Recalling Cruz's Radical Roots
Accepting the endorsement of the United Farmworkers’ Union in Delano, California last week, California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante pledged that he would “always remember [his] roots.” While he was referring to his rural central California pedigree, one can’t help but speculate about his ideological affinity with El Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, the radical racial separatist organization otherwise known as MEChA. Bustamante has distanced himself from one of the central aims of the group – the establishment of a sovereign Chicano nation in the southwestern United States.
Nevertheless, Bustamante’s MEChA membership has become a campaign issue. State senator Tom McClintock has called on Bustamante to renounce his membership in the group. There is more to this story than accusations of race-baiting and political gamesmanship, however. Looking at two of MEChA’s founding documents in conjunction with Bustamante’s politics, it is clear that the spirit of MEChA is still very much with him. Nowhere is this more evident than in his policy positions on the economy and race relations, where group identity and economic collectivism prevail over individualism and the market process.
The Spoils of Racial Balkanization
Any honest analysis of MEChA and its role in Bustamante’s political calculus must begin with an appraisal of the organization’s stated beliefs. “El Plan de Santa Barbara” does not read like a revolutionary document. Its overall tenor is one of bland entreaties geared toward student organizing and community outreach, both commendable aims. Nevertheless, there is some language which is provocative. In explanation of its embrace of the world “Chicano”:
The Mexican-American or Hispanic is a person who lacks self-respect and pride in one’s ethnic and cultural background. . . . Chicanismo simply embodies an ancient truth: that a person is never closer to his/her true self as when he/she is close to his/her community. . . . Cultural nationalism is a means of total Chicano liberation.
“El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,” the other founding document of MEChA, is much more strident in its prose:
[T]he call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. . . . 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. . . . [W]e declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture.
What does all this verbiage mean in the context of the current political landscape? A reconquistadora (re-conquest) of the Southwestern U.S. by a pan-national coalition of “bronze people” is both implausible and laughable. But race continues to play a seminal role in California politics. As the state becomes increasingly multi-ethnic and racially diverse, it struggles to transcend traditional notions of race and, more importantly, government’s role in the treatment of individuals using that social construct. With our changing human landscape, it is time for government to adopt a truly “colorblind” approach to race relations.
Cruz Bustamante is at the forefront of California politicians who foment race-consciousness to garner votes and patronage. He supports racial preferences in government employment and education. He opposes Proposition 54, an initiative that would forbid state government’s collection of racial data with narrow exceptions. The initiative is on the October 7 recall ballot and currently retains a narrow lead in the polls.
Bustamante continues to support bilingual education, which the California electorate abolished in 1998 via Proposition 227. If not for the actions of the gabacho tech entrepreneur Ron Unz, who bankrolled the initiative campaign after witnessing the Latino parents picketing their schools to teach their children English, immigrant children of a multitude of linguistic backgrounds would still be subject to a separate and unequal public education. “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” endorses bilingual education as an express goal, so that education is “relative to our people.”
Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot measure that sought to preclude health, education and welfare benefits to illegal immigrants, has become a major campaign rallying cry for Bustamante nine years later. This despite the fact that Prop. 187 was overturned in the federal courts. Bustamante finds every opportunity to relay the message that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a proponent of Prop. 187, in addition to being a board member of an organization advocating English as the official language of the United States. At the United Farmworkers rally, a large picture was prominently displayed showing Schwarzenegger alongside former California governor Pete Wilson, who embraced Prop. 187 as he ran for re-election.
In another attempt to cast himself as the guardian of “bronze people,” Bustamante currently supports giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, despite concerns over border security, integrity of the state’s voter rolls, and federal law. This kind of advocacy has tangibly paid off. He has received the endorsement of most every interest group that specializes in race-consciousness as an unwavering philosophical principle and advocates further state-sponsored racial balkanization. The $2 million contribution from a band of Southern California Native Americans who operate a successful casino-resort further evinces the conclusion that racial politics yields generous dividend for Bustamante.
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
MEChA’s economic agenda is grounded in the subordination of the individual to the community, the re-appropriation of ancestral lands, and the repudiation of Western notions of material value. “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” is clear:
Land 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. . . . 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.
The document further calls for restitution to redress “past economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction and denial of civil and human rights.” As with the call for reparations over African-American slavery, the question must be asked – who should be liable to whom and for how much?
“El Plan de Stanta Barbara” denounces the “ethic of profit and competition, of greed and intolerance, which the Anglo society offers. . . .” And what will be erected in its place? “[O]ur ancestral communalism and love for beauty and justice.” This may seem ephemeral, but the consequences of “communalism” may have dire consequences for California taxpayers.
On fiscal matters, Bustamante positions himself as a practitioner of “tough love.” This is apparently the latest leftist euphemism for higher taxation. Beyond the tenderhearted semantics, however, MEChA’s economic vision manifests itself in two specific areas of Bustamante’s “tough love” agenda – electricity regulation and gasoline prices.
