Asses to ashes

Dear Mexican:

I often pick up the Albuquerque Alibi to read your babosadas. Now, let me get this straight: You appear to be a bright guy who claims to have the Mexican people all figured out, right? To you, we are all 5-feet-6-inches, medium-complexion, and we all pray to Moctezuma to come save us in Atzlán? Now, this might describe a lot of Mexicans you know, but it doesn’t do justice to millions of castizos in Mexico and the United States that you seem to despise. See, mi familia were hacenderos from Chihuahua before all the chaparritos from the south invaded our state and started pinche selling drugs. My family and many tall, brown-, green- and blue-eyed chihuahuenses and duranguenses can trace our roots back to when Spanish families emigrated from Spain became hacenderos and practice things like ranching, farming, mining and good ole’ vaquerismo (cowboying)—things, by the way, gabachos stole from our beloved states in Tejas and Nuevo Mejico and claimed to be their own. I also despise historical idiots like Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata (his men hung my great-grandfather in front of his family, only because he had the smarts to have his own business and create jobs for their communities).

I despise the fact that Mexican and Mexican-Americans youth (same shit to a gabacho) in California and other states have to hang on to this bullshit mythical origin of Azteca. I don’t recall the last Mexican that I met that speaks pinche Nahuatl. We speak Spanish, we practice charreadas, we celebrate Día de Los Muertos, we give our little girls a quinceañera, and we are the closest thing to Old Spain this side of the pond that I’m aware of. We are an extension of Spain and their traditions. The day we stop acting like a bunch of stupid payasos with our screwed-up gangster mentality and start cowboying up as our true ancestry dictates and find a new appreciation for our Spanish ancestry is the day Mexicans will advance as a society. I’m sick of stupid gabachos (a lost society of their own) thinking they know what a Mexican is or isn’t. We are as diverse as they come and sorry, Mr. Whiteman: We aren’t all 5-feet-6-inches and brown.

—Viva la Raza (A Term Not of Azteca Origin but of Spanish Origin—Reference the Black Legend)

Dear Vendida:

Self-loathing, ahistorical, proudly Hispanic—Governor Susana Martinez, is that you?

I’m a chulita Mexicana cátolica, and there is something that I have thought about all my vida: Why is it that Mexicans go to church on Ash Wednesday, then the next day they show up at school or at work with the ashes still on their foreheads? Is it because they want to show off how pious they are, or is it porque no se bañan? Just a side note: When I was a kid this man in my neighborhood had a black discoloring of his skin—a birthmark—right there where the ashes should go. At first, I thought he was overdoing the Ash Wednesday thing, but no: He was legit. So we nicknamed him “Ash Wednesday.”

—Chulita Mexicana Cátolica

Dear Cutie:

For Lent, I say you give up bullying. For the ashes, consult Genesis 3:19.

GOOD MEXICAN OF THE WEEK! The National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies is exactly what it sounds like and is at the forefront of defending our universities and public schools from whitewashing Know Nothings who don’t like honest histories infiltrating the American story. They’re holding their annual conference next week, so a shout-out to them in the discipline’s time of need. Learn more at www.naccs.org.