Plan Espiritual de Aztlán

The Plan Espiritual de Aztlán (English: "Spiritual Plan of Aztlán") was a pro-indigenist manifesto advocating Chicano nationalism and self-determination for Mexican Americans. It was adopted by the First National Chicano Liberation Youth Conference, a March 1969 convention hosted by Rodolfo Gonzales's Crusade for Justice in Denver, Colorado. In 1848, the Mexican–American War created the Xicano with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on Feb 2 of that year. In a land colonized by three European/Western nations (Spain, France and the United States), the original occupants of these lands began to rebuild their own national identity, an identity focused on ancient ties to the occupied Americas and indigeneity. Ernesto Mireles says, "For the portion of the Xicano/a community engaged in resistance writing, the necessities of survival under colonial rule have overshadowed Aztlán and its mythology for centuries." The tie to the land known as Aztlan (Southwest United States, Northern Mexico) had emerged in the contemporary Xicano Movement as a pre-Cuauhtemoc trope and gives claim of this occupied territory to Xicano and Indigenous peoples. Beginning with the Chicano power movement of the 1960s and 70s the Xicano re-emerged as indigenous and no longer a foreigner of their own land. The Xicano power movement of the 1960s and 1970s was a continuation of the centuries-old question surrounding the natural inheritance of indigenous people and national identity. This conversation around Indigenous national liberation and the expulsion of foreign invaders has a long history over the past 500 years. The Provisional Directorate of the Plan of San Diego, Texas written in 1915 states, "we will arise in arms against the government, and country of the United States of North America, one as all and all as one, proclaiming the liberty of the individuals of the black race and its independence of yankee tyranny which has held us in iniquitous slavery since remote times". This plan was written as the battle of the west started to come to a close and the settling was almost done.