In his poem “If We Praise the Aztecs,” Reyes Cárdenas expresses the dilemma faced by many Mexican American activists in the years following the decline of the Chicano Movement. Being of that generation himself, his insight allows him to capture the mixed feelings felt by many Chicanas and Chicanos who had championed various causes during the turbulent period of the 1960s and 1970s. These causes included social, cultural, and political actions that were defined ideologically by their militant and revolutionary undercurrents. By the time Cárdenas published “If We Praise the Aztecs” in his 1986 book of poems I Was Never a Militant Chicano, that radical activist period was in the past. Nonetheless, both the title of the poem and his book, like much of his work, are purposely ironic considering that writing Chicano poetry is itself a revolutionary act. Cárdenas’s clever wording aside, it is difficult to ignore the contradictions presented here. The poem warns Mexican Americans of the perils of romanticizing the indigenous past, fetishizing revolutionary heroes, and subscribing to the “white way” (American ideas of capitalism and politics). Alternatively, Cárdenas reminds his audience that there is another way to exist, one that cannot be delayed. Overall, the poem synthesizes the apprehension that many Chicana/os felt during the Reagan Era of the1980s, a period that was emblematic of conspicuous consumption and personal success contrasted against a backdrop of economic inequality and the distress of disadvantaged communities.