Dear Mexican: The pinche Republicans are making a gigante ruido about their “Hispanic” senators in Congress. Wachale! Lets call a pendejo a pendejo. Please discuss with tu audienca what Mexicans really think about Cubans in these Estados Unidos.
El Güero Tejano (no Cubano)
As a recent transplant from Miami to Albuquerque, I was wondering what is the Mexican’s take on the privileged status of our preferred border-crossers, the Cubans. If a Cuban manages to get his little toe on dry land in the U.S. he is immediately given a new Toyota, an American Express card and the keys to the city of Hialeah.
Aturdido Floridian
Are Cubans Mexicans with connections??
Quiero Ron
Dear Readers: Next to Puerto Ricans and negritos, no other ethnic group gets pegged as the eternal enemy of Mexicans as Cubans. If you believe coños like Rush Limbaugh, Mexicans despise Cubans because it’s “a race thing. [Cubans are] just not quite dark—as dark [as Mexicans], and they’re oriented toward work.” (Rush obviously never met a beauty from Los Altos de Jalisco, or a paisa from Sinaloa). But Mexicans for the most part actually like Cubans, and definitely more so that Puerto Ricans. We enjoy Cuban rum and cigars, they believe in curanderos like us, their Spanish is as garbled as ours, we both love guayaberas, and Cuban music legends Beny Moré and Perez Prado spent so much time in Mexico that their tunes are part of the Mexican songbook (multiple bandas have covered Moré’s “La Culebra,” while “Parece Que Va Llover” was memorably sung by Pedro Infante and Luis Aguilar in their 1951 film ¡A Toda Maquina!).
What does drive Mexicans crazy about Cubans, however, isn’t so much what they do or who they are but how gabachos treat them: as gods. One niggling fact: Cuban music inspires excessive mainstream media coverage in relation to its actual popularity in the United States, especially when compared to the ubiquity of Mexican regional music en el Norte. Another one: gabachos‘ insistence that mariachis play “Guantanamera.” Even more infuriating for Mexicans is the immigration narrative gabachos have constructed of Cubans and Mexican. While Americans opened the gates to Cuban refugees as a Cold War ploy and continue to let said refugees come illegally into the U.S. as long as they land via sea, gabachos have never extended the same courtesy to Mexicans or our Central American brothers during our civil wars. You can’t hate the Cubans for their special status, but you can hate gabachos for this preposterous double standard. As if Mexicans needed another reason to hate gabas…
I’m so annoyed with you printing the letters from idiots. The vast majority of white people don’t hate Mexicans. We don’t sit around bitching about Mexicans taking our jobs. Most of us don’t hate anyone. A lot of us love the fact that America is a melting pot of cultures where we share ideas, music, art, and we just plain love each other. When you print the letters from idiots, it implies that we all feel that way. We don’t. There are idiots of all races, creeds, and colors, and the idiots that write ignorant letters to you are not typical of us. They don’t represent the majority. There are different colors and cultures because God is an artist and she needed colors to decorate the world. Most of us celebrate our differences. Giving these idiots a forum is like putting a booger on a Picasso. It just don’t belong.
No Hate
Dear Gabacho: Gracias for your heartfelt letter—now, can you please indoctrinate Congress and other idiot gabachos with your wisdom? Because, as you can see with the current amnesty battle, they need it.
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This article appears in Feb 7-13, 2013.
gdelirium,
“This will come out really bad, but I just want to state that at the time of writing this I don’t have any ‘beef’ with any racist a$$hole and my expressions here are nothing more than simple observations and experiences” — you are a PIG.
As an Anglo who lived the first half of his life on the west side of Tucson and who still finds the Old Pueblo to be a powerful magnet, I have to say that gdelirium454 must have never made it west of Tucson Blvd. Pobrecito. Ignorance is not bliss. Tucson was an O’Odham, Spanish and Mexican community before the U.S. picked it up in Santa Ana’s yard sale. It is the mix of all of those cultures that make it a much more liveable place than the big metro-tumor to the north. So tacos are more fattening than chicken-fried steak with gravy? Latinas are unattractive as compared to Honey Boo0boo’s family? The music is bad? Latinos are undereducated and don’t contribute? Get out of your bubble. All cultures have something valid to contribute to the world and Tucson’s mix is a good example.
