Do Mexican Teens Hate Old People?

DEAR MEXICAN: We have Mexican teenagers in my apartment building who are chronic troublemakers. My question to you is: Why do Mexicans break the rules, refuse to be corrected and harass us senior citizens? Why is it always the Mexicans who are the worst? Is it in their culture? Or are these just uneducated low-lifes? And because their fathers are nowhere in sight? The management here and the cops can hardly keep up with them, probably because they're Mexicans, too.

Frustrated

DEAR GABACHO: You didn't give me specifics, so I'm not sure if the young Mexicans in question are merely playing in the hallway in violation of apartment rules or making you pay a protection “tax.” I'm thinking the former because Mexicans are taught to revere viejitos as if they were their own abuelitas, so rarely disrespect the elderly. Since you're claiming Mexican cops and apartment managers are conspiring to protect the kids from punishment, I'm going to mark you down as a nasty old bigot, the kind who remembers when Mexicans were referred to as “wetbacks” and everyone laughed at Sy the Little Mexican. In case you actually are a kind old soul and a bunch of asshole kids are truly harassing you, call up an old Mexican grandma: Her chancla will have them scrambling faster than a gabacho running to the restroom after eating habanero salsa.

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DEAR MEXICAN: Why do the women on Mexican television wear so much eye makeup?

Mascara Maven

DEAR GABACHA: Same reason American women on television do—patriarchy!

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DEAR MEXICAN: I was in a Mexican restaurant and saw a map of Mexico on the wall with all the states shown. I'd previously assumed that Chiapas and Yucatán were cultural regions, like Appalachia or the Pacific Northwest, not states in a republic. I never really liked or learned geography. Thank Glob for Google Maps, right? In public school, maps always showed North America as Canada and its territories, the U.S. and all its states, but Mexico as a unitary region. Wikipedia says that Mexico's official name is United Mexican States (in English). Cartographers might say that Mexican state names won't fit in available space, but they still draw Rhode Island on the map of the U.S. Showing Canadian territories makes Canada seem “like us,” while showing Mexico as a single region makes Mexico seem undeveloped, undergoverned and homogenous.

Other countries also have states or provinces that aren't shown, like Brazil and China. Mexican states probably vary more than Canadian provinces do. Is the snow in Manitoba different than the snow in Ontario? Why do you think most maps made in the U.S. show U.S. states and Canadian territories, but not Mexican states?

'F' in Geography

DEAR GABACHO: Because the U.S. and Canada are English-speaking neighbors, while Mexico ain't. Meanwhile, Mexican maps don't offer the same courtesy to its Central American neighbors in showing each country's departments (their version of states)—further proof to chapines, catrachos, ticos and guanacos alike that Mexicans are brown Hitlers. No joke here; they really do!

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