Dear Mexican: As teachers, we’ve been exhorted to expand our
efforts in closing the achievement gap between majority and minority
students (read: Anglos and Mexicans). I teach all of my students in the
best ways that I can determine for each individual student, within the
constraints of a classroom of 20 or more. In my 18 years, I have
observed, on many occasions, Mexican girls choosing to fail their
freshman year, in spite of obvious intelligence and interest in the
subject. Several times, I have overheard Mexican boys seeming to tell
the girls not do well. I do not speak Spanish, but I am a very good
observer. Upon further investigation into some of these instances, my
observations were proven correct. You are obviously an erudite
philosopher and student of Mexican society. Tell me why this happens,
and what I can do to close the gap.

Teacher

Dear Gabacho: Are you sure it wasn’t the other way around?
While Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School
Graduation, co-released this summer by the Mexican-American Legal
Defense and Education Fund and the National Women’s Law Center, found
that the high school dropout rate for Latinas is 41 percent, it’s a
staggering 50 percent for boys (neither set, by the way, is the largest
set of ethnic kiddies that drop out of high school, although it’s damn
close). But you asked about the chicas, and the study has
recommendations: empanada-in-the-sky requests for more government
spending, but also more concrete, doable steps like connecting girls
with role models, eliminating discrimination in schools and involving
parents in every step of the educational process. And while the
dos groups do point the finger of failure toward the usual
cultural cucuys such as immigration, uneducated parents and
poverty, they also cite the more crucial factor of gender expectations
from gabachos—in other palabras, teachers like
yourselves, mere observers instead of interveners, deserve blame,
también. But at least you want to help. The Mexican’s
advice: Get them to a nunnery, away from the corruptive leers of
teenage boys, and emphasize the Reconquista isn’t possible with a
bola of uneducated pendejas.

As a transplant from New York, I’ve spent the past three years in
Houston. I’ve lived most of my life around different cultures,
especially Mexicans. We get along great! I happen to be a mix of Puerto
Rican and Colombian. There is one thing I’ve never really understood
about Mexicans, though. As recently as Labor Day weekend, my wife (a
Mexican) and I were experiencing San Antonio. While having dinner in a
Market Square restaurant, a mariachi band was playing at random tables.
They began playing for a table of young Mexican men and women. Now,
here is where the confusion kicks in: I don’t understand why these
young men felt the need to scream and cackle while the mariachi band
played. I happen to love the music but find it so annoying when YOU
PEOPLE ruin the song with your cries. Why do they do this? This
continued for about 10 minutes in the middle of dinner, which was
definitely ruined by their shenanigans.

Vallenato Vato

Dear Boricua Paisa: Considering mariachi is OUR MUSIC, we can do
whatever chingado we want while a group plays, and part of the
music genre’s rich tradition is the ronca, the piercing yelps
most gabachos know as “Ay yai yai” from the refrain of the
standard, “Cielito Lindo.” Women can join in ronqueando, but
it’s mostly a macho thing, partly because a ronca is literally a
mating call, but also because the emotive power of mariachi is
supposed to turn men crazy, into drunken shouters, into sobbing
messes—it’s “Freebird” writ large, but replacing the onanistic
guitar solo with trumpets. If you want a genteel evening, ask for a
trio—another fine Mexican musical style, but one where the
audience is supposed to be as well-behaved as the Centre Court crowd at
Wimbledon.

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

This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.