

### The End of Texas

### Or How Indigenous Mexicans Had Something Different to Say About a "Republic of Texas"

### By Juan Batista

### Copyright 2012, All Rights Reserved by Author

### Published by Juan Batista at Smashword

### Smashwords Edition, License Notes

### This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

### Table of Contents

### Introduction
### Chapter 1: The Governor Flirts With Secession

### Chapter 2: The Governor Pals Around With Terrorists
### Chapter 3: Another Resolution Passes

### Chapter 4: Carlos Guerrero Editorial
### Chapter 5: Rally at the Alamo

### Chapter 6: The Militias Rally
### Chapter 7: Standoff

### Chapter 8: Alamodome Convention
### Chapter 9: El Paso and Austin Conventions

### Chapter 10: What a Difference
### Chapter 11: The Final Breakaways?

### Chapter 12: Would It Work?
### Appendix I: Rio Grande Constitution

### Appendix II: Pecos Constitution
### Appendix III: Constitution of the City-State of Austin

### Appendix IV: West Texas Constitution
### Appendix V: Proposed Constitution for Adelsverein

### Appendix VI: Charts
### Appendix VII: Republic of Texas Quotes

### Notes

### Coming from Juan Batista

### Coahuila y Tejas

### Texas Republic Claims & Reality

### 1. Area of Sporadic Control & Ethnic Cleansing by Anglo-American Proslavery Insurgency

### 2. Territory & People Remaining Loyal to Mexico, Claimed by Insurgents But With No Actual Control Whatsoever.

### The End of Texas

### Introduction

### A Little History: No Lies, No Bull, Just Straight Facts

### All of this introduction, all the events and facts, are true. All portions of the book describing events prior to the secession speech are true. Every word in this book about Texas history, people, culture, politics, and government are absolutely true, scrupulously researched, and beyond doubt, no matter how much people devoted to the myths surrounding Texas might wish to think otherwise.

### The entire first and second chapters in particular are also true, with the exception of some small parts of Governor Rick Perry's speech and the responses to it. Those parts which have been altered are indicated by italics.

### All of the events and facts in the remainder of this book could have come true. They came very close to being true, and would have become true with just very slight changes. This book could have come true just by Governor Perry doing some things which have become signatures of his, a careless slip of the tongue followed by obstinately insisting he is right when confronted with evidence he is clearly wrong, and refusing to back down or admit to being wrong.

### All of the facts and events in this book, prior to the pivotal change of the aftermath of Rick Perry's now infamous speech approving, with a wink and a nudge, the idea of secession and treason against the United States, are true. Unlike most books on Texas, both fact and fiction, they have not been altered or rewritten to fit with foolishly romanticized notions about the origins or Texas or the mythology built about around some of its archetypical characters like cowboys, Rangers, and indeed "Texans."

Rick Perry does not deserve to be the primary villain of this book, and in fact he is not. He is just a posturing buffoon with no deep seated beliefs who changes positions on issues even more than the Clintons. The primary villains of this book are various organizations of traitors residing in the state of Texas, some of them violent, some of them racist, some of them simply deluded or ignorant of what they think they know. Many of them are now former supporters of Rick Perry, as some of the rants quoted at the end of Appendix VII: Republic of Texas Quotes make clear. But Perry sought out their support, used them to build himself a greater base by pandering to their contemptible beliefs before later abandoning and angering them.

It was pure luck Perry's support from such extremists did not explode in his face. His association with such traitors and dangerous terrorists may yet become a liability in the near future. (Yes, it is true, and I will say it. Rick Perry, a man who would be president, was truly "palling around with terrorists," unlike the baseless and utterly ridiculous charge once made against our current president. Yet while not many Republicans and conservatives voted for Perry because of his bumbling, most still will make excuses for his ties to terrorists. In some narrow little minds, whites can't be terrorists, only Arabs.)

### Rick Perry is far more foolhardy than he is evil. He is just another very ambitious, unscrupulous, and ultimately foolish politician, skilled at very little besides (sometimes) getting himself elected, with far too much tunnel vision and too little brains. His primary foolishness is in not realizing (or caring) how he could have unleashed some very disastrous events.

### There is a long strain of secessionism/treason in Texas history. Texas itself was founded in secessionism and would never have come into being if it were not for this strain (I'm tempted to say "stain") of thought.

### Texas was born because a group of immigrants, some legal, some illegal, including some who were downright criminals and terrorists of the lowest sorts, decided to take over their new adopted land, a place that had generously welcomed them, even offering them handouts and public assistance. But that wasn't enough. They refused to follow the law (specifically, the ban on slavery) and lashed out angrily with criminal and treasonous actions.

### Did I mention those ungrateful, traitorous immigrants were Anglo-Americans, the very same ones held up as all-American heroes? They had been invited in as immigrants by Mexico's government, and to thank the Mexican nation, they tried to take over and impose their ways on others by violence and terrorism. They are the ones widely hailed in Texas history as heroes and founding fathers.

### Anyone doubting that the founders of Texas were racist terrorists should go right now to Appendix VII: Republic of Texas Quotes. Founders they were, but many of them were far from being heroic. Jim Bowie, supposed hero of the Battle of the Alamo, was that most despicable of human beings, a slave trader. The second president of the "Texas Republic," Mirabeau Lamar, was a vicious racist of the worst sort, downright genocidal towards American Indians, leading extermination efforts against even the friendliest tribes like the Caddo, Cherokee, and Shawnee. The only one of the insurgent leaders with occasional decency was Sam Houston.

As for the most famous "Texan," Davy Crockett...well, he wasn't really a Texan at all. He had only been in Texas a few weeks when he got himself and his hapless followers trapped at the Alamo by mistake, getting himself captured and then executed after the battle. By some accounts he even tried to bargain for his life. And why not? No one could truly blame him for wanting to live, except the most fanatically blind partisan of the myths built around Texas "independence" who falsely insist he was a martyr fighting to the last for their misguided, hopeless, and terroristic cause.

### The Battle of the Alamo was probably the most ludicrous case of misguided martyrdom until Custer at Little Big Horn. In both battles, these were cases of incompetent commanders throwing away the lives of their men needlessly. In both cases, myths about the battles take aggressors and turn them into "defenders" for the sole reason that they were white and their enemies (who were defending their homelands) were not white. Cheer for the "heroes" of the Battles of Alamo and Little Big Horn and you cheer for racism and conquest, whether you know it or not, whether you understand that or not, and whether you are honest enough to admit it or not.

### Fact is, most of the "Texans" had been in the Mexican state of Coahuila y Tejas for less than a year when they decided to commit treason and started their insurgency. Yet in history books and elsewhere, they are called "Texans" for one simple reason: Again, they were white, Anglo-Americans, or Anglos as commonly called in the southwest. (An Anglo need not be of English ancestry and can refer to any non-Latino white person.)

### Meanwhile, the Mexicans who had been there for many generations, and the Indians who had been there for thousands of years, generally get called or are assumed by the ignorant to be "foreigners" simply because they are not white. (Often this goes hand in hand with calling them the many derogatory names for Mexican or Indian, and I fully expect many of my critics to do the exact same thing to me based solely on the last half of my pen name.) It's the old story of racist Manifest Destiny, and of defining only whites as Texans, and thus by extension "real 'Mericans."

Not only was the insurgency one of racist terrorists. The so-called "Texas Republic" was nothing of the sort, not an independent nation in any meaningful sense. It was never even intended by the insurgent leaders to be an independent nation at all. Texas was intended to become, from the very beginning of the insurgency, another American state, one which would have slavery. Texas leaders applied for admission to the US within a few days of claiming "independence" but never counted on the US President saying no. No, we don't want you. No, we don't want any more conflict over the expansion of slavery, a new slave state, and more slave owners.

So Texas became a supposed "independent nation" against its will, but its insurgent leaders never even wanted to be independent anyway. And by any practical or honest standard, Texas was never an independent nation. Texas was no more an actual independent nation than Chechnya is today. And Texan insurgents were every bit as vicious, bigoted terrorists as Chechen fighters are today.

### The agreement to independence from Mexico was signed by its president/dictator, Santa Ana (pronounced "Santana" like the musician) while he was a prisoner of war. His signature, obtained by force and under duress, was not valid, and he immediately repudiated it afterwards. Santa Ana had no authority to sign away a piece of the Mexican nation anyway. Not surprisingly, Mexico's congress never approved or ratified the agreement.

### Independence is not only self sufficiency. Independence which is not recognized by others is not true independence. No actual nations in the world recognized Texas as a nation. And why would they? Keep in mind, far from being an actual nation, it was a mostly empty huge area with only a tiny number of people in it, perhaps 30,000. Plus there were Indian tribes and Mexicans who stayed loyal to Mexico, likely outnumbering the insurgents. Most people within "Texas" certainly did not accept the mythical authority of this would-be nation. Contrary to the fantasies of mythmakers, the US never sent ambassadors to Texas. The US government did send charges d'affairs, temporary agents that were just sent there to assess the situation. Some of these charge d'affairs were only in the insurgent area for as little as a few weeks.

The one possibility, the only nation that took preliminary steps to grant recognition, was France, kind of, sort of. (Isn't it a nice irony that the Texas Republic's claim of independence would depend on French recognition? The French, who are despised by so many "real 'Mericans.") France did send an ambassador. But the French ambassador never even went to Texas, and spent all of his time in New Orleans, getting drunk and chasing women. Thus there were no diplomatic relations between the "Texas Republic" and any actual nations or governments.

### Independence does also mean self-sufficiency, but Texas didn't have it. Its economy and government were falling apart at the seams for those brief nine years. Nations are also supposed to have control of the territory they claim. The "Texas Republic" claimed all territory between the Rio Grande, Red River, and Sabine River. This includes land that today makes up more than half of New Mexico, large parts of Colorado, and small pieces of Oklahoma, Kansas, and even Wyoming.

### Problem was, those claims weren't anywhere close to being true. The most distant part of the claimed territory was nearly a thousand miles beyond actual control of the supposed "Texas Republic" government. Fully half of that territory or more was actually under the control of numerous Indian tribes, for whom it was their homeland as far back as anyone can trace. All of what is today the state of New Mexico stayed under Mexican government jurisdiction and, for the most part, control. Most of the Indian tribes in New Mexico, the nineteen Pueblo peoples, recognized and accepted Mexican authority, while retaining their own self-government and local control. Most what is today west Texas also accepted Mexican authority.

### The Santa Fe and El Paso areas both stayed Mexican territory until the US-Mexico War, and when the Texas military sent an expedition to try to conquer Santa Fe, the Santa Fe Expedition got lost, got their tail kicked, surrendered, were imprisoned and then got sent back humiliated and defeated, in that order. After the US conquest, El Paso and most of what is today west Texas wanted to be part of New Mexico Territory. It was only by some very undemocratic threats of military force that what is today "west Texas" became part of the new state of Texas, against their will.

### The Rio Grande Valley, what was called the Nueces Strip since it includes everything between the Rio Grande and Nueces River, also stayed under Mexican control, with its citizens staying loyal to Mexico during the entire time of the "Texas Republic." Almost nothing west of the Balcones Escarpment (a geographic feature running from north of Dallas to south of San Antonio) was ever under "Texas Republic" control. Take a look at the second map to see the difference between what the alleged nation of the "Texas Republic" claimed and the actual reality.

### Even in the territory more or less under its supposed control, the "Texas Republic" was an ungovernable mess, an abortion that didn't deserve to be called a government or nation. Mexico sent several armies north that sometimes succeeded in reestablishing control for periods of time. The territory was so huge it would have taken a large army to control it. But the main reason Mexico did not permanently reassert control was that its ruling classes were selfish elites more preoccupied with holding onto their own privilege than the good of Mexico. They kept fighting amongst themselves with little concern for how they wreaked havoc on their own nation, and did so for most of the first half century of Mexico's existence. A Mexican nation that had won its independence under a populist leader such as Hidalgo or Morelos, compared to crass and opportunistic elitist leaders like Iturbide and Santa Anna, would never have lost Texas or the rest of the southwest to the US.

### The "Texas Republic" could not do the most basic parts of governing at all. It was broke and in debt, its economy a shambles the entire nine years of "independence." Its money was nearly worthless. The seat of "government" bounced around from one tiny town to another. Much of its military was a joke, the army building up and then being dissolved again when the congress couldn't find money or agree to pay them. Often commanders ignored orders from civilian leaders.

### The Texas Rangers? Contrary to fantasies of Chuck Norris and others, they were notoriously poor fighters infamous for most often attacking the innocent and the helpless and often making volatile situations worse, and then being bailed out by the regular army (and after statehood, by the US Army.) Also, take note, Mr. Norris: The Rangers were notoriously racist and excluded minorities for almost all of their history. There are actually more minority Texas Rangers in Norris's films and TV show than in real life. Having clueless token minorities play the sidekick to the Great White Ranger you always play on your television show and films does not change that.

### The Texas Navy was the worst of all. It was more Keystone Cops than a military force. Tiny, never numbering more than six ships, they usually confined themselves to attacking civilian vessels in the manner of pirates, rather than military service. On several occasions they hired themselves out as mercenaries, and held ships and their crews for ransom. But the navy commanders were so incompetent, they kept sinking their own ships! There were two separate groups of ships called the Texas Navy, and most of the ships ran aground or wound up at the bottom of the ocean.

(Actually, not the entire navy sank. One of them, the Liberty, was seized by debt collectors. Seriously. One can't make up such bad comedy.)

### The one thing the "Texas Republic" could do (sporadically) was nothing anyone would be proud of except the most hardened racists. The insurgents carried out campaigns of ethnic cleansing, outright extermination or genocide. The Texas Army ethnically cleansed Texas of nearly all its Caddo, Cherokee, Delaware, and Shawnee Indians. It did this even though all four tribes had been on friendly terms with the new colonists. The Delaware and Shawnee had even been allies of Texans up to then, acting as scouts for the Texas military, Texas Rangers, and Anglo civilians.

### The worst fate of all befell the Tonkawa. After some Anglos in the city of Goliad stole Tonkawa horses, some Tonkawa retaliated by robbing a few Anglos in turn. So Goliad's Anglo population proposed outright genocide, killing every last Tonkawa to the last man. And they nearly succeeded. Driven near the city of Bastrop, and very few in numbers, they turned to begging or hiring out as manual farm labor to survive.

### Texas, much like the US, was often dishonorable and broke its treaties with Native tribes. The first President of Texas, Sam Houston tried to make treaties with most of the tribes. But his successor, Mirabeau Lamar, was a butcher favoring the genocidal tactics of extermination or removal. The last tribe to feel the wrath of the brutal "Texas Republic" was the Lipan Apache. Texas signed a treaty with them in 1838. By 1842, the treaty terms had been repeatedly broken, and most were driven to Mexico. Some Apache found refuge with the Mexican population, with whom they intermarried.

### As for the Mexican population, the Battles at the Alamo and Goliad turned a war for supposed independence into a race war. "Remember the Alamo!" became an excuse for hatred and violence towards all Mexicans. (The same is often true with how the battle is remembered today.) In 1836, Mexicans in the town of Victoria were expelled after the Battle of San Jacinto. All Mexicans in the city of Goliad were also robbed and driven out by the Texas Army. From to 1836 to 1838, all Mexicans living in the city of Nacogdoches were either driven out or killed. In San Antonio, the Mexican population was much larger. But still, Mayor Juan Seguin reported Mexican requests for protection from violent Anglo racists "every hour of every day." In 1842, over 150 Mexican families fled San Antonio after the Somervell Expedition, a mix of the Texas military with vigilantes, pledged to kill every Mexican they could find and committed mass rapes of Mexican women and girls.

### As was once said in an editorial, written after the standoff with the so called Republic of Texas militia group, "Texas Republic-Not a Good Idea Then or Now." The "Texas Republic" was an aborted effort by racist terrorists of the most vicious sort. After nine years of failure, finally along came an American president who was happy to have another slave state. The failing "Texas Republic" was glad to be rescued.

### (Things had gotten desperate enough that Sam Houston even proposed Texas join the British Empire. If Houston had succeeded, it would make for an interesting alternate history. A Texas with many Indians from India, likely brought in to replace slave labor since the British had outlawed slavery in their empire. But that would have meant the end of power for the plantation slave owners, which is why Houston had little support on this.)

### A false image of Texas and Texans would be built up over time for the next century and a half. It's an image which whitewashes and sanitizes the past, denies, justifies, or even glorifies that ethnic cleansing and terrorism. Texas's Native tribes would suffer the worst of it. Today there are only three tiny tribes in Texas, all of them at the edges of the state. The rest were forcibly removed and almost wiped out. Texas's Mexican population were nearly as badly treated, often forced off their lands, killed or abused by racists, but kept around as a marginal exploited cheap source of labor. Other minorities would suffer similarly, but the popular image of Texas either ignores that or downplays it, or in the worst cases even celebrates it.

### We all know that popular image of Texas; cowboys, cowboy boots, hats, belt buckles, guns, horses, cattle, rodeos, violence, hard drinking, country music, pickup trucks, and wide open spaces and oil wells are all central to the image. Supposedly Texans are very independent minded and self-sufficient, so many often think of Texas as deeply conservative in both their political and religious beliefs and society.

### But the real Texas is nothing like the fake popular image. The real Texas is quite different from what many of you likely think. For you see, there is much that ethnic cleansing never wiped out. There is much of Texas which is Tejano, not Texan, proudly multicultural and pluralist, not reactionary, not racist, and certainly not redneck.

### Strongly implied if not outright stated in most depictions of Texans, especially older ones from "independence" up to the Civil Rights Era, is that a true Texan is a white male. A Texan is not simply a white male, but very much a WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant), the strongest possible expression of Anglo-Saxon manhood and Protestant virtue. A Texan, by default, is assumed to be a WASP male, and all other Texans require modifiers, Texan woman, Black Texan, etc. Even a Native Texan is assumed to mean a white Texan, rather than a Native American Texan.

### Other aspects of who is or is not "truly" Texan extend to beliefs and lifestyle. A liberal Texan would be assumed to need a qualifier for being supposedly atypical, for example, since political and social conservatism is assumed to be part of what is "truly" Texan. The same is true for non-Christian Texans, though Texas is not short of them.

The real Texas include large numbers of American Indians, Asians (including South Asians and Middle Easterners), Blacks, Latinos, atheists, agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, pagans, and an amazing variety of faiths. Keep in mind we are not talking small groups. Absolutely every one of the above groups named number in at least the hundreds of thousands in Texas. Latinos in the state alone number almost ten million.

### There are also more than 800,000 Asian-Americans in Texas. Chinese communities in Texas go back almost to the Gold Rush. Asian Lunar New Year, Dragon Boat Festivals, Moon Festivals, and Red Egg Festivals have long been widely celebrated in Texas. Along with Asian immigrants to the state came Buddhist and Hindu beliefs, Buddhist and Hindu temples, monasteries, retreats, and yoga centers. There are hundreds of Buddhist centers of worship in at least twenty-five Texas cities, offering services in English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Japanese, Laotian, Burmese, Thai, Vietnamese, and Hmong. Way back in the 1940s, Texas country music legend Ernest Tubbs performed "My Filipino Baby," about his love for a Filipina woman, to huge cheering audiences throughout the state.

### South Asians number over 100,000 in Houston alone, and over 160,000 statewide. There is even an officially named Mahatma Gandhi District in Houston. In the city of Irving near Dallas, the South Asian population is large enough to bring the first mall in the entire nation, Everett Heights, catering to South Asians. Celebrations of Diwali, the Hindu New Year Festival, are large enough to fill the Houston convention center.

### The Middle Eastern population in Texas is large and growing, with over 65,000 in Houston alone. In a sign of the times, Farouk Shami, a Palestinian immigrant and millionaire entrepreneur, placed second in the Democratic primary for governor in 2009. One of the most Muslim places in America today is actually Houston, with twenty-two Islamic centers and mosques, and nearly 60,000 Muslims. (Houston also elected an openly lesbian mayor in 2009.) Texas has the eighth largest Islamic population of any state in the US, with about 140,000 Muslims. There are fifteen K-12 Islamic parochial schools in the state of Texas today.

### Jews have long been a central part of Texas. Adolphus Sterne, an east Texas merchant, was a financial backer of the Texas insurgency against Mexico. Another Jewish colonist, Albert Moses Levy, was the chief surgeon for the insurgent army. A number of Jews were leading colonists, the most famous being Henri Castro, the founder of the city of Castroville. The state's first synagogue was founded in 1859, in Houston.

### Probably few things are more associated with Texas than oil. You might think the Texas oil industry is run by Anglo-American cowboy types. Actually, Jews played a central role in the Texas oil business, including Haymann Krupp, Max Jaffe, the Rudman and Danciger families, and Charles Brachfield, first president of the East Texas Lease Royalty Owners.

More than forty cities in Texas have had Jewish mayors. Dallas has combined local flavor with older traditions to even have a Kosher Chili Cook Off. The best known Jewish Texan today is probably Richard "Kinky" Friedman of the country music band The Texas Jewboys, with songs like "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore."

If a Jewish Texan may not fit the popular image of what is Texas, think of this: Texas actually was long a stronghold of atheists and agnostics, all the way back to the 1840s. For much of the state, the locals wanted nothing to do with organized religion and did not even build churches. Freethinkers made up much of the German immigrant population and were the majority in the German Hill Country, one-eighth of the state's territory. Freethinkers opposed slavery, believed in racial equality and women's rights and opposed organized religion. At one point the German colonists even planned to break away from Texas to form their own nation.

### The state also has large numbers of pagans, including people whose beliefs include a mix of Christianity with older beliefs, such as Curanderismo, the Native American Church, Santeria, and Voodoo. Many, if not most, Latinos in the state believe in or practice Curanderismo or Santeria. Given their large numbers, there are probably more pagans in Texas than all but the biggest Protestant denominations.

### Texas today is no longer a mostly white state. Texas has no racial or ethnic majority anymore, and it reached that milestone long before the rest of the US. A third of Texans do not speak English at home. (Racist fear mongers need not panic at hearing that fact. Almost all Spanish, Vietnamese, Cherokee, etc. speakers are bilingual or multilingual, unlike most of the paranoid types who fear them.) Texas is less than a generation away from have a Latino majority again.

### The most remarkable story in Texas history is the comeback of the Mexican population, in spite of the early efforts at ethnic cleansing, in spite of a long history of facing deep hatred and widespread discrimination, and in spite of the current hatemongering atmosphere created by anti-immigrant groups and other racists, none of whom seem to realize Mexican Equals Indian. A Mexican is usually a Spanish speaking Indian, or of mixed American Indian ancestry or heritage, and thus cannot be an "immigrant" and especially not an "illegal" one. By any reasonable standard, Mexicans have far more right to be in Texas than any of the ignorant types who hate them.

