DEAR MEXICAN: Waze is launching Waze Carpool throughout California. I think it’s gonna be a hit, especially with tight Latino enclaves throughout the state. But . . . is there a history of raites within the Mex community?
Uber Wazer
DEAR GABACHA: Everything that tech bros and their hipster acolytes think they’re creating, Mexicans did first. Ripping off music and movies? We call it piratería, and we know a guy at the Paramount Swap Meet who has Guardians of the Galaxy 3 on VHS. Airbnb? We’ve been renting out the couch to visitors since the days of the Toltecs. Uber? The aforementioned raiteros, what the gabacho media used to call gypsy cabs. Some app that you can use if you need someone to cut your lawn or fix your clogged toilet? Day laborers. Día de los Muertos everything? BRUH . . . And all of this caca will continue because, as I’ve written before, when hipsters do something that’s slightly outside the law yet an innovation over the old guard, they get a Series-C round of funding, Instagram influencers and fawning media coverage. When Mexicans do it? We get code enforcement.
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DEAR MEXICAN: I need to be set straight. I’ve recently dubbed myself “un loco pocho” because I’m in the same pinche crisis as every other Mexican-American three generations in. I’m an artist, so to obtain scholarships and grants, I must illustrate what a sell-out I don’t want to become. My abuelita is güera, not white, and speaks fluent Spanish (nothing else), and I prefer flour over corn tortillas any day. Sadly, I’ve come to the realization that I will never be Nahuatl, Maya or Chichimecan. Yet I’m not white; I’m a dark-skinned, non-español, seemingly mojado wannabe. I don’t want to be white; I want to be American. I don’t want to forget the struggles of my grandparents, yet my baby-boomer parents already have—as have so many other children of immigrants from different countries, living off the fat of the land (now in a position to benefit from the Third World countries from which they fled). Can I just use pocho, the pejorative term, for “fake-ass Mexican” (may as well be la malinche in the flesh) as a symbol of hope? Or am I just trying to have my cake and eat it, too?
Un Sonso Poco Loco Defecto Asking Who the Fuck They Are, LOL
DEAR A DUMMY BUT CRAZY DEFECT PREGUNTANDO QUIEN CHINGADO SON, JAJA: Man, you’re so pocho you think Nahuatl is a people, not a language. You’re so pocho that Donald Trump just appointed you to his cabinet. You’re so pocho that Carlos Mencia accuses you of stealing his jokes. You’re so pocho that you probably think embarazada means embarrassed, not pregnant. You’re so pocho you drive a Prius instead of a 1979 Ford Ranger Supercab with “CHALINO” stenciled in the camper window. And you know what? It’s perfectly fine. The beauty of America for Mexicans is that we can sell out as much as we want, and it sometimes works—but at the end of the día, gabachos still think you’re just a dirty Mexican.
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