Absolut 'Gives' Southwest US to Mexico

Vodka ad shows ‘Absolut world’ in which California, Arizona, others secede

Please call Absolut Vodka’s PR department at 1-212-641-8720 and voice your concerns.

New ad for Absolut Vodka reconfigures North America according to the aspirations of many Mexicans, who believe the U.S. Southwest was stolen and should be returned.

Over a redrawn map of the U.S., the ad by the Absolut Spirits Co. declares, “In an Absolut World,” noted columnist and blogger Michelle Malkin.

Major Hispanic civil rights groups in the U.S., such as the National Council of La Raza, are tied to movements advocating a “reconquista,” or reconquest, of territory lost when Mexico signed the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo at the end of the Mexican-American War.

As WND reported in 2006, Rep. Charles Norwood, R-Ga., called on La Raza to renounce its support of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan – which sees “The Race” as part of an ethnic group that one day will reclaim Aztlan, the mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. In Chicano folklore, Aztlan includes California, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and parts of Colorado and Texas.

In 2002, a prominent Chicano activist and University of California at Riverside professor, Armando Navarro, told WND he believed secession is inevitable if demographic and social trends continue.

“If in 50 years most of our people are subordinated, powerless, exploited and impoverished, then I will say to you that there are all kinds of possibilities for movements to develop like the ones that we’ve witnessed in the last few years all over the world, from Yugoslavia to Chechnya” Navarro said.

“A secessionist movement is not something that you can put away and say it is never going to happen in the United States,” he contended. “Time and history change.”

Navarro said one could argue “that while Mexico lost the war in 1848, it will probably win it back in the 21st century, in terms of the numbers,” “But that is not a reality based on what Mexico does, it’s based on what this country does,” he insisted.

In a 1995 speech to Chicano activists, Navarro said demographic trends are leading to “a transfer of power” to the ethnic Mexican community in the Southwest. He notes that most studies show that within the next 20 to 30 years Latinos will comprise more than 50 percent of the population of California. This fact, and other cultural and social developments, are opening the door for “self-determination” and even “the idea of an Aztlan,” he said in his speech.