### The popular image of Texas, then, not only is not true now, it never was entirely true. Texas went from entirely American Indians, to Natives plus mestizos (mixedblood people) under Spain and then Mexico, to mostly but far from exclusively Anglo for less than a century and a half. The state is returning now to a largely mestizo Mexican and otherwise Latino population, plus others, who are increasingly other nonwhites.

Even the popular image of what is a typical Texan, the white cowboy, also obscures just what a typical cowboy was, and what he is today. Your typical cowboy was not John Wayne. (John Wayne was actually a white supremacist and a draft dodger, but that's another story.) Your typical cowboy then was more likely to be American Indian, Black, or Mexican than he was to be white. Cowboy traditions were originally Mexican vaquero ways, from which we get that other word for a cowboy, buckaroo.

### Cowboys today are also quite different from the popular image. To call all or most of them ignorant racist rednecks would be equal parts wrong and insulting. The best known country singer from Texas, Willie Nelson, has long been antiwar and pro-legalizing marijuana (as well as an openly heavy user.) Nelson is one of a long line of often leftwing country artists from Texas, joined by Jerry Jeff Walker, Kris Kristofferson, Joe Ely, Steve Earle, Townes Van Zandt, and Robert Earl Keen.

### Texas country music also crossbreeds quite a bit with another music native to the state, Tejano. One of the most common sights in Texas is crowds of cowboy-hat clad Mexican-Americans. Texas country music has even produced such wonderful demented music like cowpunk (cowboy music mixed with punk in the 1980s) and hellbilly (country and rockabilly mixed with thrash metal in the 1990s). Not for us the bland commercial pandering of cities like Nashville and Motown. Texas has more often produced dangerous radical music from artists like Big Mama Thornton, Janis Joplin, 13th Floor Elevators, Millions of Dead Cops, the Dicks, the Butthole Surfers, D.R.I., Geto Boys, Reverend Horton Heat, Union Underground, Pantera, Underground Kings and Chamillionaire, and all those left wing country singers mentioned before.

### Your typical Texan, then, is not John Wayne. Your typical Texan is from a land of Native peyotists, kosher chili cook offs, curanderos and botanicas, Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism, atheism, Muslim K-12 schools, and left wing white and Mexican cowboys. The popular image of Texas today as a land of staunchly conservative (or even reactionary or racist) white Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians is ludicrous at best, and becoming more untrue every day.

### But those reactionary people who live, love, and believe in the redneck image of Texas don't die easily. They react with anger at seeing the dying of the old ways. The worst of them easily turn to violence. That's what this novel of alternate history is about. Because Governor Rick Perry, through clumsiness, lack of thought, and his typical loudmouthed nature, almost stirred up a whirlwind he could not have controlled.

That whirlwind could have destroyed Texas once and for all. And in some ways, that would have been a good thing. I say this as someone born, raised, and living most of my life in Texas, with a great deal of affection for the better diverse parts of the state, its people and cultures. For it would have freed the blue state (for lack of a better succinct term) parts of Texas from the domination of the dying, reactionary, red state parts of Texas. And ending the old Texas would have made all of America a better place in the process.

### And make no mistake, redneck Texans are dying out (good riddance) to be replaced by a state of multicultural Tejanos. The only question will be how redneck Texas dies.

### Enjoy.

### Chapter 1:

### The Governor Flirts With Secession

### (All quotes, especially from Rick Perry, are written exactly as reported. Those comments which are fictitious are in italics, though I have tried to duplicate Perry's style of speaking.)

### It was during the Tea Parties, those staged astroturf corporate sponsored rallies endlessly promoted by Fox "News," that the whole mess began.

### No one expected where this would finally end up, with a man who aspired to be president humbled and humiliated, beaten repeatedly, and the state he not-too-seriously-nor-smartly claimed could become a nation instead shattered, broken in almost half a dozen pieces, leading to the rise of movements the exact opposite of what secessionists wanted.

In San Antonio, Fox's Glenn Beck, conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, was broadcasting live that day from Alamo Plaza, flanked by the famous Alamo, Rivercenter Mall, and the old federal building. Many handwritten signs repeated the talking points put out by the astroturf organizations. "I'll keep my freedom, my $ and my guns. You keep the change." "Stop Rewarding Failure." "Stop Obama's Socialism." Another read, "Some Pirates Are in America," (a race baiting reference to Somali pirates) and showed photos of Obama. Probably the most popular race baiting altered photo from the Tea Parties would come later in the healthcare debate, showing Obama in "whiteface" as the Joker.

Far right racist rock musician Ted Nugent, last popular back in the 1970s, performed a guitar version of the national anthem. Nugent had been barred from playing some venues in the state for his racist outbursts, longwinded rants attacking Mexican-Americans. Speaking at an NRA rally in back in 2007, Nugent raged, "Remember the Alamo! Shoot 'em!....I want 'em dead. Get a gun, and when they attack you, shoot 'em." Over the years, Nugent had been given many a pass for his racism. Nugent has long performed wearing a stereotyped caricature of supposed American Indian clothing.

### In 2008, Nugent publicly threatened Obama's life while on stage. At an August 21 concert, he shouted onstage that Obama was a "piece of shit" and Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch." Nugent then threatened to murder both of them. Holding up weapons, he told Obama, "Suck on my machine gun." Then he yelled, "Hey Hillary...ride one of these into the sunset!" The crowd roared in response to the death threats, some in shock, and others in approval. Amazingly, he has never been charged with sedition for his death threats against two presidential candidates and senators.

Later in 2008, Nugent had more racist remarks about Obama, calling him a "dope pusher" and blaming him for "gangland rioting." At a USO tour in Iraq, Nugent was quoted saying, ""Just aim for the laundry." (A reference to Arab turbans. But with ignorance typical of him, Nugent didn't realize that Iraqi men generally don't wear turbans.) A later online rant by him in the far right Moonie cult newspaper The Washington Times went on an extended racist bashing of Africans, even arguing African lives were worthless. "Africa isn't called the dark continent for no reason....Genocide is a way of life [for Africans]....There is little light in Africa...Africa is an international scab." Nugent was later welcomed on a white supremacist radio show, The Political Cesspool. The host applauded Nugent for "pro white" remarks he made at a Dubuque, Iowa concert. "There's a lot of white people in this crowd. I like that! Dubuque is a white town!"

### Nugent has also repeatedly called for uprisings or violence against Obama, Democrats, feminists, environmentalists, vegetarians, liberals, and pretty much anyone he disagrees with. Early in his career, Nugent described defecating in his pants for a week to avoid getting drafted and sent to Vietnam. Yet he still calls himself a patriot.

San Antonio Tea Party organizers forbade politicians from speaking. But Nugent was apparently fine by them. This kind of rally would be typical for the Tea Party, and the offshoot from it, secessionist rallies promoted by the governor of Texas.

Up at a Tea Party rally in Austin, a reporter asked Perry about some people associating him with the idea of secession from the US or independence for Texas.

"Oh, I think there's a lot of different scenarios. Texas is a unique place. When we came in the union in 1845, one of the issues was that we would be able to leave if we decided to do that." Perry answered.

He continued, "You know, my hope is that America and Washington in particular pays attention. We've got a great union. There is absolutely no reason to dissolve it, but sometimes it seems like those politicians in Washington are trying to push us to. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what may come out of that? So...But Texas is a very unique place and we're a pretty independent lot to boot. If they give us enough reason, we'll go ahead and leave."

Someone in the crowd cried out, "Secede!" The crowd cheered and took up the chant, "Secede! Secede!"

### Contrary to what Perry claims, this would not be the last time he flirted with secession. Later he spoke to a group of conservative bloggers. The interview was posted on YouTube in March 2009. Perry discussed Texas in 1836, the year the insurgency began against Mexico. Perry pointed to a painting of the defeated terrorists in the Battle of the Alamo. He had similar objects in his own office. He even had a "Come and Take It" logo (a slogan used by the traitors in their uprising against Mexico) on his own pair of boots.

"Texans have a different feeling about independence. When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation," said Perry. None of what he was saying was remotely true, but such myths are widely believed.

What Perry said next was treasonous. "One of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we're kind of thinking about that again."

### The crowd erupted in laughter and cheers supporting treason.

Perry took it one step further. "Think I'm joking? Maybe not!" The crowd continued to cheer.

But at first Perry called secession a "side issue of Texas history. ... We are very proud of our Texas history; people discuss and debate the issues of can we break ourselves into five states, can we secede, a lot of interesting things that I'm sure Oklahoma and Pennsylvania would love to be able to say about their states, but the fact is, they can't because they're not Texas." So even while claiming not to want secession, Perry has continually flirted with the treasonous notion, and held it up as a good thing.

Perry's campaign has also repeatedly said Perry believes Texas could secede if it wanted. Perry continues to believe this and defends the notion to this very day. He is not alone. Up to one third of Texans also believe this, and for whites, Republicans, and conservatives in the state, the proportion believing this urban legend is an actual majority.

Problem is, that belief is a load of nonsense held by people ignorant of law and history. The Texas State Constitution, the US Constitution, and the 1845 Joint Resolution Annexing Texas to the United States, all do not have any right, any provision, and not even any mention at all for a way for Texas to return to its claim of being an independent nation. And as discussed in the Introduction, that independence is itself a myth.

The 1845 resolution does allow for Texas to break itself into five states but doesn't specify whether that would require congressional approval. For those with less understanding of the law, it's perhaps easy for them to confuse forming new states with secession.

In the aftermath of Perry's secession speech, one Republican congressman bragged that Texas should go ahead and split into five states, since it would give the Texas eight more (presumably conservative Republican) senators. But he apparently did not understand that much of Texas is not red state territory. Even in the most lopsided of elections, generally forty percent of Texans vote Democratic. There are large sections throughout the state that vote moderate or are downright progressive minded, especially the third of the population that is Mexican-American, the Black neighborhoods of the major cities, and Austin, which styles itself as the Texas version of San Francisco, proudly liberal, multicultural, and with proportionately probably the largest gay population of any southern city.

Perry's next step was to turn to some of the most disreputable people ever to share the stage with any governor, and if Perry had his way, a future president.

Chapter 2:

The Governor Pals Around With Terrorists

Perry at the time was running for reelection, and his opponent was US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, a solidly conservative Republican serving nearly twenty years in the US Senate and almost another twenty in public offices before that. Perry decided to use the secession issue to paint himself as more Texan and Hutchinson as a product of Washington. (Hutchinson, to her credit, never uttered similar treason. As a conservative her record is accomplished, no matter whether one shares her opinions.)

Perry turned to promoting a state congressman, Brandon Creighton, author of a nonbinding resolution supporting the so called Tenther Movement, based on claims about the 10th Amendment to the US Constitution. "I'm talking about states' rights," Perry said at a press conference on the resolution, pandering to an issue that is a favorite of not only some conservatives and Libertarians, but also hardcore racists.

Perry at first did not draw much attention when he endorsed Creighton's "sovereignty" resolution. But the Drudge Report, an online tabloid specializing in scandal from a hard line conservative point of view, then posted a Perry news release. Rightwing talk radio then picked up the story, including Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Laura Ingraham. Perry's website received more than 300,000 hits a day, compared to its usual 5,000. Perry's appearance with Creighton supporting the "sovereignty" resolution made the top 100 watched videos on the YouTube site.

### Perry's speech used rhetoric strikingly like that of segregationists in the 1950s and 60s:

### "I agree with Texas's seventh governor, and I happen to think its greatest governor, Sam Houston who once said, 'Texas has yet to learn submission to any oppression, come from what source it may. We didn't like oppression then, we don't like oppression now. I believe the federal government has become oppressive. I believe it's become oppressive in its size, its intrusion in the lives of its citizens, and its interference with the affairs of our state. Texans need to ask themselves a question: do they side with those in Washington who are pursuing this unprecedented expansion of power, or do they believe in individual rights and responsibilities laid down in our foundational documents? Where you gonna stand? With an ever-growing Washington bureaucracy or are you gonna stand with the people of this state who understand the importance of states' rights?"

### The conference was sponsored by and included members of the Texas Nationalist Movement and the Tenther Movement. But even more unsavory characters attended. Dan Miller is the leader of a far right militia group calling itself the so called "Republic of Texas" or ROT.

The ROT militia began in 1995, claiming they had begun again the provisional government of the original "Republic of Texas." Like many other so called freemen or sovereign citizen groups, they set up their own "banks," printed their own "currency," and began harassing state officials with a blizzard of phony liens, affidavits, orders, summonses, and arrest warrants. Federal judges and prosecutors had to step up security and were guarded by US Marshalls to prevent possible kidnappings. Then-Governor George W. Bush and the Internal Revenue Service offices in Texas were both ordered by the ROT militia to vacate their offices. The ROT demanded more than $92 trillion in "war reparations" from the federal government. ROT militia leader Richard McLaren publicly depicted Texas as a "captive nation" he would free.

In less than two years, the ROT militia filed more than two billion dollars in phony claims and liens. Militia members also passed more than two million dollars in phony checks. At one point, over 300 angry militia members stood on the Texas Capital Building steps, trying to deliver papers demanding that Bush leave office. The ROT militia also worked with another militia, the Washitaws, issuing fraudulent cashier's checks, money orders, passports, driver's licenses, and birth certificates. In the most audacious single one of these schemes, members of both militias tried to issue $1.5 billion in deposit warrants to a Spanish bank in Puerto Rico, and tried to buy Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Lexuses, along with pieces of real estate.

### The ROT militia split into three groups in 1996, one led by Richard McLaren operating out of an "embassy" (actually a trailer) in the remote small town of Fort Davis in west Texas. That part of the state wasn't even part of the original "Republic of Texas." Another ROT militia faction was led by by David Johnson and Jesse Enloe. Yet a third ROT faction was headed by Archie Lowe and Daniel Miller.

### In 1997, McLaren and other members of his faction kidnapped their neighbors Joe and Margaret Ann Rowe and held them hostage at the "embassy." The ROT militia, so convinced they were leaders of a reborn Texas nation, for a time destroyed much of the sympathy that all but the most delusional Texans had for secession by getting into a standoff with over 200 Texas state police lasting over a week. Police even brought in armored vehicles.

### The ROT militia kidnappings made headlines worldwide. McLaren's bizarre and delusional behavior only made things worse. McLaren claimed to be an ambassador and counsel general. He claimed diplomatic immunity, and that state officials seemed willing to negotiate. In fact, Governor Bush had a hands-off approach, leaving everything to state police on the scene. As much of a loose cannon as Bush was as president, determined to expand government power in ways that can only be called oppressive, as the Governor of Texas, Bush was remarkably restrained.

### McLaren publicly insisted, "We're not going to surrender. We're going to press for our international rights." His bluster worsened day by day, darkly suggesting a civil war was coming. "Most of the [militia] people feel that if there's a battleground, it might as well be Texas....We consider we're still engaged in a war." In another interview, he declared, "We are at war with the United Nations and all foreign entities....we are at war with the federal agencies which have no jurisdiction here."

### At the end of the week, though, McLaren's wife talked him into giving up and releasing the kidnap victims. As the state police closed in, McLaren suffered one final outburst of delusion and self-importance, issuing an SOS by radio and calling for other militias to come defend his faction. But other militias, including those in Texas, publicly refused to consider coming to his aid, arguing McLaren had done enormous damage to their image and causes.

### On trial, the full extent of the ROT militia's lunacy came out. McLaren had tried to buy stockpiles of American military weapons, including surface-to-air missiles. The ROT planned to shoot down Governor Bush's airplane. A jury from conservative west Texas took only ninety minutes to find McLaren guilty. All told, seven ROT members were convicted because of the standoff, one not being captured until later and another killed in a shootout with police. Later evidence also showed the ROT militia monitored the US Army Base at Fort Hood, Texas, intending to attack it because they falsely believed it housed foreign or United Nations troops.

### The leadership of one faction of the ROT had dissolved, with its leaders being jailed. A second faction, led by David Johnson and Jesse Enloe, was no less dangerous. Jack Abbot Grebe Jr. and Johnie Wise, two members of the Johnson-Enloe faction, were arrested and convicted in 1998 of planning and threatening to assassinate a number of government officials, including President Bill Clinton.(A third man, Oliver Dean Emigh, was arrested but acquitted, and died in 2003 of natural causes. For all the militia tough talk about independence and self sufficiency, Emigh was buried in a grave at public expense.)

In June of 1998, the men sent an email with a "Declaration of War" to President Clinton, the FBI director, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Attorney General, and their families:

"Your [government] employees and their families have been targeted for destruction by revenge....Non-traceable, personal delivery systems have been developed to inject bacteria and/or viruses for the purpose of killing, maiming, and causing great suffering."

### The planned method of attack used biological weapons, cactus thorns coated with deadly toxins. They were arrested in Olmito, Texas, near the Mexican border. The men told an FBI informant they planned to modify cigarette lighters so they could expel air, shooting cactus needles dipped in anthrax, botulism, or the AIDS virus. On trial, both men made rambling speeches, saying they refused to accept the government's authority and that their names were invalid because the court documents spelled them in all capital letters.

### In the same year, another ROT militia leader, Jacque Jaikaran, tried to purchase a four story building in Houston with machine gun turrets, a bomb shelter, and an operating room. Jaikaran was sentenced to three years in prison for tax evasion. He claimed not to be part of the ROT militia, but instead to be associated with the Constitution Party and the Christian Party of Texas. But there is no sign either party has any history of violence, promotes secession, or breaks the law.

### In 2000, members of the ROT militia planned to attack the Houston Federal building. Federal agents arrested Mark McCool, leader of the ROT's "Militia and Combined Action Program." McCool was arrested buying C-4 plastic explosives and automatic weapons. McCool pled guilty and served time on the federal charges.

### Yet in spite of all these factions' losses, the ROT militia continued and the three factions actually merged together again. In 2003, members of these militias recognized first an "interim" government, replacing a "provisional" government headed by "President" Daniel Miller, the same man who shared the press conference with Governor Perry. The ROT militia set up a "government" in the town of Overton, Texas, a remote town in the northeast part of the state, with a population slightly under 2400. Later the militia leaders described an attack by what they called a "white supremacist faction" within their "republic." The ROT headquarters in Overton burned down on August 31, 2005, injuring one of its members.

### The ROT militia continued to sell items like a "Republic of Texas passport." Their earlier schemes issuing dubious documents took a serious hit. The state of Texas passed strict laws to block the filing of false court documents, especially false liens on property that the ROT militia had used to finance their group. Then-Governor Bush considered the matter serious enough to give it emergency status before the legislature.

### The militia movement had made serious enough inroads that Republican Congressman Steve Stockman had sought out and received their support. Stockman claimed the standoff with the Branch Davidian cult at Waco was a government conspiracy to "prove the need for a ban on so called assault weapons." Some in the militia movement thought so highly of Stockman they sent him an anonymous fax within fifty minutes of the Oklahoma City bombing, celebrating the attack. The FBI found Stockman had no ties whatsoever to the bombing. But Stockman's support of the militia movement proved his undoing, and he was defeated for reelection in 1998.

### There are two smaller splinters from the ROT militia, the Texas Convention Pro-Continuation 1861 (TCPC), and the so called 10th Congress, which meets at the small town of Washington-on-the-Brazos. The 10th Congress website claims "Any outfit that is not part of the 10th Congress...claiming to be any of the Republic of Texas is bogus and aside from treason is probably involved in serial frauds." Other portions of the clumsy website describe their "evidenice of recognition."

### In 1998, ROT militia member Carolyn Carney was sentenced to ten years in prison for threatening a highway patrolman with a gun. The officer was one of several serving an arrest warrant on her for failing to appear in court on other charges.

### In 1999 in Trinidad, Texas, ROT militia member John Joe Gray was in a car pulled over for speeding. He was carrying a gun without a permit and resisted arrest. Gray tried to take one officer's gun and actually bit the other officer's hand during the struggle. He went to jail. Though he was known to be a militia member, alleged to be part of a plan to bomb a highway, and alleged to have had others make threats to carry out violence unless he was released, Gray was allowed out on bond.

### Two months later, Gray sent a letter telling the authorities, in essence, if you come on my property, bring body bags. For twelve years, the authorities have refused to try to arrest him. Gray has remained hiding out on his small country property. Gray's extended family living with him includes up to sixteen people, some heavily armed, some children. Gray has also avoided prosecution for unpaid taxes and has sheltered his daughter defying a court order giving up custody of her children to an ex-husband. Gray was also once part of the Embassy of Heaven, a cult that issues its own licenses and passports since they believe the US to be a "pervert nation." Gray began stockpiling for what he believed would be the end times in Y2K. When the end of society did not come, Gray continued to stay in hiding. Conservative film star Chuck Norris even offered to pay for legal representation if Gray would surrender. Gray continues his standoff, for over twelve years now and counting.

In 2010, ROT militia member Victor Dewayne White shot two deputies and an employee of an oil company in Odessa, Texas in a dispute over property rights. From behind homemade barricades, White challenged officers to come get him in a siege lasting twenty-two hours. White finally surrendered and was indicted on three counts of attempted murder.

### By my count, the ROT militia is guilty of:

### Treason, seeking to overthrow the US and Texas governments by force

### Plots to assassinate one American President and one Texas Governor

### Plotting to murder soldiers at an American Army base

### Plotting to murder federal employees

Over $2 billion in various forms of fraud

### Three kidnappings

### Three other attempted murders, including of two law enforcement officers

### Three assaults on law enforcement officers

### Numerous threats against law enforcement officers

### Numerous threats against public officials

### Attempts to stockpile missiles, plastic explosives, other military weapons

### Paper terrorism using phony liens, court orders, summons, warrants

### Numerous counts of forging passports, driver's licenses, other documents

### The ROT militia claims to have 40,000 members statewide.

Recall the phony charges against President Obama in 2008: Charges Obama was "palling around with terrorists" for briefly serving on a committee that met a few times a week with a man who, a quarter of a century earlier, had blown up property but taken care not to injure anyone, who had never been convicted, and who renounced even that limited violence and become a respected education reformer.

But the Texas governor shared the stage with real terrorists, and sought out their support. The ROT militia tried to assassinate a Democratic president and a Republican governor, murder police and innocent civilians, force elected officials from office using threats, steal on a scale most organized crime can only dream about, and intimidate any who disagree with them. This militia was guilty of terrorism while Perry shared the stage with them. Victor Dewayne White tried to murder cops within a year of Perry's conference. John Joe Gray remained in his armed standoff with law enforcement at the same time as the conference, and still is as this is being typed.

