. Again, whose cultural values? Mexican and Indigenous values are based on a society where the needs of the group supercede those of the individual. Are we sure that we want a society where individual aspirations may be coerced or squashed? I, for one, do not. If I did, I would not have attained the goal of obtaining a college degree, let alone an advanced one. If our artists produce art that appeals to or people, they will embrace it. If not, they will discard it. Why should this goal be codified? And who says that Indigenous or Mexican culture is revolutionary? If anything, they are conservative since change is resisted because it upsets the balance of forces on which the community depends for stability.
True, the gringo value system is one based on production and consumption wheras the ancient ones were one of balance between need and production. But if we go back to the past, we are then renouncing life in a technological society. Can't have it both ways.

   7) Political liberation can only come through independent action on our part, since the two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feeds from the same trough. Where we are majority, we will control; where we are a minority, we will represent a pressure group; nationally, we will represent one party: La Familia de la Raza! True enough. Both parties represent roughly the same interests. However, any third party action has eventually been coopted. The efforts of the activists led to sufficient upheaval, most notably within the Democratic party, that many of its best and brightests have been brought inside the main parties. This is pragmatism at work.
Very doubtful that we can become united as a family since this plan is predicated on an all or nothing position. There can be no concensus if it is coerced. The lack of harmony in our thinking is exemplified in the bitter debate over what label we should apply to ourselves.

Action
   1) Awareness and distribution of El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. Presented at every meeting, demonstration, church, school, tree, building, car, and every piece of human existence. Sure, the more people know this Plan, the greater the awareness of the issues will be. This should encourage more people to voice their opinions on and concerns of their communities.

   2) September 16, on the birthday of Mexican Independence, a national walk-out by all Chicanos of all colleges and schools to be sustained until the complete revision of the education system: its personnel to meet the needs of our community. No longer relevant. If anything, we have yet to take full advantage of the changes effected on the educational system. Our problems are more mundane: how to keep our youth motivated and in school. Some problems still persist but they are nowhere near what they used to be. For example, bilingual education is now a fact not a promise.

   3) Self-defense against the occupying forces of the oppressors at every school, every available man, woman, and child. Well, many of the teachers are now Chicanos. Are they oppressors, too?

   4) Community nationalism and organization of all Chicanos: El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. This line is nothing more than the restatement of the above paragraphs, except that it renders it as a slogan to be shouted. The symbolism is that all Chicanos will unite communally as a group whose fundamental characteristic is a nationalism centered on Chicano values. These values are supposedly based on Indigenous societies, even though most are derivations of modern Mexican philosophy. But this set of values seems to me to be an ad hoc synthesis rather than a core set of beliefs that we all abide by.

   5) Economic programs to drive the exploiter out of our community and a welding together of our people's combined resources to control their own production through cooperative effort. Nice, but there is no way in my view that an industrial society can be run along agrarian models. This paragraph evidences a strong influence of Marxist philosophy, which in the last 20 years has been fairly discredited as feasible in the modern world. Arguing that it is an Indigenous model and not an European one still renders the process irrelevant. One cannot produce high technology in an environment that is not competitive and incentive-driven.

   6) Creation of an independent local, regional, and national political party. Good luck in doing it. Not even Perot with all his millions has been able to do it.

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.
El Plan de Aztlán is the plan of liberation!
This paragraph is what feeds the most paranoid thoughts of our enemies: that Chicanos want to secede from the US and become an independent nation or, worse, rejoin with México. This simply ain't goin' to happen'. The US's only civil war, a most bitter conflict still alive in some regions, was not fought over the lofty goal of freeing the slaves. It was fought over exactly what this paragraph calls for: secession. Given all the ties that bind the region with the rest of the nation, as well as the size of the financial stakes, the actual creation of Free Aztlán becomes a physical impossibility.
The legal structure of the US makes it possible to fight for many of the wishes stated in this paragraph. Yes, there are always obstacles thrown in our ways, like 187 and 209, but if anything, we will endure. As the Brown Buffalo said, we are like the cucarachas, they might stomp one of us, but there are hundreds of us waiting behind the baseboard.

This is my present opinion on the Plan Espiritual de Aztlán and is, of course, subject to change without notice. While it might seem harsh at first reading, I ask that my objections to the Plan be given sufficient consideration and be judged on the facts presented, not purely on philosophical grounds. If we, the US citizens of Mexican descent, are to advance in this society without withdrawing from it or creating a social conflagration, we must have a dialog between the different points of view found in our community. We must raise above our bickering and remember that idealism and pragmatism have a place in our discourse. After all, idealism is the engine of change and pragmatism its moderating force.

