Fidel Castro and Che Guevara
To oppose the funding of a museum for Chicano Park contact your City council member and the Mayor and request that they not support any more funding of Chicano Park.
San Diego City Council Offices
The Chicano Park Steering Committee hopes to expropriate a building next door to Chicano Park in Barrio Logan to use as a museum. They are requesting that the City provide the building at a very nominal cost, without going through the normal bidding process. They are also requesting $8 million dollars to remodel and upgrade the building.
In a speech at Chicano Park Day on April 23, 2016, David Rico declares Chicano ownership of the Southwestern US and that “we are going to get this land one way or another.” David Rico is head of the local Brown Berets, the Chicano paramilitary group, whose leadership appears to be aging and unfit.
Chicano-ism does not represent Mexican Americans as a whole and likewise does not even represent all of Barrio Logan. It is an anti-American, political ideology. By far, not all Mexican immigrants sympathize with the Mexican ultra nationalism represented by Chicano Park. There are many different minorities in Mexico, too, and a good part of these people felt discriminated against and oppressed in Mexico. Just one good example would be the Yaquis, who were often enslaved by the corrupt, Mexican ruling class, which also tried to exterminate them completely in the early 20th century. Many Yaquis fled oppression in Mexico to come to the US. There are other minorities in Mexico, who have a similar outlook. Chicanos in the US silence Mexican-Americans, who think differently, calling them race traitors and sell-outs.
Sadly, we have today many voters, media types and politicians who are only too accepting and supportive of anti-American ideologies. It is trendy and chic in some social circles to be seen as anti-American and “revolutionary.”
The term “Chicano” at one time was a slur for ethnic Mexicans living in the United States, who had not assimilated, but were not considered really Mexican any longer, either. In response to this identity crisis, a brown supremacist ideology was developed in the late 1960’s. The inspiration for this quasi-religious, neo-pagan ideology was the fascist, Nazi fifth column which existed in Mexico before and during World War II mixed with some (Marxist) collectivist concepts. It is ultra nationalist, like a Mexican form of fascism, but also has aspects of Marxism.
Since Nazism fell out of favor after WWII, they ally themselves more easily today with Marxists, communists and ordinary, self-hating, white liberals, compared to before WWII when such extreme Mexican nationalists aligned with Nazism and the “falangismo” of General Franco’s fascist Spain.
The giant Swastika in this mural is a reminder of the Nazi sympathizer and propagandist, Jose Vasconcelos, whose work was a major inspiration for the ideology of Chicano-ism.
The idea that Aztlan is the mystical homeland of the Aztecs is totally absurd accepted by some Chicano with a cult-like quasi-religious faith. No one knows were Aztlan was, to start off, or even if it existed and was not a complete myth. If it could be located that does not mean the descendants of the Aztecs would have a claim to it, today. The Aztec tribe was one small tribe which has not existed in 500 years. There are no real Aztecs any more, except in the vivid imagination of some Chicanos. Most Mexicans have no ancestral connection to the Aztecs.
This page is under development. Check back here for developments in the funding of the Chicano Park Museum. The decision is expected to be made towards the end of the year, probably to allow out-going, lame-duck, council members to help approve the museum.