Dear Mexican: I have always liked ranchera music. As of late, I have wanted to get deeper into it as far as the history, the culture and especially the songs and lyrics go. The older I get, the more rancheras seem like poetry to me…sounds cursi, I know. I was…
Dear Mexican: What do we need to do to make the güeros understand that we come in peace? As Mexicans, we are from this great American continent as well, but in the average closed-minded English-speaking folks’ definition of “American,” it’s amusing to see they don’t understand what it really means…
Dear Mexican: We’re in state testing this week at the high school where I teach. After the students finish a section, they can only sit and read or just sit. I did an experiment: I chose the cholo-est, most tatted, pierced non-readers and dropped your book on their desk. Students…
Dear Mexican: Please explain to me why so many mexicanas seem to think it more important to stay home and baby-sit than to attend school (so that they may become more in life than producers of offspring). As an educator (lately of students identified as “at risk” for failure in…
Dear Mexican: About six years ago, my wife and I adopted a little baby boy. He is “pure” mestizo and we are complete wabs. I’m a little dark because of my mixed Arab heritage, but my wife is a major-league blanca. He is a sweet little gabacho growing up in…
Dear Mexican: I’m living in Mexico part of the year. I’m learning Spanish, but I can’t say I understand or speak it well. I read several books about the history of Mexico and think I’m reasonably well-informed. I’m curious about a phrase I saw on a T-shirt in an expensive…
Dear Mexican: I would be most interested in hearing your point of view regarding our raza always voting for someone with a Latino last name, without even considering if the vato/vata is qualified for a particular office. Often I hear comments like, “If he’s Latino, it makes up for all…
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…
