THE COMEBACK RIVER When I was six years old, we visited the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in Mexico City quite often. My grandfather owned a XVI Century house near the Shrine, which he lent to the Capuchin sisters to use as a convent. On the façade of that building was a plaque, commemorating the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo by which the United States took away by force of arms, more than half of the Mexican territory. The land taken by the US in said war includes California, New Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Kansas, Colorado, Wyoming and Oklahoma. It is needles to remark that Mexico did nothing to provoke the American invasion. It is worth noting, that during the war against Mexico, Senator Thomas Corwin of the United States, delivered a speech before the American Congress, In which he defended Mexico and condemned American unjustifiable aggression against Mexico. That speech is regarded as one of the most beautiful oratory pieces ever pronounced in Washington. The case is that on that occasion, while we were standing outside the convent, before the commemorative plaque, and having read its contents, , my grandfather told me what had happened. My reaction was to ask him to recover our land immediately. To my child’s mind, it was the most natural thing to do. If my grandfather was almighty in my view, and that robbery had been committed in his father’s house, he was perfectly capable of undoing the larceny and bring back those lands into Mexico’s sovereignty once again. As you can imagine, every grownup present, laughed about my demand, until my mother had to tell me to stop bothering. My grandfather told me that as soon as we returned to his house, he would lend me James Polk’s memoirs for me to read them, and that once I had read them, he would allow me to discuss the matter further. He must have thought that I would not read the two volumes of Mister Polk’s memoirs, but I did. After a little over two months I came back demanding action from him to recover all those territories. His final reply was, that if I wanted to do something about it, I should study law and do it myself when I grew older. This is how in 1987, in view of the foreign debt crisis with which Mexico was faced and threatened by world bankers and usurers, I thought the following: According to international law, when a treaty is declared null and void, it involves two main consequences: • Things must return to the situation in which they were before such treaty was imposed against the free will of the affected country. • The country responsible for having imposed that treaty by force has to indemnify the counterpart in addition to returning the territories to their original sovereignty. This means that I proposed in my book, for Mexico to take legal action to declare the nullity of the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo, by which means we would be freed of the immense foreign debt, without affecting Mexico’s international credit, and we would lawfully recover our occupied territories. As you must be aware, there are nearly 40 million people to the North of the actual Mexican-American border, with Mexican ancestry in various degrees. Los Angeles is the second city in the world with the largest Mexican population. While I was searching for an editor to publish my manuscript, I knocked on the door of two famous Mexican writers to do the prologue. Carlos Fuentes and Gaston Garcia Cantu declined my invitation for their own reasons. Instead of knocking on any other writer’s doors to that end, it was Benito Juarez who finally opened the lines of my book, since I inserted his letter to Matias Romero, dated January 26, 1865, in which he expressly said the following: “Let the enemy vanquish us and consummate his robbery, if such is our destiny; but we must not legitimize the abuse; willingly surrendering what is taken from us by force of arms. If France, the United States or any other nation takes over any part of our territory, and because of our weakness we cannot throw them out; let us maintain alive the flame of our undisputable rights, so the future generations to come after us, can reclaim it and bring them back”. “It would be wrong to allow a superior military force to subdue us; but it would be unforgivable to deny our sons the evidence and arguments necessary to recover what is rightfully theirs, knowing as we know, they shall be braver and even more patriotic than ourselves, and will be willing to make our rights be observed and recognized someday”. This led me to write HERIDAS QUE NO CIERRAN (OPEN WOUNDS). I intend to START A MOVEMENT. At this point I must provide further explanation: I love the United States of America. I studied in Linton Hall Military School in Bristow, Virginia many years ago. I entrusted my son’s education to the American School Foundation in Mexico City since Kinder Garten until High School. My older son, Julio, went on to study college at the University of Chicago and therefrom, to the School of the Arts, Institute of Chicago. I understand that justice must prevail before the cold rules of a blind law. As much as I am aware that nearly two centuries of occupation of our territories by the United States, have given place to developments and deep human roots, which oblige us to acknowledge our unbreakable bonds; it is precisely because of the human preeminence and our right to go, live, thrive, die and rest in those lands of ours, that we must find a way to coexist alongside one another in equality and justice. What I believe and demand, is in the right to share as brothers and sisters, and to take globalization at its word and its worth, abolishing all barriers and frontiers between us, not only for commerce and trade but for human interaction and everyday life. So the movement I want to start, is to promote the awareness of Mexico’s rights and the true story of the annexation of our territories in the XIX Century, so Mexicans are no longer referred to as “illegal aliens” or “wetbacks”, when according to the very words of Senator Corwin, it is the US presence in those lands that was truly unjust and illegal. “Remember The Alamo” has long been an undisputed phrase beneath which, underlies the hidden truth of Texan History. It must be known that it was Mexico who defended The Alamo from alien invasion. It is false and absurd to keep indulging the belief that we were the aggressor at The Alamo in 1836. It is as absurd as declaring that Hitler should be honored as the rightful defender of France, during operation Overlord on June 6, 1944. I want to CHANGE THE WORLD. How do I want to change “our common world’? Allow me to quote William Shakespeare’s St. Crispens Day Speech to explain myself: “…We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; for he to-day that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother…” Since after the Mexican-American war, there has been a profound human interchange between the peoples of the United States and Mexico. We have had sons and daughters together; we have dreamed, worked, lived and thrived together; we have pursued ideals, shared hardships, built cities, palaces and factories; we have worked the land together and harvested together; we have loved each other; we built a new race whose blood runs through the veins of our common sons and daughters; we have laughed and shed tears together; we have rejoiced and mourned together; and we have gone to battle together against common enemies through thick and thin. Having as we have shed blood together in many rivers and oceans; in endless battlefields from World War I to the Persian Gulf, Viet Nam and the Pacific, we have become much more than difficult neighbors; we have indeed become brothers and sisters; and we have the right to remain and the Right to return to our lands. This is what we have to achieve: We need to awaken the consciences and shake prejudices to build a new coexistence where no one is deemed “illegal” and everyone is welcome in good faith. I want to start this movement in brotherhood. I want to change the way we live, and turn the waters that have separated us with blood through these open wounds, into the COMEBACK RIVER. We are the children of Cuauhcetcui, the returning Eagle of our elders. Julio Chavezmontes
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 07:43:57 +0000
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