Mechistas? It's Mucho Ado About Nada

It shouldn't surprise anyone who reads this column that I was active in the again-controversial Latino student group MEChA during my college days.

MEChA is an esoteric Spanish acronym that translates as Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan. That final word refers to an ancient legend that places an Aztec homeland somewhere in the north. A few Mexican Americans use the word to refer to the U.S. Southwest, and extremists on both ends of the political spectrum interpret that as a desire by Chicanos to reclaim that region -- somehow, someday -- for Mexico.

But such a far-out idea was never on my agenda in the 1960s, when I was one of the few Mexican Americans at UCLA or, later, at Cal State Northridge. I just wanted to help get more Latinos into college.

Thankfully, MEChA was successful in reaching its goals by focusing on such practical matters.

So successful that thousands of young Latinos in college have created about 300 MEChA chapters, and similar groups, aimed at Latino students on campuses from San Diego to Boston. And most of them are even more benign in their aspirations and activities than the Mechistas I went to college with.

But that has not stopped some folks from trying to equate MEChA with hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Some of these claims are based on genuine confusion, such as attributing offensive political slogans once used by other Chicano groups ("For the race, everything. Outside the race, nothing") to MEChA.

Of course, the rhetoric some then-Mechistas used was overblown. But they were immature activists who -- ignorant of a long history of Mexican American activism -- really thought they were the community's political vanguard.

That is why Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante should not renounce his affiliation with the MEChA chapter at Fresno State in the 1970s, when Bustamante was a student there. A rival candidate in the campaign leading up to the Oct. 7 recall election, Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks), made that demand recently, repeating the canard that MEChA is a racist militant group.

But if the normally diligent senator had done better homework he'd have found that MEChA is no more militant and racist than the Young Republicans clubs on many campuses.

Bustamante is not the first Latino politician to be attacked for his MEChA ties. A few supporters of Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn attacked City Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa for the same thing during a tight race for the top job in City Hall three years ago, although Hahn did not join in.