Why Do Pochos Make Mexicans Look Bad?

DEAR MEXICAN: What's up with pochos and their disrespect for their origins? I'm a Mexican, born and raised in Mexico, a proud chilango, and, well, I gotta know why do pochos—Mexican-Americans or whatever—try to make our reputation as bad as possible by acting all gangster and drug dealer, like a lazy, ignorant, person? I mean, no kidding: They represent Mexican culture in the USA, and, well, it doesn´t give us real Mexicans a good image, especially the working ones. I mean, I´m not poor, but I was born poor, and my biggest example is my dad, who busted his butt working for us to get where we are. So, why do pochos put us as lowrider drivers who do drive-bys and lazy guys who are ignorant and know nothing? I mean, I got pushed back to eighth grade again when I studied in the U.S. for a year, just because I came from Mexico; the excuse was that the school system was different. Anyway, I just hope you can answer why pochos do that.

Mexico City Misfit

DEAR NACO: Man, Mexicans have been fretting about the supposedly bad image Mexican-Americans give them ever since Octavio Paz was railing against pachucos in The Labyrinth of Solitude. In “The Pachuco and Other Extremes,” he ripped apart Mexican-American youth as emblematic of a “sheer negative impulse, a tangle of contradictions, an enigma” and accused them of “grotesque dandyism and anarchic behavior”—and if that doesn't describe all the wannabe buchones who blast El Komander from their Escalade while driving to Culiacán, I don't know what does. Too regional a reference? How about all the Mexican soccer fans who continue to chant, “Ehhhhhh . . . PU-TO” during matches despite FIFA fines and pleas from El Tri? You think Emiliano Zapata would approve of that mierda? The years have taught me that the more “real” Mexicans say they are, the more pendejo they actually are—and, I mean, you just proved that.

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DEAR MEXICAN: I'm a dark Mexican with curly hair who spent my whole life defending my full-blooded Mexican-ness to people who insisted I was half-black. I married a black guy because (aside from the fact that I fell in love with him), as I explained to my grandma, no Mexican guy ever gave me the time of day while black guys did. So we have one child who is, as George Lopez says, “Chicano-plus.” Why is my family so fascinated with him? “Look at his curly hair!” I have curly hair! “Look at his beautiful skin?” We're the same color! He looks just like me and not a bit like his black daddy. Same goes for another of my family members who also married a black guy! What gives with mixed babies and Mexicans? And why didn't I get this kind of love growing up?

Hating on My Mixed Baby

DEAR POCHA: Chill out—everyone's freaking out about your baby because he's obviously cute, and mixed babies are the most chulos. You didn't get that love, en el other hand, because your family was in denial about ustedes' Afro-Mexican roots (dark skin? Curly hair? There's an African in that family árbol . . . or at least a Moor). How to explain the contradiction? Easy: By marrying a black man, you've helped to push racial ambiguity and anxiety back into the chamber pot of pendejismo where it belongs, right next to Donald Trump and Mexican soccer fans who chant, “Eh . . . PUTO!”

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