Dear Mexican: As a Chicano/Mexican, I have lost my faith in God.
While they take pride in their country like everyone else, and like to
make frequent jokes, Mexicans are generally very humble (poor) people.
Isn’t God supposed to be on the side of the poor and humble? Why is it
that Mexico always loses soccer matches to a generally rich and
arrogant people (Americans) who don’t even care about the sport? Plus,
we started the swine-flu epidemic that could be the next bubonic
plague, and we get natural disasters ALL THE TIME! This reminds me of
the saying, “Poor Mexico—so far from God, so close to the United
States!” Do you think Mexicans are coming up as God’s next “chosen
people” and are going to get it as bad as the Jews have over the
centuries?

Still Believing in the Virgen de Guadalupe, but Not So Sure About
the Big Papi Upstairs …

Dear Wab: We are the Chosen Juans—have been for
generations. After all, the Jews never got away with calling their boys
Guadalupe and Salvador, and girls Jesusita—hell, the more
orthodox of them don’t even have the huevos to say G-d! And
there are more anti-Mexican slurs used by gabachos in the
present day than there are against judios, and slurs are
necessary lumps God forces upon the meek—or did you already
forget the Sermón on the Mount?

But do you really think we’re going to get it as bad as the heebs?
Ever heard of the Holocaust? Pogroms? Henry Ford? The genocide of
America’ indigenous was horrendous, as are modern-day deportations
suffered by our undocumented, but Jews have been dealing with that crap
since the days of Pharaoh, so they’re centuries ahead of us in the
persecution game—and it’s not a game we really want to win, you
know?

I am glad, however, that you compared Mexis to Jews and not
Palestinians like most Chicano yaktivists do, since the Palestinians’
plight is its own demented chingadera that nosotros wouldn’t be able to comprehend even if the United States stole Mexico
up to San Luís Potosí.

How did Looney Tunes characters enter the Mexican cultural
pantheon alongside la virgencita as an image to wear on your
T-shirt, glue to your dashboard and tattoo onto your skin? Don’t get me
wrong; I was into cartoons when I was a kid, but it’s just weird to see
grown men and women sporting cartoon characters on their jeans jackets
and bracero biceps. Is it because they always have little kids running
around, so that cartoons are the only thing on TV? Moreover, this is
something Mexicans seem to share with certain sectors of the gabacho lower class. What explains this strange adult fascination
with Looney Tunes?

Gabacho Loon

Dear Gabacho: As I’ve written before, Mexicans love the Warner Bros.
stable of caricaturas (custodians of Cervantes: I know this
isn’t the exact translation of the Spanish word for animated cartoons,
but this is the word mami y papi used to describe them, so
vayanse a la chingada) because they personify the Trickster, the
universal archetype who uses mayhem and wits to wile his way through
tough situations.

But that doesn’t explain the almost-as-popular use of Disney
characters such as Winnie the Pooh, Goofy and the various princesses
among wabs. I would offer a Mexican-specific response, but your final
point regarding similarities between wabs and rednecks, coupled with
the disturbing popularity of anything Disney by too muchos adults in the United States, show that this is a small mundo after all.

Sorry to offer such a Mickey Mouse response, readers, but when it
comes to el ratón, the more you can disparage him, the
better.

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net,
myspace.com/ocwab or 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 Dec 10-16, 2009.