¡Ask a Mexican!

Dear Mexican: In an earlier column, you mentioned that
conservatives can’t have an argument against illegal immigration
without it degenerating into a diatribe against culture. Here’s an
argument that has nothing to do with culture: In California, we now
have a severe water shortage. I work for a municipal water agency. We
are asking that people ration 20 percent of their water usage. We must
ration 15 to 17 percent of our water in order to make sure we don’t run
out. Considering that the illegal-immigrant population of California is
approximately 16 percent, we would achieve our rationing goal if
illegal immigrants went back to where they came from.

Wet Back, But Not the Wetback Kind

Dear Gabacho: Your work has given you agua on the brain,
amigo. Where did you get the stat that California’s
illegal-immigrant population is 16 percent? Even if you take the
over-inflated 2008 estimate of the Golden State’s illegals (3.2
million) claimed by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (aka
FAIR, which many Know Nothings cite as a legitimate think tank but
which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group for
their connections to bona fide racists) and square the stat with the
Census Bureau’s 2008 guess for California’s total population (36.8
million), the final percentage of indocumentados is about 8.7
percent—still a significant chunk of cambio, but almost
half of what you claimed, Wet Back.

But you like numbers and conservation, so refry this: A 2005
California Urban Water Conservation Council study found almost half of
all residential water use in the state was for landscaping. Want to
achieve your rationing goals and then some, Wet Back? Let lawns die. Of
course, gabachos would never allow that to happen, more than
willing to behold the bean in a Mexican’s eye without considering the
burrito in their own eye.

During the 1970s, I heard my father tell a couple of activist
friends that some Mexica males practiced contraception by chewing on a
type of root. Is this true? Or am I confusing the Mexica with the
Mayas, Olmecas or mi tío Monchi?

El Gallo Habrano

Dear Wab: Probably. Probably not. Point is, what does it matter?
Obviously, it ain’t being used today.

I decided to move definitivamente to America two years
ago. I started working a year and a half ago, and I’ve noticed that,
for some reason, my co-workers think that because I’m Mexican, and very
proud of it, the only kind of food I’ll eat is … MEXICAN food!!! I
must say, there’s nothing better for la cruda than menudo, and I could eat all the mole my estómago
will allow, and that I cannot die before I have a nice plate of zacahuil (¡y arriba San Luis Potosí!), but, to
be honest with you, I also like Indian, Thai, Chinese, Italian,
Peruvian, Middle Eastern, French … I think you get it. Why is
that?

Not as Square as You (Gringos) Think

Dear Wab: Bienvenido to los Estados Unidos! On behalf
of all raza, allow me to present you with your standard-issue
poncho, sombrero, bandoliers, mustache, gold tooth, taco belly and fake
Social Security number!

Chistes aside, does such a gastronomic stereotype really
surprise you? Never mind that Mexican food is an amalgamation of
various culinary traditions (Lebanese, Spanish, French and indigenous
are just the most obvious and pervasive), or that—as I’ve written
before in my column and book (buy it!)—Mexico is one of the
world’s top consumers of ramen: If you’re a Mexican in the United
States, gabachos expect you to subsist on a steady diet of
yellow cheese, chili, pinto beans and beer. Do the Mexican a favor, Not
as Square: Cast out the burrito in your co-workers’ eyes, then go out
and pound the Herradura.

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net or myspace.com/ocwab; find
him on Facebook or Twitter; or write via snail mail at: Gustavo
Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433!

This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2009.