Ask a Mexican Quotes

“Your life depends on a random stranger who could kill you, will probably disrespect you, and will most likely pay you much less than you deserve. But even those prospects are better than the ones you used to have. This is the life of los jornaleros – the day laborers.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Why do Mexicans park their cars on the front lawn? MIGHT EVEN NEED SOME OAXACANS Dear MENSO: Where do you want us to park them, MENSO? The garage we rent out to a family of five? The backyard where we put up our recently immigrated cousins in tool-shacks-cum-homes? The street with the red curbs recently approved by city planners? The driveway covered with construction materials for the latest expansion of la casa? The nearby school parking lot frequented by cholos on the prowl for a new radio? MENSO, the lawn is the only spot”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Why is it that when you invite Mexicans to a party, they feel compelled to bring along thirty of their relatives? NOT ENOUGH FOOD FOR EVERYONE Dear Gabacho: Mexicans and parties—was there ever a coupling more spectacularly grotesque? We drink mucho, we eat mucho, we fight mucho, we love mucho, we mucho mucho.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“1954, when the Eisenhower administration launched a program to deport all illegal immigrants. But America being America, la migra rounded up Mexican-Americans, legal immigrants—anyone who was brown, really. The program’s name? Operation Wetback. The American experience is cyclical, of course, so expect Americans to soon begin calling Mexicans Sensenbeaners.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Gabacho: A gringo. But Mexicans don’t call gringos gringos. Only gringos call gringos gringos. Mexicans call gringos gabachos.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Chicano: The poorer, stupider, more assimilated cousins of Mexicans. Otherwise known as a Mexican-American. George López is such a Chicano with his unfunny jokes.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Che worship amongst Mexicans, however, features a few more wrinkles than the usual caudillismo causes. Guevara, for one, was an emigrant—left Argentina for revolution—who remade his life in Mexico when he met Fidel Castro. He died young, like all good Mexican men. Che was a romantic—can’t tell you how many pro-immigrant-activist e-mails end with Guevara’s supposed quote “At the risk of seeming ridiculous, let me say that a true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.” More important, Guevara wasn’t afraid to use violence as a method in the pursuit of his love, the love that dare not speak its name except through the barrel of a gun. Don’t believe Chicanos: while César Chávez advocated nonviolence, Mexicans like their leaders armed to the gold teeth—think Emiliano Zapata, Pancho Villa, Subcomandante Marcos. And now you know why democracy has never existed in Mexico.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Also, why do Mexicans wipe after a No. 2 and then throw the crappy toilet paper into the trash can rather than flushing it away? So gross! Let’s try to put an end to that madness. ANÓMINO Dear Gabacho: ¡Felicidades! You have just stumbled upon the most surefire way to tell if a Mexican is fresh from the border—or, as Mexicans who have lived in this country for years like to describe them, si tienen un nopal en la frente (if they have a cactus growing from their forehead)! See, flushing toilets remain a novelty in rural Mexico, so Mexicans new to this country treat public restrooms with the same anticipatory awe Japanese tourists save for Disneyland’s Matterhorn—hence, the long lines. Regarding the popó-gunked Charmin: those precious few ranchos that do have indoor plumbing suffer from inferior pipes installed on the cheap by Mexico’s government. Anything heavier than last night’s menudo would rupture the sewage system and ruin the rancho’s water supply, so used toilet paper must go in the waste-basket. Nopal-wearing Mexicans keep this tradition long after emigrating here, though…can you do me a favor, gabacho, and tell nopaleros that here in los Estados Unidos, we’re much more sophisticated with our No. 2—we flush it into the ocean.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“El Muchacho Alegre” should be the Mexican national anthem because it has everything a Mexican needs for fun: boozing, whoring, gambling, singing, gunplay, anal”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“The oldest American capital is Santa Fe, founded in 1609, over 150 years before the United States was even born and almost 250 before the United States eventually conquered what’s now the Southwest from Mexico.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“The oldest city in the United States is St. Augustine, Florida, founded by Spaniards in 1565,”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Your English is great. Why do your compadres choose to not adapt to an American accent when speaking English? NACHO MAMA Dear Gabacha: What the hell is an American accent, anyway? The drawl of the South? The lazy uh s of beachside Southern California? It’s difficult enough to learn a second language, and now you want Mexicans to adopt a mythical “American” accent?! When a Mexican keeps his accent, he’s just continuing the proud American ethnic tradition of allowing one’s native tongue to influence a region’s cadence—examples include the Scandinavian singsong common to Minnesota and North Dakota, the Irish brogues of Boston, the hurried Italian of Philadelphia, the Jewish nasal inflections of New York City, and so on.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Examples of elision in Mexican Spanish abound—pa’ instead of para (for), apá instead of papá (father), SanTana instead of Santa Ana, pos instead of pues (well), and my supposed gaffe.