!Ask a Mexican!

Dear Mexican,

What's with the Mexican need to display the Virgin of Guadalupe everywhere? I've seen her in the oddest places, from a sweatshirt to a windshield sticker. As a Mexican, I find it a little offensive and tacky to display this religious symbol everywhere. You have all these fuckingpersinados who do their shit in front of the image of the Holy Mother.

Foxy Mujer

Dear Pocha,

Among Mexicans, Virgen de Guadalupe product-sighting is a pastime as popular as sneaking illegals into the U.S. The beautiful 2002 pictorial anthology Guadalupe shows Mexico's patron saint on bandannas, booze bottles and car hoods; as tattoos, key chains and even soccer jerseys. I've seen her painted on murals, woven into fabulous silk shirts worn by Stetson-sporting hombresand—one holy night—in my bowl of guacamole. But while I share your disdain for the hypocrites who cross themselves in Her presence before they sin, Foxy, I don't find public displays of the Empress of the Americas offensive at all. Mexican Catholicism is sublime precisely because it doesn't draw a distinction between the sacred and the profane. We can display our saints as comfortably in a cathedral as we do on hubcaps. Besides, the brown-skinned Guadalupe is a divine vete a la fregada, puto (“Go to hell, fucker”) to the gabacho rulers of the world. Remember from the Sermon on the Mount that God loves the wretched—and what people are more wretched than Mexicans—besides the Guatemalans, I mean?

BuyGuadalupe at Librería Martínez, 1110 N. Main St., SanTana, (714) 973-7900; www.latinobooks.com.

Dear Mexican,

Why do Mexican boys prefer their prospective wives virginal when they themselves are more broken in than a construction worker's boots?

Cherry Poppin' Papi

Dear Gabacho,

The obvious answer comes courtesy of my dago cousin Mario Puzo. In his 1969 novel The Godfather, Puzo describes how, after Michael Corleone makes his Sicilian bride Apollonia a woman, Michael “came to understand the premium put on virginity by socially primitive people. It was a period of sensuality that he had never before experienced, a sensuality mixed with a feeling of masculine power.” But another theory comes courtesy of the December 2004 issue of the Journal of Marriage and Family. There, University of Texas-Austin professor Gloria González-López examined why Mexican fathers in the United States wanted their daughters to remain virgins until marriage. Contrary to myths about machos expecting their daughters to be forever maidens, González-López argued, Mexican dads “expect their daughters to practice sexual moderation and to delay premarital sex. For them, this is a strategy that their young daughters may use to attend and complete college, and thus improve their living conditions and socioeconomic future as they survive in an increasingly competitive society.” Mexican men want their women to remain pure, therefore, because that shows a committed, serious lady who, unlike men, has mastered her libido.

Got a spicy question about Mexicans? Ask the Mexican at ga*******@oc******.com. And those of you who do submit questions: include a hilarious pseudonym,por favor, or we'll make one up for you!

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