DEAR MEXICAN: I’m wondering what your thoughts are on the use of Lotería cards as decorative elements, specifically when used by people without Mexican heritage. Lotería cards are beautiful and interesting, but is using an image from the cards without a connection to any specific history, culture or meaning (such as on a tote bag or the like) a disrespectful appropriation? Or is it just a fun game such as checkers that happens to include some interesting artwork?
Not Columbusing, Just Asking
DEAR GABACHA: While gabachos have appropriated Mexican everything ever since they took our cuitlaxochitl flowers and renamed them poinsettias after some pendejo ambassador or other, I’m a bit more lax with Lotería. While this bingo-esque board game goes back to the 1700s, its most iconic pictograms—such as the bare-chested mermaid “La Sirena” or the derelict borracho called, fittingly enough, “El Borracho”—aren’t cultural patrimony so much as the intellectual property of Don Clemente Inc., a for-profit company. And while it’s easy to get mad at gabachos doing their own take on Lotería cards, it’s akin to doing the same with Monopoly figurines. We’re talking about a private, capitalist enterprise here, not la pinche Virgin of Guadalupe. Besides, Mexicans appropriate ourselves all the time—and if you don’t believe it, ask the tehuanas in Oaxaca how they feel when fresas from Guadalajara steal their steez.
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DEAR MEXICAN: If USA and Mexico go to war, whose side will the Mexican people in the USA stand on?
Alt-Asshole
DEAR GABACHO: Ah, the ultimate Chicano parlor game, one brought closer to reality by our incoming president! It’s all about context. Mexicans here have fought the narcos south of the border for the past couple of years with arms shipments and even brigades, so you’d expect the same if Enrique Peña Nieto announced he’d use his cartel amigos to try to invade el Norte. If Trump decided to move on Mexico for not trying to build a wall, you’d see a lot of hilarious memes but no uprising, as much as yaktivists would want you to believe. But if Trump starts mass roundups, let’s just say raza won’t take it quietly. I’d say more, but then the FBI would show up at my doorstep and disappear me to some black site or other for further questioning with Señor Waterboard.
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DEAR MEXICAN: I love ¿Qué Pasa, USA? Lots of Spanish, English and Spanglish. Do you know of any other TV shows like it?
Netflix and Chillar
DEAR POCHO: Nope. And this is how pathetic Hollywood is: Forty years ago, television was confident enough in a bilingual show about the Latino-immigrant experience that it made a sitcom about a Cuban family that aired nationwide on PBS. Today? They do entire films about Los Angeles, such as La La Land, and show a total of one Latino character in the film. Chris Rock put it best: “You’re in LA; you’ve got to try not to hire Mexicans.” I’d end on a funnier note, but trying to follow Chris Rock is like drinking Cazadores, then following up with Sauza—and I’m not even Sauza.
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