Remember way back, when Mexico and the United States went to war? Davy Crockett, Remember the Alamo
all of that good stuff? Probably not. Anyway, since the 1850s, the West has been part of the good old Estados Unidos de America and not part of Mexico, in accordance with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Flash forward to the 1970s. The growing Chicano, or Mexican-American, nationalist movement calls for the reclamation of the mythical, and geographically ambiguous, homeland of the Aztec, which is imaginatively named Aztlan. Skip ahead 30 more years, to modern times. The Los Angeles-based Mexican nationalist group, the Mexica Movement, demands that the indigenous peoples of North America overthrow the White Supremacist ideology and the established order in favor of where Europeans are the illegals. The Mexica Movement says that it plans to accomplish its goal of indigenous liberation through demographic expansion, hijacking the democratic processes of Mexico, Canada and the United States from the inside. And don't believe for a second that the Mexica Movement is the only pro-reconquista group in existence, either. There are many more all over the nation, and if you speak out against them, they call you a racist and a xenophobe.
What's with the history lesson? Last week, Absolut Vodka ran an ad in a popular Spanish-language magazine called Quien, which is basically the Mexican equivalent of our People magazine. In this advertisement, an alternate-history map of America and Mexico appeared, in which the American-Mexico border has been redrawn to represent the pre-1846 border. The advertisement is labeled In an Absolut World. So, in an Absolut world Mexico would have retaken a good two-thirds of America, and the land west of the Mississippi and south of Washington would not be part of the Union anymore. When people called the company that makes Absolut, the V&S Group, to complain, they were told that the advertisement was designed to appeal to Mexican sensibilities. If by Mexican sensibilities they meant Mexican jingoism and reconquista philosophy, they're telling the truth!
Let's extrapolate this Absolut World a bit farther, shall we? Would an Absolut World have a Europe in which Nazi Germany successfully conquered the entire continent, giving that regime plenty of lebensraum in which to stretch its fascist limbs? Would an Absolut World feature a United States that executed the old belief of Manifest Destiny and ruled Canada and Cuba? Or would it have a Soviet Union that stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific and Indian Oceans? It's a cute advertisement, sure ' but in a day when immigration is a touchy subject for a lot of people on both sides of the border fence, is it smart to be, at least inadvertently, saying that a successful Mexican Reconquista of American lands is a good thing? If you believe that it is smart to do such a thing, I've got some condominiums in Fallujah to sell you.
Normally, I'd be willing to give Absolut the benefit of the doubt. I mean, it could have been a complete accident that they designed an advertisement that appears to drink to the concept of Mexicans conquering the United States, right? However, I can't reasonably believe that running an ad campaign targeted at a region and a demographic that would be likely to believe in reconquista is an accident. When companies start promoting racist ideals such as this, that's when I take my business elsewhere. Until next time, cheers!
Jesse Hathaway is a junior English major. Send him an e-mail at jh309105@ohiou.edu.
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Jesse Hathaway
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