Audio By Carbonatix
Dear Mexican: My wife and I have an argument going about
pirates. And since you are the source for all things Mexican, I’d
thought I’d ask: While I know there were Spanish and Portuguese pirates
back in the early 1600s and 1700s, were there ever any Mexican pirates?
Not pirates from Spain who pirated in Mexico, but real,
honest-to-hay-soos Mexican pirates? Would be interesting to know!
Pirates Pat McGroin and the Right Reverend One Eye
Dear Gabachos: It depends on your definition of “pirate.” If
you’re looking for a famous swashbuckler from the days of Blackbeard,
tough tamales: Historians never bothered to glorify the numerous
buccaneers who ransacked Spanish galleons laden with the gold and
silver of Mexican mines off the Mexican coast. The most famous Mexican
pirate was Fermín Mundaca, who operated a contraband empire from
the island of Islas Mujeres off the coast of Quintana Roo during the
mid-1800s — but Mundaca was a Spanish native. Why look back in
the past, though, when so many Mexican pirates exist in the present?
Piratería is as Mexican an industry as tortilla-making
and immigrant-smuggling: The International Federation of Phonographic
Industry, an organization that fights music piracy worldwide, estimates
Mexicans make more than $220 million off of illegal CDs, most sold at
the nearest swap meet, bodega or taco truck near you. And before some
of you readers start insinuating that such a startlingly large amount
is somehow indicative of the Mexican culture’s tendency to steal, what
would you call file-sharing?
Dear Mexican: Do Mexicans get annoyed that whenever a
Hollywood movie calls for a Mexican character actor, Cheech Marin gets
the job? This is great for Cheech, but must be bad for Mexican actors
struggling to land a good part in Hollywood. Danny Trejo gets the
badass roles, Antonio Banderas gets the leading-man roles, and
character roles go to Cheech (in the case of a small budget, maybe
Tommy Chong, but he’s cast more for being an old stoner than a
Mexican). With the blooming careers of truly great Mexican directors
Alfonso Cuarón and Guillermo del Toro, don’t you think Hollywood
should give some other Mexicans a chance in the limelight? Cheech is
already rich — let someone else have a slice of the pie!
Celluloid Culero
Dear Gabacho: No argument from me, except Tommy Chong and
Antonio Banderas ain’t Mexican!
Dear Mexican: If we stereotype a person by drawing attention
to the fact that someone is Mexican instead of the content of their
actions, why do minority cultures celebrate the very fact that, say,
Mexicans fought for certain types of rights? Aren’t they stereotyping
themselves by doing so? If I did the same thing as a white person, I’d
be considered racist. So why aren’t you considered racist as well?
14/88
Dear Gabacho: I’ve contestado many a silly question in
this column, but yours takes the pastel as the stupidest I’ve
yet answered. What Know Nothings such as yourself don’t understand is
that when minority groups struggle for civil rights, they’re merely
calling America on its founding bluff — you know, that whole “all
men are created equal” bullshit. So when Mexican parents in Orange
County in the 1940s sued four school districts for segregating Mexican
kiddies away from gabachitos, the parents didn’t do it just to
benefit wabs; the resulting lawsuit, Mendez vs. Westminster, served as
a precedent to the much-more-famous Brown vs. Board of Education. When
César Chávez marched and fasted for justice in the
fields, his ultimate causa was the same as that of European
unionists at the turn of the twentieth century: a fair shake for the
working man. When millions march for amnesty for the undocumented, it’s
a protest against a hypocritical, Byzantine immigration system that
entangles all foreigners, not just Mexicans. Whites fighting for
“white” rights only shows how freaked some gabachos get about
realizing that minorities are actually, finally being treated like
Americans. If trying to battle hate makes me a racist, then here’s a
Roman salute to your face, pendejo.