### It is just a matter of time until we see another violent spree from more members of the ROT. It would be extremely unlikely if the ROT militia leadership is not plotting terrorism at this very moment, and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Their leaders are utterly unrepentant or dismissive of that violence, and continue to promote treason and secession. The ROT militia is guilty of no less than crimes against America when Perry shared the stage with this militia and endorsed them.

### The Texas Nationalist Movement (TNM) is another group whose support Perry sought out, and that appeared with Perry at his press conference. Unlike the ROT militia, the TNM does not resort to violence or advocate it. The group does openly advocate treason, the overthrow or secession of Texas from the United States. They openly associate with the ROT militia, work with them on issues, and share the same goals of secession and treason.

### The TNM proudly posted on their website Perry appearing with their leaders at the press conference. Members were urged to send this message to their congressmen:

" ....I agree with everything that Congressman Creighton and Governor Perry said last Thursday at the Capitol press conference. I agree that our federal government has become oppressive in its size, its intrusion into the lives of Texans, and its interference with the affairs of our great state.

### I am also wanting to express my diligent and unwavering belief that the State Legislature should ultimately seek the full independence of Texas so that we never have to revisit this issue.

### Texans are keeping this under close watch. We will not forget this when the time comes to cast our votes at the ballot box.

### Thank you for your time and attention in this matter.

### Texans for Liberty, Sovereignty, and Independence from Washington,"

### The Texas Nationalist Movement claims to have 250,000 members, both in Texas and nationwide. Their website makes it clear their leadership includes conspiracy theorist crackpots making wild claims about one world government, the Bilderbergs (a popular bogeyman among anti-Semitic bigots), and the United Nations.

The TNM website also proudly insists that a future Texas Republic Constitution will have the "immediate repudiation and eviction" of any progressives (whom they argue are communists), and will ban public education, public assistance for the poor, the regulation of business, public debt, paper money, national or federal courts, taxes, and will bar any treaties with other nations. Seemingly they want to transform Texas into Somalia, a nation run by militias and not a government. The only difference is the people would be white Christian conservatives, and run by local county government, which is often notoriously corrupt and brutal in Texas. But the end result would be the same, an ungovernable mess and as much of a failed state as the original "Republic of Texas." Failed states attract terrorists, who use them as a base because the government is too weak to stop them. A "Republic of Texas" would be sought out as refuge by everyone from the Aryan Nation to apocalyptic cults, who would launch terrorist attacks from its soil.

Such were the people Governor Perry was pandering to in order to defeat a fairly mainstream but solid conservative of several decades, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, in his re-election bid. But this was not the last of the fringe groups he appealed to.

### Also at the conference were members of the so-called Tenther Movement. The Tenther Movement touts the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution as supposedly supporting state sovereignty. They are not violent nor do they commit many crimes as the ROT militia does. They do not advocate treason and secession as the TNM does. But the Tenther Movement is every bit as misguided and ignorant of law and history as militias and secessionists.

The main thrust of the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution is simple. "...All is retained which has not been surrendered." You may recall this from high school government classes being referred to as the "elastic" amendment to the Constitution, designed to supplement other parts of the Constitution such as the "elastic clause." Basically the Founding Fathers wanted to make sure the federal government was not limited in its power. Supreme Court decisions like _United States v. Sprague_ have consistently upheld this interpretation.

### The Founders and the ratifiers of both the Constitution and the Tenth Amendment rejected strict limits on federal authority that had been in the original Articles of Confederation. The Articles limited Congress to those powers "expressly delegated" to it. The Tenth Amendment drops "expressly."

The Tenth Amendment goes even further, stating the federal government has all power "nor prohibited by it to the states," Fact is, the Tenth Amendment limits powers of the state governments and explicitly protects and expands federal power. Yet the Tenther Movement completely misreads the Tenth Amendment, imagining that it expands the powers of the states to even give them "sovereignty."

### This was the same argument used by secessionist traitors who tried to destroy America in the Civil War, just to hold onto their barbaric system of slavery. (As one US senator recently put it, the Tenth Amendment should really be called the Slavery Amendment since that is what its misguided defenders rally around.) Tenthers imagine that the Tenth Amendment allows state governments to pick and choose which federal laws they will follow. As with all states rights arguments and groups, supporters include a mix of types. Sometimes the movement tries to appeal to the fringes of fiscal conservatism and believers in a small or limited federal government. But the movement also appeals to much of the most extreme and violent anti-government militias, so called "patriot movement" people, so called "constitutionalists," neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists, and other assorted racists.

"States' rights" movements have always been immensely hypocritical. Always they have sought "states' rights" solely for their own causes, and conveniently ignore supposed states' rights when it does not suit their purposes. Slavery defenders wanted states' rights to keep the federal government from freeing slaves, but opposed states' rights when it came to the rights of fugitive slaves and of states that wanted to ban slavery. Slavery's defenders hypocritically demanded the federal government be used to return escaped slaves to their former masters even while they hollered about "states' rights." Current states' rights supporters demand that states have the supposed right to block healthcare reform. But they also want to block states from the public option or starting their own government run healthcare programs. There are even hypocrites on the left who used the states right argument to push for their state to ignore antidrug laws or keep soldiers from their state out of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, but would never ever push for states' rights on issues they oppose. A supposed states' rights believer who will push for that principle, no matter how their own pet beliefs are affected, is a rare person indeed.

### The "sovereignty resolution" read, in part:

### The 81st Legislature of the State of Texas hereby claims sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.

### That this serves as notice and demand to the federal government, as our agent, to cease and desist, effective immediately, mandates that are beyond the scope of these constitutionally delegated powers.

### But this resolution was purely symbolic, a bit of empty pandering to constituents with no force or law behind. Basically the resolution was passed in May 2009, sent on to the federal government, which ignored it, filed it away, and forgot about it.

### So the three main secessionist groups, the ROT militia, the TNM, and the Tenthers, followed up one symbolic win by pushing for another. Their next proposed resolution asked the state legislature to bring independence up for a state referendum. In the hopes of simply using the referendum to build support, it was to be, like the previous resolution, purely symbolic, nonbinding, and without the force of law:

### Be it further Resolved that:

### The vote of the citizens on the issue of independence be non-binding and advisory only.

### That the results of the voting of the citizens of Texas be reported to the Governor and the sitting members of the Legislature of the State of Texas for further consideration in accordance with the wishes of the citizens of the State of Texas.

### That the results of the voting also be reported to the both houses of the United States Congress and the President of the United States.

### That the wording of the issue to be placed on the ballot shall be as follows:

### That the State of Texas should declare its independence from the United States of America and return to a Republican form of government as the Republic of Texas.

At that point, Rick Perry went no further. His flirtation with the would-be independence movement was over. He wrote his screed against the federal government, Fed Up!, and turned away from any further association with militias, secessionists, and other traitors. The sole remaining sign of this dance with treasonous ideas and people is his continuing belief, against all evidence, in the urban legend that Texas has a supposed legal right to secede, unique among the states.

### His breaking away from them did not go well. Some of the groups' leadership clearly despises him. Following his announcement of the run for president, there have been wild claims about him being "a Bilderberger." Some of his former supporters in secessionist traitors denounced him in the harshest terms. It is not above the realm of possibility that some might even turn to violence against Perry. That same violent streak could easily be turned against any group or other individual the militias single out, anyone who is perceived to stand in the way of their goals.

### The list of militias in the state of Texas is long and disturbing:

**AMARA** **Temple of Moorish Science** -Arlington

**American Open Currency Standard-** Frisco

**American Patriots for Freedom Foundation-** Spring

**Central Texas Militia-** Central

**Church of God Evangelistic Association-** Waxahachie

**Concho Valley Volunteer Militia-** San Angelo

**Confederate States Home Guard-** Port Lavaca

**Constitution Party** -Cleburne

**Constitution Society** -Austin

**Dallas City Troop-** Carrollton

**Freedom School** -Austin

**Freemen Project-** Houston

**John Birch Society** -Corpus Christi

**Liberty Regulators-** Houston

**North Central Texas Patriots-** Dallas

**Oath Keepers-** Statewide

**Order of Constitution Defenders-** Houston

**Patriotic Space** -Waco

**Southeast Texas Patriots-** Sugar Land

**Southwest Desert Militia-** West Texas

**Texas Central District 14 Patriots-** Lockhart

**Texas Militia-** Huntington

The " **Republic of Texas" militia** has a long list of chapters all by itself:

### Bastrop County, Bexar County, Bowie County, Brazos County, Colorado County, Fayette County, Galveston County, Goliad County, Harris County, Harrison County, Houston County, Jackson County, Jasper County, Jefferson County, Lamar County, Liberty County, Matagorda County, Milam County, Montgomery County, Nacogdoches County, Red River County, Refugio County, Robertson County, Rusk County, Sabine County, Shelby County, Travis County, Victoria County, Washington County

Another group called t **he Texas Militia** has chapters in: Austin, College Station, Conroe, Corpus Christi, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Katy, Killeen, Laredo, New Braunfels, San Antonio, Waco, Wichita Falls, and Winnsboro.

**We Are Change** has chapters in Austin, Dallas, Fort Worth, Pasadena, San Antonio, San Marcos, and Tyler.

Not all of these groups advocate violence. Most are heavily armed though, and uniformly hostile to the federal government. Most believe in or advocate conspiracy theories. Most have roots that go back, ultimately, to extremist groups, white supremacists, or other terrorists.

### In hindsight, it is amazing that none of them carried out violence in the wake of Perry's seeking favor with them. Under Perry, they got as close as they ever have to full secession from the US.

### Now imagine things had gone just a little bit farther. With so many crazed terrorists itching for secession, it's not hard to see how things could have gotten very bloody....

### Chapter 3:

### Another Resolution Passes

### For all of its existence, Fox News has been notorious as an extremely efficient propaganda machine. Never are reporters allowed much in the way of independent thought or personal judgment. Always the top management spells out exactly what their intended targets are, how to go after them, the terms to be used, methods to be employed, and points of view to be pushed.

### From Fox News headquarters, company President Roger Ailes sent out a very typical memo to all "news" executives, editors, and producers of each program.

### From: Ailes, Roger

### Sent: 9-11-09

### To: 054-FNSunday; 169-SPECIAL REPORT; 069-Politics-Root (FoxNews.com); 036-FOX.WHU; 050-Senior Producers

### Subject: Friendly Reminder: Let's Keep Pushing on Texas

### 1) Secession as an issue is a winner for our purposes, but a loser when the public hears it called that. Most Americans vaguely know it's an act of treason, they remember from Civil War documentaries. Refer to secession ONLY using the terms "independence movement," "freedom from federal domination," or best of all "freedom from federal tyranny" or "freedom from Obama's tyranny."

### 2) We must always stress how imminent the independence movement is and how many Texans want it, no matter the facts or numbers. If we can't find numbers that support us, focus on prominent figures. Governor Perry is a good one. He may one day soon be prime material for our other purposes.

### 3) Secession/independence is very effective as a ploy to threaten Obama over healthcare reform. (Recall earlier memos. Healthcare reform must be referred to as "government takeover of healthcare" or Obamacare. Avoid any mention of how most of Obamacare was formerly proposed by GOP going all the way back to Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt, or enacted in Massachusetts by Romney the RINO.)

### 4) Be certain to play up the angle that Obamacare is so offensive to American ideals it may bring civil war and could break apart this great nation.

5) Legal has advised that claims secession is legal for Texas are in fact false. No evidence for it anywhere, and the laws are pretty clear. This is a moot point for us. Act AS IF it is true, or defer the matter saying there are different sides to the issue. Fact is there are many angry rubes who believe it is true and we must take advantage of that.

### 6) Look for other independence movements. Look at neo Confederates, but take care not to mention ties to KKK, Nazis. Don't look at Vermont Republic, we want no mentions of lefties.

Fox News's blitz would continue. Every commentator repeated the talking points as ordered. A network committed to hard line conservatism would promote nothing less than treason and the threat of breaking up the United States, simply because they disagreed with most Americans about public healthcare for poor people.

### Back in Texas, the ROT militia gathered together to meet with TNM and the Tenthers Movement. One leader jokingly proposed they call themselves Texas Independence Movement or TIM since it sounded so inoffensive. But they quickly took to more serious matters. They had an opportunity they might never have again. Perry, as one professor had put it, had sparked the most talk of secession than had been seen since Reconstruction.

### Back in Austin, Perry's campaign worried they had gone too far. To have a nonbinding resolution was one thing. But actual independence, none of them truly wanted.

### But for some Republican state congressmen, there were still voters to be placated. Playing up calls for independence was a good way to sound angry about Washington.

### For some US congressmen, the resolution supporting a vote on independence was a golden opportunity. The most notorious was the crank from District 14, Ron Paul, a Libertarian turned Republican. Paul brought in a revisionist "scholar," Thomas DiLorenzo, to give congressional testimony. DiLorenzo, however, is a leading member of a white supremacist group, the League of the South, that wants a returned Confederacy and a "society dominated by European Americans."

League leaders include Jack Kershaw, formerly of the White Citizens Councils (often described as "the Klan without the hoods.") Kershaw's most notorious statement was, "Somebody needs to say a good word for slavery. Where in the world are the Negroes better off today than in America?"

The next best known leader of the League of the South is Michael Hill. His philosophy in his own words:

"If the scenario of the South (and the rest of America) being overrun by hordes of non-white immigrants does not appeal to you, then how is this disaster to be averted? By the people who oppose it rising up against their traitorous elite masters and their misanthropic rule. But to do this we must first rid ourselves of the fear of being called 'racists' and the other meaningless epithets they use against us....I am not ashamed to say that I prefer my own kind..."

### Hill often defends slavery as "God-ordained" and calls for a society of "superiors, equals and inferiors," and attacks equality as a "fatal heresy." Only white Christians could live in the new Confederacy. Any others must accept "the cultural dominance of the Anglo-Celtic people." After September 11, Hill claimed the attacks were "the natural fruits of a regime committed to multiculturalism and diversity."

### The League's leadership includes outright terrorists such as Michael Tubbs. Tubbs was a League leader in Florida. In the military, Tubbs was found with arms and explosives caches. Tubbs had lists of targets; newspapers, television stations, and businesses owned by Jews and Blacks.

The League of the South was hardly Paul's first alliance with white supremacists. In the 1990s his Freedom Report newsletters had frequently published articles from white racists. One claimed, "Only about 5% of blacks have sensible political opinions." Another ranted , "If you have ever been robbed by a black teenaged male you know how unbelievably fleet footed they can be.... I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city (Washington DC) are semi-criminal or entirely criminal." Legendary Black congresswoman Barbara Jordan was attacked as a "half educated victimologist" and that her "race and sex protect her from criticism."

### This was a conscious policy Paul and the Libertarians in Texas had followed throughout the 1980s and 90s. "Go right" as they put it, and try to co opt and bring those on the far right into the Libertarian movement, which up to that point mostly attracted leftists who agreed with its antiwar and drug legalization beliefs. Paul had as his chief of staff a leading Neo Confederate, Lew Rockwell. Rockwell is the most likely candidate to have written the racist screeds in Paul's newsletter, something he denies. Rockwell's mentor was Murray Rothbard, an anarchist, racist, and self-hating Jew who ranted about Jewish control of business and government.

Paul, from working with Neo Confederates, has long preached the central tenet of Neo Confederate belief, hatred of the federal government. He has long associated with racists even while denying being one, and been endorsed by a wide collection of not just Neo Confederates, but anti Semites, Holocaust deniers, and Nazi skinheads such as Stormfront. In Tennessee, Paul's chief online organizer was "White Will," also an organizer for the Neo Nazi group the National Alliance, the same group which published the Turner Diaries, the book that inspired Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

### With the rise of the secessionist treason movement in Texas, Paul went further:

"I think people should discuss [secession]. Because right now the American people are sick and tired of it all. And I think the time will come when people will consider it much more seriously, is when the federal government can no longer deliver."

### While Paul's frequent support of secession helped the movement get national exposure, within Texas it was mostly Perry's support that insured the nonbinding vote for independence would get on the ballot. Perry's stubborn streak would not let him admit he had gotten himself into a bind. On top of that, some of his secession supporters were expressing new concerns. Perry had attended the famous Bilderberg conference in 2007.

### The conference is basically a gathering of influential leaders where ideas can be informally floated without public scrutiny. But to conspiracy theorists, anti-Semites, and assorted cranks, they are where world leaders plan to further dominate the world, secretly pulling the strings. Perry's single attendance (he either chose not to attend or was not asked to return) looms large in the imaginations of the paranoid.

### But the only actual long term consequence of his going turned out to favor the secessionists, not harm them. Partly as a way to reassure this fringe group, and partly to hold onto the loyalties of the 30% of Texans and the almost 50% of white Republican conservatives in Texas who favor secession, Perry chose to back putting the resolution on the ballot. And he used his bully pulpit to push Republicans to vote for the resolution.

### It was a foregone conclusion. Now Texans had a chance to tell the world, officially, what they thought of the federal government, that some of them despised it so much they favored treason.

### Headlines across the US the next day read:

### "Texans Will Vote on Independence"

### "Will Texas Secede? They Get a Chance to Vote On It Soon"

### "Texas Republic Again?"

### TIM secessionist leaders were elated, if still suspicious of Perry. What none of them expected was that a certain outspoken Mexican further south would throw a monkey wrench in their plans.

### Chapter 4:

### Carlos Guerrero Editorial

### In the midst of the raging debate over secession came a stinging rebuke from an old time activist long respected in the Latino community.

### Carlos Guerrero first made his name back in the heyday of La Raza Unida Party ("The People United" Party.) LRUP began back in 1970. With the breakup of LRUP in 1978, Guerrero turned to writing, advocacy journalism, teaching, and sporadic runs for public office.

### LRUP was among the most important Latino movements calling on Mexicans to break away from domination by Anglo racists in the state, but it was hardly the first. In 1859, a man named Juan Cortina saw a former worker of his being abused by an Anglo sheriff. Angered, he shot the sheriff dead. Calling on Mexicans in the Rio Grande Valley to rise up, Cortina found plenty of volunteers. He led hundreds of fighters from the valley. In daring raids, they attacked the Anglo authorities that oppressed their people. Cortina fought for over a dozen years, both before and after the Civil War. He is still remembered today by Mexicans as a Robin Hood figure.

### In 1915, a group of Mexican anarchists (yes, anarchists in Texas) led a failed uprising in the tiny town of San Diego, Texas. The Plan of San Diego called for Mexicans across the southwest to rise up and drive out their racist oppressors, forming a nation based on anarchist principles. PSD followers called for alliances between Mexicans and American Indians, Blacks, Japanese-Americans, and German-Americans. (Sometimes the PSD is inaccurately depicted as a "race war." The multiracial alliance, especially the presence of Germans, disproves that. The only race war was that being done by an Anglo minority on the Mexican majority in the Rio Grande Valley.) Yet in spite of its grandiose plan, the PSD probably had no more than 150 fighters. The plan became bound to fail when one of its members was arrested and found with a copy of the plan on him. He turned informer. Forewarned, the authorities fought off several dozen attacks from the PSD relatively easily. Perhaps fewer than two dozen lives were lost on both sides during the PSD attacks.

### The army, Texas Rangers, and Anglo vigilantes retaliated with a terrifying campaign of ethnic cleansing. The three most southern counties in Texas, Cameron, Hidalgo, and Starr, suffered a minimum of 300 deaths, Mexicans and Mexican-Americans summarily executed whether they were involved or not. Some estimates were up to ten times that number, over 3000, killed by the typically brutal savagery of the Rangers and others. Property losses were estimated in the millions.

### Such losses convinced Mexicans in the state that violence would never be a solution to defeating oppression. In the aftermath, LULAC or League of United Latin American Citizens formed. Made up of members of the tiny Mexican middle class in Texas, LULAC members were doctors, lawyers, teachers, journalists, and small businessmen. They stayed with legalistic approaches or quiet petition and negotiation, especially suing in court to obtain rights. LULAC had many victories in challenging segregation laws, obtaining more rights for Latinos, and success in the larger society.

### But LULAC were also pro assimilation and anti immigrant. One had to be a citizen to join. LULAC even supported deportation campaigns. LULAC also were unwilling to challenge authorities with anything as "provocative" as public demonstrations. In the 1940s, LULAC lost its status as a leading civil rights group to be replaced by the GI Forum, made up of returning Latino World War II veterans. Later came MAYO (Mexican American Youth Organization), and MECHA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or National Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan), both student protest movements. The Brown Berets, formed in the mid 1960s, were obviously the Latino version of the Black Panthers, Latino nationalists. By 1974 they were gone, though another version of them returned in 1994. In Texas, they had very little presence.

### (Some of the more ludicrous anti-immigrant racists attack the Brown Berets or other Brown Power activism as somehow "racist" in of itself. Mexican is a culture, not a race. Mexicans can be of any race, though most are mixed ancestry/mixed culture American Indians.)

### In Texas, the most important activist group during the civil rights era was LRUP. At its height it won majorities in two city councils, two school boards, and elected two mayors. In the statewide run for governor, their candidate received almost a quarter of a million votes, 6% of the total and nearly a third of Latino votes statewide, and a majority of support among Latino youth, especially college students.

Guerrero published his editorial in the San Antonio Express-News:

Call for Independence From Texas:

### Do Not Let the Rightwing Loons Take Us Out of the USA!

### We Will Make the New American State of Aztlan!

### The most patriotic group in Texas, the most reliably gung ho super Americans...They are Mexicans!

### Mexican-Americans, probably some of you would insist on calling us, or Latino, or Hispanic. But we're not from Hispania! Or any other mythical place in Anglo imaginations. We will not let you pretend we are Europeans when most of us don't have family from there. We are Mexicans plain and simple, and proud to be called that.

### Not Mexican American as a label most of us drop because it's too long to say, unless Cheech Marin is joking about it in that cool song he sang while Chong played terrible guitar. Just Mexicans, and it doesn't matter if you confuse us with Mexicans from Mexico. Land and culture don't necessarily tie to nation. Mexico's government doesn't inspire loyalty, even within Mexico, not even to Mexican citizens.

But American government, except for the pinche migra and abusive cops, does. It inspires passionate devotion in Mexicans both US-born and immigrants, and even so called illegals, those without papers. As a nation and a government, America inspires love, like Romeo was inspired by Juliet, like Mary was inspired by the angels sent by Almighty God.

### Meanwhile, at the same time, the most disloyal, the most distrusting traitorous people in Texas are a peculiar strain of Anglo conservatives and Republicans. Not old time small government pragmatic conservatives who want less regulation, but angry, vindictive, hostile, foaming at the mouth, how-dare-anyone-disagree-with-me types. They rant about lynching, shooting, or executing politicians or appointed officials for imagined offenses, see black helicopters in the sky, and sinister re education camps in Black and brown inner city kids going off to Job Corps.

