Cliven Bundy: The honorary Chicano radical
If Chicano activists need a modern-day folk hero as a symbol of their longstanding outrage against U.S. for taking the Southwest from Mexico, they should…
Rancher Cliven Bundy, center, walks off stage after speaking at a news conference near Bunkerville, Nev., Thursday, April 24, 2014. (AP Photo/Las Vegas Review-Journal, John Locher)
If Chicano activists need a modern-day folk hero as a symbol of their longstanding outrage against U.S. for taking the Southwest from Mexico, they should look no further than the firebrand Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy.
For it is Bundy, who effectively has been giving the U.S. government an angry middle-finger salute that should endear him to Chicano radicals in his recently publicized standoff with the feds that actually goes back longer than his 20-year battle over cattle-grazing on federal land.
Its a dispute that has its genesis in the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in which Mexico lost the land on which Bundys cattle have grazed, as well as much of what makes up the Southwest in America today.
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That treaty became a centerpiece of the Chicano movement of the 1960s when activist leaders like Corky Gonzalez of Colorado and Reies Lopez Tijerina of New Mexico railed against how the U.S. took the Southwest by force.
Chicano apologists wrote books with titles like Occupied America, referring to the land Mexico lost, and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo became an epistle for the movement, with a slew of masters and doctoral degree papers all attesting for how important the document became in the Chicano culture.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican American War between the U.S. and Mexico of the mid-19th century but in doing so it ceded gave 55 percent of Mexican territory to the United States what writer Raoul Lowery Contreras calls the largest land garb in Western world history
That land became Nevada, California, Utah, plus chunks of New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona. Mexico also agreed to drop any claim to Texas.
In exchange, the United States paid Mexico $15 million, though Mexico never got a cent as it was effectively written off as part of money the Mexicans owed the U.S.
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Additionally, the treaty not only guaranteed citizenship to Mexican settlers in those territories but also assured them that they could keep their land promises that were broken and led to long grievances and bitter feelings.
For years Bundys cattle grazed on government-owned land that was part of that land that formerly belonged to Mexico and became known as the Mexican Cession in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Rancher Cliven Bundy speaks at a news conference near Bunkerville, Nev., Thursday, April 24, 2014.
Bundys problem was that he thought that as a longtime landowner in the area he didnt have to pay for allowing his cattle to graze on that land, even after being sent bills beginning in the 1990s by the federal Bureau of Land Management that oversees these lands.
That bill accumulated to more than $1 million, and earlier this month the government took possession of several hundred head of Bundys cattle that continued to graze on the land.
Thats when Bundy initiated a standoff with the government that included a ridiculous showdown with the rancher daring federal agents to shoot at a front line composed of armed women.
It has all made Cliven Bundy a new age folk hero, especially among conservatives and at Fox News, where some of his racist remarks have found a home.
But Bundy is also a maverick, much like those Chicano movement radicals who carried their angry remorse for Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on their sleeves. And, as an outspoken maverick, Bundy will say almost anything thats on his mind or that he believes.
Now, let me talk about Hispanic people, he said in one interview with Foxs Bill OReilly that had the show host scratching his head. You know I understand that they come over here against our Constitution and cross our borders but they are here and they are people.
And I have worked side-to-side a lot of them. Don’t tell me they don’t work. And don’t tell me they don’t pay taxes. And don’t tell me they don’t have better family structures than most of us white people.
Not surprising, OReilly quickly cut him off.
Now, Mr. Bundy might just be covering his butt with that statement, OReilly said.
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Really? Cliven Bundy doesnt seem like the butt-covering type. Just the opposite.
And that should make him lovable to anyone still believing in Guadalupe Hidalgo.
