Dear Mexican: How Should Al Pastor Be Made?

Dear Mexican: I’m tired of debating these pasty whitebreads that the Camino Real has had people back and forth across the border for over 500 years, and that a fence is redundant and that people will always be crossing our southern border. The whitebreads insist that the wall can end this traffic; I don’t think so. What is your thought on the Camino Real?
Blanco Beaner

Dear Gabacho: Which Camino Real are we talking about? The one that connected California’s missions and was romanticized by gabachos? The one that connected Texas’s missions? El Camino Real de Tierra Adentro, which went from Mexico City to Santa Fe? Or El Camino Real, the chingón Fullerton eatery that’s the favorite of Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant? All of them reflect the same idea that you allude to: that la frontera has had humans going back and forth for centuries, if not millennia, and that trying to seal off the border for good is as futile an endeavor as getting Donald Trump’s mouth not to spew caca.

Dear Mexican: Does Mexico have a problem with illegal immigrants coming into their country for free health care and welfare?
San Miguel de Allende Asswipe

Dear Gabacho: No, because we’re smarter than that — and look how well our immigration policy has worked for us!

Dear Mexican: I think, by law, all al pastor should be made traditionally — on a spit topped with a fresh pineapple. Agreed?
Otro Idiota con las Mejores Intenciones

Dear Another Idiot With the Best Intentions: Yes and no. The Mexican thinks that al pastor — the Mexican meat that involves packing together chunks of marinated pork on a spit, slowly roasting it for hours and shaving off slices as needed — tastes best when topped with a pineapple, the better to have jugo de piña seep into the trompo. But be careful when you talk about traditions and Mexican foods. As seemingly all hipsters found out this year after NPR and leeches — sorry, I meant millennial publications — did stories about al pastor’s origins, the tradition owes nothing to Mexico: It’s based on the shawarmas that Middle Eastern immigrants brought to central Mexico in the 1930s. All Mexicans did was substitute puerco for the original beef and lamb. And the original al pastor didn’t have pineapple; that’s a more recent addition dating back no more than thirty years, if that. The only Mexican food law that should be enacted is a ban on anyone ever thinking that celebrity chef Rick Bayless is an authority on anything other than his pocketbook.