Personally, I think that gdelirium454 showed great moral courage in posting his racist rant anonymously.
Ummm – Well Mike – as for contributing – apparently Mexico doesn’t share your opinion – since it has been “exporting” nationals at an almost exponential rate for a looooong time …
more like a cleansing really than an migration.
I am yet to hear a cogent explanation as to why this “culture group” is routinely discriminated against – low pay, squalor and despair seem to be their share of the native land treasure into which they were born – where’s the “grass roots” civil rights movement in Mexico for a a fair wage, family cohesion, community stability and infra-structure investment; And the support of the Obama government …so sensitive to the human rights issues?( Of course there are no votes available from fully engaged Nationals residing in Mexico – so it’s understandable from that perspective.)
And just out of curiosity when the neo-cultural studies resume will the exploitation and dislocation of the indigenous Indians of Mexico be included in the “cultural history”?
And Tom – that old saw just doesn’t mean much anymore it’s really more like an insider joke … if that’s all you got – then you ain’t got much – but then we both know that … don’t we!!
gdelirium454 please seek help without delay before you harm yourself or others. Talk of suicide as an alternative to a particular variety of music is not a sign of mental or spiritual health nor is your need to share such strong negative opinions of a country you have never visited.
Seeking help is not a sign of weakness but rather of strength. Be strong!
Hapstone: Mexico doesn’t deport their own citizens. They come here on their own to find work. They are not leaving their country at an exponential rate. In fact, illegal immigration to the U.S. across the border has slowed down considerably during the past decade, due to increased enforcement and a lack of work here. You do bring up an interesting point about exploitation of indigenous cultures that deserves to be discussed in any ethnic studies classes. Spaniards indeed conquered and exploited the locals. They also intermarried with the locals, creating beautiful brown people. Anglos conquered and exploited native people and then shoved them into big open-aired ghettos called reservations. Intermarriage with brown pagan savages didn’t figure into the Anglo scheme of things. Then they reneged on their treaties, pushing tribes out of land they had been promised. After that, they passed the Dawes act, dividing up many reservations and buying up the land. Mismanagement and corruption have characterized the U.S. relationship with its native peoples since 1776. Was it better to destroy native cultures through assimilation and expropriation or by pushing them off coveted land and creating ghettos on the land Anglos didn’t want at the time? I would say neither were moral or just. As far as morality and decency is concerned, I would say there is plenty for both countries to be introspective about: if Mexico has not done a good job of tasking care of its own, neither has the United States treated its people of color well. Slavery existed for 240 years on this continent in what is now the United States and apartheid for another century after that. And I ask you which country’s slaves were illegally imported into the other during the period before the Texas revolution?
As far as Mexicans contributing to their culture, are you referring to Americans of Mexican ancestry or Mexicans? To say that either group doesn’t enrich culture is just plain ignorant. Mexican music, art, literature and cinema on the other side of the border have very productive. If one bothers to look outside the American pop culture bubble one would learn that. As far as Mexicans standing up to social injustice, I refer you to 1910, 1968 and the Zapatista movement. And to the actions being taken right now in Ayutla and other places where Mexicans have become exasperated with their lot.
To say that Mexico’s government has served its people well would be inaccurate. We’d all better hope that recent efforts at reform will bear fruit. Another revolution would not be good for either nation. At the same time, corruption, greed and mindless violence are certainly not unfamiliar aspects of life in America, are they. And when’s the last time Mexico invaded another country under false pretenses?
TO gdelirium454:
You’re right, it came off sounding really bad.
But you are so wrong, and I really hope you are not so much racist, but culturally deprived.
The only thing wrong with Mexicans is that they got such bad play in the movies when you were a child.. they were always the bad guys, and you were dumb enough to believe it.
This part of the country was their land.. and it was through genocide, just as with the Native American Indians, that it became the white eyes land.. how’s that for a heritage for the “white man?”
Now, take your BS, expand your cultural ties, and get a real life, instead of the one where you really come off as the bigot you didn’t intend to become, but were too ignorant to realize that you are.