A principal co-sponsor of the legislation that enacted a half-baked deregulation of California’s electricity markets, Bustamante is now backtracking. He is compounding the errors of his past by advocating re-regulation. This would make the commodity of electricity display all the attributes of what economists call a “public good” – higher long-term costs to the consumer, artificial shortages, and overarching government control of production and distribution. He is but the latest in a long line of politicians who decry “market failure” when a genuine market never really existed.
Californians currently pay the highest gasoline prices in the nation, due in large part to environmental regulations that make gasoline in California a boutique product. Gasoline sold in neighboring states, for example, cannot be sold in California. A few years ago, the mandate that California gasoline contain an additive that would make it burn cleaner had the unintended consequence of seeping through gas station tanks into groundwater supplies. The total costs of this fiasco have yet to be accounted for. Further, the state gasoline excise tax is 18 cents per gallon.
Given the costs borne by consumers as a result of government intervention, Bustamante is eager to portray the role of an antagonist in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as he also rips a page out of the playbook of Richard Nixon. His solution for higher prices? Price controls. Even The Sacramento Bee, hardly a champion of the market process, denounced the proposal. A lead editorial remarked, “Either Bustamante doesn’t understand simple economics or he’s pandering to people who don’t.”
Is MEChA Really Relevant?
Whatever the incendiary language of MEChA’s declarations, its collective bark is louder than its individual bite. The MEChA chapter at my undergraduate school in early 1990's Los Angeles played a prevalent role in campus politics. But most of the organizations activities were geared toward cultural and social events open to the larger campus, academic support for Latino students, and community outreach efforts that emphasized volunteerism.
At the time Bustamante was a MEChA member, the ideology of the Old Left dominated both campus politics and national politics. Identity politics and the propensity to blame social and economic problems on “capitalist excesses” are still defining characteristics of today’s Left. Whether they are college professors, campus administrators, or elected officials, Leftists remain committed to the notion that the personal is the political.
This ideology – a word which wrongly carries a negative connotation in the present civic discourse – has unquestionably wreaked havoc within California government. As the late University of Chicago Professor Richard M. Weaver once observed, “ideas have consequences.” The consequences of the grand idea of Sacramento Leftists – providing the proverbial free lunch with others’ money in the name of compassion – have brought the state to the financial brink.
Governor Davis, who promised to “blaze a trail of moderation” shortly after his initial election, is sure to be recalled. If enough Californians vote “Yes on Bustamante” on October 7, MEChA’s vision of race and economics may in fact have broad consequences for the future of the Golden State. And that would make conservatives and libertarians yearn for the halcyon days of Gray Davis moderation.
Nevertheless, Bustamante’s MEChA membership has become a campaign issue. State senator Tom McClintock has called on Bustamante to renounce his membership in the group. There is more to this story than accusations of race-baiting and political gamesmanship, however. Looking at two of MEChA’s founding documents in conjunction with Bustamante’s politics, it is clear that the spirit of MEChA is still very much with him. Nowhere is this more evident than in his policy positions on the economy and race relations, where group identity and economic collectivism prevail over individualism and the market process.
The Spoils of Racial Balkanization
Any honest analysis of MEChA and its role in Bustamante’s political calculus must begin with an appraisal of the organization’s stated beliefs. “El Plan de Santa Barbara” does not read like a revolutionary document. Its overall tenor is one of bland entreaties geared toward student organizing and community outreach, both commendable aims. Nevertheless, there is some language which is provocative. In explanation of its embrace of the world “Chicano”:
The Mexican-American or Hispanic is a person who lacks self-respect and pride in one’s ethnic and cultural background. . . . Chicanismo simply embodies an ancient truth: that a person is never closer to his/her true self as when he/she is close to his/her community. . . . Cultural nationalism is a means of total Chicano liberation.
“El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan,” the other founding document of MEChA, is much more strident in its prose:
[T]he call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny. . . . 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. . . . [W]e declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture.
What does all this verbiage mean in the context of the current political landscape? A reconquistadora (re-conquest) of the Southwestern U.S. by a pan-national coalition of “bronze people” is both implausible and laughable. But race continues to play a seminal role in California politics. As the state becomes increasingly multi-ethnic and racially diverse, it struggles to transcend traditional notions of race and, more importantly, government’s role in the treatment of individuals using that social construct. With our changing human landscape, it is time for government to adopt a truly “colorblind” approach to race relations.
Cruz Bustamante is at the forefront of California politicians who foment race-consciousness to garner votes and patronage. He supports racial preferences in government employment and education. He opposes Proposition 54, an initiative that would forbid state government’s collection of racial data with narrow exceptions. The initiative is on the October 7 recall ballot and currently retains a narrow lead in the polls.
Bustamante continues to support bilingual education, which the California electorate abolished in 1998 via Proposition 227. If not for the actions of the gabacho tech entrepreneur Ron Unz, who bankrolled the initiative campaign after witnessing the Latino parents picketing their schools to teach their children English, immigrant children of a multitude of linguistic backgrounds would still be subject to a separate and unequal public education. “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” endorses bilingual education as an express goal, so that education is “relative to our people.”
