1. BUSTAMENTE AND MECHA. I guess I should repeat part of my post from August 30. I see plenty of people criticizing Lt.Gov. Bustamante for not renouncing his membership in Mecha. But it's much worse than that: he publicly voices *support* for the group, as Fox News tells us:

LOS ANGELES --- California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (search), the grandson of Mexican immigrants who counts improving race relations among his biggest pursuits, refused Thursday to renounce his past ties to a little-known Hispanic organization considered by critics to be as racist as the Ku Klux Klan.
Instead, Bustamante, who is running to be governor of California, praised the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, or MEChA (search), and said he still supports it.

It's worth looking at the fundamental documents of MECHA. One is the El Plan Espiritual de Aztl�n, which says,

Aztl�n 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.
...
Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada.
...
ECONOMY: economic control of our lives and our communities can only come about by driving the exploiter out of 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.
...
POLITICAL LIBERATION can only come through indepen-dent action on our part, since the two-party system is the same animal with two heads that feed from the same trough.

Another, less dramatic, document is the Philosophy of MEChA, which says,

General membership shall consist of any student who accepts, believes, and works for the goals and objectives of M.E.Ch.A. including the liberation of Aztl�n.
...
...Many Chicano Studies faculty have submitted to the pressures of the system and no longer support student activism, leaving their departments vulnerable to attacks from school administrators. To correct this lack of linkage with Chicano Studies, M.E.Ch.A. proposes the following goals:
Process of Implementation: 1) The immediate re-establishment of communication with student program input, and M.E.Ch.A.'s Campus Chair having a vote in departmental meetings; 2) The establishment of inter-campus Chicano Studies Concilio Networks at the local level with student and community participation; 3) The redirection of a portion of Chicano Studies resources into cooperative recruitment and retention projects with M.E.Ch.A. and the Chicana/Chicano community...

In light of this, I'd like to know Lt. Governor Bustamante's (and MECHA's) answers to the following questions:

Do you believe that California should be part of the United States?
Do you acknowledge current holdings of private property in California as legitimate? If not, who ought to be give up the land they are now claiming to own?
Do you think non-Chicanos have a right to live in California?
Just what is the role of "Chicano defense units"?
Do you believe that the Democratic and Republican parties should both be rejected? If so, why are you listed as a Democrat?
Do you think that universities should only hire activist Chicanos for Chicano Studies programs, and that MECHA should have a vote in department meetings and part of the departmental budget?

I know this last item is trivial by comparison, but I'm a professor, after all.

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