### There are none more disloyal as to see all government as "tyranny." Anarchists, but without any sense of community except their common hatreds, and without any sense of cooperation except to make sure the average working man can't do that same cooperation for better wages. They want others to have the right to work for less than minimum wages and die in the street or the emergency room because of no insurance. They are Social Darwinists who hate Darwin almost as much as they don't understand him. They are Hobbesians who haven't thought it through, even while driving a car made safe by government standards down a highway (not toll roads) paid for by government on the way to a Fourth of July or Memorial holiday celebrating victories won by soldiers (the ultimate bureaucracy) and not mercenaries.

The more extreme conservative white Texas may see government as evil, but Texas Mexicans, Tejanos, sure don't. We wish there was more of it, doing more. Being your brother's keeper, after all, is a good Catholic principle, as it was a good indigenous tribal principle less than a century and a half ago when most Mexicans were still in tribes. Half a dozen generations haven't erased the fealty to that principle, only circumstances called for a transfer of it to the church and even more so to the nation-state. Like any good socialist instinct, most Mexicans know We The People Are The Government. It is not some outside oppressing force, as white conservatives often believe.

### So I'm pretty fed up with these radical conservative (or maybe rightwing anarchists) Anglos bashing We The People. I want to stay part of the United States! I don't want to be dragged out of it by these loons!

### And I know many of you agree with me.

### Yes, I've done my share of protests over the years. But I would never have done them if I didn't care, care deeply, passionately, with all my heart, about this country and its people, all of its people.

### I also care deeply about a nation that (some cops and government agents aside) lets me do all the protesting I've done by word, deed, pen, and with my big mouth. I couldn't get away with half of this in Mexico, and my ancestors have been here since before Stephen Austin and Sam Houston, and way before Davy Crockett's foolish little trip.

### That's why you see so many deeply loyal, deeply patriotic Mexicans. That's why so many of us are over in Iraq and Afghanistan, in uniform.

### And that's why most Mexicans want nothing to do with this crazy, unpatriotic, disloyal, verminous, traitorous, malformed, pipe dream foolish notion of a so called independent nation of Texas. Texas was a lousy nation for a Mexican to be trapped in before, a place where you'd get killed by a racist Anglo at the drop of a hat, with your daughter raped and dishonored. That will happen again if they should somehow succeed and secede.

### So, first thing: Stop the crazy drive towards secession.

### Second thing, and the easiest way to make sure secession can't succeed: Break away from Texas! Send them a message!

The law says quite clearly we have the right to do so. (Unlike their crazy claim of being able to secede. Que chingas es eso! Que pendejos!)

### Texas can break into as many as five states. OK, let's make one of them the new state of Aztlan, named after the Aztec homeland, which may well have been Texas anyway. Everything in a line from Del Rio to San Antonio to Corpus Christi, all the way south, should be the new state of Aztlan.

### El Paso and the western panhandle, why don't you form your own state too? You have more in common with New Mexico than Texas.

### Austin, they have never liked you progressives, greens, and free thinking artistic types. Why not break away and form your own state?

### And west Texas Mexicanos, why not form your own state too? I know it can't be easy out there for you, surrounded by Bible Belt types, such as Rick Perry himself. What would it say to the world if Rick Perry's own hometown does not want to be part of Texas anymore?

### How much easier will life be for us to never have to listen to rightwing fundamentalist Christian conservatives again? These are people constantly trying to refight the Civil War, but along religious lines. They are American Taliban against everyone else.

### How much easier will life be for us to never have to put up with nonsense like Official English or immigrant bashers who don't stop to think that we Mexicans have been here far longer than them, or their ancestors?

### And these new states, these will all definitely be blue states, free from red state domination.

### They want secession? Secede from Texas!

### Aztlan Now!

### Sincerely, Carlos Guerrero

### Guerrero's editorial sent a shockwave throughout the state. Within days, numerous volunteers set up Aztlan Now petitions for statehood, websites, organizing drives, and sought out their elected officials to press their calls for separation from Texas.

### Aztlan Now movement members had the simplest approach. "Do you want to leave America?" "Hell no!" was the typical answer of most Texans, about 70%. But for white Republicans (frankly there weren't that many Republicans in the state who weren't white), about half wanted secession.

### For Mexican-Americans, the numbers were a strong statement of patriotism and loyalty, over 95% opposing secession and treason. For Democrats (the majority of whom in the state were Mexican) numbers ran over 80% against secession.

### Blacks were even more opposed, over 98%. Just like with the Confederate symbol, nearly all nonwhites can see the Texan symbol and identity does not include them. Unfortunately most of the Black population lived in Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston, or in the many east Texas small towns. A few Black leaders considered a separate state for Black Texans, but there was no way to form one with a Black majority short of the craziest kind of gerrymandering. Many joked (and some seriously planned for) how they would leave Texas if secession somehow succeeded.

### Getting support from some segments of the general public was one thing. Mostly the newness of the idea was the largest barrier. But unlike most white Texans, most Black or Latino or "other" Texans aren't heavily invested in the idea of Texan identity. The same is true of plenty of leftist white Texans, who see people with pride in living in or being from Texas as hicks at best, rednecks at worst.

### Getting support from political leaders was much harder. Most feared being labeled as fringe thinkers, and if the separate states idea was not carried out, relations with their fellow politicians on the other side of the aisle would be that much more difficult. Outside of some small town councilmen and a few state congressmen, most elected leaders in the future Aztlan had a wait and see approach.

### Of all the media, Fox was predictably the most hysterical and angry. Hannity went on a tear, insisting without proof, like always, that these groups were somehow "racist." O'Reilly, true to form, repeated a slur he had used in the past, calling the movement "led by wetbacks." Limbaugh also repeated some prior race baiting of his. "Lazy Mexicans...I didn't know they had it in them to work hard for anything." Michael Savage, of course, was somehow convinced it was all a conspiracy by Muslims.

### Probably the funniest reaction came from Bill Maher. On his New Rules segment he took a shot at Perry and the secession vote:

### "New Rule- Conservatives, you can't call yourself patriots...if you want to leave America or overthrow America!

### It's getting pretty screwy when a Mexican named Carlos is showing himself to be a one hell of a lot more patriotic than any of you white guys!

### (The audience laughed and cheered.)

When did conservatives become so disloyal? Remember when conservatives used to say 'Love it or Leave It? Now they don't love America anymore, and they want to leave it!"

### (The audience laughed and cheered again, followed by applause.)

### The strongest reaction to the editorial actually came from secession supporters. Guerrero received his first death threats within minutes of the essay being published. His email and voicemail overflowed with angry secessionists spouting bile and venom. Racist taunts accompanying most threats were about what one would typically expect:

### "If you know what's good for you beaner..."

### "Go back to Mexico you commie..."

### "I'll shove a shotgun up your wetback greaser ass..."

### But Guerrero could not arm himself in self-defense. In 1979, he had been caught smuggling several pounds of marijuana across the border. The jury included two Latinos, and they and an Anglo member had voted to acquit him. With a split decision, he would have gone free. But the judge intervened, ruled that the dissenting jurors were ignoring clear evidence of lawbreaking, and declared Guerrero guilty.

### The judge sentenced him to the maximum of twenty years to life as a "large scale" smuggler. Public outrage at the heavy handedness and clearly political motive for the harsh sentence became a minor cause célèbre. Two years of appeals followed, with Guerrero finally getting time served and the rest of the sentence suspended. But no governor had ever granted him a pardon, so he was not allowed to either own or carry a gun. Getting a pardon in Texas, while technically a rigorous process screened by the governor's office, was usually a routine matter bureaucratic procedure. But no governor ever wanted to be seen as soft on crime, especially with a famous leftist radical and drug smuggler. Guerrero would never get a pardon.

### For protection, Guerrero had to turn to moving from friend's house to friend's house, keeping an irregular schedule, and always living and traveling with those who could possess a gun legally. College students groups or veterans' groups were most often his bodyguards.

### At a news conference, a reporter asked Rick Perry what he thought of the burgeoning breakaway movement from Texas. Governor Perry's reaction was as ignorant and reckless as on anything else he typically said:

### "Oh, it doesn't worry me one bit. I know we've got a great state, and I know most of our Hispanic voters want to stay part of it. Tell you what, I'd even let them put it to a vote! County by county, why not? I bet you right now every last county would vote to stay part of good old Texas."

### The reporter couldn't believe his ears. "Will you commit yourself to allowing a vote, Governor? Will you publicly promise that?"

### "You bet! I'll make you a bet right now, I'll eat your hat if these breakaway movements get anywhere."

### True to his word, Perry confidently pushed for a resolution in the state legislature, and used his bully pulpit to rush it through. The state's Republicans and conservative Democrats, confident any breakaway movement would never succeed, voted for Perry's "Loyalty to Texas" resolution. So did the minority and progressive members of the legislature, eager to placate their own voters.

### The resolution read:

### Be it resolved that Texas has nothing but people who are loyal to this great state, once an independent republic.

### That Texas, in the finest republican tradition, wishes to give its citizens an opportunity to show their loyalty.

### Therefore the State of Texas, and formerly an independent republic, will hereby allow each individual county to vote whether to form any separate state, to remain part of the State of Texas, or to join any return to an independent Republic of Texas.

### When Guerrero first heard Perry's public declaration, he could not believe his ears and good fortune. Seemingly this allowed Texas to balkanize. Potentially there could be individual isolated counties side by side, some breaking away, some remaining part of the state. And were Texas to actually secede, there could be war as vicious as the Balkans had. It was more important than ever to make certain entire regions voted to break away.

### But this also gave Aztlan Now a firm legal footing. Now the only thing necessary was to win the hearts and minds of local voters. And both Perry and the secessionists were making that so easy!

### "Thank you, Rick Perry!" Guerrero thought. "You could not have made my work any easier."

### Chapter 5:

### Rally at the Alamo

### Aztlan Now decided to publicly launch their movement with the largest rally possible. It would have to be in the largest city in the region, San Antonio. And of course the site was never in doubt, the most famous one in the city, the Alamo. Holding it there was a public rebuke both of the Tea Party and of anyone with romantic notions of Texas "independence."

### The rally by Aztlan Now was double the size of the Tea Party held earlier, but you would never know it by the press coverage. Fox News had considered whether to give it any attention. Hopefully they looked for signs of guns or Mexican flags, but were disappointed to find huge numbers of American flags instead, and homemade signs mostly reading "USA!" So they stayed away. The "liberal" media, true to their herd instinct, assumed this was a fringe group and ignored it also.

### Still, Guerrero and the others hoped it would draw enough attention to boost their cause. "Mexicans at the Alamo" as a headline? Hopefully that would be enough to draw attention and then in interviews where he could speak further.

### What he did not prepare for was the kind of angry reaction it would draw in some quarters....

### As Guerrero spoke, the crowd was in a jubilant mood. The local Latino community had not been this united in some time. Patriotism and showing one's loyalty to America by making certain everyone knew that traitors pushing independence did not speak for the Mexicans of Texas was a cause everyone could unite around.

### But in the distance, one could hear gunfire. Semi-automatic guns fired off rounds. The gunfire was getting closer! The crowd scattered in panic. Four armed men rushed in, mounted the stage, threatening those in their way, and pointed their guns at Guerrero.

### One held a gun to Guerrero's head. "Move when and where we tell you to move!"

### Aztlan Now security, mostly college student volunteers, were unarmed. They had not wanted the bad publicity, what the race-baiters at Fox would have done with the sight of Mexicans carrying guns. Local police were there largely for crowd control. Nothing like this had been prepared or planned for by the Aztlanistas.

### The four men, hostage in tow, rushed from the stage, past the crowds and to their waiting cars near Travis Park. Militia members had left the cars, one old Buick and an old Ford truck, running in the parking lot, with one member guarding them.

### The two cars roared down San Pedro Avenue. At any crowded intersection or red light, they fired their weapons in the air to clear traffic out of the way. The plan had been to take Highway 281 north to their hideout in San Antonio's suburbs in Comal County. The area was a hotbed of fundamentalists, home to the likes of conspiracist preacher John Hagee who, seriously, claims Obama is the Antichrist and a human in lizard form whose human skin would fall away and reveal himself any day now.

### But the lead car had turned to the left near Baptist Medical Center instead of right. Instead of the highway they were trapped on the busy avenue, driving on sidewalks, dodging near miss after near miss in traffic.

### After the third intersection they had to shoot their way through, the lead car pulled into a parking lot to the right. This was a place he knew, San Antonio College. The top floor of the Moody Learning Center was seven stories high, overlooking all the nearby area. A perfect place to hide out, he thought, accessible only by a single escalator and an old elevator.

### Both cars went past the parking lot and hopped up on the sidewalks, honking their horns at startled students. In the "free speech zone" between the Moody and the Loftin Student Center, the first car halted. The truck behind barely avoided hitting the first car.

### "What are we doing here?" yelled the militia leader.

### Said the car driver, "I know this place. Went to school here. The top floor is the perfect place to hole up."

### "You idiot! We'll be trapped half a mile from the downtown of a big city!"

### "We'd never make it out the city. This is our best bet."

### At that point, campus security was already running up to see what happened. The city police weren't far behind. The five militia members dragged their prisoner up the steps.

### Running up the escalators, the first militia member screamed obscenities and fired a shot in the ceiling. Students scrambled out of their way. The militia hustled their prisoner up the escalator.

### At the top floor, the group rushed into the library. "Everybody out!" yelled the militia leader, waving his pistol. "You stay!" he snarled at the librarian. She froze.

### More students scattered. The other militia members closed the library doors. The leader ordered the librarian to lock every entrance, his gun at her head while she did so.

### Three of the other militia members began piling tables at the entrances and windows. The last kept his gun on their captive.

### "You idiot!" growled the leader at the car driver. "You brought us to a place with plenty of windows!" Looking around, one could see the walls of the library between it and the hallway were glass partitions. "Plenty of ways for the cops to take a shot at us."

### "But it's high up. And hard to get to. We'll be able to see them coming."

### "And what about that?" The leader pointed indignantly outside the window. The neighboring parking garage was almost as high as the building.

### "It wasn't built yet when I went to school here. So much has changed," the car driver whimpered.

### The leader resigned himself to their situation. "We'll do the best we can. Not much choice..."

### Yet another militia standoff in Texas had begun.

### Chapter 6:

### The Militias Rally

### The news of the kidnapping of Carlos Guerrero threw the secession movement into a crisis. Every preconception of them was seemingly confirmed, as a violent threat to innocents and a bunch of racists with a special animus towards Mexicans. The question of Mexicans has always vexed those who think of Texas as a once independent nation. Obviously the Mexican and American Indian presence predated their own and had far more legitimacy than did any claim to Texas independence. The obvious solution was simply racist denigration of Mexicans, but after the civil rights movement that was no longer as acceptable as it once was.

### Guerrero was the embodiment of that ideological threat to their ideas, so it was little wonder he was singled out by an irrational and not very bright group of militia. But how to show the world that image was not all they were? The obvious way, after several failed public statements by their leaders that actually refused to condemn the kidnapping, was a public demonstration, bringing the whole movement into view where their voices could be heard, where they could make their case to the media.

### The call went out on secessionist sites all across the web, and was picked up by the national press:

### "Militias across the state rally!

### Texas is one and indivisible!

### We will not allow these illegal aliens to take over our beloved Republic!

### Will this be the proud Texas Republic?!

### Or one more banana republic run by drug dealing mafias?!"

### The rally had been in the planning stages prior to the kidnapping, as a counter protest to the Aztlan Now rally at the Alamo. Now it was needed more than ever. But already there were problems. The announcement seriously asked people to believe that all Mexicans were in Texas illegally. Not only was that racist and a ludicrous stereotype, it clearly was not true. Virtually everyone in Texas knew Mexicans who had been in the state many generations. Some of the young Latinos could not even speak Spanish. Some only knew the cursing. Most spoke Tex-Mex, which included not only a mix of Spanish and English, but many very archaic Spanish words from the days when Coahuila y Tejas were somewhat isolated from the rest of Mexico. Some Tejanos even named their kids very un-Latino names like Crystal and Cameron. Long gone were the days when most Mexicans had Biblical names like Lazaro and Magdalena.

### In Austin, more than 2,000 militia members, secessionists, gun rights people, anti-tax protesters, and varied opponents of the federal government rallied only two days after the kidnapping. The marchers gathered at the banks of the Colorado River, marching north up Congress Street for a dozen blocks, and then finally demonstrated in front of the State Capitol building.

### One of the most common and striking sights was that of marchers carrying guns. Perhaps half the marchers had pistols, revolvers, or other handguns strapped to their side. Many carried rifles and shotguns slung over their shoulders. Some were carrying semiautomatic weapons, AK-47s, M16s, and Uzis. A few provocatively chose to carry the weapons in their hands and sometimes even brandished them for the cameras, waving them high over their heads, shouting slogans.

### Officially, none of them were supposed to be loaded. (More than a few seemed to be carrying ammo clips or had them stashed or hidden nearby, ready to lock and load at a moment's notice.) Much like armed protesters at the Tea Parties, the marchers carried them with the intent of making a point about what they believe on the subject of gun rights, that anyone law abiding should be able to carry a weapon openly. But the manner of the protesters, and the fact of who the protesters were and what they believed on other subjects, undercut any gun rights message. What most of the public saw was a bunch of people wanting to overthrow the government. As if to underscore that, some protesters also carried signs saying, "My Gun Isn't Loaded- THIS TIME!"

### In practice, gun ownership in America has always been heavily racialized. Originally, the first gun laws in America both required every white male to own a gun and barred anyone who wasn't white from having one. The intent was obvious: Keep the darker races in line through force or the threat of force. When nonwhites carry guns, many find it threatening. California passed laws barring the public carrying of guns...right after the Black Panthers started doing it. Rapper Jasiri X put it succinctly in his song, "If the Tea Party Was Black." The double standard is clear. If Blacks or Mexicans tried carrying guns in demonstrations, the public outcry would be deafening. Even carrying Mexican flags in demonstrations brought forth bigoted howls from the likes of Fox News's Brit Hume. If he found a flag threatening, how much more enraged would he be by the sight of Mexicans demonstrating with their guns?

### Gun ownership continues to be highest among those least likely to need it for protection: the wealthier you are and the whiter you are, the less likely you are to be a crime victim. The darker and poorer you are, the more likely you are to be a crime victim. And poor nonwhite people can just as clearly see there are lesser consequences, namely shorter prison terms, for using a gun against others like themselves rather than against whites or well off victims. This, in part, is why the poor victimize mostly each other, and almost all crime is on people of similar background, Black-on-Black, Brown-on-Brown, and white-on-white. The one exception is among American Indians, who are usually victimized by white criminals.

### None of these facts take away from the point that guns can be useful tools, both for self-defense and hunting. It just points to the insanity behind people who, rather than think of guns as something practical, are downright gun worshippers, people who think of guns as literally a magic bullet, a quick easy solution for every problem. Guns give the delusion of absolute power and protection. Your voice is a far more effective weapon than a gun for maintaining your freedom. Dictatorships, far from fearing gun ownership, fear eloquent and outspoken people far more. Dictators round up university students and artists, not gun owners. The Nazis actually ended almost all the gun control that had been passed by the Weimar Republic. Looking at the rally marching up Congress Street, most Americans and even the most gun loving Texans had the thought that most of these people shouldn't be allowed to handle sharp scissors, much less carry an AK-47 near the capital.

### The rally sent the worst possible message: Angry white people raging against Mexicans, liberals, and government, and threatening violence. Much like the Tea Parties, protesters' signs seemed guaranteed to make them look like vicious racist nut jobs:

### "Rick Perry, Obama's White Slave"

### "Obama, Back Off Homey"

### "Rick Perry Got Punked by Obama"

### "The Zoo Has an African Lion and the White House Has a Lying African"

### "Kenyans and Mexicans Will Destroy Texas"

### "Stop the Mexican-Bilderberger-United Nations Takeover!"

### "Obama -Monkey See Monkey Destroy"

### "Obama=Slave Owner, Texas Taxpayer=Niggar"

### "Trade Obama Back to Kenya, Trade Mexicans Back to Mexico"

### "Texas Is White, Not Mexican"

### "Obama That's My Nigger"

### "Obama Perry = Somali Pirates"

### "Hang Em High Traitors Obama Perry Pelosi Kennedy"

### "Death For Feds"

### "Death For Perry and DPS"

### "It's Time to Water the Tree of Liberty with Perry & Obama's Blood"

### "I Got Your Trigger Right Here"

### "We Are Armed and Ready"

### "No Socialests, No Meskins"

### "I'm a Mavrick How Bout You"

### "Obama Perry the Massas of the Texas Plantation"

### "We're Not Slaves"

### "Obama Perry a Black Future"

### "AP Associated Puppetmasters" with a picture of Obama and Perry

### "Texas Taxpayers Are the Jews for Obama Perry's Ovens"

"Obama Bin Lyin, Perry Bin Bowin Down"

### "This Finger Wasnt Made to Press One for English"

### "Undocumented Worker" with picture of Obama

### "Control Our Boarder Stop Illegals"

### "Obama Perry Bilderberg Jihad"

### "Perry Is a Bilderberg UN NAFTA Stooge"

### "Obama Half Breed Muslin"

### "Perry Is a White Nigger White Meskin"

### "Perry Bilderberg Puppet Manchurian Candidate"

### "O.B.A.M.A. Oppressive Bloodsucking Arrogant Moslem Alien"

### "Go Back to Your Country"

### "Show Me Your Mexican Flag Ill Shove It Up Your Ass"

### "Go Trash Your Fathers Crappy Country"

### "40,000,000 Illegal Mexicans Violate US Texas Laws"

### "Gee a Whole Lot of White People Here Today"

### "We're Not Racest Your Illegal"

### But where the Tea Parties had an almost whimsical sense of delusion, with protesters often dressed like American Revolution characters, the secessionist uniform of choice was, well, uniform.

### Fully half the protesters wore army camouflage, an ill-fitting sea of mottled greens, browns, and grays. One militia group also wore camo makeup, usually green camo mixed with black shoe polish. Wearing shoe polish on the face gave some a definite minstrel show Amos-n-Andy look that combined with the racist signs in the worst way. Given that many of the militia members were clearly overweight, most were middle aged, and some were gray haired, balding, and elderly, the message they sent was not so much "We will fight for our freedom to the death" as "We are the bigoted uncles you get embarrassed about at family reunions."

