The MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano/Chicana de Aztlan) organization was blamed for the California wildfires that occurred in late October. A fake CNN webpage was posted on Oct. 25 saying that MEChA students from San Diego got bottles of gasoline with a fire cloth and ignited the fires that have caused a loss of more than 350,240 acres.
This was truly irresponsible of the person or people involved with this fake webpage, especially on CNN. Because of this story, people began posting this website on blogs and it resulted with hate mail to some MEChA organizations.
I am a MEChA member and to hear that we were blamed for those fires is truly unbelievable. The article went on to say that “we don’t know who did it but one thing is for sure, they are brown.”
Our organization would never do anything so chaotic. Why did these people do this? Either they thought it would be funny or they were out to destroy our reputation, which they kind of did.
We are a peaceful organization and if we are accused of extreme matters we will defend our reputation.
I did not care that they called us “brown” or “separatist,” but do it to our faces without using a fake page on other Web sites. If you have a problem or concern with us, let us know so we could settle this like adults, rather than getting the public against us.
CNN almost immediately caught the hoax website and publicly announced and apologized for the site. This was great for them, but a lot of people who read the fake story did not read the apology, so there are people out there who still think that MEChA was involved in the fires.
In extreme situations like fires, terrorist attacks and homicides, libelously creating scapegoats is irresponsible. People die and things are lost during these situations. I don’t think me saying that NAFTA is to blame for the 9/11 attacks would be very fair.