Dear Gabacho: Oh, Aztlán! Nothing gets Know Nothings more encabronados than this creation myth. The breve version: the Aztecs told the Spaniards that their ancestors had migrated from somewhere north of modern-day Mexico City. The Spaniards begin a’slaughtering, unintentionally elevating Aztlán to Eden in the minds of the Mexica. Centuries later, the 1960s Chicano Movement began appropriating Aztec motifs and picked up on the People of the Sun’s longing for the Garden. The Chicanos also grabbed from another culture – the historical reality of the southwest United States once belonging to Mexico – and anointed this geographic region Aztlán despite there being no evidence the Aztecs ever lived anywhere in the Southwest. At least the Jews kept their origin story straight for millenia, you know?

Aztlán seems like revanchist irredentism, ¿qué no? But believing in it is mostly a college phase, like thinking communism can work or that Dane Cook is funny. Most Mexicans only vaguely know about Aztlán, and then in the same way gabachos think about Plymouth Rock. Some Chicanos remove Aztlán from its terrestrial moorings and adopt its Edenic spirit – in other words, the spirit of a people committed to bettering their community. Nothing harmful in that. But yes: some do believe the American Southwest is Aztlán, and that all non-Mexicans should vamoose back to Europe – the Mexican calls these ahistorical pendejos indigenazis. Don’t believe the hype – Aztlán is as harmless as arroz con leche.

Dear Gabacho: Gracias for giving me the opportunity to commemorate the passing of one of the Mexican’s idols: Studs Terkel, the legendary oral historian who went to his reward two weeks ago at the age of 96. Terkel documented a respuesta in his 1992 collection, Race: What Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession. In it, he said Mexicans served as a buffer between African-Americans and gabachos. In light of Barack Obama’s historic victory, Maydon’s following words are most telling: “Whatever gains the Hispanic community has made in this country have been at the expense – we’ve piggybacked the black movement. I say every time blacks make political, economic and social gains, I say hooray for them because we get some of the fallout. They sneeze; we catch the cold. They make inroads; we get hired.”

Ask the Mexican at askthemexican@mcweekly.com