Dear Mexican: Math problem—If there are 20 Mexicans, 20 Indians, 20 Chinese, 20 Puerto Ricans, 20 blacks and one white person in a room, how many people are there whose identity is used as a benchmark to establish the identities of the rest of the people in the room? (Hint: Not a colored person.)
Swimming Upstream
Dear Gabacho: The 20 Mexicans—because everyone else will do everything possible to let the world know they’re not Mexican once the deportation train comes along.
OPEN LETTER TO MEXICANS AFRAID OF PRESIDENT-ELECT TRUMP
Gentle cabrones: fear not. Our raza has gone up against Cortés, Maximilian, Winfield Scott, Porfirio Diaz, the PRI, the narcos, Enrique Peña Nieto, Harrison Gray Otis and Harry Chandler (the founder of the Los Angeles Times and his son-in-law, who owned hundreds of thousands of acres in Mexico and published all sorts of calumny against Pancho Villa, Francisco Madero, and Emiliano Zapata), Maná, the PAN, Joe Arpaio, Pete Wilson, the Salinas de Gortarís, Tlatelolco, the Pastry War, Santa Anna, Victoriano Huerta, Henry Lane Wilson, Álvaro Obregon, Plutarco Elías Calles, NAFTA, Maseca, Rick Bayless, the 1994 devaluation of the peso, the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, Arjen Robben, 7-0 versus Chile in the Copa Ámerica, Landon Donovan, Dos a Cero, Barbara Coe, Hollywood, the Texians, Taco Bell, the pinche rinches, border walls, la migra, the Zimmerman affair, femicide in Juarez, genocide against our indigenous ancestors, the pillaging of our natural resources by the Spanish, gachupines, gringos, Yanquis, Carlos Slim, Jorge Hank Rhon, the Creel-Terrazas family, José Jiménez, the Frito Bandito, “We don’t need no steenkin’ badges,” “Go back to Mexico!,” “beaner,” “wetback,” “illegal alien savage,” “invader,” los científicos, ICE, the health inspector, soyrizo, ¡Ask a Mexican!, Linda Chavez, Ruben Navarrette, Fox News, Lou Dobbs, cholos, Ask a Chola, the Mexican Mafia, vendidos, Tío Tacos, SB 1070, Proposition 187, the Sensenbrenner bill, the fall of Tenochtitlán, that Time magazine cover about “Saving Mexico,” Ben Affleck playing a Chicano in Argo, Matt Damon playing a half-Mexican in The Good Shepherd, Operation Wetback, the Great Arizona Orphan Abduction, Jan Brewer, the Zoot Suit Riots, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the Gadsden Purchase, James K. Polk, John C. Frémont, school segregation, housing covenant, lynch mobs, Pikers, Ann Coulter, The Children of Sanchez, Robbery Under Law, the gentrification of mezcal, the Columbusing of elote, Katt Williams, Adam Carolla, the Republicans, the Democrats, capitalism, colonialism, imperialism, “Come a Little Bit Closer,” John Wayne, the Dirty Sanchez, Vicente Fox, Felipe Calderón, Paul Rodriguez, the Hispanic 100, tortillas and tamales in a can, Drinko por Cinco, Televisa, Univisón, Jacobo Zabludovsky, #tacotrucksoneverycorner and that one girlfriend who broke up with you because her parents thought you were a gang member even though you were a graduate student at UCLA and working a full-time job while their itinerant daughter was mooching off Mommy and Daddy, and many, many other pendejos—and we have not only survived, but thrived.
Are we a bunch of whiny Trumpbros, or are we Mexicans? Pónganse las pilas, y a trabajar, banda.
Oh, and #fucktrump.
Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net; be his fan on Facebook; follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano; or follow him on Instagram @gustavo_arellano!
Confusion reigns. You say “ask a Mexican,” but are you talking about an American citizen who is of Mexican extraction or a Mexican citizen visiting from that country, or an illegal border crosser? I don’t want to rattle the cage and wake the inmates, but there is a difference between the above three classes. The first is a person either born here or naturalized a citizen and who either comes from or whose parents came from the country of Mexico. The second is self-explanatory, as is the third. So which one are you referring to, pendejo? You’re as bad as MSNBC when they talk about immigration and label as “immigrants” all those cabrones coming across the border desperately trying to evade the Border Patrol. You wanna know who’s an immigrant? I am, cholo! My family waited seven years to come to the US, we didn’t just pay a coyote to smuggle us in. I came to this country at the age of six speaking only Spanish, ese, from El Salvador, so don’t you call me a nativist or xenophobe. That won’t work with me. I became a citizen, served in Vietnam in 1968, I’ve paid my dues, so don’t tell ME I don’t have the right to insist we stop illegal immigration – from everywhere, not just Mexico! How you like them apples, Mexicano? As to being “whiny Trumpbros,” you tell me what you call someone who knowingly breaks the law and then cries about it when they get caught. Ai, pobrecitos!