Ask a Mexican!

Dear Mexican: Why is it that ever since the United
States/California let you people immigrate, tunnel, weasel or whatever
into this country, nothing good has happened and/or come from it?
California’s welfare program is burdened with low-life Hispanics. The
prison system is 70 percent Hispanic and 45 percent gang-based. Real
estate values have dropped sharply; violence due to gangs is rampant;
and to top it off, all you motherfuckers are somehow related.
What—do you have Hispanic incest festivals? I mean, Jesus Christ,
I’d like to go to one restaurant in Southern California and not see a
shitload of beaners. Why the fuck can’t you stay in that shit box of a
country and leave the United States alone?

Fountain Valley Fucktard

Dear Gabacho: Because it’s a shit box, silly!

Many wonderful things have happened in California and the United
States since the Reconquista officially began in 1965, when the
Immigration and Nationality Act made it easier for non-Europeans to
invade our shores. The filling of lower-rung jobs by Mexican immigrants
forced American citizens to find better jobs, spurring the digital
revolution. Revenues have exploded across the United States in those 45
years—how do you think those welfare-taking Mexicans get their
government queso? From plucking checks off of branches?

Spare me your causality arguments, and get your stats
correcto: Latinos make up 38 percent of California’s prison
population, and 40 percent of the federal level.

Finally, want to visit restaurants with no Mexicans? Try Arby’s.

Why do Mexicans make up stupid names? I’m not talking about
indigenous names. I’m concerned about names that are entirely made up,
with extra syllables that aren’t linguistically logical. I’m also
concerned about parents who name their children foreign names that they
don’t know how to spell. I’ve meet tons of little Mexican boys named
Giovanni, but their moms or dads spell it Giobani, Geovany, Jobany.
These spellings aren’t phonetic in any language. This must be really
embarrassing for the kids when they grow up. Also, I am sick of all the
variations of Jazmin—Jasmin pronounced Yasmin, Yazmine, Yasmina,
etc. Most of the time, the J is pronounced like a Y, when in reality,
the flower name Jazmin pronounced with the J from jalapeño is
really beautiful. Was Disney’s Aladdin really popular among
Mexicans or something? I’m also sick of all the Mexican kids named
“Bray-yan,” because Brian is a stupid name, even in English. What
happened to naming kids after saints? Did that go out of fashion with
the rise of so many Mexican-targeted evangelical movements? I’m just
worried that the children of this generation will suffer, because no
one will take them seriously.

Linguistically Loco

Dear Wab: People bastardizing names is a hallmark of the human
experience: The Hebrew Yochanan is the root for John, Jean, Juan,
João, Ivan, Johan, Jan, Evan, Giovanni, Hans, Sean and many,
many other variants. And Mexicans stateside don’t use saints’ names in
Spanish, because—as I repeat in this column ad nauseum—they
assimilate. As the Mexican’s old UCLA professor Edward Telles and his
Department of Sociology colleague Vilma Ortiz showed in their 2008
book, Generations of Exclusion: Mexican Americans, Assimilation and
Race, the longer Mexicans live in this country, the more likely
they’ll bestow non-Spanish names on their children. No joke from me on
this point—just basking in the satisfaction of stats proving the
Know Nothing nation wrong again. Give up, already,
pendejos!

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

This article appears in Jul 9-15, 2009.