Dear Mexican: In an earlier column, you mentioned that conservatives can’t have an argument against illegal immigration without it degenerating into a diatribe against culture. Here’s an argument that has nothing to do with culture: In California, we now have a severe water shortage. I work for a municipal water agency. We are asking that people ration 20 percent of their usage. We must ration 15 percent to 17 percent of our water in order to make sure we don’t run out of it. Considering that the illegal immigrant population of California is approximately 16 percent, we would achieve our rationing goal just by illegal immigrants going back to where they came from.
Wet Back, But Not the Wetback Kind
Dear Gabacho: Your work has given you agua on the brain, amigo. Where did you get the stat that California’s illegal-immigrant population is 16 percent? Even if you take the overinflated 2008 estimate of the Golden State’s illegals (3.2 million) claimed by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR, which many Know Nothings cite as a legitimate think tank but which the Southern Poverty Law Center classifies as a hate group for its connections to bona fide racists) and square the stat with the Census Bureau’s 2008 guess for California’s total population (36.8 million), the final percentage of indocumentados is about 8.7 percent—still a significant chunk of cambio, but almost half of what you claimed, Wet Back. But you like numbers and conservation, so refry this: A 2005 California Urban Water Conservation Council study found almost half of all residential water use in the state was for landscaping. Want to achieve your rationing goals and then some, Wet Back? Let lawns die. But, of course, gabachos would never allow that to happen, being more than willing to behold the bean in a Mexican’s eye without considering the burrito in their own.
Dear Mexican: During the 1970s, I heard my father tell a couple of activist friends that some Mexica males practiced contraception by chewing on a type of root. Is this true? Or am I confusing the Mexica with the Mayas, Olmecas or mi tío Monchi?
El Gallo Habrano
Dear Wab: Probably. Probably not. Point is, what does it matter? Obviously ain’t being used today.
Dear Mexican: I decided to move definitivamente to America two years ago. I started working a year and a half ago, and I’ve noticed that, for some reason, my co-workers think that because I’m Mexican, and very proud of it, the only kind of food I’ll eat is . . . MEXICAN food!!! I must say, there’s nothing better for la cruda than menudo, and I could eat all the mole myestómago will allow, and that I cannot die before I have a nice plate of zacahuil (¡y arriba San Luis Potosí!), but, to be honest with you, I also like Indian, Thai, Chinese, Italian, Peruvian, Middle Eastern, French . . . I think you get it. Why is that?
Not as Square as You (Gringos) Think
Dear Wab: Bienvenido to los Estados Unidos! On behalf of all raza, allow me to present you with your standard-issue poncho, sombrero, bandoliers, mustache, gold tooth, taco belly and fake Social Security number! Chistes aside, does such a gastronomic stereotype really surprise you? Never mind that Mexican food is an amalgamation of various culinary traditions (Lebanese, Spanish, French and indigenous are just the most obvious and pervasive), or that—as I’ve written before in my column and book (buy it!)—Mexico is one of the world’s top consumers of ramen. If you’re a Mexican in the United States, gabachos expect you to subsist on a steady diet of yellow cheese, chili, pinto beens and beer. Do the Mexican a favor, Not as Square: Cast out the burrito in your co-workers’ eyes, then go out and pound the Herradura.
MEET THE MEXICAN! The Mexican will sign copies of his book at the Anaheim Public Library, 500 W. Broadway, Anaheim, (714) 765-1880. Sat., 3 p.m. Admission is free, but books aren’t!
Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net or myspace.com/ocwab. Or write to him at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433. Find him on Facebook and Twitter!
