BY GUSTAVO ARELLANO
SPECIAL VIRGIN OF GUADALUPE EDITION
Dear Mexican: As a Chicano/Mexican, I have lost my faith in God. While they take pride in their country like everyone else, and like to make frequent jokes, Mexicans are generally very humble (poor) people. Isn’t God supposed to be on the side of the poor and humble? Why is it that Mexico always loses soccer matches to a generally rich and arrogant people (Americans) in fútbol who don’t even care about the sport, we start the swine flu epidemic that can be the next bubonic plague, and get natural disasters ALL THE TIME? This reminds me of the saying, “Poor Mexico — so far from God, so close to the United States!” Do you think Mexicans are coming up as God’s next “chosen people” and going to get it as bad as the Jews have over the centuries?
— Still Believing in the Virgen de Guadalupe, but Not so Sure About the Big Papi Upstairs…
Dear Wab: We are the Chosen Juans — have been for generations. After all, the Jews never got away with calling their boys Guadalupe and Salvador, and girls Jesusita — hell, the more orthodox of them don’t even have the huevos to say G-d! And there are more anti-Mexican slurs used by gabachos in the present day than there are against judios, necessary lumps God forces upon the meek — or did you already forget the Sermón on the Mount? But you really think we’re going to get it as bad as the heebs? Ever heard of the Holocaust? Pogroms? Henry Ford? The genocide of America’ indigenous was horrendous, as are modern-day deportations suffered by our undocumented, but Jews have been dealing with that crap since the days of Pharaoh, so they’re centuries ahead of us in the persecution game — and it’s not one we really want to win, you know? I am glad, however, that you compared Mexis to Jews and not Palestinians like most Chicano yaktivists do, since the Palestinians’ plight is its own demented chingadera that nosotros wouldn’t be able to comprehend even if the U.S. went on to steal Mexico up to San Luís Potosí.
How did Looney Tunes characters enter the Mexican cultural pantheon along side la virgencita as an image to wear on your T-shirt, glued to your dashboard, and tattooed onto your skin? Don’t get me wrong — I was into cartoons when I was a kid, but it’s just weird to see grown men and women sporting cartoon characters on their jean jackets and bracero biceps. Is it that they just always have little kids running around, so that cartoon are the only thing on TV? Moreover, this is something Mexicans seem to share with certain sectors of the gabacho lower class. What explains this strange adult fascination with Looney Tunes?
— Gabacho Loon
Dear Gabacho: As I’ve written before, Mexicans love the Warner Bros. stable of caricaturas (custodians of Cervantes: I know this isn’t the exact translation of the Spanish word for animated cartoons, but this is the word mami y papi used to describe them, so vayanse a la chingada) because they personify the Trickster, the universal archetype who uses mayhem and wits to wile his way through tough situations. But that doesn’t explain the almost-as-popular use of Disney characters such as Winnie the Pooh, Goofy, and the various princesses among wabs. I would offer a Mexican-specific response, but your final point regarding similarities between wabs and rednecks, coupled with the disturbing popularity of anything Disney by too muchos adults in the United States, show that this is a small mundo after all — sorry to offer such a Mickey Mouse response, readers, but when it comes to el ratón, the more you can disparage him, the better.
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