### The other half of the protesters were mostly in t shirts and jeans, and the t- shirts usually had similar slogans as the signs. Not even the militia leaders could be bothered to wear suits, preferring to pose as, well, the leaders of actual militias, as though this ragtag collection was any kind of serious military threat. Threatening neighbors, making elaborate plans for murder, making inflammatory posts on the net, and even blundering into shootouts with police, these are terrorist actions, but they are not the same as starting a revolution. None of the militias pose the slightest challenge to a real army, no matter their delusions of fighting "tyranny." The ineffectiveness of these militias in every standoff they had and their inability to carry out any of their terrorist plots only highlights their utter lack of real military skills.

### But the message they sent that day to most Americans, most Texans, and especially most Tejanos or progressive Texans, was that these were people who mean to do you harm. The thought of a nation run by these ignorant crazed types was chilling. All the media had to do was point to their signs, or point to the secessionist websites with a call to expel any "communist" progressives from Texas. Aztlan Now activists reported a flood of activity on their behalf, more signatures on petitions, more online editorials in their favor, more calls and emails to elected officials.

### For the first time, most Mexican-American politicians in the state started to favor breaking away from Texas. Even should secession be defeated at the polls, reconciliation would take a long time. Texas politics had not been this polarized since the 1970s.

### Chapter 7:

### Standoff

### "Come on sheriff! Come on highway patrol! Come on you pathetic fat ass campus cops! Come get us!"

### The militia leader probably had the most bluster of any of them. The car driver had the least. He carried a perpetual hangdog look. The other three vacillated between anger, frustration, and fear, sometimes mocking the cops just to keep up their spirits.

### The police backed off, of course. Just as in previous standoffs with militia, police showed a restraint that would never have been given to someone holding hostages in a failed convenience store robbery.

### But it didn't take much to rattle militia members. They do not trust government, so of course they would not trust any offers of food sent by cops. They also did not trust the cops to not poison the water fountains in the library. One militia man thought they might put hallucinogens in it to get them to shoot each other. Others expected it would have sleeping pills. So none of them dared fall asleep.

### They did not even trust each other enough to sleep in shifts. As time went by they each began to entertain thoughts of who could be an informer, even who could not be dedicated enough to their ideals and would turn on them once they were arrested.

### It didn't take long. No surprise, Victor Dewayne White had given up after only twenty hours, and he was only slightly less prepared than this group. Rick McLaren, the leader of the ROT militia with six other allegedly trained members, had only been in able to carry out his standoff for a week.

### This militia bunch fell apart in three days. Tired, sleep deprived, thirsty, hungry, and downright delusional, they staggered out into the light of day, prisoners of Carlos Guerrero himself!

### Guerrero had not gotten much sleep, only a few sporadic hours a night. He seriously worried they would execute him, either in frustration, carelessness, or in revenge for starting a movement which threatened to take away nearly half the territory and people of their imagined (de facto All White or White Run) Texas Republic. He was certain they cursed him for exposing to the world the lie of the mythology surrounding the fanciful cowboy image of Texas. But he comforted himself knowing that if they killed him, most likely he would be far more of a potent symbol as a martyr. And others would take over, regardless of if he lived or not.

### But to his surprise, he woke up in the early morning of the third day to see several of the militia had finally collapsed. Two of them had finally fallen half asleep, slumped over on the floor, but with their guns nearby. Another stood on the far side of the room, looking out the window warily. The militia leader stood stock still, intense and concentrating on something only he could see. The final member, the driver, shivered in the corner, but not from cold. He had utterly broken down, a wreck of a man.

### Guerrero strained painfully against his bonds. The rope cut, but he was able to pull free. And no one had noticed, at least not yet.

### The closest man to him had his gun half covered by his hand, but was not gripping it. Guerrero lunged forward.

### The gun was in his hand! And no one had yet noticed. But there was no way to break through the barricades of tables pressed up against the doors without a lot of noise. And the librarian was still a hostage. No telling what they might do to her if he escaped. No way to wake her and remove her restraints without a chance of her making noise or attracting attention.

### So Guerrero took careful aim at the man at the window. The bullet pierced the man's shoulder. He slumped and fell to the ground. Then the militia leader was startled out of his reverie. Guerrero quickly shot him in the belly. The leader slumped forward, writhing in the most intense pain of his life.

### The car driver stayed in a state of shock, still unaware of anything around him. The other two came awake. The one still with his weapon began to reach for it, but quickly stopped when he realized Carlos was pointing the seized gun straight at him.

### And with that, the standoff was over.

### Carlos emerged in the early morning light, with two of the disarmed militia men ahead of him and the librarian behind him.

### "Officers, we're coming out! The militia is disarmed!"

### Police rushed forward. He laid his weapon down. The librarian laid down a bag with all the arms she had helped Guerrero gather from the other militia members.

### Guerrero said, "There are two wounded men in there. And the last one seems to be in shock, maybe a mental breakdown."

### Police rushed into the library cautiously. All three injured men were taken to University Hospital, what was once called Bexar County General Hospital. These antigovernment rightwing militia men would be treated in a public hospital at public expense. Had their own purely privatized system been in place, they would have died from lack of treatment for their lack of ability to play. Two of the militia were blue collar workers, one a plumber's helper and the other a laborer at construction sites. One was unemployed, and the other two ran small businesses, one selling weapons at guns shows and the other selling aluminum siding. All of them were barely getting by.

### Both wounded men would recover, though the militia leader took several months to recuperate from the bullet tearing through his intestines. The second man never would regain full use of his shoulder again, looking like a hunchback for the rest of his life. A public defender for the mentally traumatized militia man argued for temporary insanity at trial, a defense tactic roundly condemned by right wingers as too soft on crime.

Guerrero was widely hailed as a hero, "the man who outfought five militia crazies." Actually Guerrero did give credit to police for keeping up the pressure enough to effectively disarm the militia. Some of the public compared him to daring folk heroes like Joaquin Murietta, Juan Cortina or Gregorio Cortes, or Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry or Charles Bronson in Deathwish. One underground artist did a comic of Guerrero's life showing him as a modern day Zorro, making utter fools of the militia in the same comical but daring way Zorro did to colonial soldiers.

### Guerrero gave his first public appearance the day after the standoff, speaking spontaneously:

### "Aztlan, we will become a state! Our fate is sealed! It is destiny! We know that and you know that!

The whole world has seen the true nature of these white supremacist militia wimps! Yes, they are wimps, cobardes, loudmouths, violent traitors, vermin and criminals, murderers and terrorists, small brained men with guns they can't use because their verga is small and limp. I spit in their face! I kicked their tail all up and down the street! And so will we all, come convention day! And so will we all, come Election Day!

### Use this chance to move forward, push hard. Push your congressmen! Push your senators!

### Aztlan now! All the other states that wish to break away, act now!"

### Video of the statement went viral. It was one of the most played clips online. This triumphant heroic end to the kidnapping was the final push the Aztlan Now movement needed. Aztlan Now delegates were elected from each county and sent to the statehood convention in the Alamodome. It was a foregone conclusion how they would vote.

### It was also almost preordained now how all of Texas would vote in the referendum. The nonbinding independence resolution never had more than 30-35% support at any point. The real danger was always that in a low turnout, the ones most likely to vote were the ones most likely to favor it, older white conservative Republicans. Those most opposed to generally have a lower turnout, Blacks, Latinos, and younger voters.

### But with the anger aroused by the kidnapping and the militia rally, and the jubilation following the triumphant end of the kidnapping, voter turnout reached an unprecedented 80%. (Something similar happened one state over when former KKK leader David Duke ran for governor of Louisiana. When faced with the threat of a racist takeover, voter turnout soared and Duke lost by almost two to one.) Texans overwhelmingly voted against the secession resolution by over three to one, 77% opposed, 23% favoring.

### The urban legend of Texas "independence," which had never happened in the first place, was now dead. The possibility of it ever coming true was gone beyond all doubt. Most striking of all was that of those opposed to secession, young white voters were almost as likely to oppose it as Latinos or Blacks. Those favoring secession would be as rare a species as believers in a flat earth a generation from now.

### Aztlan Now prepared to make the new state of Aztlan. But while they would succeed beyond their wildest dreams, not all would turn out as some of them hoped.

### Chapter 8:

### Alamodome Convention

### One the edge of downtown San Antonio lies the Alamodome, a convention center holding up to 65,000 people. The dome, as people often call it, was built under Mayor Henry Cisneros, the first Latino mayor in this Latino majority city in nearly 150 years. (City politics had long been dominated by political boss Brian "King" Callaghan and his son, and later by the Good Government League of wealthy Anglos on the north side.) Intended to bribe the San Antonio Spurs from moving to a new city, the dome was also built to serve the needs of Anglo real estate developers, who have long had a stranglehold on city government. This made for a nice bit of irony that a convention designed to plan a state named after the Aztec homeland be held there.

### Delegates and curious onlookers of cheering crowds flooded in. Here were old time Brown Power people now in their fifties and sixties, today mostly teachers and writers. Side by side with them were Latino establishment types, the small businessmen (mostly restaurant and bar owners), the lawyers, the up and coming YUMMies, (Young Upwardly Mobile Mexicans), and college students. Here were suburbanized Mexicans who spoke little Spanish and sounded like their Anglo friends side by side with those from the deep barrios, the small town and rural Mexicans in their cowboy boots, and people from the border cities who made their living treating the boundary as a nuisance.

### There were also more than a few Anglos from San Antonio's north side, the Anglo neighborhoods of Corpus Christi, and Anglos who had long been part of the small towns who spoke Spanish almost as well as any Mexican. Some of the Anglos made up the city's environmental movement, hoping for a better chance under Aztlan than the ugly sinkhole, a series of developments that resemble strip malls and not neighborhoods, which make up the north side. Libertarians were there in force as well, hoping to shape the new state. Conservative Evangelical whites also showed up, fearing the worst.

### The last group need not have worried. Latino establishment figures made up fully half of the delegates. To avoid a bruising convention fight and close votes at the start that could undermine confidence in the new state, there were many compromises.

### The Texas Constitution is one of the worst of any state in the US. It is ridiculously long and unclear. It is in fact the longest constitution in the nation, with 467 amendments. (No, that is not a typo. 467.) Much of the constitution actually repeats itself. It is also the sixth constitution the state has had, and the second most restrictive one in the nation, after South Carolina's. The state constitution strictly forbids the state government from doing anything not explicitly granted the right to do. Thus there is the need for literally hundreds of amendments. Even the most minor changes in law or regulation often require a constitutional amendment. It also has large portions that are useless, such as over sixty outdated deleted sections, and large parts that contradict itself, such as demanding all office holders admit the existence of God while also barring any religious test for office.

The constitution was written after Reconstruction, designed to keep the government from being able to protect the rights of former Black slaves (and to a lesser extent, Mexicans and American Indians.) To keep government from working well, every cabinet member is elected separately, and congress only meets for 140 days every other year. The governor is actually a figurehead, with very little power. Every cabinet member is elected separately and has more power than the governor. Both George W. Bush and Rick Perry had a lot experience winning elections, but almost none actually governing. Texas is a living breathing example of how limited government does not work well at all, and that is exactly why business loves it. Texas state government cannot or will not protect the rights of just about anyone, from nonwhites to consumers to prisoners to women to religious groups. The state government doesn't have the means, financial or logistical, or the political will. The one exception is that is the state does make lawsuits very easy, so Texas is a litigation happy state. Suing is one of the few ways the average Texan can seek justice.

### The new state constitution for Aztlan was a model of clarity and brevity, light years away from the Texas Constitution. Simplicity was the watchword so as to get the support of voters. There was to be only one legislature, not two houses. Nebraska's unicameral legislature has always worked as well as any state with two houses. The congress was also to be small, to save on expenses, only twelve members. The governor would have as much power as in most states or as a US president, including appointing his own cabinet, pardons, vetoes, and even a vote in congress in the event of tie votes.

### Since Anglos would make up perhaps one sixth of the population, there would likely be two largely Anglo districts, one in San Antonio and one for in and around Corpus Christi. Blacks made up less than a few percent of the state (mostly in San Antonio's east side), and Asians the same (mostly scattered across San Antonio's north side, except for Filipinos who lived among the Mexican neighborhoods) so no districts for them were possible. The state as a whole was much more likely to vote Democratic by a four to one margin. Only the Anglo districts had any chance of Republican congressmen. They would face some stiff competition from not only the Democrats, but from Greens and Libertarians. One of the first rules all parties agreed on was allowing combined tickets, which in the Anglo districts would wind up being a contest of Democratic-Green vs. Libertarian-Republican. On a national level, the state would get four congressmen, two senators (usually Democrats and usually working class liberals, like most Mexicans). The only chance Republicans had for garnering Mexican voters were on the abortion issue, and even on that more than half of all Mexican Catholics in the US don't follow or believe in Catholic Church teaching on abortion. The more likely hope for Republicans was among the Mexican population's growing Evangelicals.

### The final lure for voters to vote for the new constitution and statehood was a series of guaranteed rights. The US Bill of Rights was enforced by Aztlan's constitution. Added to this were guarantees of the right to vote, in a strong rebuke of Republican efforts to keep as many Blacks, Latinos, and poor whites as possible from voting using voter ID laws, on the phony pretext of nonexistent voter fraud and race baiting claims that "criminals" (code word for people who aren't white) might vote.

### The constitution also guaranteed rights to food, shelter, and healthcare, making it quite clear that Aztlanistas thought of themselves as their brother's keeper, following good Catholic principle. This meant the state was committed to helping the poor. A right to privacy was included, strongly implying that abortion would be protected. Finally the right to language was included, putting an end to cases of employers firing workers for speaking Spanish and encouraging both English and Spanish to be taught at a young age to all children, Anglos, Mexicans, and others. Guerrero even insisted upon guarantees for the new state's tiny American Indian tribes, the Kickapoo in Eagle Pass and an unrecognized group, the Lipan Apache, plus scattered urban Cherokees.

### The issue of where to have the new capital was one where Guerrero's genius showed itself again. Clearly San Antonio would be the new capital, as the largest city and a forward capital. The capital building itself, where the legislature would meet? No less than the Alamo itself!

### The Alamo, and the battle there that made the site so famous, have long been white supremacy symbols pretending to be symbols of freedom. "Freedom," for those who hold up the "heroes" of the battle as worthy of admiring, apparently means stealing land from brown skinned people and refusing to follow their laws. The revolt was led by men who were horrified at having to live in a nation of mixed race Indians, with a government that had already outlawed slavery nearly half a century before the US and even had a mixedblood Black-Indian President of Mexico, Vicente Guerrero.

### John Wayne was the best known example of the Alamo's admirers, a self- described white supremacist who produced, directed, starred in, and even partly financed the notoriously inaccurate far right wing screed of a film. The film shows Mexicans as little but faceless evil, and was little but a platform for Wayne's views.

### But Wayne was far from the first to rewrite history and ignore facts that didn't suit him. The Alamo has long been run by the Daughters of the Republic of Texas (DRT). Membership is limited to descendants of the terrorist insurgency against Mexico, and some of the small number of Tejano descendants who took part first complained of falsehoods in the story being presented to the public, and then broke with the Anglo leaders in disgust. Probably the worst racism in what the DRT presents to the public is the obscene cenotaph in front of the Alamo, a memorial to the insurgents. Not content with glorifying an uprising by racists to give America another slave state, the monument adds Anglos who were not even part of the battle, and excludes Tejanos who were.

### On top of that, the grounds in front of the Alamo are an American Indian grave yard, a Catholic cemetery from the time the Alamo was a mission to convert the Coahuilteca Indians. The city finally agreed to no longer allow traffic to drive over the graveyard. The DRT has kept its incompetent control over the Alamo mostly because the state of Texas likes the fact that the site doesn't cost the state any money to maintain.

Others have recognized how the Alamo's symbolism is important enough to be challenged. PBS journalist Jim Lehrer wrote the novel Viva Max about a Mexican army unit's attempt to take back the mission, mocking Texan pretensions about the battle site. It was made into a Hollywood comedy in 1969, and the DRT, unable to handle criticism, tried to shut it down by protesting filming on site. Communist Party members ran a hammer and sickle flag up the Alamo in 1980. One of the members was murdered later, and other members allege it was retaliation. The Ku Klux Klan then vowed to "stand guard" to prevent any "takeover" by like-minded people.

### Guerrero knew exactly why he wanted to see the Alamo as the capital for Aztlan. What a message that would send to white racists and those with fantasy images of Texas. Mexicans of a breakaway state, holding their congress inside the Alamo! A symbol of white supremacy transformed into a symbol of Latino triumph over that white supremacy.

### It would certainly be a great improvement to see the Alamo become a congressional hall, instead of what it currently was, tourist schlock inside a badly maintained old building. Tourists typically see the Alamo for the first time and are stunned to see it across from Rivercenter Mall, with Walgreen's across the street. "That's it?!" They were expecting it to be out on the open plains they'd seen on film.

### But to instead see Aztlan state police guarding the Alamo, and people coming into a small visitor's area to watch the dozen congressmen passing laws. What a different message that sends. Mexican-American self-rule, self-sufficiency, and self-realization after a century and a half of alienation within their own homeland, and until the civil rights movement, lorded over by racist Anglos, fearful of indigenous Mexicans.

### The final issue, one which Guerrero and the old time activists had to give way on, was the name of the state. Many worried naming a state after the Aztec homeland and a potent symbol of Latino nationalism was too divisive. It was too easy for the ignorant and the racist to portray the state as somehow itself racist. Guerrero correctly pointed out this would happen no matter what they did, much like lies from the likes of Glen Beck or Bill O'Reilly that MECHA was somehow "racist" even though it is a middle of the road civil rights group with membership open to anyone.

### For the younger generations, Aztlan wasn't necessarily that much of a symbol anyway. It mostly was one for baby boomers, those who came of age in the 60s and 70s who once called themselves Chicanos. And finally complicating the matter was the fact that Texas may not have been Aztlan anyway. Modern scholarship points towards the Mexican states of Sonora or Sinaloa as more likely candidates.

### The debate became what to name the state instead. South Texas was long what most people called the region anyway. But to name a state breaking away from Texas while including Texas in the name seemed hypocritical. Others suggested Tejas, but that would have been too confusing. No doubt many Anglos would mispronounce it "Tedge- us" instead of "Teh-has." Some even suggested returning the name to Coahuila y Tejas. But there you had the same problem with pronunciation, and with ignorant racists who felt easily threatened by a name in Spanish.

### Finally the convention settled on the most neutral name they could find, one named after geography. Rio Grande would be the state's new name, named after the river which many Anglos incorrectly call the "Rio Grande River." A geographic feature neutralized all the ludicrous claims of racism. The matter of what to call residents of the state was complicated. No doubt many Anglos would insist on being called Rio Grandians. No doubt many Latinos would insist on Rio Granderos or Rio Grandistas. And no doubt some of the old time militants will still insist on being called Aztlanistas. The convention decided to leave such a matter to a future legislature.

### Only three weeks later, in an election held quickly to still capitalize on the euphoria following Guerrero capturing his kidnappers and the secession resolution being defeated, the voters approved the new constitution by a huge margin, 74% in favor to 26% opposed. And this never would have been possible if Rick Perry had not put his foot in his mouth, and then stubbornly not admitted he was wrong. Thank you, Rick Perry!

### One ominous sign, though, was that Anglos had voted against statehood by a margin of two to one. Guerrero and the other Aztlan Now people knew they would have to move cautiously to avoid stirring up any fear among these conservative whites, who could easily move to the suburbs in Comal and Kendall Counties. One of the first solutions passed, though, was punitive. Rio Grande set up toll booths to tax those coming in from outside the new state, hoping the expense would encourage them to move back to San Antonio.

### Guerrero now turned his attention to the new statehood movements elsewhere...

### And Obama and progressive Democrats, minus the Blue Dogs, saw an opportunity in the healthcare debate. With four new states, with reliably Democratic voters, would bring eight US senators and break any Republican attempt to filibuster.

### Privately, Obama and congressional Democrats must have wondered if they too should thank Rick Perry.

### Chapter 9:

### El Paso and Austin Conventions

### El Paso sits on the furthest western edge of Texas. It is actually closer to Los Angeles than the eastern edge of Texas. It is a city of about 800,000, right across the border from Juarez which has twice that many people. Not too surprisingly, the metro area of El Paso-Juarez has long been a crossroads between New Mexico and the nation of Mexico. It was not until the modern interstate highways were built in the 1950s that it saw much contact with the rest of Texas.

### The western panhandle area never wanted to be part of Texas. When Texas was taken over by the US to become another slave state, naturally that caused quite a bit of controversy. The US Congress debated whether or how to divide up the state, finally adding the provision it could be split into four more states at a later time. Culturally, economically, and geographically, this western area is much closer in every way to New Mexico. But the "Texas Republic" was dead broke and heavily in debt due to its leaders incredible incompetence at governing. So to get the federal government to pay off the debts, at first they agreed to let go of claims to the territory now making up New Mexico and parts of Colorado and further north. But a later governor changed his mind and threatened to send Texas militia into New Mexico. It looked as though Texas and New Mexico might have a mini-war. To satisfy the Texas governor, the federal government agreed to hand over large chunks of what at the time were looked at as mostly useless barren territory, west Texas, including two western panhandles.

### These two panhandles, one northwest and one southwest, play a big part in Texans' self-image. Just like the Rio Grande Valley in the south, they give Texas its unique distinctive shape and are the clearest sign of aggression, of reaching out to grasp territory against the wishes of the people there. Take them away and you take away some of the foolish pride of some Texans. Texas without the panhandles looks more like an oversized Idaho, a comical rather than an aggressively shaped state.

### The southwest panhandle has only one big city, El Paso. The remaining counties are huge in size and very low in population. Only two of the counties have more than a few thousand people each, sometimes much less. Loving County, right at the corner of the state, has the smallest county population in the US, barely sixty, with a "town" of about half that.

### Guerrero and other Aztlan Now leaders traveled to El Paso to the convention. They had been in contact with El Paso civic leaders and community organizers almost from the day his editorial was published. The convention had begun immediately after the end of the Aztlan meeting in the dome. Again, the gathering had the same mix of activists with Latino business establishment members. But unlike in Rio Grande, El Paso had very few Anglos. Whites make up not quite one in ten people in the region, and most of them mixed freely, lived in the same neighborhoods, often intermarried, and spoke Spanish.

### The only worry was in gathering support from the rural counties. For just El Paso to break away would send a different message than an entire region. Small town politics in Texas is enormously insular, decided by very small groups that literally could fit around a single table. This gave these few counties outsized influence in the convention, but also made them easier to influence. Guerrero's presence and that of other Aztlanistas was just what the rural counties needed to see. He reassured them this was a wise step.

