LOS ANGELES: Mayor Villaraigosa to visit Mexico City (Tenochtitlan)
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"Our city is a Mexican city, and Mexican Americans have greatly shaped
our cultural, political and commercial landscape."Los Angeles Mayor James K. Hahn
November 5, 2001* * *
by
Ernesto Cienfuegos
La Voz de AztlanLos Angeles, Alta California - April 29, 2007 - (ACN) Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will travel to Mexico City to meet with President Felipe Calderon next month. The trip is tentatively set for May 2nd, one day after the "Gran Boicot" is to take place throughout Aztlan and beyond.
Mexico has an interwoven history with that of Los Angeles, which was once governed by Mexico. Mayor Villaraigosa recently became the first mayor of Mexican descent in 133 years. The last Los Angeles mayor of Mexican descent was Cristobal Aguilar who completed his term in 1872.
"EL Pueblo de Nuestra Seņora La Reina de Los Angeles" was founded in 1781 by Mexican families primarily from the states of Sinaloa, Sonora and Jalisco. From 1781 to 1822 all of the mayors were born in Mexico but from 1823 to 1848 they were mostly native Angelinos, sons of Mexican families who owned vast "Ranchos" in the area. The first White mayor was a migrant from Missouri by the name of Stephen Foster. Foster commenced his term as mayor in 1848, the year when the Mexican-American War ended. In 1949 Alta California experienced an invasion from the east of large numbers of Whites looking for gold. The "Gold Rush 49ers" were mostly unsavory characters who negatively transformed the peaceful culture of the region.
Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a former student leader of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA) at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), took over the mayor's office of the second largest city in the USA in May of 2005. Los Angeles has the second largest population of Mexican descent next to Mexico City or "Tenochtitlan", as it is known to Mechistas.
The trip of Mayor Villaraigosa to Tenochtitlan is seen by many as symbolic of the political transformation taking place in the Southwest, or in the territory that members of MEChA call Aztlan. Aztlan is comprised of those territories taken from Mexico after the Mexican-American War and after the Treaty of Gudalupe-Hidlalgo, a treaty many youths of Mexican descent do not recognize as legitimate. Mechistas also consider Los Angeles the Capital of Aztlan.
The mayor's trip is being criticized by a few White malcontents in Los Angeles. These malcontents, mainly proponents of building walls between Mexico and the USA, have been waging war against the mayor. They have accused the mayor of being a "reconquista". They say he is involved in a grand conspiracy to return the vast USA Southwest back to Mexico. In local hate radio, the White shock jocks often call Mayor Villaraigosa "Mayor Vivalaraza".