Back to essay list.

J. Manuel Urrutia
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
UCLA
Box 951547
Los Angeles CA 90095-1547

310-825-7898 (voice)
310-825-4057 (fax)

Page maintained by J. Manuel Urrutia. Last update: 16 March 1997

Original text	Commentary
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 Aztlán 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.	Here is the essence for the Chicano Movement as predicated by MEChA: the land taken from México after the Mexican-American War is claimed to be the ancestral land of the Aztecs. Therefore, Mexicans can claim the land just like the jews claimed Palestine, now Israel. The problems with this position is that: These lands were already inhabited by other indigenous groups before the Spaniards and then the Mexicans laid claim to it, Assuming that the old tales are true, the Aztecs left the area because they had been promised, by Huitzilopochtli, a "promised" land where they would prosper. Hence, they gave up their claim to this land, and No leyend says that the Mexica would return to their lands. The entire paragraph is a distillation, in my view, of a common Mexican belief: we will not recognize the border because it was put there under duress (even I used to cling to this belief in my youth). It is simply put in a more poetic language that harkens to the days of the Aztec empire ("children of the sun,'"our inevitable destiny"). Given that Alurista was exposed to this iconography while growing up in México, it does not surprise me that it found its way into this document.
We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán 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.	Again a very common Mexican motif, this one based on Zapata's demand that "the land belong to those that work it" (tierra para el que la trabaja). Of course, it ignores the fact that the Indigenous empires and city-states indeed did have borders.
Brotherhood unites us, and love 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. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. 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 Aztlán. For La Raza to do[sic]. Fuera de La Raza nada.	Very stirring call to brotherhood. It is an echo of the "libertè, egalitè, fraternitè" cry of the first revolution fought for the underclass. The reference to the agrarian background of most MexicanAmericans is meant to remind them that they belong to the land. The "bronze" motif was lifted from the teachings of José Vasconcelos, respected Mexican educator and philosopher, who is the author of La Raza Cósmica (1948). However, Vasconcelos theorized in his book that the raza de bronce owed its best aspects to the Spaniards, which is diametrically opposite to what this document proclaims. The last line is a paraphrase of Fidel Castro's pronouncement about the Cuban revolution: Con la revolución todo, contra la revolución nada.
El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán sets the theme that the Chicanos (La Raza de Bronce) must use their nationalism as the key or common denominator for mass mobilization and organization. Once we are committed to the idea the philosophy of El Plan de Aztlán, we can only conclude that social, economic, cultural and political independence is the only road to total liberation from oppression, exploitation, and racism. Our struggle then must be for the control of our barrios, campos, pueblos, lands, our economy, our culture, and political life. El Plan commits all levels of Chicano society - the barrio, the campo, the ranchero, the writer, the teacher, the worker, the professional - to La Causa.	The opening paragraph echoes a Mexican myth: that the Mexican is a new race, bronze colored because of its Indian and Spanish roots. The basis of this philosphical view,as mentioned above, is the book La Raza Cósmica. Vasconcelos, because of his serving as Secretary of the Education Department during part of the Calles period (1920-1938), may be credited with the practice of the Mexican government of honoring the Indigenous past and ignoring the influence of the Colonial period on Mexican concioussness. During his tenure, the UNAM was established and he is the author of its slogan: Por mi Raza hablará el Espiritú. This slogan has also been made a part of the Chicano Movement. The root of all evils aflicting Mexican Americans is then placed at forces outside the community. To root out such evil a total independece is then called for. In my view, this is impractical because we are no longer isolated in barrios or professions. Many of us have diffused into the rest of society. Access to higher education, a central part of the Plan de Santa Bárbara, has opened many avenues to the brightest ones. To continue to call for such independence would be economic suicide for many and economic isolation for the rest.
Nationalism Nationalism as the key to organization transcends all religious, political, class and economic factions or boundaries. Nationalism is the common denominator that all members of La Raza can agree upon.	But which nationalism? Mexican? US? Chicano? If the authors meant that to the racist Anglo a Mexican is a greaser regardless of class, color, politics, etc., then yes, it is a common denominator. However, not all Anglos are so monolithic in their thinking. To reduce all "white" people to such a stereotype is simplistic and ultimately unfair.
Organizational Goals 1) Unity in the thinking of our people concerning the barrios, the pueblo, the campo, the land, the poor, the middle class, the professional - all committed to the liberation of La Raza.	My question is who is going to decide what we think. Given the freedom to think for ourselves, I am sure that not every Mexican American will feel obliged to follow the political orthodoxy demanded by the writers of this plan. Especially since a communal utopia, reminiscent of Chinese communes, is called for.