### To move the convention along and get a public vote while enthusiasm was still high, the convention adopted virtually all of the Rio Grande state constitution. The main exception was that protection and deference extended to the Kickapoo tribe and other Indians was instead extended to the tiny Tigua people, Ysleta Pueblo within the borders of El Paso itself.

### The only debate was over the name of the new state. Some half heartedly suggested Aztlan as a name once again. But business leaders put their foot down, worried about spooking Anglo investors from outside the region, pushing for a neutral geographic name again. The convention settled on Pecos, named after the river.

### The constitution and new statehood passed by a ridiculously high margin, 89% to 11%. In the rural counties, the margin of victory was only by a few percentage points.

### Things were looking very poorly for Republicans in DC. The region votes consistently Democratic, by more than 90%. Two more Democrats joined the US Senate, and like in Rio Grande, they were strong progressive working class Mexicans.

### Texas was getting smaller by the month. Thank you, Rick Perry!

### Austin sits in the center of the state. It was not always so. The town actually once was what is called a forward capital, a capital on the edge of claimed territory, designed to serve as notice by an aggressive nation that "we will hold onto this land, come what may." (Other famous examples from history include St. Petersburg in Russia and Richmond of the Confederacy.)

### Austin is named after the man who brought over the Anglo-American colonists who decided to commit treason and overthrow Mexican rule. Stephen Austin was as much of a racist as most of the insurgents, and in the first decades the population of Austin was almost two fifths Black slaves brought there against their will. That makes it doubly ironic that today Austin is famous as an eclectic center of progressive thinking. This is the city that takes as an unofficial slogan, "Keep Austin Weird."

### In the 1970s and 80s Austin began attracting an impressive music scene with everyone from Willie Nelson to the punk rock band Millions of Dead Cops. Austin ever since has attracted many people who see it as a liberal oasis, with a strong environmental movement, anti-corporate movement, and probably proportionately the large gay community of any southern city. Over a third of the city is Latino, with Asians and Blacks each making up about one twelfth of the city population. The city's progressiveness has attracted the largest concentration of high tech industry outside of Silicon Valley, leading to another nickname for the area, Silicon Hills.

### Texas legislators who come to Austin often cannot stand the atmosphere, and even derisively redbait the city as the "People's Republic of Austin." The frequent sight of openly gay couples, a wide variety of cultures, tolerance for the homeless, and health food stores and vegetarian restaurants outnumbering "regular" ones makes for quite a culture shock for the conservative Republicans who make up most of the legislature. So it was only fitting that Austin responded to such a long history of contempt from Texas state officials by finally declaring their independence as a city-state. Recall, the Texas Nationalist Movement is on record as calling for no less than a purge of all Texas "communist" progressives. Most Austinites knew all too well, they would have to flee any new "Republic of Texas." Flee, or even be kicked out by force!

### Austin's statehood movement met at the Frank Irwin Center, less than ten blocks from the Texas State Capital Building. The movement attracted everyone fed up with interference from the Texas state government, its kowtowing to business interests, spending more on prisons than schools, gerrymandering districts based on political advantage for Republicans, and a state school board notorious for putting false history in textbooks. They wanted a state with schools where you could mention Darwin, lynching, and condoms, where you could admit gay people exist and that many Founding Fathers weren't Christians (most were Deists), and where oil, banks, and Evangelical churches did not try to dominate every aspect of daily life.

### Austin's statehood convention was the most contentious and drawn out of any held by the statehood movements, if only because every idealistic thinker saw a chance to put their ideas into reality. Environmentalists proposed enshrining environmental protections into the new state constitution. Blacks and Latinos wanted an end to rampant poverty and exclusion of the city's poorer east side. Gays wanted civil rights protections included, including a guarantee of the right to marry. Feminists hoped to see abortion explicitly protected by a state constitution for the first time, and some hoped to see quotas for women as elected officials. Some idealists even called for nothing less than experiments in alternatives to capitalism to be set up by the city-state.

### Even on the most central questions, that of the structure of the new government, there was little agreement. Some wanted an open forum much like some small towns in Vermont, where every adult would be allowed to speak their piece and then vote. They hoped to see this act of direct democracy go even further, replacing any legislature. Some quickly pointed out this was not practical. The city had close to a million people. Their quick response was that every neighborhood should have open forums, and that each neighborhood would then have one vote. Other proposed instead having a legislature chosen by lottery, with one hundred persons chosen in proportion to the ethnicity, gender, and income level of the populace. Some wanted a council leading the executive branch rather than a governor. Others proposed every cabinet member be elected separately, completely decentralized government. (This failed when someone pointed out this was exactly what Texas already had, and it resulted in a weak government that doesn't work.) Some wanted judges elected while others preferred appointed but easily impeached. One speaker even suggested any supreme court be replaced by a council of wise elders taken from all areas of life, from religious leaders to artists to teachers.

### Finally, one convention member brought Carlos Guerrero up from San Antonio to address them. Guerrero worried this convention would founder because it had too many abstract idealists rather than hard headed realists who could get things done:

### "My friends, I beseech you, do not let your high mindedness get the better of you. Do not struggle to achieve perfection in an afternoon, or even a week or a month. Instead, build the means to achieve all you seek, the structure, the skeleton, and let the flesh be added later.

### I humbly submit that our own constitution for the state of Rio Grande would make an excellent outline for your own. It can be the skeleton, the blueprint on which you can hope to build your noble experiments. Do not seek such radical democracy, for it may become cumbersome, and especially in this early phase, your opponents who wish to see you fail can latch on to your indecision and spread disillusion. The skeleton now, the flesh added later. Or if need be, let there be amputations and implants.

### Then once you have the basic structure, let each faction, each section of thinkers add that which will guarantee the rights they hold dearest. I beseech you to consider my words."

### The convention accepted Guerrero's plan. The structure of government branches was the same for Austin as for Rio Grande and Pecos, and as it would be later for West Texas. Then gays added a clause protecting gays. Feminists got one protecting abortion and birth control. All members also agreed to push for every political party to have a quota guaranteeing each gender would have no less than 40% of all elected offices, and would strive for a 50-50 ratio. Economic progressives got one clause limiting corporate power and another strongly dissenting against the federal definition of corporations as "persons." Ethnic minorities got a clause defending minority language speakers, with every language with over a hundred speakers in the city specifically named. An official language was specifically banned as promoting prejudice.

### For those hoping to see experiments in alternatives to capitalism, they had to admit such plans might cause a flight by large employers. Instead they settled for one clause protecting unions and another guaranteeing poorer people would not be taxed unfairly. Texas has one of the most regressive set of taxes in the nation, with the poor paying much more than the wealthy, since it has no income tax but does have a high sales tax.

### From now on, the people of Austin were not only taxed progressively, they were even fined progressively. If a millionaire and a man making minimum wage got the same traffic ticket, they no longer paid the same $250, which is inherently unfair. Instead, they both paid one week's income, $250 for the poorer man and $40,000 for the millionaire. Justice was served. Activists across the nation took note, and the same proposal spread quickly to small towns as far away as Alaska and Maine. Even Sarah Palin's hometown of Wasilla considered it, and passed the law. The former governor learned to drive more cautiously, not wanting to lose the wealth she made fleecing anti-intellectuals.

### The day after Austin voted to become a separate city-state, Governor Rick Perry and the other Republicans were in a quandary. Most Texas state buildings were now technically in another state. And the state of Texas had no money to build a whole new set of offices, another capital building, another governor's mansion, another supreme court, another set of buildings for the dozens of agencies this "small government" philosophy maintained. To do so, one would have to raise taxes, and that was a political death sentence for Perry or any other Republican.

### Besides, where could Texas choose for its new capital? The obvious choices were either Dallas or Houston. Competition for the new capital would set off a stark choice over who would run the state, oil interests in Houston or bankers in Dallas. Perhaps the best choice would be a compromise. College Station was the home of Texas A & M, and many legislators were alumni. Choosing College Station would also please the rural whites of east Texas, many of them angry over how Perry bungled the secession issue and lost half the state's territory and population. There was even a good chance healthcare reform might pass because of Perry's screw up!

### But Austin did not really want the state of Texas to leave either. The state was their number one employer. Especially vital was the University of Texas at Austin, one of the nation's best public universities, and one that received more funding than all other state universities put together. Austin was glad to work out a compromise with Texas. Texas could keep its state offices in Austin, free of charge. In exchange, Texas must keep funding the University of Texas at its current levels, and must also fund any rise in enrollment. Failure to do so, and the City-State of Austin would foreclose on Texas government buildings and expel their occupants.

### Thus the City-State of Austin became the only state to have another state's capital within its borders, and the only city to be the capital of two states. There was also a nice irony in the conservative state of Texas funding this most liberal new state of Austin.

### For Rick Perry though, it was yet another state to not recognize officially, insisting publicly that they were just some misbehaving residents who would come back any day now, even while his conservative party negotiated with Austin and prayed they would be allowed to stay in the city. (For one thing, where else would it be so convenient for closeted married gay conservatives to find gay sex partners?)

### The City-State of Austin became the only US state besides Vermont where third parties had a good chance of getting elected. The Democratic Socialists had a small chapter in the area whose membership soared after statehood. So did the old radical labor union, the International Workers of the World, or Wobblies. But the best chance was for the Greens. And any Democrat would be guaranteed to never be a Blue Dog, Green in almost all but name. While the suburbs sometimes vote Republican, only a sharp split between two strong Democratic and Green candidates could give them a chance at winning.

### That meant two more progressive US Senators added to Washington DC....

### Thank you, Rick Perry!

### Chapter 10:

### What a Difference

### In all three states, it didn't take much time to see dramatic changes.

The first conflicts came with the greatly shrunken state of Texas. Rick Perry still insisted these were misbehaving groups of malcontents who would come back any day now to "our great state of Texas." Backtracking from his push that had let them vote, county by county, on whether to leave, Perry now insisted they had no right to. A man who defended the mythical "right" of secession for Texas was not going to allow any secession from Texas.

### So Perry thought he would use state resources to break the fledgling new states. Texas state offices were ordered to stay under the control of Texas, not allowing them to transfer to Rio Grande, Pecos, or Austin. The state police would all stay Texas state police, and along with the Rangers would enforce continued Texan state control.

### The three new governors quickly consulted by phone and came up with an ingenious solution. Hit Perry in the one area where no conservative politician could bend: taxes. All three governors went to the new congresses, which quickly passed new laws declaring the high sales tax ended in their states. Instead, that would be replaced by state income taxes, 1% for the poorest, 10% for the wealthiest. Local consumers were elated, especially the poorer ones. Their cost of living had just dropped by almost a tenth. Merchants liked not having to collect sales tax anymore as well. Perry would now be stuck having to defend taxes, and collect them using force. And three progressive governors and congresses had just earned reputations as both tax cutters and for soaking the wealthy!

### The three governors followed up that maneuver with a second one as ingenious. State police and National Guard within their new states were to be transferred from Texas to Rio Grande, Pecos, and Austin. Any officer wishing to resign and join Texas state police or National Guard could do so. But very few actually did.

### Perry seemed to be caught off guard yet again. He blustered in public that he would enforce the law and seemed to be vaguely threatening to even use the National Guard to keep the three new states from breaking away. Guerrero saw a chance and gave pointed public speeches about Perry's "oppressiveness and tyranny," throwing Perry's own words back at him. The speeches struck a chord, and Perry backtracked and insisted publicly he never meant to imply using military force.

### The matter was finally settled by Department of Defense rulings that, yes, the National Guard in those new states were being transferred from the state of Texas. The head of the police unions stated publicly he didn't think most state police would be willing to use force against the three new states either. All three new states organized their new state police (basically just a matter of ordering new uniforms) and Perry lost again.

### The final maneuver Perry had left was trying to use state prisoners as a bargaining chip. Texas has close to a hundred prisons, both public and privately run for profit, holding over 160,000 prisoners. The number of parolees is several times that, for the state is notorious for handing out long sentences but also paroling in most cases after as little as 10% of the sentence is served.

### (Kind of contradicts the false image of tough Texas justice, doesn't it? The purpose of long sentences is to have the parolees pay the state through the nose for many years. Prisons are a huge business in Texas, and a big money maker for both the state and private business.)

### One of the first laws all three states passed was an end to criminalizing marijuana. Within Mexican culture, there has long been a lesser stigma to using marijuana, even less than for using alcohol. For other drugs, all three states ordered rehab or detox treatment rather than prison sentences for addicts. Ending prison sentences for drug addicts meant that about one fifth of the prisoners from Rio Grande, Pecos, and Austin would go free. Every prisoner sentenced for possession was now free. Those guilty of trafficking in marijuana were now free. Even some of those who had trafficked in other drugs were now free, if they could prove addiction and the amount was for personal use, or if the trafficking was to support their own addiction.

### But Perry refused to let any prisoners go. He continued to claim all four states' prisons were Texas prisons. To his embarrassment, the prison guards union again stated they would not support him, and agreed to turn over their facilities to the new states. So Perry turned to refusing to allow prisoners from Rio Grande, Pecos, or Austin to be set free, if they were locked up in a prison that was still in the shrinking state of Texas.

### Perry felt buoyed by this strategy. It allowed him to bluster as tough on crime, and bash these new progressive states as too soft on criminals. The three new governors were stymied.

### What none of them counted on were prisoners making a dramatic statement of their own.

### The first uprising in Texas prisons actually didn't involve any prisoners who might be released. That was simply the pretext. Prisons are always bottled rage, violence ready to burst at the slightest excuse, brutality multiplied by grievances real or imagined. The news of one fifth of the prisoners being released stirred a lot of resentment among the prison hierarchy. Prison gangs would be losing their biggest source of income, addicted prisoners paying far more for dope inside the prison than outside of it. Addicts could be coerced, bribed, extorted, prostituted, and forced to make their family members pay as well. The number of criminals imprisoned for violent crime would decline sharply as well if addicts were treated as ill rather than as criminals. The crime rate and prison population would drop overall with drug treatment for addicts, since addiction plays a large role in many crimes.

### The gangs didn't want to see the addicts leave. Some gangs also hated the new states with a passion. Rio Grande and Pecos, states run by Mexicans? The Aryan Brotherhood and Texas Syndicate, which virtually run things inside the state prisons in collusion with corrupt white racist prison guards, could not have that. And the transfer of prisoners from Texas to Rio Grande or Pecos meant that those prisons were bound to be run now by gangs like the Mexican Mafia, Tango Blast, Barrio Azteca, Orejones, Hermanos Pistoleros Latinos, and Texas Chicano Brotherhood. Black prison gangs like the Black Guerilla Family also knew they would be facing a new situation, where they would become the Aryan Brotherhood's main rivals thanks to far fewer Latinos in Texas prisons.

### Some of the uprisings targeted prison guards, and seemed to be protests urging addicted prisoners be released. But some were clearly mass assaults on drug offenders by angry, vengeful, or jealous fellow prisoners. The death toll reached over 100.

### Both types of uprisings proved a huge embarrassment to Perry. Even more striking was that none of the uprisings were in prisons in the three new states. Right wing hate radio tried to spin the timing and location of the prison rebellions as a massive conspiracy to embarrass the governor. "Criminals love the new liberal states and will kill to get back at Rick Perry!"

### Fox News was, not too surprisingly, virtually silent, except for calling for the uprisings to be put down by massive force. Fox had to remain mostly silent. After all, they had promoted his flirtation with secession as a way to embarrass Obama on healthcare reform. Now it was backfiring badly and giving the Democrats new senators, and the GOP a governor whose prospects as president were fading.

### After a week and a half, the last of the prison revolts were crushed. The prison guard union bluntly laid the blame on Perry and his bumbling, but also on the long term neglect of the prisons. In some of the interviews, one couldn't help but notice how many of the guards favored letting addicts be treated rather than imprisoned. It would ease the overcrowding, weaken the gangs, and certainly make prison guards' jobs much easier.

### In the end, Perry quietly backed down, letting drug offenders from the new states get released. Perry made light of it when asked by reporters. "If they want to go easy on druggies, who am I to tell them different?"

### He had played his last hand, and lost. Now all he had left was to insist someday, surely someday, those three states would come back to Texas. He was acting like a jilted boyfriend who doesn't want to admit his girlfriend has moved on.

### What a difference it made, the Mexican majority regions (and one progressive city) formerly part of Texas freed from reactionary domination. Lower taxes for the poor, and the wealthy finally paying a fair share. Schools fully funded. Highways far less funded since the oil industry was no longer king.

### For all the complaints about big government, none of the three new states had as large a bureaucracy as Texas, not even in proportion to population. The states shifted their funding from corporate welfare to a generous public assistance equal only to California's. This included generous unemployment retraining and, in Austin, the return of the union hiring halls. The three states had some of the fastest growing unions in the country, Austin especially. This meant that, in the middle of a recession, wealth was actually being redistributed from the wealthy to everyone else, not by government so much as by efforts of the workers themselves. For the first time in generations, the region had thriving unions of construction workers, hotel workers, and the like, not just unions for cops and firefighters. Leading the way were the biggest industries, hi tech, medical, and government, where the employers were progressive minded or the public could pressure them, thus giving way on workers' rights much easier.

### Marijuana had not only been legalized. In Austin they entirely decriminalized it, allowing anyone to grow it individually, or any business to sell it or market it. The only restriction was on use by minors, while driving, or trying to cross the state border with it. In Rio Grande and Pecos, one needed a license much like a liquor license. Austin experimented with harm reduction programs like in Europe, where heroin addicts went through methadone programs. An ugly side effect was the flocking of addicts to the city because the penalty for prosecution was gone.

### Ironically, in some ways Austin became something of a Libertarian center. Sex work was also decriminalized in Austin, leading to a booming prostitution trade equal to Nevada's. This was coupled with extremely strict laws about pimping minors or human trafficking. In a campaign led by feminists, immigrant rights activists, and by Black civil rights leaders drew comparisons to slavery, resulting in some of the harshest sentencing in the nation. A human trafficker in Austin faced life doing hard labor without the possibility of parole. Human trafficking resulting in death was the only crime in Austin for which they had the death penalty.

### For all other offenses the city-state at first abolished the death penalty. Later it was reinstated for hate crimes resulting in death, including hate crimes based on orientation. A second change in the death penalty came in the face of threats from the militia movement. Terrorism resulting in death, attempted mass murders, or attempted murder of cops or public officials carried the death penalty. Rio Grande and Pecos followed suit.

### Crime dropped in all three states, to the disbelief of conservatives. Open carry of guns ended. There were no serious efforts in the three states, as there are in Texas, to allow guns in bars, churches, and universities. The NRA screamed bloody murder and filed suits repeatedly. Then the NRA began a long propaganda campaign to demonize the three states on gun laws. But it could not change the fact that crime was dropping.

### Life truly was better in all three states for having broken away. Crime was down, unemployment was down, the wealth was being spread, and workers had a newfound sense of power. And most unbelievable of all to conservatives, taxes went down for most people.

### In all sincerity, some Aztlan Now people were wondering if they shouldn't publicly thank Rick Perry.

### Back in what was left of Texas, the rump state included some who were worse off than ever. The two largest metro areas, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, include most of the state's Black population. The cities also include a large Latino population. Houston actually has the most Latinos of any city in the state. There are also growing Asian populations, and the rural regions of east Texas include many Blacks.

### Being more outnumbered than ever by white Evangelical conservative Republicans, they had less of a voice that ever. Before the breakaways, two fifths of Texans voted Democratic. Most of them were moderate-to-progressive. But the three new states took away a fourth of the Texas population, nearly 90% of them moderate/progressive voters. Blacks, Latinos, and white non-conservatives now found themselves facing a Texas which was the reddest of red states, with three fourths of the voters identifying as conservative.

### And Perry and other angry conservatives seemed determined to take it out on the state's remaining Democrats. The first law to pass was the strictest voter ID law in the nation, aimed squarely at keeping as many poor and dark skinned people from voting as possible, as well as banning the use of college IDs to vote. It was followed by new gerrymandering to reduce the number of minority districts, as much as the legislature thought the federal courts would let them get away with. Then the state topped it off with laws barring any felon from voting, ever. The final step was barring anyone on welfare from voting. There was even an effort to bring back a law requiring property in order to vote, something the nation hadn't seen since the 1850s.

### The hate crime law passed in 2001 was also revoked, dropping any greater penalties for murder based on orientation. Some legislators publicly stated they felt it sent a wrong message to protect a "special class of deviants." To an extent, this didn't change much. Texas has long scrupulously avoided using its hate crime laws to protect gays, even while having them on the books.

### But death row in Texas continued to grow, made up mostly of Blacks from Houston, sent there by a particularly vicious district attorney using their deaths to get reelected by sending a "tough on crime" message. Poverty in the state continued to grow, along with minimum wages jobs and more wealth for the wealthy. Unions were still weak, dropout rates still high, and prisons still overflowing.

### In the new Texas schoolbooks, there was absolutely no mention of why the three new states had broken away. No doubt , the simple answer some parents told their kids was, "It's the fault of those damned upstart Mexicans." The Texas State Seal still shows the original shape of the state. Wishful thinking surely dies a hard death.

### In the long run, it doesn't matter. This rump state of Texas will see redneck Texas die out, to be replaced by a Texas of Tejanos also. It just will take another generation. Like the Tea Parties, the current wave of angry GOP, and militias of all sorts, they are the rage of the aging and impotent.

### Chapter 11:

### The Final Breakaways?

### Two final efforts to break away from Texas...

### In the farthest western reaches of the states, outside of the southwestern panhandle, lived another population that has much more in common with New Mexico than they had ever had with Texas. Its most distinctive characteristic is that it is Latino majority, old time Catholic (meaning socially conservative but politically liberal), compared to slightly further east where the population is mostly white Evangelical Protestant and includes some midsized cities, especially Amarillo and Lubbock.

### At the top of the northern panhandle, this territory is two counties wide. Three counties down, it widens to three counties wide starting with Parmer, Castro, and Swisher counties. Two counties further down, the strip narrows slightly because of the presence of mostly white Lubbock, then opens up again to three counties wide. As the state border turns a corner, this strip widens to four counties wide. Finally it narrows again to a single county, Crockett.

### The area is almost entirely rural. Most towns, including the county seats, are less than 2,000 people. Often the smallest settlements are fewer than a hundred people, and a typical county may only have a few. The closest thing to a major city is Odessa, with about 130,000. This would become the last state to successfully break away from Rick Perry's Texas. And ironically, it would include Perry's own hometown of Paint Creek. Paint Creek has been disgusted with Perry for a long time now.

