Why Do Mexican Men Love Their Mothers So Much?

BUY TACO USA! Gentle cabrones, my much-promised Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America has finally hit bookstores! Place your order with your favorite local bookstore, your finer online retailers, your craftier piratas, but place it. My libro editor has already promised to deport me from the publishing industry if we don't sell enough copies!

 

DEAR MEXICAN: I'm getting sick and tired of all these dirty, stupid Mexicans running around. The first part is easy: As Mr. Dix says in David Copperfield when asked what to do with David, “Why, bathe him.” The second part could be just as easy: Pay them to learn English. There is no damn crime in knowing two languages. If they are kids brought here illegally by their parents, pay the parents to learn English, too. And don't ever, ever tell me there's no money. I HATE MEXICANS EXCEPT FOR THE GIRLS!

Wrote My Letter Via Snail Mail

DEAR GABACHO: And as Dickens wrote in Martin Chuzzlewit, “What is exaggeration to one class of minds and perceptions is plain truth to another.” I agree it's no damn crime to know two languages, so please tell your gaba raza it's okay to learn Spanish—shit, Mexicans learned English long ago!

 

DEAR MEXICAN: Why are Mexican men so attached to their mommies? My boyfriend is an only child, and his mom is loca for him. When he goes out to dinner with his parents, she never has anything to say. But if I am around, she will talk to him forever. I tried to be friends with her, but she looks like she just wants to have a civil relationship with me, not a “mother-daughter” relationship. He isn't crazy in love with his mom—he has stopped speaking to her for 10 days because of su novia and had arguments with her because of things she did against me in the past, but he is still kind of . . . blind. How can I take him away from her? Somebody told me that food will. I already know how to make three Mexican dishes, and he loved them! What else can I do besides cook and have sex (which he enjoys a lot!)?

Confused Nuera

DEAR DAUGHTER-IN-LAW CONFUNDIDA: It's not so much a Mexican thing as it is a Catholic culture cosa. One of my favorite cross-cultural moments happened in The Godfather 2, in which the young Vito Corleone (as played by Robert DeNiro) saw an opera in Little Italy in which the protagonist, upon learning about the death of his saintly mother, proceeded to sing that he was going to kill his . . . was it his wife? Lover? Don't have my Netflix right now. Anyhoo, Catholic culture teaches the male worship of moms and the dismissal of all other woman as inadequate—it's the whole Madonna/whore complex, and it's a cycle that not even the best panocha on Earth can break. And as the eldest son of a wonderful mami, I say let this benevolent tyranny reign FOREVER.