SOUTHWEST USA (By Jim Meyers, NewsMax) May 6, 2005 - Many Hispanic activists, Mexican citizens and perhaps even members of the Mexican government believe the American Southwest rightfully belongs to Mexico.

They refuse to accept the legality of the U.S. annexation of Texas in 1845, the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo following the Mexican-American War, which gave large parts of Mexico to the U.S., or the 1852 Gadsden Purchase of Mexican territory now in Arizona and New Mexico.

In 1997, then-Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo told the National Council of La Raza in Chicago: "I have proudly affirmed that the Mexican nation extends beyond the territory enclosed by its borders."

And current President Vincente Fox "repeated this line during a 2001 visit to the U.S., when he called for open borders and endorsed Mexico's new dual citizenship law," according to Investor's Business Daily.

Activist Charles Trujillo, a professor at the University of New Mexico, predicts that a new Hispanic nation will be formed within this century, encompassing much of the American Southwest and part of northern Mexico.

He says U.S. states have the right to secede under our original Articles of Confederation, and this will occur in the future when several Southwest states have Hispanic majorities.

The Hispanic student activist group MECHa (a Spanish acronym for Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan) claims that Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico and southern Colorado were stolen by the U.S. and should be returned to the people of Mexico, under the name "Nation of Aztlan."

Aztlan is the mythical original home of the Aztec people.

Some Californians seem to think that Los Angeles has already been "returned" to the Mexican people. As NewsMax.com reported in April, billboards touting a Spanish-language TV news program showed two newscasters in front of the L.A. skyline, with "Los Angeles, Mexico" printed above.

The billboards angered groups fighting illegal immigration. Stuart Fischoff, who teaches media psychology at California State-Los Angeles, told the L.A. Times: "The joke here is, ‘We're taking back California.' Underneath the joke is part of the truth."