### The new state really was gerrymandering at its finest, including every Mexican-majority county but excluding Anglo-majority areas. It formed a long narrow snake, with a small population of not even 200,000. But this still fit the constitutional requirement for new states of at least 60,000 people. Republicans howled and wanted to see it stopped, but the law was clear. Texas could divide into five states at any time. Since Texas Republicans were so tied to Texan identity, they stubbornly resisted the idea of the state being divided and did not try to put forth their own proposed states. All that was needed was congressional recognition, easily done. Not even the President's recognition was required, and Obama was happy to stand aside and avoid any flack, while still reaping the benefits of a filibuster proof Senate. House leader Nancy Pelosi saw her chance for the supermajority and, to her credit, took it.

### The small town officials hardly even bothered debating their new constitution. Rio Grande's was used as a model. The name of the state was equally lazy, West Texas. A lone college professor suggested West Tejas, a good Spanglish name. But business leaders, again, worried about alienating outside white businessmen. It mattered little. Most of the locals would call it West Tejas anyway.

### The constitution and statehood passed with not so much as a roar as a shrug. Turnout was low, but it was approved by a two to one margin.

### Eight Democratic senators had now been added to the US Senate...

### In the center of Texas is the German Hill Country. This is a cluster of counties north of San Antonio and west of Austin, stretching in a trapezoidal shape roughly from next to Del Rio up to Concho east next to Austin and then back to north of San Antonio. Germans have made this their home since the 1840s, and also once made it a stronghold of atheists, agnostics, early socialists, communists, the occasional anarchist, and leftists and freethinkers of all stripes. Many of these Germans came as refugees from failed political uprisings in Germany. Better educated and more ideologically driven than most immigrants, some of them even tried experiments in communal living, sharing work and all property and wealth in common.

### Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels was one of many German educated nobles influenced by politically radical democratic ideals. With some other German colonist leaders he saw an opportunity to build an independent nation in the German Hill Country, one based in New Braunfels. Prince Carl's descendant uncovered evidence the immigrants even planned to ship in weapons from Germany. US officials discovered and seized the weapons, and the colonists' plan for a new nation faded.

### Such a country way back in the 1840s would have been amazingly modern, opposed to slavery, favoring equal rights regardless of race, engendering respect for Blacks and Mexicans within its territory, and seeking to always deal with American Indians by treaty, avoiding violence whenever possible. The early German Freethinkers signed the Treaty of Meusebach with the Comanche Nation, pledging friendship and that both groups could travel freely in each other's territory.

### When the Civil War began, most Germans were avidly pro Union, and voted against secession in huge numbers. German-Americans made up one sixth of the Union Army. Germans in the Hill Country suffered massive persecution from the Confederacy, including several mass executions for refusing to be drafted into the Confederate military.

### Germans maintained a strong connection to their culture. They began the first preschool kindergartens in America, predating Head Start by over a century. Germans began the first bilingual education, not counting American Indian teachers. While most immigrants lose their mother tongue by entirely by the third generation, most Germans remained bilingual (or even monolingual German speakers) for nearly eighty years.

### The First World War and anti-German hysteria changed all that. Germans across the US suffered extreme persecution, harassment, beatings, and even a few lynchings. In Texas, it became illegal to speak the German language in public. Some Germans went into hiding, changed their last names and stopped teaching their children German. In San Antonio, the Kaiser Wilhelm neighborhood changed its named to King William. German language schools across the state were shut down. Prohibition was the final nail in the coffin, shutting down German-American taverns.

### Four to five generations of enforced assimilation changed the German population. For some, their German heritage means little but how they spell their last name (assuming the name has not been Anglicized.) For others, it means little but a chance to drink beer and eat pretzels during Oktoberfest, the largest in the worldwide outside Germany. Politically, some German Texans went from being freethinking radicals to, frankly, every bit as redneck as the people who persecuted their grandparents. The German Hill Country was always a Republican stronghold when the GOP was a sometime force for political equality and had a variety of views. As Republican Party turned to the right uniformly starting in the 1960s, many Germans had assimilated the same beliefs.

### Yet even so, a minority of German Texans held onto their progressive and even radical views. German atheists and others maintain a monument, Treue der Union (True to the Union) to those massacred by Confederates. German heritage clubs are common. Some German citizens still find the region culturally close enough to migrate to.

### It was this faction that proposed the state of Adelsverein, named after the original society set up for the protection of German immigrants. (Tellingly, the name attracted no protests from Anglo racists, unlike possible new state names in Spanish.) The proposed constitution was another variation on the Rio Grande Constitution, except for special provisions for German heritage and language. Activists from the Hill Country counties found it hard going though. Not even a fourth of the residents in the area favored becoming a new state. The plans remained just that, plans.

### The US Constitution also forbids new states being made out of existing states. There were some grumblings from Republicans hoping to counterbalance the new, almost certainly Democratic senators, congressmen, and electoral votes to be added. Yet no part of the state saw any serious movement towards splitting off. Ironically, Texan identity made that pretty unlikely.

### Rick Perry's political future looked to be very much in doubt. Most of the country saw him as much like Sarah Palin, a failed governor whose out of control mouth was their downfall.

### In Washington DC, the arrival of eight new Democratic senators in the middle of the healthcare debate could not have come at a better time. With a filibuster proof Senate, the public option was guaranteed. Guaranteed also was allowing states to form their own public healthcare programs. All four new states joined Massachusetts in passing Romneycare-like programs.

### Medicare For All could have passed, except for one barrier. The President. Once again, Obama showed his timidity and backed away, not even wanting a vote on it. But in the end that would matter little. Healthcare is one thing government does extremely well, far better than any private system could hope to. That's exactly why conservatives demonize it, because it proves their ideology false and purely reactionary, with no creative ideas, just hating what the other side does. Private insurance companies would largely die off, as would most private healthcare except that aimed at the wealthy. And good riddance. It's a system that charges twice as much and provides half as much, and the reason that American life expectancy is so low and child mortality is so high compared to other wealthy nations.

### Breakaway state movements gathered steam with progressives in southern Arizona and eastern Tennessee. Conservative activists also pushed for new states in southeast California and eastern Washington state. But without the loophole that the law gave states breaking away from Texas, it was unlikely any of these states could form. Fox News hyped the possibility of a new Confederacy breaking away, and then was badly burned by the overwhelming presence of white supremacists among them. Murdoch suffered heavy losses as advertisers began to flee. But just as in the losses he suffered due to Glen Beck's race-baiting and conspiracy theories, he did not care.

### The four new states suffered a rash of terrorism from the "Republic of Texas" and other militias. One militia plotted an attack on Fort Bliss near El Paso, convinced that the Mexican-American soldiers on the base were Mexican and UN troops in disguise.

### Another militia tried to assassinate the Governor of West Texas with an assault by five men on his office, ending in deaths for all of the militia and two police.

### Another militia member hijacked a small two engine plane and tried to ram it into the Alamo with the Rio Grande Congress in session. He missed, exploding on the federal building next door. Two postal workers and three FBI agents were killed, and many injured.

### The FBI carried out a massive manhunt against the militias. Half a dozen militia members died in separate bloody shootouts with local cops or federal agents. Many militia members fled the five state regions, holding up in hideouts in national parks or other remote areas. A number of militia compounds were raided. Some of the militias proved quite pathetic, giving up easily. Some staged longer holdouts, but none over two weeks. A few committed suicide, blowing their own brains out or taking cyanide. One tried becoming the first American militia suicide bomber, strapping homemade explosives to his chest and running towards FBI agents. The agents shot him dead before he could get close, and he exploded gruesomely but harmlessly.

### Homeland Security, its hands once tied thanks to a staged outcry from Fox News over a report on rightwing terrorism, was finally given the means to go after militias. Rightwing racist white terrorists have actually committed far more acts of terror against America than ""Moslem terrorists" (who are actually political and not religious terrorists.) But the media has largely failed to cover that. Too many right wingers would howl if they did.

### Terrorism by rightwing white racists goes all the way back to the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. It is far more dangerous than any terrorism from foreign lands because there are powerful American elites who want to see it succeed. Never forget.

### But thanks to Rick Perry's blunders, we have four new states that are models for the rest of America, that have the best that is America, its Mexican population and other mestizo peoples, the open minded and the forward thinking, progressive people who think first about how to make the world better rather than clench their sphincters in fear at the thought of whites being yet another minority in a nation of nothing but minorities. These are people who don't fear their kids growing up speaking two languages, gays having a family, atheists, Muslims, and pagans not having to hide their beliefs, or real persons having more rights than fictitious persons called corporations. They find other languages, food, faiths, and ways of living exhilarating to learn from, not something to fear. The sight of a turban, fez, yarmulke, veil, mosque, or temple inspires thoughts of beauty in them, not hatred. The sound of Spanish, Arabic, or Hindu are lyrical to them, not a cause for red faced anger.

### This future Texas shall have halal chili, just as it already has kosher chili and vegetarian chorizo (Mexican sausage).

### Thank you, Rick Perry! In all sincerity, without you putting a whole shoe store in your mouth and then being too stubborn to back down, we couldn't have done it.

### Chapter 12:

### Would It Work?

### And thus ends this alternate history, this indigenous Mexican-centered story of seeking independence from Texas.

### Would it work? Would such a plan, four new states breaking away from Texas, be legal?

### Absolutely. The American law which brought Texas into the union does specifically allow the state to break into five states. The mechanism for how this would happen is clear. Normally a new state must be approved by the US Congress, and the law specifically bars new states created from already existing states. The only constitutional requirement is a population over 60,000. But in Texas's case, thanks to the unique resolution which brought it into the US, it is the only state which can be broken apart far more easily.

### That it has never happened (at least so far) is simply because there has never been a driving reason for any section of the state to break away, save one: The extreme racism that nonwhites have been subjected to. That same oppressiveness effectively prevented any activism that could have formed separate states. But post-Civil Rights Era, legally sanctioned racism is largely gone. The very reason for breaking away is now mostly absent. It would take something like the threat of legally sanctioned racism coming back to force Mexicans in the state to make their own state(s).

### Only the threat of traitorous secession could make Mexicans in Texas seek something as drastic as a new state or states. Anyone naïve enough to think a Texas Republic would somehow not be deeply, viciously racist has no understanding of either the true nature of Texas's founding fathers, or their would-be heirs alive today in the militia movement and other secessionist traitors. And anyone imagining Mexican-Americans anywhere in the US, outside of the tiniest fraction, actually desire to "return" to Mexico, betrays their own lack of understanding of Mexican people. Even Keith Olbermann seems to have fallen for the lies put out by anti-immigrant hate mongers, that anyone with a Latino name is a foreigner whose loyalty does not lie with America, rather than as what they truly are, indigenous to the southwest and truly the most patriotic ethnicity in all of America.

### As the last half of this book has made clear, it would be an incredibly good idea to break Texas up. At time, right wingers in Texas seem to be competing with those in South Carolina for being most detached from reality. The result is why Texas shows up in the bottom in one statistic after another, among the worst in spending on education, in dropout rates, in average wages, in job creation, poorest in health, and number one in many matters which should be a matter of shame, number one or close to the highest in poverty rates, crime rates, unemployment rates, in prison population, and prisoners executed.

### But regardless of whether it ever happens or not, the old Texas, what has long been portrayed as the "real Texas," the land of either rugged white cowboys, or devoutly Evangelical conservative Christians, is less than a generation from a well-deserved end. The future Texas will be Tejas again. It will be a state of people who act and think more like California's Bay Area than any overgrown juvenile's Wild West fantasy.

### Obviously part of the purpose of this book was to challenge the delusions and myths built around Texas, and the mythical "Texas Republic," that failed racist terrorist movement that should be a cause of shame, not pride. Another was to chastise Rick Perry, and to warn the public of his recklessness and the dangerous company he keeps. The "Republic of Texas" and other militias rank alongside the Aryan Nation and the Ku Klux Klan in the level of dangerousness they represent. While America has (supposedly) focused on fighting Al Qaeda, most forget that their one successful strike in the US was, to an extent, a fluke. Both post 9-11, and in all of America's history, more Americans have been killed or terrorized by white American (and theoretically Christian) right wing terrorists than by so called "Muslim terrorists" who, again, are actually largely politically motivated zealots.

### It was white right wing terrorists in Texas who committed the last lynching in America, the dragging death of James Byrd in Jasper, Texas. It was white right wing terrorists in Texas, the Confederate Hammerskins, who tried to attack Jewish Temple Shalom in Dallas using cyanide gas. The so called "Republic of Texas" differs from them only in goals, and only slightly in views, and not one bit in methods of reckless terroristic violence.

### Americans and Texans fail to heed the threat of such terrorists at their own peril. Governor Perry never answered why he palled around with such extremists. No true American, and especially no elected official, should be the friend to attempted cop killers and would be presidential assassins, men who tried to kill a Republican governor and a Democratic president. No one claiming to be a true patriot, or a true conservative, could vote for such a man. It speaks of the failure of the national press that they never exposed these facts, and Perry went down to defeat instead for clumsy debate performances. It speaks of the even greater failure of the Texas press that they never exposed Perry's seeking the support of terrorists in his own backyard.

### Appendix I

### Rio Grande State Constitution

### Article I-Executive Branch

### 1. All executive power shall be vested in a Governor, elected by the voters of the state. He or she shall have the power to appoint a cabinet, heads of agencies, and any board positions as the legislature may approve. He can cast a tie breaking vote in the event of a tie vote in the legislature.

### 2. All legal adult citizens of the state of Rio Grande shall be eligible to become governor. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of the governor shall be four years. No governor shall serve more than two terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. There shall be no vice-governors or lieutenant governors. In the event of a governor's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections set by congress.

### Article II-Legislative Branch

### 1. The legislature shall be vested in a single body, a Congress of twelve persons. They shall have all power to pass state laws, set the terms of their enforcement, order the collection of taxes and fees, and to impeach the Governor for crimes.

### 2. All adult citizens of the State of Rio Grande shall be eligible to become Congressmen. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of congressmen shall be four years. Council members may serve no more than three terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. In the event of a congressman's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections as set by the legislature.

### Article III-Judicial Branch

### 1. All state judicial power shall be vested in a State Supreme Court, as well as Criminal and Civil Courts as Congress shall designate.

### 2. All state judges are appointed for life by the Governor, subject to approval by Congress and subject to Recall by the voters of the state or Impeachment by the legislature.

### 3. All judges must avoid conflicts of interest. Failure to do so may result in Impeachment, Recall, or possible criminal prosecution or sentencing.

### Article IV- State Bill of Rights

### 1. All rights designated by the US Constitution are valid and supported by the State of Rio Grande's Constitution as well.

### 2. All citizens of the United States who are also residents of the State of Rio Grande who have lived in the state continuously for more than seven years, or seven years over a period of not more than the last fourteen years, have the Right to Vote in all state elections. The State of Rio Grande shall not impede nor deny that right in any way, nor shall any resident, organization, group, business, or institution, whether from within the state or from outside of it.

### 3. All residents of the State of Rio Grande have a guaranteed Right to Food, Shelter, and Healthcare. It is illegal to deny these to any human in the state based on a person's lack of funds.

### 4. All residents of the City-State of Rio Grande have the Right to Privacy insofar as it does not directly impede the rights of others nor cause harm to others. The State of Rio Grande and all residents within it shall not impede such rights.

### 5. All residents of the State of Rio Grande have the Right to Language. All may speak the language of their choice without fear of discrimination or reprisal, including but not to limited to English, Spanish, Kickapoo as spoken by the Kickapoo Tribe, Indeh and Cherokee as spoken by Apache and Cherokee of the state, and any and all other American Indian languages. The state shall be committed to teaching English and Spanish to all residents in their schools in the manner most likely to preserve and promote the use of these languages.

### Amendments

### 1. This constitution may be amended by a two thirds vote of the Congress, approval by the Governor, and two thirds vote of the voters.

### Appendix II

### Pecos State Constitution

### Article I-Executive Branch

### 1. All executive power shall be vested in a Governor, elected by the voters of the state. He or she shall have the power to appoint a cabinet, heads of agencies, and any board positions as the legislature may approve. . He can cast a tie breaking vote in the event of a tie vote in the legislature.

### 2. All legal adult citizens of the state of Pecos shall be eligible to become governor. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of the governor shall be four years. No governor shall serve more than two terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. There shall be no vice-governors or lieutenant governors. In the event of a governor's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections set by congress.

### Article II-Legislative Branch

### 1. The legislature shall be vested in a single body, a Congress of twelve persons. They shall have all power to pass state laws, set the terms of their enforcement, order the collection of taxes and fees, and to impeach the Governor for crimes.

### 2. All adult citizens of the State of Pecos shall be eligible to become Congressmen. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of congressmen shall be four years. Congressmen may serve no more than three terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. In the event of a congressman's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections as set by the legislature.

### Article III-Judicial Branch

### 1. All state judicial power shall be vested in a State Supreme Court, as well as Criminal and Civil Courts as Congress shall designate.

### 2. All state judges are appointed for life by the Governor, subject to approval by Congress and subject to Recall by the voters of the state or Impeachment by the legislature.

### 3. All judges must avoid conflicts of interest. Failure to do so may result in Impeachment, Recall, or possible criminal prosecution or sentencing.

### Article IV- State Bill of Rights

### 1. All rights designated by the US Constitution are valid and supported by the State of Pecos's Constitution as well.

### 2. All citizens of the United States who are also residents of the State of Pecos who have lived in the state continuously for more than seven years, or seven years over a period of not more than the past fourteen years, have the Right to Vote in all state elections. The State of Pecos shall not impede nor deny that right in any way, nor shall any resident, organization, group, business, or institution, whether from within the state or from outside of it.

### 3. All residents of the State of Pecos have a guaranteed Right to Food, Shelter, and Healthcare. It is illegal to deny these to any human in the state based on a person's lack of funds.

### 4. All residents of the State of Pecos have the Right to Privacy insofar as it does not directly impede the rights of others nor cause harm to others. The State of Pecos and all residents within it shall not impede such rights.

### 5. All residents of the State of Pecos have the Right to Language. All may speak the language of their choice without fear of discrimination or reprisal, including but not to limited to English, Spanish, Tigua Pueblo, and any and all other American Indian languages. The state shall be committed to teaching English and Spanish to all residents in their schools in the manner most likely to preserve and promote the use of these languages.

### Amendments

### 1. This constitution may be amended by a two thirds vote of the Congress, approval by the Governor, and two thirds vote of the voters.

### Appendix III

### Constitution of the City-State of Austin

### Article I-Executive Branch

### 1. All executive power shall be vested in a Governor, elected by the voters of the state. He or she shall have the power to appoint a cabinet, heads of agencies, and any board positions as the legislature may approve.

### 2. All adult citizens of the city-state of Austin shall be eligible to become governor. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony. They must not advocate nor promote secession, separatism, or other acts of treason.

### 3. The term of the governor shall be four years. No governor shall serve more than two terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. There shall be no vice-governors or lieutenant governors. In the event of a governor's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections set by council.

### Article II-Legislative Branch

### 1. The legislature shall be vested in a single body, a council of twelve. They shall have all power to pass city-state laws and to impeach the Governor for crimes.

### 2. All adult citizens of the city-state of Austin shall be eligible to become council members. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of the council members shall be four years. Council members may serve as many terms as the public elects them for. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. In the event of a council member's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections as set by the legislature.

### Article III-Judicial Branch

### 1. All city-state judicial power shall be vested in a City-State Supreme Court, as well as Criminal and Civil Courts as the legislature shall designate.

### 2. All judges are appointed for life by the Governor, subject to approval by the Council and subject to Recall by the voters of the city-state or Impeachment by the legislature.

### 3. All judges must avoid conflicts of interest. Failure to do so may result in Impeachment, Recall, or possible criminal prosecution or sentencing.

### Article IV- City-State Bill of Rights

### 1. All rights designated by the US Constitution are valid and supported by the City-State of Austin's Constitution as well, with the following exceptions.

### 1A. The Constitution of the City-State of Austin takes exception to the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, except for the purpose of the arming of lawful state militias or national guard.

### 1B. The Constitution of the City-State of Austin takes very strong exception to the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution, solely as interpreted by US Supreme Court decisions that grant the right of persons to corporations.

### 2. All residents of the City-State of Austin who have lived in Austin continuously for more than seven years, or seven years over a period of not more than the last fourteen years, have the Right to Vote in all City-State elections. The City-State of Austin, shall not impede nor deny that right in any way, nor shall any resident, organization, group, business, or institution, whether from within the city-state or from outside of it.

### 3. All residents of the City-State of Austin have a guaranteed Right to Food, Shelter, and Healthcare. It is illegal to deny these to any human in Austin based on a person's lack of funds.

### 4. All residents of the City-State of Austin have the Right to Privacy Including Right to a legal and safe Abortion and Birth Control and the Right to be Free From Laws Repressing Sexual Freedom within the privacy of one's own home or designated private spaces. The City-State of Austin and all residents and organizations within it shall not impede such rights.

### 5. All residents of the City-State of Austin have the Right to Freedom from Discrimination against gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered (GLBT) persons. The City-State of Austin shall make no such discriminatory laws and shall make laws to prevent such discrimination by private parties, individuals, institutions, or businesses. GLBT persons are specifically granted the right to marry and all attendant rights that come with it.

### 6. All residents of the City-State of Austin have the Right to Language. All may speak the language of their choice without fear of discrimination or reprisal, including but not to limited to any and all American Indian languages, Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, German, Hindi, Japanese, Pushtu, Spanish and its local variations, Tagalog, and Urdu. Designation of official languages is expressly forbidden as tending to promote racism, linguicism, and xenophobia.

### 7. All residents of the City-State of Austin have the Right to Collective Bargaining, and to form and join labor unions for that purpose. The City-State of Austin shall not impede or limit this right, nor shall any resident, business, or other institution or person, whether within the state or from outside.

### 8. The City-State of Austin shall have Right to Limit the Power of Corporations as it and its residents see fit by acts of legislation.

### 9. Regressive taxation, defined as any tax that has the less wealthy pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the wealthy, is expressly forbidden to be used by the City-State of Austin or any government body or district within it. Penalties and fines shall also be dictated by income level, and shall be paid in proportion to income and assets.

### Amendments

### 1. This constitution may be amended by a two thirds vote of the Council, approval by the Governor, and two thirds vote of the voters.

### Appendix IV

### West Texas State Constitution

### Article I-Executive Branch

### 1. All executive power shall be vested in a Governor, elected by the voters of the state. He or she shall have the power to appoint a cabinet, heads of agencies, and any board positions as the legislature may approve. . He or she can cast a tie breaking vote in the event of a tie vote in the legislature.

### 2. All adult citizens of the State of West Texas shall be eligible to become governor. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of the governor shall be four years. No governor shall serve more than two terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. There shall be no vice-governors or lieutenant governors. In the event of a governor's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections set by congress.