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Virgin of Guadalupe—a syncretism of the Aztec mother goddess Tonantzin and Mary of Bethlehem—that’s the focus of veneration in Mexican Catholicism.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“where cholos skulk behind bumpers ready to pounce on the first available coche—just to knock on your friend’s door? Or would you punch out “The Mexican Hat Dance” on your pito?”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“the old Warner Bros. cartoons, that studio can go to la chingada. It’s this studio’s fault that gabachos always try to imitate Mexicans with accents more refried than a Taco Bell special.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Speak Spanish, get accused of separatism. Speak English, get laughed at for thick accents and limited vocabularies. Many Mexicans speak English to Mexican workers out of gratitude—the fast-food counter is the only place Mexicans can feel like Americans by speaking the shared language of haggling with Mexican workers over the cost of fries.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Similarly, the Mexican Bueno greeting opens a window into our politeness. It originates from our daily salutations—buenos dias, buenas tarde, and buenas noche (good morning, afternoon, and evening, respectively), and thus the phone greeting Bueno is just a shortened version of the others. And remember that Mexicans are some of the happiest people on earth—and nothing radiates positive vibes like saying Bueno.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“The first generation of immigrants commit themselves to a lifetime of labor, not assimilation—that’s the job of the children.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“But a smart Mexican comes into this country with the understanding gabachos will always dismiss them as idiots. To get ahead, then, many Mexicans pretend not to recognize English so their gabacho bosses can entrust them with all the company secrets—codes, financial figures, and the all-important personal telephone number of the secretary.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“We Mexican-Americans in Orange County created wab to describe our wabby brothers and sisters, and all you Central Valley wabs could come up with to insult your unassimilated paisanos is chunti?! Chunti is shorthand for chúntaro, what Mexicans in Mexico call the poorer, rural Mexicans—”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“whether the Mexican in question flushes his soiled toilet paper or tosses it in the trash can. Another surefire way is the ch/sh phonetic test. Proper Spanish doesn’t feature a sh sound (known among linguists as a linguapalatal fricative), so most Mexicans pronounce English words with a sh sound with the harsher ch (known as a lingualveolar affricate). However, many indigenous Mexican tongues use linguapalatal fricatives. The most famous example is in the original pronunciation of Mexico: as said in Nahuatl, the word sounds like “meh-shee-ko.” The Spaniards couldn’t pronounce the middle consonant, though, instead substituting a guttural j (as in “Meh-hee-ko”) early in the Conquest. They killed most of Mexico’s Indians in the ensuing decades, but the indigenous sh sound never wholly disappeared;”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“What the fucking fuck is up with you border bandit cholos and Old English fonts? They’re ugly, just like everything about your culture and people. REALLY ABHORS CALIFORNIA-INVADING STUPID TOMATEROS Dear RACIST: The popularity of Old English script is a prison phenomenon that transcends race—just check out some of the tats on your white-supremacist cousins the next time they show up at your family picnic, pit bull and all, or the signs in a town’s historic district. But what’s up with the gabachos who appropriate gangster fashion for their designer labels?”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“In Mexico, we usually go by three names—first name, father’s surname, and mother’s surname. We shorten that to first and last name in los Estados Unidos.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Many such ethnic groups influenced the formation of the Mexican nation. Before the Conquest, major indigenous languages such as Nahuatl, Zapotec, and Totonac featured a whistled-only dialect. After the Conquest, migrants from the Canary Islands, home of the world’s most famous whistled language, Silbo Gomero, were among the first settlers of Texas. And since the past is ever present for Mexicans, it makes sociological sense to argue that the Mexican propensity to whistle-talk, like our obsession with death and Three Flowers brilliantine, is a (literally) breathing cultural artifact.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Raza cósmica, la: “The cosmic race.” Refers to a movement by Mexican intellectuals during the 1920s arguing Mexicans have the blood of all the world’s races—white, black, Indian, and Asian—and therefore transcend the world.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Aztlán: The mythical birthplace of the Aztecs. Chicanos use this term to describe the southwest United States. Chicanos are idiots. Citlali says Aztlán is somewhere in Ohio.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Pocho: An Americanized Mexican.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Chúntaro: A Mexican redneck. Term used mostly by Mexicans against each other. Jeff Foxworthy is a white chúntaro.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican

“Chingar: To fuck up. Its various derivatives are used for a delightful array of insults, such as chingadera (fucked-up situation), chingazos (punches thrown), and Chinga tu madre, cabrón (Go fuck your mother, asshole). Chinga tu madre, cabrón—if you don’t stop this chingadera, I’m going to chingar you with chingazos.”
― Gustavo Arellano, Ask a Mexican