Dear Mexican: My home town of El Paso is getting a new AAA baseball team. The owning group just announced the name: The El Paso Chihuahuas. Reasons given? The origins of the dog and the city's location in the Chihuahua desert, and that it was family-friendly. Many in this city are saying the name is offensive, while others (myself included) love the name, as it follows the team-name protocol/trends of minor-league baseball. Plus, the logo seems pretty awesome. So, in your most Mexican opinion, who is right?
Getting Drunk at Chope's
Dear Wab: Neither. For one, smarty-art Mexicans need to own the Chihuahua as a fine metaphor for our raza instead of something shameful. As I wrote back in 2008, the perritos are "quintessentially Mexican: Napoleonic in complex, usually brown but available in all colors, maligned by gabachos as puny runts but secretly ferocious and smart, and bearers of muchos, muchos babies." If Huskies (University of Washington), Salukis (Southern Illinois University), Terriers (Boston U), pinche Scotties (Agnes Scott College) and far too many bulldogs to mention can get athletic fame and glory, why not Chihuahuas? On the other hand, the owners of the San Diego Padres affiliate planning to set up shop in Chuco named their team the Chihuahuas specifically for the publicity, so shame on them for their Hispandering. Besides, neither side is getting it correcto: The team should be called El Paso Doubles — not just for the extra-base hit, but also in honor of a double order at the legendary Chico's Tacos chain. Now, THAT would be chingón.
Dear Mexican: I had been married to my Mexican wife for a while when my father-in-law, Adolph, says, "I bet an alemán like you probably wants to know why my name is Adolph." I said, "Yeah, that's true." He said that because the California Mexicans from the old days and the rebels from Mexico wanted to take the southwestern U.S. back from the United States, and because the Germans asked Mexico to invade America back during World War I, maybe if the Mexicans supported Hitler, he would help them liberate California. To me, that kind of made sense, but I had a different question. "Why do all Mexicans drive Fords?" He looked at me like I was a stupid gringo, which I am, and told me, "I thought you knew history; didn't Henry Ford support Hitler before the war?" So what about this central California Mexican man's story?
El Gringo de Sangre Mezclado
Dear Gabacho of Mixed Blood: Your cuñado was fucking with you. Hitler was just a lowly soldier in WWI when the Zimmerman Telegram he was referring to was proposed. And everyone knows why Mexicans love Fords: Enrique's hiring of Mexicans during Ford's Golden Age ("far more than any other Detroit-area carmaker," according to Recasting the Machine Age: Henry Ford's Village Industries) was mucho appreciated, bless his anti-Semitic heart.
