Absolut Reconquista

Why is the ad in English? Does that suggest Absolut anticipated the broohaha, maybe even intended it?

I recently attended, out of curiosity, a book fair put on by a anarchist group in San Francisco. A popular sticker there showed the entire North and South American continent and labeled it "Indian Country".

I don't understand these reconquista people. By their logic, if they get the western US "back", then the descendants of the Aztecs can come along and request to get Mexico back, send the Mexicans back to Spain. And then the Arabs (Moors) can claim rightful ownership of Spain. And then the Spanish from before that can claim it from the Arabs, etc etc etc.

To the victor go the spoils, you can't whine about losing territory after having been defeated, how it's unfair. That's really quite new. Palestinians claiming they were unfairly kicked out of Israel, Mexicans from the southwestern US, preposterous. Might makes right when it comes to territorial boundaries. Always has been always will be.

I stand corrected, Curmudgeon (name well earned, by the way). Of course, such fails to contribute much of anything to answering the question.

WOW! I read nearly all 200+ posts on Michelle Malkin's website. I'm not a vodka drinker, but if I were, I'd definitely be boycotting all Pernod-Ricard brands. It's quite extensive. Stoli is among them as well. Many posters who have some knowledge of vodka are recommending Tito's. Just thought I'd pass that along to those of you who do drink vodka. I find it strange that when an enraged people promise to boycott that a company can act so indifferently. They really do need to fire their entire marketing staff, but I'm not fooled. They knew it would be provocative and they knew it would offend and they probably giggled under their breath when the launched the ad campaign. It's a form of Russion roulette, really. Remember Disney? Disney got hit HARD in the wallet! Didn't they even lay off Mickey for awhile? LOL I grew up watching "The Wonderful World of Disney" on Sunday nights at my granny's house after church. To this day, I still can't bring myself to watch or buy anything Disney. Remembering that they mocked and insulted Christians still sticks in my craw.

Yes, Jillian. That settles it. As an Orthodox Christian, I am dismayed that Constantinople is now Istanbul, but the Turks stole it fair and square, and that settles it. The Aztecs stole central Mexico from some folks who stole it from some other folks and so on down the line. The Angles and the Saxons stole Britain fair and square from the Celts, only to have it stolen from them by the Danes, who had it stolen yet again by the Normans. The Romans stole most of Italy from the Etruscans, and then went on to steal most of what Alexander the Great stole several hundred years before. Do you see how it works, Jillian? There is no way to put that genie back in the bottle without reopening every grievance from every nation since the dawn of time. Possession settles things.

I wonder do Mexicans really take this stuff in a serious nature? Or do they look at it the way that even SOutherners look at the various South will Rise again stuff. You know we have all seen shirts and bumper stickers with the glorious Confederacy all redone and perhaps some similar slogan like the above.

Now I suppose there are radical groups such as the League of the South and the COuncil of Conservative Citizens that would be all for it. People could point to them all day long and perhaps even run a poll om if Southerners think the right to Secede.

However Most SOutherners look at it and see the hmor and do not take it seriously.

Just something to think about

As mentioned the land was originally Comanche. And also Zuni, Hopi, Navajo, Apache, and some others. In the case of the Puebloan peoples, like the Hopi, you had a people with farming and villages. In the case of the Apache they largely maintained independence of the Spanish/Mexican forces.

I doubt changing demographics make the area returning to Mexico really plausible. For a fairly long-time after the US took it New Mexico, as I recall, remained largely Mexican and American Indian. Mexico was not in a position to retake it just from that. The majority of Mexican-Americans would not really want the land to return to Mexico. Mexico would probably not administer the land as well.

In addition to that some of the areas that were nominally ruled by Mexico don't really have that large of a Hispanic minority. Utah gets a fair amount of illegal immigrants, and something 8% speak Spanish at home, but I really doubt they've become that thoroughly Mexicanized. Mostly Americans should see this as almost a joke, but unfortunately it's a paranoid decade.

Another lesson I take from blunders like this is how clumsy and tin-eared huge corporations can get, especially with globalization. Any American, or anyone else with a decent feel for American culture, could have glanced at this ad and said, "Um, might be a problem here." (Maybe they did, but figured it'd attract more sales from Mexicans and US-haters than it'd cost.)

And that leads me to wonder how often "American" companies like McDonalds manage to offend other cultures by being unaware of their feelings about things.

"I wonder do Mexicans really take this stuff in a serious nature?"

I think they do, but not in the sense of Mexico annexing the USA. Vincente Fox and others have predicted a cultural takeover, where the Spanish language and Hispanic culture will continue to permeate the US through immigration until the US becomes so like Mexico that there's no need for a political or military conquest. (The push for more Spanish in the US is a big part of this.) They seem to see it as an inevitable demographic shift--which it will be, if our immigration laws don't change.

