Aztlan

Factual Questions
1

Enlighten me, southwestern dopers… exactly what and where is Aztlan? Depending on whom I talk to, it’s either:

  1. A name for the southwestern desert region of America, which is influenced by Mexican/Indian culture. I’m thinking, “cool! I live in Aztlan”

  2. It’s the former Mexican territory the U.S. took (via war) in the 1800’s (true); activists want it returned either to Mexico or to decendents of the original residents and anyone “from” Europe or elsewhere gets the boot. I’m thinking “hmmm… kinda snobby”

So what’s the scoop?

p.s. please remember this thread isn’t about whether U.S. should have snatched the property or who rightfully should be running it- I just want to know if I can refer to Aztlan without sounding pretentious (or alienating people)

2

I’ve heard of ‘Aztlan’ from the tinfoil hat brigade claiming the spanish speakers in the SW USA have a plan to steal it all from us.

Other than that I’m blank on it.

3

Maybe you mean Aztalan, the ancient native american city in Wisconsin.

http://www.mysteriousworld.com/Maps/NorthAm/USA/Midwest/WI/Aztalan/

4

I only know this from the historical novels of Garry Jennings – “Aztec,” “Aztec Autumn” and “Aztec Blood” – so I don’t have a real historical site for it: Aztlan was the legendary ancestral homeland of the Aztec or Mexica Indians. According to their own traditions, the Aztecs did not always dwell in the Valley of Mexico (where Mexico City is today), but migrated there from Aztlan, which was somewhere to the northwest. In the first novel Jennings has his protagonist, the Aztec Mixtli, set out on a quest to find Aztlan. He ultimately does find it: It’s a town on the Pacific Coast of what is now northern Mexico, where the people still speak the Aztec language, Nahuatl.

It’s easy to see how Mexican-American nationalists might come to apply the name “Aztlan” to the formerly Mexican territory of the southwestern U.S., but I don’t think there’s any evidence at all that the Aztecs originated there.

5

There’s a loopy novel, <i>Shadows on the Aegean</i>, by Suzanne Franks, about the ancient Minoan civilization on Thera when the island was destroyed by a volcano. She called it “Aztlan” based on the theory that Thera was Atlantis, and that the names of Atlantis and the Mesoamerican Aztlan came from the same origin. Or something like that. I’m guessing because Franks didn’t even explain what she was thinking; she’s a sloppy writer.

6

I had just been typing on another message board that uses HTML; I forgot the square bracket tags that are used here.

7

Jennings placed Aztlan (ancestral home of the Aztecs, as opposed to the more modern use of the term) in present-day Mazatlan (see the map in the book).

8

I said this in an earlier thread:

9

According to this rather, um…interesting website, the capital of Aztlan is Los Angeles. :dubious:

10

Based on linguistics, (most diversity) the original home of the Uto-Aztecan language was probably in the mountains just northwest of the Mojave. (Also the site of the magnificent Coso Range petroglyphs). There is considerable archaeological evidence that their migration from this area (at least their migration through southern California and the Great Basin) began about the beginning of the Christian era, a time contemporaneous with their introduction to the bow and arrow. If this is the original area for all Uto-Aztecan speakers, this would have given them about 600 years to make their way to the Valley of Mexico and destroy the city of Teotihuacan (it is purely speculation on my part that Nahuatl speakers destroyed Teotihuacan). No doubt some Nahautl (a Uto-Aztecan language) speakers dropped out along the way. Over the centuries, the lure of the wealth and easy living of the Valley of Mexico (at least compared to the Sonoran Desert) acted as a magnet to these dropouts with the Aztecs being one of the last of a series of invaders. (Compare the time frame of the Cimbrian invasion of Roman territories in 105 B.C. and the sack of Rome in 410 A.D.)
However, I would expect some region in Sonora or Sinaloa was the home they had mythologized rather than the Coso Range in California. I also believe that the Sonora - Sinaloa area is the location of Cibola but that is another myth (or is it the same one?)

11

Interesting indeed. The site also suggested discussed:

“The Satanic Roots of Heavy Metal Rock”

“Shuttle Disaster: a sign from God”

“Anthrax terrorists may be Zionists”

and, my favorate,
“Disney’s Michael Eisner, the big bad racist-zionist”

I suggest they change their name from “The voice of Aztlan” to “The voice of Fantasyland”, they’re giving Aztlan a bad name…

12

mipsmam gave a pretty thorough answer on the linguistic and historical meanings of the word.

In purely political usage, Aztlán is sometimes used to refer to areas that were once Mexican territory in the Southwest. In the 1960’s, some Chicano activists, who resented their treatment as “foreigners” or “outsiders” in American society, embraced Aztlán as an ancestral homeland of the Mexica people - and placed this homeland within the Southwest, to legitimise their presence within this region.

Actually, the fact that these lands were Spanish for 300 years and then Mexican for another 30 or so years could have been used to make this point. But many Chicanos made a point to embrace their native roots and reject their (by their view imposed) Spanish or “Hispanic” identity. So instead of using Spanish land grants they used a Native American based source for this.

Since the 1960’s a handful of activists have gone further, expousing self determination and even independence for ‘Aztlán’. However these views are definitely not widely held. The one professor that became identified the most with this, Carlos Truxillo from New Mexico, tried to make it clear that he wasn’t really advocating sudden separation, but that the emergence of a sort of Hispanic “Quebec” was likely in the next 50 to 100 years. Of course, a lot of people denounced this, including many Chicanos who felt his motives were actually “Eurocentric”.

Yet this have been seized upon by some right wing groups, who claim that Latin American immigration and multiculturalism are driving a mass “Aztlán” speratist movement, that seeks to drive out whites and return these lands to Mexico, or set up a new “Chicano nation”.

However this is mostly hogwash. Basically a small fringe of Chicano extremists and a small fring of Anglo extremists are essentially jerking each other off with claims and counterclaims of “Aztlán separatism”. I think in 50 years, there will be definitely a political difference in California, Arizona, or Texas (New Mexico is already there), and already there have been cultural changes that do make some people uncomfortable…but if anything it’s Mexico that will be holding out against absorption into North America - and not the other way around.

Also , “Aztlan.net” is very suspicious, as it seems to have more Anti-Jewish rhetoric than anything else. As far as I know its a complete fraud, as not even the most hardcore Chicanistas I know have any such views. I think MEChA is more representative of leftist Chicano activism that makes the case for some sort of political Aztlán, and my personal impression of them is that they are more “Food Court Che” types than a serious threat to anyone.

13

Also…“Mexica” was not a typo for Mexican…Mexica (pronounced Mesh EE kah) was the ethnonym for the “Aztec” Indians, as well as the root of Mexico, Mexican, and possibly Chicano (often rendered Xicano).

Also, quite a few Mexicans in Mexico and Hispanic Americans are of full or mostly European ancestry and identify with being “white” (maybe not in the same sense Anglo Americans usually define that term as excluding them) or something else other than “Indian” or “Mestizo”, which further complicates this whole political “Aztlán” issue.