Proposition 187 was the first major obstacle in the onward march of revolutionary "Raza" rights groups, and it roused them to new heights of hostility and hysterical hyperbole.
Militant Chicanos have been threatening violent insurrection since the 1960s but, by 1994, MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund) had accomplished many of its goals through the courts and provided, at the same time, a quasi-respectable mantle for its ambitious irredentism.
Cultural and "language rights"1 had already been won and anyone seeking to cross the border illegally, whether apprehended or not, could eventually gain entry.2 Every day thousands of Mexicans enter our country at will, and in numbers grossly undercounted by federal authorities. Los Angeles is the second largest Mexican city in the world and Hispanics will soon be a majority in California.
After Proposition 187 passed, Hispanic leaders met in January of 1995 on the campus of the University of California at Riverside. At that meeting Art Torres, now State Chair of the California Democratic Committee,3 declared that Proposition 187 was "the last gasp of white America;" and Hermann Baca, founder of the Committee on Chicano Rights, reassured the audience that "historically we are going to win - and take our place as rightful owners of this land."
The task of indoctrinating Hispanic youth for their role in a United States, sin fronteras (without borders) where they are in control, is the mission of MEChA (Movemiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan). Their message is broadcast defiantly from hundreds of institutions of secondary and higher education, and nowhere else are Chicano takeover plans expressed more bluntly or brutally.
MEChA's description of the San