The school board of the mostly Hispanic community objected to the
antagonistic racial and political tone of the book, which contains
mostly pictures and is used by over 300 educational institutions in
the United States. Chapter headings include Death to the Invader,
U.S. Conquest and Betrayal, We Are Now a U.S. Colony, In Occupied
America, and They Stole the Land. The stated purpose of the text is to
"celebrate our resistance to being colonized and absorbed by racist
empire builders." Chicanos are not white, but mestizo, "a
people born from an act of destruction, a people born from an act of
rape, a new people of America born to revolt."
American defenders at the Alamo were "slave owners, land speculators, and Indian killers," and Davey Crockett was a cannibal. The 1846 "War on Mexico" was an unprovoked U.S. invasion. The Texas Rangers are a "terrorist force" that, "like any police force, ... exist to protect the property of the rich and to keep down the oppressed.... Today they still serve the rich by repressing farm workers." Predictably, the Immigration and Naturalization Service is "the Gestapo of Mexicans." On the brighter side, pre-invasion Mexico "was a land of ancient cultures that prohibited anyone going hungry or homeless. The idea of private property did not exist." Students are taught that, "for poor Chicanos and Indian people, the land is our mother—not private property. It is a means of survival, of production, that we lost to the capitalist system and its values." Today, by contrast, Mexico's wealth "goes to U.S. capitalists, whose domination of Mexico's economy is part of el imperialismo yankee."
