One man's take on his culture's stereotypes

en alguna parte su se escribe: Donde fuego hubo cenizas quedaran

One man's take on his culture's stereotypes

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Dear Mexican: I am a mutt. My father’s father was an illegal immigrant from Mexico. My mother’s father was an illegal immigrant from Ireland. My surname is Mexican and is usually mispronounced by gabachos and pendejos alike. I look more Irish than Mexican. And as my father never spoke it at home, the only Spanish I know is from three years of waiting tables at Norms, where the Mexican waiters called bad Mexican tippers pinche indios. I get WTF stares when I inform pendejo gabachos why I don’t appreciate their beaner jokes. I know I’m not a Mexican. I’m just tired of getting shit from everyone on both sides of the invisible race border that exists everywhere in our lives in Orange County and the Southwest in general. And what do I teach my two little girls, who look even whiter than me? - Nada Pero Cansado

Dear Nothing But Tired: Actually, I’d call you a leprecano (half-Mexican, half-leprechaun), but my thoughts of which racial category you fit in should matter nothing – you call yourself what you want to call yourself, and tell those who have a problem que se vayan a la chingada. Teach your girls that people will harass them for their mixed heritage – but that’s OK because anyone who clings to doctrinaire tests of ethnic identity, who can’t accept that people’s concept of nationality, race, and ethnicity vary and intersect, is deluded and, frankly, pendejo. The only other point I’ll make is to thank you for introducing surumato into the Mexican’s Rolodex of Racism. Cabrones: a surumato is the New Mexican version of wab, which is to say it’s the historical term those New Mexicans who considered themselves “Spanish” and called themselves manitos used to ridicule newly arrived Mexicans.

Can you please explain to all gringos that not all the Mexicans know how to dance salsa, merengue and other Latino dances? - El Cometa Mexicano

Dear Mexican Comet: Only the surumatos don’t. The manito Mexican knows his tropical dances thanks to cumbia (the slow shuffle originally from Colombia that all Mexican groups regardless of genre incorporate into their repertoire), Perez Prado (the King of Mambo who, while technically Cuban, enthralled the world while being based in Mexico) and the fact gabachas would rather dance to tropical rhythms than our corny-ass mestizo polkas and waltzes. Take a class, tonto.