!Ask a Mexican!

Illustration by Mark Dancy

Dear Mexican,

Being a pocho,I look forward to reading your column every week. Here's the problem: I work with a Canadian and another Mexican. Every week when the Canadian and I read your article out loud, the Mexican in our cube never listens. He goes to the bathroom or doesn't pay attention to what you're saying. He says that you aren't even a real Mexican! That you're just a cabrónacting like a Mexican! Don't worry, he attacks me, too! He says I'm a "White-xican" because I, too, find humor in the ways of the Mexican. Even the Canadian cabrónthinks your stuff is funny because he's a green-card carrier like many Mexicans. What's with my Mexican co-worker's hate?

El Pocho y el Gabacho Canadian

Dear PochoyGabacho,

Primeramente,tell your babosoMexican co-worker quesevayaalachingada—I'mpurozacatecanofrom the beautiful city of Jerez, Zacatecas. Secondly, all Mexican-on-Mexican bashing stems from class conflict—bone up on your Chicano Studies, pochoygabacho!Better-off Mexicans have always trashed poor Mexicans—look at the murder of Zapata, your typical telenovela plot or the battle between Mexicans north of Santa Ana's 17th Street and those living south. Similarly, loser Mexicans love nothing better than to pick on their betters. It's what one of my former professors at Chapman University, Paul Apodaca, used to call the crab theory—like crabs in a bag, loser Mexicans like to pull back those brave few who dream of a world free of Sunday-afternoon Raiders games and nightly visits to Rockin' Taco Cantina. But bringing down your race isn't exclusively a Mexican psychosis—Chris Rock once did an amazing monologue on how lower-class blacks derided their wealthier, smarter brethren for being "smarty-art niggers." Such squabbling helps keep the powerful powerful: the French pitted Hutu against Tutsi in Rwanda, Saddam Hussein did the same with Shiites and Sunni, and Cortes wrecked havoc with Tlaxcalans and Aztecs. So tell your babosoMexican to stop hating you and me and turn his vitriol toward the true enemies: the Guatemalans.

GotaspicyquestionaboutMexicans?AsktheMexicanatgarellano@ocweekly.com.Andthoseofyouwhodosubmitquestions:giveyournameorapseudonym,por favor, orwe'llmakeoneupforyou!