Ask a Mexican!

Dear Mexican: The mainstream media is making big noise about
Sonia Sotomayor likely being the first Latina Supreme Court justice,
and hinting that all Latinos should be proud. But Puerto Rican ain’t
Mexican! The Supreme Court won’t have a shade of brown until a Mexican
is among Roberts and Scalia. What does the Mexican think of Sotomayor’s
nomination and likely appointment?

Legalingo

Dear Pendeja: Sotomayor not brown? Yeah, and George Lopez is as
güero as Conan O’Brien. The Mexican beams with pride at the
thought of Sotomayor on the Supreme Court, not just because she’ll be
the first Latina/o to be part of the nation’s highest judicial branch
(don’t believe the hype about Benjamin Cardozo being el primero;
he never identified as Latino or even Hispanic, and I doubt Hizzoner’s
Sephardic ancestors would’ve liked Cardozo grouped with the people who
best carried out the Inquisition), but because she forces
gabachos to remember the nation’s other problem brownies: Puerto
Ricans, who weren’t good enough for independence like the Philippines
or statehood like the Mexis of the Southwest United States, but have
instead lived for more than a century as vassals in their own
homeland.

Gracias a Diós that I’ve heard only a few instances of
Chicano chauvinism like your case, Legalingo, and you few need to crack
open a Coors with Know Nothings and talk shop. Sure, it would’ve been
chido if a Mexican replaced David Souter, but boricuas and other Latinos deserve a spot in the Reconquista, too, and President
Barack Obama rightly, sadly, figured a moderate Puerto Rican is easier
to stomach for gabachos at this point in the American experience
than a moderate Mexican. Besides, it’s about time Puerto Rico gave this
country something more significant than Ricky Martin, reggaetón
and bananas.

Having lived in San Antonio for a number of decades, I’ve learned
a smattering of street Spanish. That experience has caused me to cringe
when I hear the word cojones used in American movies or
television as a referent to testicles when the writer is trying to have
the character talk dirty. In San Antonio, a person would use huevos
in that context. Which is the correct Spanglish, or is a matter
of cojones being used in California, and huevos being
used in Texas?

Big-Balled

Dear Gabacho: I’ve only heard gabachos use cojones,
while Mexicans use huevos. (Other Latinos, of course, have their
own terms for the male fun sack, but we’ll leave the discussion for
Maledicta.) Both words are linguistically correct and
politically incorrect, and both derive from Latin. (Cojones comes from the singular cojón, testicle, from the Latin
coleo—sack—while huevo actually means egg and
derives from ovum.) So, the real question in your inquiry: How
did gabachos come to use cojones more commonly instead of
huevos as slang for balls?

The answer is Ernest Hemingway, a man who introduced more
misinterpreted-as-Mexican overused Spanish terms (mano a mano,
macho and maricón, to name the most notorious
examples) than any other writer—after me. His otherwise-masterful
Death in the Afternoon, an account of bullfighting and its
practitioners, included a glossary defining cojones and
remarked, “A valorous bullfighter is said to be plentifully equipped
with these.” Gabacho writers began introducing cojones into their works to emulate the faux-authenticity of Papa, and their
audiences made the word a part of American Spanish, just like
gringo and Drinko por Cinco.

Mexicans, meanwhile, try to teach gabachos about
huevos, but remain puzzled why gabachos consistently
prefer fey Castilian over our crude idioms. Eh, what’s a wab to do,
except steal back more of Aztlán?

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This article appears in Jul 23-29, 2009.