Dear Mexican: I seen black homeless people and white people being homeless. How come I never seen a Mexican and a Chinese person being homeless?
—Get a Pinche Job, Bum
Dear Pocho: I can’t answer for chinitos, because the most Celestial thing about me is my love for an orange chicken-chow mein-brown rice lunch combo. But you’re falling into the same trap that many Mexicans fall into on Facebook: namely, that Mexicans never go homeless because they’d rather sell oranges and flowers on street corners than hold up a sign begging for food like a lazy gabacho. The answer is more complex than a pinche meme. Percentage-wise, Latinos are over-represented on a national level: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s 2015 Annual Homeless Assessment Report found about 20 percent of the homeless are Latino, just a tick above the 17 percent of Latinos that make up the American population. But the survey doesn’t break down the Latino homeless—whether the population is more immigrant or assimilated, Salvadoran or Mexican. A better indicator of whether Mexican immigrants are less averse to homelessness is in a 2015 study by the Institute for the Study of Homelessness and Poverty at the Weingart Center examining the homeless community in Los Angeles County. It found that Latinos (who make up 47 percent of LA County’s population) accounted for only 33 percent of homeless. More tellingly, “about 14 to 18 percent of homeless adults in Los Angeles County are not U.S. citizens compared with 29% of adults overall,” suggesting undocumented Mexicans would rather hustle than live outside. But there’s nothing to brag about here—don’t be a heartless pendejo, and help out the homeless, regardless of raza.
Why aren’t there more Mexicans in outdoor-type jobs? I’m referring to camp guides, naturalists, river rafting guides, etc My theory is that the outdoors haven always been a safe space for us, and most times that is where we were working, not relaxing.
—Tomás but Not a Tío
Dear Tom but not an Uncle: A 2009 survey by the University of Wyoming and the National Park Service (NPS) found that Latinos (read: Mexicans) actually made up the largest percentage of minorities who visited national parks—a whole nine percent! And pochos like you are even rarer: only five percent of NPS workers were Latinos (read: Mexicans). This aversion to the gran outdoors is logical, actually. Gabachos have the luxury of enjoying backpacking for weeks at a time and rafting down the Withlacoochee (quick aside: since this Florida river sounds like huitlacoche, is this further proof for armchair Aztecs that the Nahuatl empire went all the way to the Sunshine State the way it extended to Michigan aka Michoacán?). Mexicans, meanwhile, view nature much the way Manifest Destiny did: something to tame, not to revel in. The Mexican has many fond memories of spending days with his Papa Je in the beautiful cerros of Zacatecas—but that’s to find logs to chop down for his campesino life. Once he came to el Norte, no way would my grandpa—or I, or most non-assimilated Mexicans who knows rural life—want to camp on purpose.
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This article appears in Sep 29 – Oct 5, 2016.
Well, you fall into the lazy trap of blaming homelessness on laziness. Most homeless are in that position due to mental illness, drug addiction (including alcoholism) or both. Of the rest, many are not lazy, they just can’t manage to fit into our crazy 9to5 world.
It’s all for yucks I know, but I hate that stupid cliche.
“Assimilated”? I know brown families who have been here long, long before the whites showed up. Your use of “assimilated” vs. “immigrant” seems disingenuous at best and downright bigoted at worst.
Quick aside: “Withlacoochee” is derived from the Mvskoke language which is one of the Seminole languages and Creek language. It has nothing to do with Nahua. Michigan, on the other hand, not my language or culture, but I’m fairly confident thats derived from Anishanaabeg. Maybe the author was just messing around, but it aint cool if people start believing that stuff. White people already try to erase our presence and history in our ancestral lands. We don’t need our Xicano brothers and sisters helping them out. Assuming it wasn’t just a joke.
Re homelessness: my wild-ass guess is that the strong family-oriented ethic of Mexican and Asian communities, in which extended relatives frequently live very close to each other and can rely more easily on each other, may mean that family members who lose their income or no longer have a place to live can turn to their more fortunate loved ones in times of need, thereby averting the possibility of having to live on the street.
Just a hypothesis. If someone can prove or disprove this theory, I’d be interested to hear it.