The dance, especially the “Azteca” version of it, arrived to the United States in the mid-1970s. Two dancers, Andres Segura and Florencio Yescas were instrumental in creating Conchero/Azteca groups from California to Texas among Mexican American communities. The dance entered the US at a time when many Mexicans and Mexican Americans were taking more militant stances against the status quo, especially after the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre. A number of dance groups decided to banish the Christian aspects of the dance ceremony entirely and elements of “new age” philosophy had influence. These became more of a political force than a religious one, seeing the pre Conquest world as idyllic and the current world after that time as corrupted. Most of these dancers call the dance “Mexica” (mex-shi-ca) or some variant of the word.