In A Double Whammy, McCain Sticks It To The Base On Cinco De Mayo

Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall

Last week, on May 5th , Cinco de Mayo, Senator John McCain once again showed his contempt for the Republican base by hitting it with a double whammy.

In the same statement (see here) McCain announced that 1) he was opening a Spanish language website, and 2) he was going to the convention of the Hispanic chauvinist agitator group the National Council of La Raza [NCLR].

Why did McCain choose Cinco de Mayo to announce his double whammy? As I pointed out recently , Cinco de Mayo is not even a big deal in Mexico. It’s hardly celebrated. My school didn’t even suspend classes for it.

But in the U.S., Cinco de Mayo has become a big Mexican-American drinking fest and de rigueur occasion for pandering by U.S. politicians—chief among them being Panderer-in-Chief George W. Bush.

John McCain’s Spanish-language website is called Estamos Unidos (We are united). If you only changed one letter, the "m" to a "d", then is would be Estados Unidos (United States). Clever, eh? You can see the website here.

The website so far has links to articles. Some of the articles are in Spanish, but some are in English. As time goes by, we can expect the McCain camp to hispanify more of the website.

Countdown to May Day: The open borders circus returns

By Michelle Malkin • April 29, 2008 09:50 AM

On Thursday, the reconquista militants, illegal alien lobbyists and lawyers, multicultural mau-mau-ers, and assorted anti-border goons will turn out across the country for another May Day open borders spasm.

Los Angeles police are undergoing crowd control training to prevent a repeat of the Macarthur Park riots last year.

College students and Catholic priests will join the “Gran Marcha” to demand amnesty and non-enforcement of immigration laws.

In Madison, Wisconsin, illegal immigration apologists will protest Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney’s practice of notifying federal officials of jailed inmates’ immigration status.

Bay Area anti-war activists are riding the wave and will join open-borders groups to harass both recruiters and ICE agents. Because it’s all about sticking it to The Man.

In Chicago, open-borders exploiters will be bringing back poor Saul Arellano:

Mexico reconquers California? Absolut drinks to that!

The latest advertising campaign in Mexico from Swedish vodka maker Absolut promises to push all the right buttons south of the U.S. border, but it could ruffle a few feathers in El Norte.

The billboard and press campaign, created by advertising agency Teran\TBWA and now running in Mexico, is a colorful map depicting what the Americas might look like in an "Absolut" -- i.e., perfect -- world.

The U.S.-Mexico border lies where it was before the Mexican-American war of 1848 when California, as we now know it, was Mexican territory and known as Alta California.

Following the war, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo saw the Mexican territories of Alta California and Santa Fé de Nuevo México ceded to the United States to become modern-day California, Texas, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado and Arizona. (Texas actually split from Mexico several years earlier to form a breakaway republic, and was voluntarily annexed by the United States in 1846.)

The campaign taps into the national pride of Mexicans, according to Favio Ucedo, creative director of leading Latino advertising agency Grupo Gallegos in the U.S.

Ucedo, who is from Argentina, said: “Mexicans talk about how the Americans stole their land, so this is their way of reclaiming it. It’s very relevant and the Mexicans will love the idea.”

But he said that were the campaign to run in the United States, it might fall flat.

Marchers decry slow process for citizenship

By Louie Gilot / El Paso Times
Article Launched: 02/29/2008 12:00:00 AM MST

Members of ACORN from El Paso and Las Cruces on Thursday marched to the offices of Citizenship and Immigration Services to protest nationwide processing delays that could keep some immigrants from getting their citizenship in time to vote in the presidential elections.

Belem Lara of Las Cruces, a permanent legal resident for 30 years, said she was beginning to gather her documents to apply for U.S. citizenship.

"It is my dearest wish to be able to vote, and more than anything, to be able to stay in this country," she said. "I fear that I won't be able to vote while I wait for a response."

Delays have not been an overwhelming problem at the El Paso CIS office, and Thursday's protest attracted only about 20 people. ACORN members were to march in protest in other cities such as Los Angeles.

The CIS has acknowledged the delay and said on its Web site that applications filed after June 1, 2007, could take 16 to 18 months to process. This could mean that someone who filed in June 2007 becomes a citizen in December 2008, too late for the November election.

The naturalization process used to take three to four months from application to interview, immigration lawyers said.

El Paso protester Israel Perez said he felt the delays were deliberate.

"I think they're thinking Mexicans can sway the election," Perez, a U.S. citizen, said.

Federal officials blamed the holdup on an onslaught of applications this year. Many were made by people wanting to beat a steep increase in filing fees that took effect July 30, 2007.

How A VDARE.COM Article Landed Me A Cameo Role In A PBS Documentary

Memo From Mexico, By Allan Wall

Thanks to a VDARE.COM article I wrote several years ago, I was invited to appear in a documentary on the state of the English language in America.

In February 2002, in Spanish and the New Conquistadors, I pointed out that the growth of Spanish in the United States is frankly perceived by prominent Mexicans as a conquest.

As a result of this article, I was asked if I’d be willing to be interviewed for the projected Robert MacNeil documentary Do You Speak American? I agreed.

So, in March of 2003 I traveled by bus from my home somewhere in Mexico to Laredo, Texas, where I linked up with the production team. I was interviewed for the documentary and filmed crossing the bridge on foot. They put me up for the night in a nice riverside hotel and treated me to a few meals. It was the first time I’d ever been involved in anything like that, giving me a small glimpse of how a documentary is produced.

“Allan Wall …said that living in Mexico had given him a different perspective on the inroads of Spanish in America. He recalled a Congress of the Spanish Language in Madrid in 2001. One of the speakers was Vicente Fox, the president of Mexico, who commented that Mexican immigrants who continue to speak Spanish in the United States are doing their patriotic duty to Mexico. [Text of speech, in Spanish.] Another speaker was Carlos Fuentes, perhaps the leading literary figure in Mexico. "He said that there is a silent reconquista of the United States. He didn’t even limit it to the Southwest, as many do; he just said ‘of the United States’."