2) Economic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by driving the exploiter out of our lives and our communities, our pueblos, and our lands and by controlling and developing our own talents, sweat, and resources. Cultural background and values which ignore materialism and embrace humanism will contribute to the act of cooperative buying and the distribution of resources and production to sustain an economic base for healthy growth and development. Lands rightfully ours will be fought for and defended. Land and realty ownership will be acquired by the community for the people's welfare. Economic ties of responsibility must be secured by nationalism and the Chicano defense units.	I have great difficulty accepting this paragraph. I base my objection on two observations. Firstly, the exploiter can be defined as any one, whether white or brown, that profits from commerce, trade, or hiring within the community. As such, it is reminiscent of the "people's tribunals" set up in Mao's China during the Cultural Revolution where many were denounced as leeches of the people. This impression is reinforced when a "cultural background" that eschews the profit motive is invoked. To my knowledge, this model is only possible in a subsistence society and utterly impractical in an industrial one such as the one we live on. Whether indigenous societies prospered under such a model is inmaterial since we cannot possibly go back to that edenic time. Secondly, to claim that any land belongs to Chicanos is ludicrous in light that such ownership is traceable to Spanish King's or Mexican Governor's land grants. This mechanism of land acquisition did not give a damn about the indigenous population, a number of whom still live among us. It is extremely hypocritical to call for justice while trampling the rights of others.
3) Education must be relative to our people, i.e., history, culture, bilingual education, contributions, etc. Community control of our schools, our teachers, our administrators, our counselors, and our programs.	No quarrel from me. But there is a fly in the ointment: who is going to say what is our history and culture? Where is the mechanism that allows for a fair representation of all the ethnic groups that make up our roots? What I have seen of the historical interpretation by Chicanos (basically what has appeared in the pages of La Gente de Aztlán, the Chicano newspaper at UCLA, over the last 20 years) is, for the most part, a whitewash of Mexican history, not much better than what the PRI-Gobierno has created in México. Community control of our schools is something to be desired. All my support for this goal.
4) Institutions shall serve our people by providing the service necessary for a full life and welfare on the basis of restitution, not handouts or beggar's crumbs. Restitution for past economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction and denial of civil and human rights. Institutions in our community shall belong to the people.	This is nothing but a bargaining ploy. Restitutions from where and based on what? Arguably, the claims made do have a basis of fact, but I do not see where one can extract these moneys. The US government? We will end up paying for it in the forms of increased taxation overall. Corporations? Doubtful since they will hide behind legal barriers. This is nothing but a pipe dream. We might as well spent our energies doing something more worthwhile, like educating our people so that institutions that serve them actually do so.
5) Self-defense of the community must rely on the combined strength of the people. The front lines of defense will come from the barrios, the campos, the pueblos, and the ranchitos. Their involvement as protectors of our people will be given respect and dignity. They in turn offer their responsibility and their people do so out of love and carnalismo. Those institutions which are fattened by our brothers and sisters to provide employment and political pork barrels for the gringo will do so only as an acta of liberation and La Causa. For the very young there will no longer be acts of juvenile delinquency, but revolutionary acts.	I would like to think that our communities are not under the constant assault that would require this type of response. It could be argued that police forces are armies of occupation in the barrio and/or ghetto. But they are there because some members of the community have given them a ready-made excuse: gangs and drug-running. If these two activities were not there, what reason could the police have to continue randomly (and sometimes not so randomly) trampling the rights of citizens? If indeed the Chicano community is united in carnalismo, why then the focus is made on gangs and their fratricidal conflicts? Why haven't the veteranos been able to channel the frustration of the homies? Indeed, there was a time that active resistance to the powers that be was meted out with force. The actions called for in this paragraph were necessary. But I would like to believe that we have moved to a different plane where we can use the resources marshaled by Chicano professionals over the last 25 years.