Proposition 187, the 1994 ballot measure that sought to preclude health, education and welfare benefits to illegal immigrants, has become a major campaign rallying cry for Bustamante nine years later. This despite the fact that Prop. 187 was overturned in the federal courts. Bustamante finds every opportunity to relay the message that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a proponent of Prop. 187, in addition to being a board member of an organization advocating English as the official language of the United States. At the United Farmworkers rally, a large picture was prominently displayed showing Schwarzenegger alongside former California governor Pete Wilson, who embraced Prop. 187 as he ran for re-election.
In another attempt to cast himself as the guardian of “bronze people,” Bustamante currently supports giving driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, despite concerns over border security, integrity of the state’s voter rolls, and federal law. This kind of advocacy has tangibly paid off. He has received the endorsement of most every interest group that specializes in race-consciousness as an unwavering philosophical principle and advocates further state-sponsored racial balkanization. The $2 million contribution from a band of Southern California Native Americans who operate a successful casino-resort further evinces the conclusion that racial politics yields generous dividend for Bustamante.
The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality
MEChA’s economic agenda is grounded in the subordination of the individual to the community, the re-appropriation of ancestral lands, and the repudiation of Western notions of material value. “El Plan Espiritual de Aztlan” is clear:
Land 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. . . . 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.
The document further calls for restitution to redress “past economic slavery, political exploitation, ethnic and cultural psychological destruction and denial of civil and human rights.” As with the call for reparations over African-American slavery, the question must be asked – who should be liable to whom and for how much?
“El Plan de Stanta Barbara” denounces the “ethic of profit and competition, of greed and intolerance, which the Anglo society offers. . . .” And what will be erected in its place? “[O]ur ancestral communalism and love for beauty and justice.” This may seem ephemeral, but the consequences of “communalism” may have dire consequences for California taxpayers.
On fiscal matters, Bustamante positions himself as a practitioner of “tough love.” This is apparently the latest leftist euphemism for higher taxation. Beyond the tenderhearted semantics, however, MEChA’s economic vision manifests itself in two specific areas of Bustamante’s “tough love” agenda – electricity regulation and gasoline prices.
A principal co-sponsor of the legislation that enacted a half-baked deregulation of California’s electricity markets, Bustamante is now backtracking. He is compounding the errors of his past by advocating re-regulation. This would make the commodity of electricity display all the attributes of what economists call a “public good” – higher long-term costs to the consumer, artificial shortages, and overarching government control of production and distribution. He is but the latest in a long line of politicians who decry “market failure” when a genuine market never really existed.
Californians currently pay the highest gasoline prices in the nation, due in large part to environmental regulations that make gasoline in California a boutique product. Gasoline sold in neighboring states, for example, cannot be sold in California. A few years ago, the mandate that California gasoline contain an additive that would make it burn cleaner had the unintended consequence of seeping through gas station tanks into groundwater supplies. The total costs of this fiasco have yet to be accounted for. Further, the state gasoline excise tax is 18 cents per gallon.
Given the costs borne by consumers as a result of government intervention, Bustamante is eager to portray the role of an antagonist in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged as he also rips a page out of the playbook of Richard Nixon. His solution for higher prices? Price controls. Even The Sacramento Bee, hardly a champion of the market process, denounced the proposal. A lead editorial remarked, “Either Bustamante doesn’t understand simple economics or he’s pandering to people who don’t.”
Is MEChA Really Relevant?
Whatever the incendiary language of MEChA’s declarations, its collective bark is louder than its individual bite. The MEChA chapter at my undergraduate school in early 1990's Los Angeles played a prevalent role in campus politics. But most of the organizations activities were geared toward cultural and social events open to the larger campus, academic support for Latino students, and community outreach efforts that emphasized volunteerism.
At the time Bustamante was a MEChA member, the ideology of the Old Left dominated both campus politics and national politics. Identity politics and the propensity to blame social and economic problems on “capitalist excesses” are still defining characteristics of today’s Left. Whether they are college professors, campus administrators, or elected officials, Leftists remain committed to the notion that the personal is the political.
This ideology – a word which wrongly carries a negative connotation in the present civic discourse – has unquestionably wreaked havoc within California government. As the late University of Chicago Professor Richard M. Weaver once observed, “ideas have consequences.” The consequences of the grand idea of Sacramento Leftists – providing the proverbial free lunch with others’ money in the name of compassion – have brought the state to the financial brink.
Governor Davis, who promised to “blaze a trail of moderation” shortly after his initial election, is sure to be recalled. If enough Californians vote “Yes on Bustamante” on October 7, MEChA’s vision of race and economics may in fact have broad consequences for the future of the Golden State. And that would make conservatives and libertarians yearn for the halcyon days of Gray Davis moderation.
posted by Nikos A. Leverenz @ 8:41 AM
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