  The hypothesis that AGN jets might be the sources of the ultra-high energy
cosmic rays has originally motivated the venture of TeV gamma ray astronomy.
Surprisingly, after the discovery of TeV emission from blazars the attention
has shifted to more traditional explanations which do not involve energetic
hadrons, and there is even common believe that a hadronic interpretation is
disfavored by observations. It is shown here that this is not the case, and
that the currently observed spectra and variability features of blazars can be
perfectly understood within hadronic blazar models. I also discuss how hadronic
models might be observationally distinguished from common leptonic models, and
point out some interesting aspects which could be relevant for the
understanding of the differences between blazar classes.
