George Rebane

Mexico City, 6 May 2024 – Mexico’s president Juan Carlos Echeverria announced in his Cinco de Mayo celebration speech in San Diego that Mexican forces that have staged over the last six months along Mexico’s northern border would be further reinforced.  Tensions have increased since Russia announced that it was providing additional combat air units and advisors to Mexico under the two countries’ far reaching mutual aid and defense pact signed last year.

Negotiations with the newly formed Reconquista Party have stalled over the status of Texas and Utah in a post-autonomous Aztlan which is to be comprised of the present states New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and California.  The negotiations have traveled a rocky road over the last ten months that started after the Reconquista Party sent their Commission for the Liberation of Aztlan to Washington with a list of demands for a new autonomous region in the southwest United States.

Demonstrations by various Hispanic and immigrant activist groups have grown from peaceful gatherings protesting violations of human rights and outright repression of America’s Spanish speaking population to violent encounters with local police and country sheriffs.  Things took a definite turn for the worse last July 4th with the concurrent bombing of three power distribution stations which left most of western US without power for almost two weeks.  Washington still claims it has evidence that the strategic selection of targets and the coordinated attacks were carried out by Mexican nationals trained by their military with help from Mexico’s allies.

President Chelsea Clinton’s political opponents claim that America’s limited ability to respond to such attacks is due to the historic cutbacks in defense budgets during The Great Contraction of the last decade that required the shrinking of US naval, air, and ground combat units to historic lows below those the country experienced during the Great Depression.

Critics point out that America today has only four operational nuclear carriers, with one of those scheduled to be decommissioned next year.  As a result the US is now able to put only two carrier strike groups to sea at any one time.  (At the turn of the century the US Navy had twelve such carrier strike groups which served to maintain America’s hegemony worldwide.)  As a consequence of shrinking national budgets and historically high debt service costs, the Pentagon has limited the operational areas for the strike groups to the regional waters off the country’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts that currently see regular combat patrols by units of the Russian and Chinese navies.

The shift in America’s foreign policy started by President Obama was completed under the leadership of President Hillary Clinton before she announced her intent to serve only a single term and endorse her daughter Chelsea to succeed her.  Chelsea Clinton’s meteoric rise in the Democratic Party eclipsed even the ascendancy of Barack Obama from his community organizing days in South Chicago.  The focus of the last three Democratic presidents has been on domestic policy with emphasis on programs to combat an economy that continues chronically stagnant or contracting while creating a more economically level America for women and its various ethnic minorities.

The ongoing negotiations for the formation of Aztlan reflect the desire of our political leadership “to create an America that is more governable and less intrusive in its impact on the environment and in the affairs of foreign nations.”  President Clinton again stated that she believes the legitimate goals for self-determination by America’s Spanish speakers can be achieved peacefully through the current diplomatic efforts with Reconquista.  She has yet to make her position known on the future status of Texas and Utah, although White House sources have leaked that she is leaning toward a settlement that will transform those states into semi-autonomous jurisdictions whose citizens will enjoy dual citizenship with the United States and Mexico or Aztlan.  

Depending on the exact nature of Aztlan’s formation, La Raza may form pro-Hispanic political parties in the newly semi-autonomous Texas and Utah in the same manner that it formed the Reconquista Party of Aztlan.  There has also been talk of these states electing two sets of representatives to serve in both Washington and Sacramento, the city slated to become the capital of Aztlan.

In the meantime the mass exodus of non-Hispanic Americans continues from all the affected states with relatively little violence reported along the major highways leading north and east.  Reconquista has publicly issued orders to the Aztlan Liberation Battalions (formerly the Brown Berets), its para-military arm, to stand down but not demobilize.  It appears that most units have followed this directive.