Dear Readers: The Mexican is currently dealing with deportation issues but will return next week once he builds his fifteen-foot escalera to climb over that pesky fourteen-foot wall. In the meantime, here are some oldies but goodies to tide you over like yesterday’s menudo. Enjoy! Dear Mexican: It seems that…
Dear Mexican: You mentioned in the past that your dad is against illegal immigration, but that’s a voice you never hear. Why aren’t the legal immigrants and legal aliens “vocally outraged” about the illegals who drive down wages, drive up housing prices, use government services, give all immigrants a bad…
Dear Mexican: In the past, you have defended illegal immigrants by arguing that they (paraphrasing one of your previous columns) will do the jobs gabachos won’t do for the same wages. I agree. I have a white-collar job, so I’m totally content to benefit from the low prices brought about…
Dear Mexican: I’m 39. My stepdad — who raised me — just died. This freed my mother to tell me (Stepdad always forbade it) that the man I thought was my biological father all this time was not. The man who IS my biological father is Mexican…totally (i.e., both of…
Dear Mexican: The pinche Republicans are making a gigante ruido about their “Hispanic” senators in Congress. ¡Wachale! Lets call a pendejo a pendejo. Please discuss with tu audienca what Mexicans really think about Cubans in these Estados Unidos. El Güero Tejano (no Cubano) Dear Mexican: As a recent transplant from…
Dear Mexican: Grammar question/rant. If Spanglish is a legitimate dialect/language, why do you feel the need to italicize every instance of code switching? I seriously doubt that when you speak you emphasize every puta palabra (emphasis intended here), but that’s what your article reads like. We all know that you…
Dear Mexican: In 1983 or 1984, I was walking home down Haight Street in San Francisco one evening and stopped into Watusi Records to look through the dollar cutout bin. I flipped through it for a bit and then stopped dead when I saw the Jonny Chingas Pachuco LP. I…
Dear Mexican: Can you please tell me something? How do you think it’s fair that all the people who come to our country and stay get treated far better than some of the people who have busted their butt all their lives here? Tell me, how is that fair?! You…
Dear Mexican: What is it about Mexicans and collecting old cars? I have three Mexican neighbors with middle-class incomes, but in each case, when the old car or truck wouldn’t run anymore, they would buy a nearly new replacement and then just let the old clunker sit in the driveway…
Dear Mexican: My wife (who’s a half-Mexican L.A. native, just so you don’t think we’re a couple of white hipster dickheads) and me (I’m white, but an immigrant, so I hope that lowers my dickhead factor a little) have had it up to our orejas with our Hispanic neighbor’s music…
Dear Mexican: Many of my friends think I’m loco for playing with my dad the way I do. See, mi padre is now retired and living in Mexico, and is very worried that I am now thirty and not married yet, so he wants me to go back to where…
Dear Readers: Behold your favorite Mexican’s annual Christmas gift guide, where I give shout-outs to some of my favorite books that deserve your money this holiday season! And for once I won’t recommend my books — ¡Ask a Mexican!, Orange County: A Personal History and Taco USA: How Mexican Food…
Dear Mexican: Why is it that many Mexican women hate on me for having an Asian (Korean, to be exact) novia? I notice this in a lot of places. We go to the store and I get looks. We go to the movies and people look or say things like…
Dear Mexican: In President Bush’s State of the Union address, he reiterated a need for a guest-worker program. What is your opinion of such a program? The program seems like mierda that screws people over in the long run to me, but what do I know? Una Guerita por un…
Dear Mexican: My granddaughters were born and raised in Georgia, as was their father. Their knowledge of their culture is zero, and I have tried to educate them by talking to them and even writing a book of my life growing up in New Mexico that discusses the history, lifestyle…
Dear Mexican: Lately I’ve noticed a few bands, como Voodoo Glow Skulls, have embraced ska music both at home and in Mexico. I was curious what the appeal is for Mexicans in ska music. Also, if you had to turn people to Mexican ska, what would be your top five…
Dear Mexican: When are the racial minorities going to give up la causa? We have a black man for el presidente, and as a white middle-aged male, I couldn’t be happier. I have been hearing all of my life about how oppressed the racial minorities have been and what needs…
Dear Mexican: After a year in Spain, I speak more-than-decent Spanish, and I want to get a job in the non-profit field, where I can put it to use and pursue social justice and all that. Thing is, my Spanish is pretty peninsular. I maintained my seseo, thank God, but…
Dear Mexican: Why is it that every Mexican I know refuses to eat chocolate? My in-laws drink things I wouldn’t clean my carburetor in. They fill their piñatas with every kind of hard candy — but no chocolate! I bring out a bag of M&Ms and everyone backs away to…
Dear Mexican: As a college-educated Mexican-American, I had my fair share of Chicanas in college…all of whom my jefita considered putas with books. But now that I’ve graduated, I’m going out with a gabacha for the first time. She’s nice — bilingual, tall, skinny, educated, and a liberal with liberal…
Dear Readers: The Mexican must take the week off because his home paper is publishing its annual Best Of issue (if the devil ever condemns you to visit Orange County, pick up the OC Weekly!). To honor our Best Of, here’s a doozy from 2006. If you’ve ever heard me…
Dear Mexican: Why do so many Chicanos claim to be Aztec? Chicano Stuck in Leavenworth Dear Gabacho: You’re right. The beaner love for everything Aztec mostly stems from the Chicano movement, which appropriated various Mexican iconography (the stylized United Farm Workers black eagle, the concept of Aztlán, the airbrushed paintings…
