Barry Farber
Tuesday, June 12, 2001

Four British colonial officers in white pith helmets and swagger sticks were standing at the bar along with a tourist who was obviously American. Atop one of the barstools was another British officer, identically uniformed, but only 1 INCH TALL! Everything about him was perfectly proportioned, pith helmet and all, but he was perched atop the stool like a grasshopper.

In the caption one of the British officers of normal stature was saying to his minature colleague, "Hey, Harrison. Tell the Yank about the day you called the witch doctor a son-of-a-bitch!"

I enjoy the joke, but I defy the message. I herewith want to warn one and all about a great and growing number of "witch doctors" who are bent upon shrinking the United States of America. And I have even stronger words for them than the inch-high Brit had for the witch doctor in the cartoon.

In the early 1990s I welcomed as a guest on my radio show a Spanish teacher from New Mexico. No big deal so far. What's so special about a Spanish teacher?

This particular Spanish teacher had just returned from an international convention of Spanish teachers in Madrid. There were Spanish teachers there from England, Sweden, Russia, Romania, all over. He told me it was quickly apparent that he and his colleagues from the southwestern part of the United States were the celebrities of the conference. They got the best hotels, the best free tickets to shows and concerts, seats of distinction on the dais, muchos etceteras.

My friend finally asked a coordinator of the conference why all the special treatment. "Don't you know?" came the reply? "Not a clue," said the Spanish teacher from New Mexico.

"You and your fellow teachers from the American Southwest have a special mission," the official explained. "It's your task to spread knowledge of the Spanish language far and deep across your part of the continent to prepare the population for their eventual return to Mexico!"

In poker it takes jacks or better to open. And that anecdote was but one lonely jack.

The next jack came on one of those lazy Saturday afternoons a few years later when C-Span goes to the Mall in Washington and covers whoever is having a rally there from, seemingly, the arrival of the van with the loudspeakers through all the endless speeches clear down to the park staff cleaning up the last piece of wax paper with pizza DNA.

The organization rallying that day was La Raza. That means "The Race" in Spanish, and I decided to stay with it because a lot of the speeches were in Spanish and I wanted the practice. If I'd had any doubts about that Spanish teacher's reports of irredentist passions tearing at the American Southwest, they would have been erased within 30 seconds of any one of those speeches in Spanish or English during that entire long afternoon.

One speaker informed the foregathered that they, of Hispanic heritage, were the true owners of North America and all the rest of us were the "gringos." He referred to the American state of California as "Alta California," implying that it was part of the same country as "Baja California," namely, Mexico. He went on to give what he called the "original" Spanish names for just about every geographic entity in America, including the Hudson River.

We now have enough jacks to make a full deck. A town in south Texas declares Spanish its official language and makes all city officials pledge they'll never under any circumstances cooperate with the American border patrols.

There's a group called "MEChA" (Moviemento Estudiantil de Chicanos de Aztlan, meaning "Student Movement of Mexicans of Aztlan" – Aztlan being the name of that part of the United States its members seek to rip away from America first). MEChA enlists those eager to detach a huge hunk of America and make it Mexico.

A candidate for mayor of Los Angeles who belonged to that group as a student refuses to renounce its aims. His more conservative opponent refuses to make it an issue. (Has wanting part of the United States to REMAIN the United States suddenly become anti-Hispanic?)

Fans of a U.S. soccer team at a match in California wave Mexican flags. At another match fans of BOTH U.S. soccer teams wave Mexican flags. A Mexican president openly hails his countrymen who cross illegally into the U. S. as "heroes." He AND his successor refer to the U.S.-Mexican border not as a clearly defined line but rather as a "concept" whose elasticity stretches endlessly northward. A U.S. president docilely agrees.

A multi-term California congressman who loses his seat charges he was unseated by the votes of illegal aliens. The investigation solemnly concludes that, yes, there were quite a few illegal voters, but not enough to change the outcome of the election!

Politicians seem as reluctant to protest illegal Hispanic voters as they are to deny them welfare benefits. American mainstream media softens the term "illegal aliens" to "undocumented aliens" and then further fuzzies it down to "migrants."

We know what our policy is regarding the territory of Israel, Kosovo, Bosnia, Macedonia and even Nagorno-Karabakh. What is our policy regarding the territory of the United States?

No nation in history has ever been as willing to accommodate those who would dismember it as has the United States of America. Trying to get a straight pro-U. S. comment out of a U.S. elected official is like trying to nail a custard pie to the side of a barn. No U.S. elected official seems at all discommoded.

Big question: Is America now an ostrich or a giraffe? An ostrich just puts his head in the sand. A giraffe gets his feet wet on Friday but at least gets a sore throat the following Thursday. Will we ever feel anything? If so, when will we feel it and what will we feel?

I remember the jolt I got when I found one of my mother's schoolbooks and turned to a map of Europe in 1914. I gasped. Instead of all those interesting countries like Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia there was a huge geographic goiter lodged in eastern Europe called the "Austro-Hungarian Empire."

Will my grandchildren open schoolbooks from MY youth one day and say: "Good Lord. America used to have that big hunk of land in the Southwest, and I think Grandpa even knew the names for different parts of it, like California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and even Utah."

A wise man whose name I owe you said, "The lowly flea, though it does not kill, does as much damage as it can arrange to do."

Whether or not they succeed in transmogrifying the map of the United States, the "witch doctors" of Hispanic irredentism are doing as much damage as they can arrange to do. And they're not the least bit sneaky. They do us the courtesy of waving the flags of their preference in our compliant faces.

Will the American team ever take to the playing field, with or without flags?

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