6) Cultural values of our people strengthen our identity and moral backbone of the movement. Our cultura unites and educates the family of La Raza towards liberation with one heart and mind. We must insure that our writers, poets, musicians, and artists produce literature and art that is appealing to our people and relates to our revolutionary culture. Our cultural values of life, family and home will serve as a powerful weapon to defeat the gringo dollar value system and encourage the process of love and brotherhood.	Again, whose cultural values? Mexican and Indigenous values are based on a society where the needs of the group supercede those of the individual. Are we sure that we want a society where individual aspirations may be coerced or squashed? I, for one, do not. If I did, I would not have attained the goal of obtaining a college degree, let alone an advanced one. If our artists produce art that appeals to or people, they will embrace it. If not, they will discard it. Why should this goal be codified? And who says that Indigenous or Mexican culture is revolutionary? If anything, they are conservative since change is resisted because it upsets the balance of forces on which the community depends for stability. True, the gringo value system is one based on production and consumption wheras the ancient ones were one of balance between need and production. But if we go back to the past, we are then renouncing life in a technological society. Can't have it both ways.
7) Political liberation can only come through independent action on our part, since the two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feeds from the same trough. Where we are majority, we will control; where we are a minority, we will represent a pressure group; nationally, we will represent one party: La Familia de la Raza!	True enough. Both parties represent roughly the same interests. However, any third party action has eventually been coopted. The efforts of the activists led to sufficient upheaval, most notably within the Democratic party, that many of its best and brightests have been brought inside the main parties. This is pragmatism at work. Very doubtful that we can become united as a family since this plan is predicated on an all or nothing position. There can be no concensus if it is coerced. The lack of harmony in our thinking is exemplified in the bitter debate over what label we should apply to ourselves.
Action 1) Awareness and distribution of El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán. Presented at every meeting, demonstration, church, school, tree, building, car, and every piece of human existence.	Sure, the more people know this Plan, the greater the awareness of the issues will be. This should encourage more people to voice their opinions on and concerns of their communities.
2) September 16, on the birthday of Mexican Independence, a national walk-out by all Chicanos of all colleges and schools to be sustained until the complete revision of the education system: its personnel to meet the needs of our community.	No longer relevant. If anything, we have yet to take full advantage of the changes effected on the educational system. Our problems are more mundane: how to keep our youth motivated and in school. Some problems still persist but they are nowhere near what they used to be. For example, bilingual education is now a fact not a promise.
3) Self-defense against the occupying forces of the oppressors at every school, every available man, woman, and child.	Well, many of the teachers are now Chicanos. Are they oppressors, too?
4) Community nationalism and organization of all Chicanos: El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán.	This line is nothing more than the restatement of the above paragraphs, except that it renders it as a slogan to be shouted. The symbolism is that all Chicanos will unite communally as a group whose fundamental characteristic is a nationalism centered on Chicano values. These values are supposedly based on Indigenous societies, even though most are derivations of modern Mexican philosophy. But this set of values seems to me to be an ad hoc synthesis rather than a core set of beliefs that we all abide by.
5) Economic programs to drive the exploiter out of our community and a welding together of our people's combined resources to control their own production through cooperative effort.	Nice, but there is no way in my view that an industrial society can be run along agrarian models. This paragraph evidences a strong influence of Marxist philosophy, which in the last 20 years has been fairly discredited as feasible in the modern world. Arguing that it is an Indigenous model and not an European one still renders the process irrelevant. One cannot produce high technology in an environment that is not competitive and incentive-driven.
6) Creation of an independent local, regional, and national political party.	Good luck in doing it. Not even Perot with all his millions has been able to do it.
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. El Plan de Aztlán is the plan of liberation!	This paragraph is what feeds the most paranoid thoughts of our enemies: that Chicanos want to secede from the US and become an independent nation or, worse, rejoin with México. This simply ain't goin' to happen'. The US's only civil war, a most bitter conflict still alive in some regions, was not fought over the lofty goal of freeing the slaves. It was fought over exactly what this paragraph calls for: secession. Given all the ties that bind the region with the rest of the nation, as well as the size of the financial stakes, the actual creation of Free Aztlán becomes a physical impossibility. The legal structure of the US makes it possible to fight for many of the wishes stated in this paragraph. Yes, there are always obstacles thrown in our ways, like 187 and 209, but if anything, we will endure. As the Brown Buffalo said, we are like the cucarachas, they might stomp one of us, but there are hundreds of us waiting behind the baseboard.