There are two things that are new. One, Ron has said, is the difficulty of keeping an ad like this secret in the internet age. The second is the fact that so few Americans take offense at it.

"The second is the fact that so few Americans take offense at it"

I think a lot will. Oh the other hand I am not boiling mad over this. I tend to think the extremes on both sides from the open borders crowd to the the deport them all big and small crowd are both nuts and will just use this for their advatage. Great for the Crazy TOm Tancredos or their opposite Hispanic activist extremist opposite.

the alternative is a perpetual cycle of grievance, feud and hatred that leads to war.

I don't find the right of conquest terribly problematic; but in fairness, legal recognition of territorial conquests won't stop people from arguing that the war which spawned the conquest was unjust, a war of aggression, etc. Instead of saying it's illegal, they'll simply say it's immoral.

FYI: When he first entered the Army, future President Grant was sent to the Mexican frontier. In his autobiography, Grant states that his unit was instructed to camp across a river (the border) from a Mexican encampment and taunt the Mexicans into attacking; that way, we would be able to claim that they struck first and it was not the U.S. that was starting the war. The Americans harassed, harangued, and goaded the Mexicans until a shot was fired, which gave the Americans an excuse to go to war and steal northern Mexico.

I'll boycott the Reconquista by abstaining from Absolut, I only drink tequila and rum anyway .>

>>>>
It's always amusing when liberals make a 180 turn on their (supposed) hatred of corporations and globalization whenever American soveriegnty is being threatened. "It's just a joke guys, why can't you find Mexican irredentism as hilarious as I do?"

Posted by: Grigory | April 7, 2008 1:09 PM
>>>>

You think American soveriegnty is threatened by this ad?

Really?

"You think American soveriegnty is threatened by this ad?

Really?"

Not necessarily the ad itself, but in the context of the wider immigration debate, liberals always side with the globalists and the big business types - people whom they are supposed to hate with a passion, and rightly so.

"To be completely outrageous, it reminds me of some whites' fears of black sexual predation against white women. Given the genetic make up of African-Americans versus that of Whites, the predation clearly went the other way."

What? So whites are more genetically predisposed to rape than African-Americans? And there's an epidemic of white men raping black women? What world are you living on?

It would be very amusing if someone put an ad up in Sweden - one where 3/4 of Sweden (except the farthest north) was part of Denmark.

Roberto Rivera
There is no constituency in Mexico for retaking, whether by stealth or otherwise, the American southwest. Do they see historical and cultural links between the Southwest and Mexico? Sure. Do they treat the area around the border as a kind of fluid mixed zone. Sure. So do people along other borders. The idea of retaking it somehow is, to use a Freudian term, a projection.

That's what's always been the great insanity of the whole thing. It's like claiming that parts of England, working through Canada, want half of New England back. No, they don't. It doesn't matter how many conspiracy theories there are, that is not an actual English political position supported by anyone over there.

And of course, there is no actual way that could possibly happen at all, even if that was a goal of Mexico.

Areas near borders end up being mixes. Borders are always porous until one side or the other is willing to enforce them with firepower, and I'm not talking about US Border Patrol-level firepower, I'm talking about Berlin Wall-level firepower.

Americans don't appear to realize this because America has exactly two borders, and one of them is with a country that is near culturally identical with us. So we don't have any historic border mixing, which for a country that is a 'melting pot' is the height of ironies.

We, because we have no other borders with other cultures, don't understand that the southwest of this county is, always will be, and always has been, culturally more 'Mexican' than the rest of the country, just like the north of Mexico is going to be more American than the south. (And, presumably, the south of Mexico will be more Latin-Americany than the north.) That doesn't mean it is 'Mexican' or is even mostly 'Mexican'. It's just more.

In fact, our country is already like this. We have different cultures all over the place, often based on the original settlers to the area, from the French in Louisiana to the Scandinavians in the northern Midwest to the Irish in New York and Boston. We are a melting pot, but sometimes we didn't get stirred very well. It's just...all those European, so somehow we all get along, whereas Mexicans are only about half.

Now, there are two ways we can play this. We can play this the Yugoslavian way and have massive infights between cultures via proxy issues like immigration and languages and talking about 'reconquista', or we can play this the Switzerland way and recognize that different cultures can operate together and need to make space for each other, and sometimes the road signs will have a language on them we don't understand in addition to the one we do.

The age-old pesky U.S.-Mexico border problem has taxed the resources of both countries, led to long lists of injustices, and appears to be heading only for worse troubles in the future. Guess what? The border problem can never be solved. Why? Because the border IS the problem! It's time for a paradigm change.

Never fear, a satisfying, comprehensive solution is within reach: the Megamerge Dissolution Solution. Simply dissolve the border along with the failed Mexican government, and megamerge the two countries under U.S. law, with mass free 2-way migration eventually equalizing the development and opportunities permanently, with justice and without racism.

http://tlwinslow.weebly.com/megamerge-the-dissolution-solution.html