(At) Largely Loquacious

“Illegal immigrant invasion” is a phrase that Metro Council at-large candidate Jim Boyd has uttered so many times that some might start to think it’s part of his name. The phrase is plastered prominently on his website and repeated again and again in his campaign literature. He even wears it on his chest in the form of a square plastic badge with his name in block letters and the phrase “Turn back the invasion!” below it.

But beneath the rhetoric, Boyd reveals a real fear that the American way of life will be diminished. “I believe our country is being overrun,” he tells the Scene. “The balkanization of America has started.”

That fear has led Boyd to perpetuate some strange theories, chief among them the myth of Aztlan and the reconquistas.

According to Boyd, reconquistas are “illegal immigrant invaders from Mexico who, with their government’s support, are swarming northward, posing as itinerant slave-wage workers.” Their supposed aim is to invade California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and other Southwestern states that the United States gained during the Mexican-American War. This territory, Boyd says, comprises the land of Aztlan and was once a part of Mexico. If our Mexican gardeners, housekeepers and dishwashers have anything to say about it, it will be again. That’s because—according to Boyd—these folks will one day rise up and re-conquer (get it? re-conquer, reconquista?) these lands, making them once more a part of Mexico. Boyd even has a map on his website that depicts Aztlan and shows in geographic detail how the reconquistas plan to “carve up the U.S.A.”

“Any American who doesn’t recognize that a state of war already exists” between the U.S. and Mexico, says Boyd, “is either practicing aggressive ignorance or has sided with the invaders against U.S.A.”

Though there are Mexicans who believe that part of the U.S. rightfully belongs to Mexico, they are not in the mainstream. Such Hispanic Americans publish La Voz de Aztlan, a California-based anti-Semitic website that likens Osama bin Laden to Pancho Villa, calling them both “folk heroes” who fought “lackeys of the United States.” The site also outlines a “hidden Jewish tax on food products” in the U.S.

Legitimate scholars, of course, debunk the Aztlan lore. “Aztlan is the mythical home of the Mexican people, known today as Aztecs,” says Arthur Demarest, a Vanderbilt anthropologist and expert in Maya, Aztec and Inca civilizations.

“South of the border, references to Aztlan are limited today to the discourse of marginal…groups, mostly in Mexico City. Otherwise, except perhaps some well-educated Mexicans, I daresay few people, if any, know what the term refers to.”

This has not stopped Boyd from preaching the gospel of the illegal immigrant invasion and the ways that he can help stop it if elected to the Metro Council. Most noticeably, Boyd is active on local newspaper blogs, including the Scene’s, and in chat rooms, where he comments on almost every immigration story of the day, signing on as “Cooljim” and ending his posts with his full name—William (Jim) Boyd—and a link to his website (votejimboyd.com).

“It’s fun and I get to swap ideas,” Boyd says of his online exploits. “I’ll have an idea and float it as a trial balloon [on a message board] and I can see how the community responds. Sometimes somebody will say, ‘Hey, I like that idea…. Occasionally someone will say, ‘Hey, Cooljim, you’re an idiot!’ and I know I need to rethink that idea.”

If elected to the Metro Council, Boyd says that he will create a countywide blog requiring users to register with real names, addresses and phone numbers. “It could be a real, honest, out-in-the-open dialogue,” Boyd says.

Other candidates for the at-large seats have trouble taking Boyd seriously. Though no at-large candidate the Scene spoke with is interested in having their name in the same article as Boyd’s, at least two of them characterize Metro’s resident conspiracy theorist as a “joke candidate.” They also remark on the “camo-outfits” the former Army Reserve officer wears to campaign functions.

“On the other hand,” says one candidate, “if everyone were a serious candidate, local politics would be pretty boring.”