### Article II-Legislative Branch

### 1. The legislature shall be vested in a single body, a Congress of twelve. They shall have all power to pass state laws, set the terms of their enforcement, order the collection of taxes and fees, and to impeach the Governor for crimes.

### 2. All adult citizens of the State of West Texas shall be eligible to become Congressmen. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of the Congress shall be four years. Congressmen may serve no more than three terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. In the event of a council member's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections as set by the legislature.

### Article III-Judicial Branch

### 1. All state judicial power shall be vested in a State Supreme Court, as well as Criminal and Civil Courts as the legislature shall designate.

### 2. All judges are appointed for life by the Governor, subject to approval by the legislature and subject to Recall by the voters of the city-state or Impeachment by the legislature.

### 3. All judges must avoid conflicts of interest. Failure to do so may result in Impeachment, Recall, or possible criminal prosecution or sentencing.

### Article IV- State Bill of Rights

### 1. All rights designated by the US Constitution are valid and supported by the State of West Texas's Constitution as well, with the following exceptions.

### 2. All citizens of the United States who have lived in West Texas continuously for more than seven years, or seven years over a period of not more than the past fourteen years, have the Right to Vote in all state and local elections. The State of West Texas shall not impede nor deny that right in any way, nor shall any resident, organization, group, business, or institution, whether from within the state or from outside of it.

### 3. All residents of the State of West Texas have a guaranteed Right to Food, Shelter, and Healthcare. It is illegal to deny these to any human in West Texas based on a person's lack of funds.

### 4. All residents of the State of West Texas have the Right to Privacy insofar as it does not directly harm others or impede their rights. The State of West Texas and all residents within it shall not impede such rights.

### 5. All residents of the State of West Texas have the Right to Language. All may speak the language of their choice without fear of discrimination or reprisal, including but not to limited to English and Spanish.

### Amendments

### 1. This constitution may be amended by a two thirds vote of the Congress, approval by the Governor, and two thirds vote of the voters.

### Appendix V

### Proposed Constitution of the State of Adelsverein

### Article I-Executive Branch

### 1. All executive power shall be vested in a Governor, elected by the voters of the state. He or she shall have the power to appoint a cabinet, heads of agencies, and any board positions as the legislature may approve.

### 2. All adult citizens of the State of Adelsverein shall be eligible to become governor. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of the governor shall be four years. No governor shall serve more than two terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. There shall be no vice-governors or lieutenant governors. In the event of a governor's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections as set by the legislature.

### Article II-Legislative Branch

### 1. The legislature shall be vested in a single body, a Congress of twelve. They shall have all power to pass state laws, set the terms of their enforcement, order the collection of taxes and fees, and to impeach the Governor for crimes.

### 2. All adult citizens of the State of Adelsverein shall be eligible to become Congressmen. They must not have a felony record, or be charged with a felony.

### 3. The term of the Congress shall be four years. Congressmen may serve no more than three terms. Election times shall be designated by the legislature.

### 4. In the event of a council member's death or incapacity, there shall be immediate elections as set by the legislature.

### Article III-Judicial Branch

### 1. All state judicial power shall be vested in a State Supreme Court, as well as Criminal and Civil Courts as the legislature shall designate.

### 2. All judges are appointed for life by the Governor, subject to approval by the legislature and subject to Recall by the voters of the city-state or Impeachment by the legislature.

### 3. All judges must avoid conflicts of interest. Failure to do so may result in Impeachment, Recall, or possible criminal prosecution or sentencing.

### Article IV- State Bill of Rights

### 1. All rights designated by the US Constitution are valid and supported by the State of Adelsverein's Constitution as well, with the following exceptions.

### 2. All citizens of the United States who have lived in Adelsverein continuously for more than seven years, or seven years over a period of not more than the past fourteen years, have the Right to Vote in all state and local elections. The State of Adelsverein shall not impede nor deny that right in any way, nor shall any resident, organization, group, business, or institution, whether from within the state or from outside of it.

### 3. All residents of the State of Adelsverein have a guaranteed Right to Food, Shelter, and Healthcare. It is illegal to deny these to any human in West Texas based on a person's lack of funds.

### 4. All residents of the State of Adelsverein have the Right to Privacy insofar as it does not directly harm others or impede their rights. The State of West Texas and all residents within it shall not impede such rights.

### 5. All residents of the State of Adelsverein have the Right to Language. All may speak the language of their choice without fear of discrimination or reprisal, including but not to limited to English, German and Spanish. The state shall make every effort to promote the learning and use of all three aforementioned languages.

### Amendments

### 1. This constitution may be amended by a two thirds vote of the Congress, approval by the Governor, and two thirds vote of the voters.

### Appendix VI

### Charts

### Texas Indian Tribes Before European Invasions

### Aiys (Aix)

### Akokisa

### Alabama

### Anandarko

### Aranama

### Atakapan

### Bidai (Quismigos)

### Biloxi

### Caddo

### Cherokee

### Choctaw

### Coahuiltecans

### Comanche

### Concho

### Coushatta

### Deadose

### Eyeish (Aix, Haish)

### Hanai

### Hasinai

### Huacos (Wacos)

### Jicarilla Apache

### Jumano (Shuman)

### Kadohadacho

### Karankawa

### Kichai (Kitsai)

### Kickapoo

### Kiowa

### Koasati

### Lipan Apache

### Mescalero Apache

### Nacachau

### Nacanish

### Nanatsoho (Nadsoo, Natsoho, Natsvto)

### Nasoni (Assony, Nassonite, Nisohone)

### Natchitoches

### Nebedache

### Neches

### Pakana Muscogee

### Pascagoula

### Patiri

### Pushme

### Quapaw

### Seminole

### Shawnee

### Tawakoni

### Tigua (Ysleta Pueblo)

### Tonkawa

### Wichita

### Xacatin (Soacatino)

### Texas Indian Tribes Today

### Alabama Coushatta- north of Houston

### Cherokee communities in north Texas

### Kickapoo- near Eagle Pass

### Lipan Apache communities in south Texas

### Tigua (Ysleta Pueblo) in El Paso

### Urban Indians of many tribes

### Appendix VII

"Republic of Texas" Quotes

### Quotes from "Republic of Texas" Members 1836-45

### Mirabeau Lamar, President of the "Republic of Texas"-

### "The proper policy to be pursued towards the barbarian race is absolute expulsion from the country. The white man and the red man cannot dwell in harmony together. Nature forbids it."

### Texas General Thomas Rusk to Cherokee, Shawnee, and Delaware leaders-

### "The wild Indians and Mexicans and we are enemies...If you remain will be destroyed...."

### James S. Mayfield, Secretary of State for the "Republic of Texas"-

### "The true policy and prosperity of this country (Texas) depend on the maintenance [of slavery.]"

### Stephen Austin, colonist leader, August 1835-

### "Texas should be fully Americanized...I wish a great immigration...passports or no passports."

### "[This struggle is] a mongrel Spanish, Indian, and Negro race versus civilization and the Anglo-American Race."

### Sam Houston, President of "Republic of Texas"-

"Will you bow under the yoke of these half Indians?"

### (Referring to the Mexican government. Though Houston was himself adopted by Cherokees and had a Cherokee wife he abandoned before coming to Texas, he chose to appeal to Texas colonists by invoking hatred against Indians.)

### James Fannin, Insurgent Commander at the Battle of Goliad-

### "What can be expected for the fair daughters of chaste white women [from Mexicans]?"

### (Fannin was appealing to the racist stereotype of darker races supposedly desiring to rape white women.)

### William Travis, Insurgent Commander at the Battle of the Alamo-

### "[I fear] the pollution of wives and daughters [by Mexicans]."

### (Another appeal to the racist stereotype of darker races supposedly desiring to rape white women.)

### Creed Taylor, member of Texas Army- "I thought I could shoot Mexicans as well as I could shoot Indians, deer, or turkey."

### David Burnett, Interim President of "Republic of Texas"-

### "One general fact may account for all, the utter dissimilarity between the two people, the Texians and the Mexicans. The first are principally Anglo Americans, the others a mongrel race of degenerate Spaniards and Indians more depraved."

### "Half-Indian!" (Burnett said this to Sam Houston. Houston, one of the few Texan leaders to not be racist towards Indians, was an adopted Cherokee and had a Cherokee wife he abandoned shortly before coming to Texas.)

### William H. Wharton, Texas Insurgent Leader-

### "The Justice and Benevolence of God will forbid that the delighted region of Texas should again become a howling wilderness trod only by savages or that it should be permanently benighted by the ignorance, superstition, anarchy, and rapine of Mexican misrule. The Anglo American race are destined to be forever the proprietors of this land...THEIR laws will govern it...This is inevitable for the wilderness of Texas has been redeemed by Anglo American blood."

### Wolf Hunters, Anglo-American Terrorists from Tennessee- [Swear to stop] imbecilic oppressive priest ridden semi barbarous [Mexicans]."

### Texas Colonist H Bundy of Pleasanton-

"You will hear many say you should treat [Mexicans] like dogs, but that depends upon how you treat your dogs."

Constitution of the Texas Republic, Sections 6, 9 and 10:

### "All free white persons who emigrate to the republic...shall be entitled to all the privileges of citizenship."

### "All persons of color who were slaves for life previous to their emigration to Texas, and who are now held in bondage, shall remain in the like state of servitude... Congress (of Texas) shall pass no laws to prohibit emigrants from the United State of America from bringing their slaves into the Republic with them...nor shall Congress have the power to emancipate slaves; nor shall any slaveholder be allowed to emancipate his or her slave or slaves...no free person of African descent either in whole or in part shall be permitted to reside permanently in the Republic without the consent of Congress."

### Critics of the "Texas Republic"

### Frederick Law Olmsted, Journalist and Social Critic- "Wherever slavery in Texas has been...Mexicans, it has been found necessary to treat them as outlaws...The whole native population of county after county has been driven by planters (slave owners) from its home and forbidden, on pain of instant death, to return."

### Mexican General Teran, Describing Anglo Colonists in Texas-

### "Most of them have slaves, and these slaves are beginning to learn the favorable intent of Mexican law to their unfortunate condition and are becoming restless under their yokes...."

### Teran went on to describe the cruelty of these slave owners.-

### "They extract their teeth, set on the dogs to tear them in pieces, the most lenient being he who but flogs his slaves until they are flayed."

### Quotes from "Republic of Texas" Militias

### Richard McLaren, leader of the ROT militia, sentenced to 99 years for kidnappings which led to a standoff with Texas state police-

### "We're the militia of the Republic of Texas, and we've come to take you prisoner and seize your house." (Said to kidnap victims.)

### "I guess you boys didn't learn anything from Waco and Ruby Ridge . . . and you fools are going to come here and kill me, huh, and overrun this mission." (Statement to Texas state police during standoff)

### "We didn't start it. We're just the (keepers) of the 1836 constitution."

### (Statement to reporters after the end of the standoff.)

### ROT Militia Declaration of War email sent in June 1998 to President Bill Clinton, the FBI director, the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Attorney General, and their families:

### ``Your [government] employees and their families have been targeted for destruction by revenge....Non-traceable, personal delivery systems have been developed to inject bacteria and/or viruses for the purpose of killing, maiming, and causing great suffering.''

"Somebody shoot me, I don't care....Come on....Mr. Donaldson, the wrath of the public is coming,"- ROT militia member Rick White to Odessa County Sheriff Mark Donaldson during September 2010 standoff.

### Jonathan Gray, former ROT militia member in a ten year standoff with police, has had these hand painted signs outside his home-

### "We Are Militia And Will Live Free Or You'll Die"

### "Militias Are the People"

### "Vaccinations Equal Annihilation."

### Hanging from a tree is a noose and a sign: "Solution To Tyranny"

### "There's two people that family looks up to: Mel Gibson and Chuck [Norris],"-family friend of the Grays.

Describing why he left the ROT militia- "They was not of God. They did not go of God's ways."

### Empress Verdiacee Tiari Washitaw-Turner Goston El-Bey, leader of the Washitaw Moors or Muurs, a militia/cult with whom the ROT militia has a "treaty."-

### "I was born in my placenta...I kicked out of it on my own, and then [the placenta] rolled up on my head like a crown."

"Are you aware that you are from Mu? Are you aware that your beginning was with Queen Mu? She was actually Empress Moo....Muu is the name taught to all nations by the Creator. All over the planet, the cattle teach the same name, Muu."

### The Washitaws also have active militia groups in Texas. They and the "Republic of Texas" militia frequently work together in schemes to issue phony bonds and checks, for which both militias have several members imprisoned.

### Their ideology is a mix of Black supremacy (though they claim to be American Indian) and militia movement-sovereign citizen-freemen. Though they allow white members, they profess hatred for actual American Indians as "Chinese imposters."

### Quotes from Other Texas Secessionists, Separatists, and Traitors

None of the following groups or individuals advocates violence or engage in known criminal activity.

### Larry Kilgore, frequent secessionist candidate for public office in Texas-

### [Pointing to the American flag]"I hate that flag up there....I hate the United States government. ... They're an evil, corrupt government."

### Robert M. Smith, Texas Nationalist Movement-

"The forecast for liberty, personal freedoms, and justice is just as grim, bleak and hopeless. The fact that the US government has hundreds of detention facilities standing empty and ready to open for business, along with the US Military preparing for civil unrest in the US, speaks volumes.... Stop the oppression, the theft, and the abuse of the Federal government and the Banksters at the Federal Reserve."

### Cary Wise, Texas Nationalist Movement-

"Fellow Texans, our illustrious Governor has now declared his bid for the President of the United States....

### Well Governor Perry, here is a heads up from the Texas Nationalist Movement! First of all, many of us have read your book "FED UP". A good book, if any of it was true, and you had at least done one thing to stave off the federal government that you talked about in the book. The second thing is that Texas belongs to the people, not B. Obama. You were spineless and much less than a Texan when you failed now twice to confront him, and follow through with the false statements contained in your book, about maintaining Texas sovereignty! That at first bothered me until I recently heard; you are a Texan, but an American "first".

### Well Mr. Perry, there are a whole lot of Texans that are going to throw the "bull****" card on you now, and please, let me be the first. Your aid, ex-senator Armbrister, sat right in front of myself and Daniel Miller and swore to us that you would never, ever, run for President. I guess the lying goes deeper than just, your office. Your pathetic efforts with Obama were a complete embarrassment to the people of Texas. Your rhetoric now of changing Washington and downsizing government, is just that, rhetoric from a guy whose ambitions have now left Texas, to deal with his own future of power and fame! ....Mr. Perry, your rhetoric is old and worn out. Maybe you better check with the Bilderbergs and the UN, and with NAFTA officials before you get too deep into promises you cannot, and will not keep....

### Gov. Perry, you now begin to fill the people of America with the same rhetoric and BS you have fed the people of Texas for years. You did not fulfill your duty to Texas, and you will not do anything for the people of America, but let them down. You sir, are a fake! You sir, are a false prophet! I will, with every ounce of energy and the very last dollar I have, do everything I can to make sure you do not become President of the United States! You won't make it happen for Texas, you sure as hell won't get it done for America.

### Wake up Texas! We are left on our own! We must let America know that this man is a fake who only looks to benefit himself!

### ....And by the way Mr. Perry, just so you know. I did indeed vote for you twice for Governor. But now, I have been lied to and fooled enough. YOU LOSE!"

### Notes

### Notes for Introduction

Finding good sources on Texas history is not easy. Most are hagiography or mythology, designed to sell books by pandering to wishful thinking. There is a lot more money to be made this way than by telling the whole ugly and often disturbing truth. There are entire publishing companies that make their living peddling lies about Texas. One of the worst is Republic of Texas Press, who often publish books glorifying the racism and ethnic cleansing that is a central part of Texas history. Sadly, most of the garbage written on Texas, and especially the mythical "Republic of Texas," are children's books. If you encounter someone who is heavily invested in the mythology surrounding Texas, keep in mind that nonsense was probably drilled into their head as a kid.

### As a general rule of thumb, very little that is not from an academic press can be trusted. Even academic institutions can be infiltrated by the mythmakers. The Texas State Handbook Online, while ostensibly sponsored by the University of Texas and Institute for Texan Cultures, has quite a few entries written by obvious amateurs relying on outdated or dubious sources, hagiography, and works infused with racist presumptions of yesteryear. Check the years of their sources before relying on said articles.

Very few books on Texas history written before 1980 can be trusted. One of the few exceptions is Americo Paredes's landmark work in ethnography, With His Pistol In His Hand, which debunks the mythology surrounding the Texas Rangers and gives a Latino view of Texas history.

Other good works on Texas history include Arnoldo De Leon's They Called Them Greasers, Alwyn Barr's Black Texans, and Randolph Campbell's Gone to Texas. Probably one of the worst books on Texas history is the sadly influential racist garbage, TR Fehrenbach's Lone Star, which openly celebrates race war and the alleged superiority of whites.

### Yet even this cannot compare to how poor the official textbooks adopted by the state are. Textbooks as recently as the 1990s were barred from having "too many minorities." Today's standards ordered the removal of any mention of Thomas Jefferson's beliefs on religion, mention of the separation of church and state, criticism of McCarthyism, use of the word "democratic," and even require capitalism be called "free enterprise." It goes without saying, something like lynching will never be discussed, and slavery downplayed.

The state of Texas requires a semester of Texas History in middle school and another at the college level. The Texas School Board has even barred the mentioning of Tejanos dying at the Alamo. One of the best works on the Alamo is Sleuthing the Alamo. Again, most of the books on the Alamo are aimed at kids, and about as inaccurate and sanitized as one would expect. Most of the adult writing on the topic is aimed at fans of westerns, so again, one should expect they won't have their fantasies challenged. Two of the best books debunking the mythology surrounding the Texas Rangers are, again, Paredes's With His Gun In His Hand and Robert Utley's Lone Star Lawmen. Curiously, while extensively debunking the mythology and exposing Ranger brutality, corruption, and incompetence, Utley defends them at times, though only their competence as lawmen.

### Notes for The Governor Flirts With Secession

### Perry's speeches and activities at the time of his secession speech were reconstructed from the following sources:

 http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/robert-schlesinger/2009/04/17/texas-secession-perry-one-third-of-texans-are-wrong-texas-cant-secede

 http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/04/17/0417gop.html

 http://www.texastribune.org/texas-issues/secession-controversy/texas-wont-secede--but-it-wont-shut-up-either/

 http://blog.chron.com/texaspolitics/2009/04/perry-says-texas-can-leave-the-union-if-it-wants-to/

 http://blogs.chron.com/texaspolitics/archives/2009/04/perry_says_texa.html

 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/15/gov-rick-perry-texas-coul_n_187490.html

 http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2011/09/22/325842/rick-perry-no-truth-on-secession/

 http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/04/poll-texas-republicans-approve-of-rick-perrys-secession-remarks.php

### The resolutions quoted are taken directly from State of Texas websites.

### Notes for The Governor Pals Around With Terrorists

### For sources on the ROT militia, see articles on hate watch websites run by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Anti-Defamation League, the cult survivors' website Rickross.com, and from the ROT's own websites. Information on the Texas Secession Movement was taken entirely from their own websites.

### Notes for Another Resolution Passes

### The memo is modeled after actual Fox News memos leaked to the press.

### Notes for Carlos Guerrero Editorial

### Obviously the Carlos Guerrero character is fictional, though there are elements of him taken from actual activists. (Don't think he's fictional? Just translate his name.)

For Juan Cortina, see the biography by Carlos Larralde and Jose Jacobo. The best work on the Plan of San Diego is Richard Sandoz's Rebellion in the Borderlands. For the Brown Power movement, the most accessible would be the PBS series Chicano!

### The bigoted remarks that I show O'Reilly, Limbaugh, and Savage using, they have all used before. That is a matter of public record. Just check transcripts of their shows. One can also finds clips of them online. Hannity's practice of attacking anti-racist civil rights groups as "racists" is also a matter of public record.

### Notes for The Militias Rally

### Most of the signs listed are in fact actual signs carried by Tea Parties. Some are signs that were carried at rallies protesting "illegal immigration." In some cases I added quotes that secessionists have said about Perry, combining them with Tea Party of anti-immigration slogans.

### Notes for the Final Breakaways

The best works on Germans of Texas come from the German Texans Heritage Society, including Rudolf Biesele's History of the German Settlements and several diaries of German colonists. The best works on persecution of Germans during World War I are Arnold Krammer's Undue Process and Frederick Luebke's Bonds of Loyalty. The account of an independence movement by German colonists comes from a public speech given by a descendant of Prince Carl of Solms-Braunfels.

### Notes for Would It Work?

There have been a number of statistical charts showing the harmfulness of the small government philosophy and how it afflicts residents on a state by state basis, among them  http://infographicworld.com/demo/REDvsBLUE/index.html.

### Notes on Appendices

### The maps are entirely my own very poorly done crude works, but are based on public domain maps, with very crude alterations using Windows Paint.

Quotes from the would-be "Texas Republic" leaders are taken from Arnoldo De Leon's They Called Them Greasers. Quotes from the ROT militia leaders are taken from articles on hatewatch websites run by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the cult survivors' website Rickross.com. and from the ROT's own websites. Quotes from the Texas Nationalist Movement were taken entirely from their own websites.

### About the Author:

Juan Batista is the pen name of a professor of American Indian and Latin American history who chooses to separate his career as a professional historian from his novels and short stories. Batista describes all his fiction writing as much like himself, Indigenous Mexican Latino-Indian Mestizo Tribal-Centered, usually alternate history or science fiction, and occasionally fantasy or horror, designed to provoke thought, debate, reflection, and then action.

### Coming from

### Juan Batista:

### More Indigenous Mexican Latino-Indian

### Mestizo Tribal Centered

### Alternate History!

### Coming in Fall 2012:

### Confederate Tyranny

### It is 1864. The Confederate Secret Service will win the Civil War the only way the Confederacy could ever have hoped to win...by terrorism! Almost 150 years before 9-11, Confederate agents carry out biological warfare on northern cities.

### For three generations, the Confederacy's ever tightening dictatorship uses terror and repression against Blacks, Natives, Mexicans, Jews, Catholics, Mormons, Germans, Cajuns, and women to stay in power.

### But the day of reckoning is coming. The Confederate alliance with "our beloved brother Adolf" will only bring disaster...

### Coming in 2013:

### Spanglish America

### It is 1848. The newly victorious American government decides to annex all of Mexico, and its population, three-quarters the size of the US's.

### It is just a matter of time until the United States of Indo-Mexica-America. It will be the most powerful, prosperous, free, and righteous nation the world has ever seen...

A nation of Spanglish-speaking Americans...

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