!Ask a Mexican!

Dear Mexican,
Why is the Dirty Sanchez called a Dirty Sanchez and not, say, a Filthy Hobsbawm or a Grimy Kierkegaard? Is it because Mexicans invented it?
Soiled Schliemann

Dear Gabacho,
I assume you refer to the sexual proclivity whereupon a man sticks a finger up his beloved's butt during intercourse and smears feces on her upper lip, and not the same-named lame band from northern California, the 1999 film or the 2002 British television show that prudish MTV execs renamed Team Sanchezwhen it aired in the colonies. The answer is obvious—upon completion of the Dirty Sanchez, your ruca sports a mierdamustache, and Americans nowadays associate thick, bushy mustaches with Mexicans. But the Dirty Sanchez is just one of many sex acts named after a locale or ethnicity, in a subgenre of slurs linguists call “ethnicons.” These are insults meant to comment on an ethnic group's supposed depravity that become popular shorthand for said characteristic—for instance, we call vicious people “mongols,” “welsher” is synonymous with a swindler, and the hip kids yell “Guatemalan!” whenever their friends do something estúpido. Other famous sexual ethnicons, as listed in the Rotten.com library's “Rolodex of Love” section, include the Cleveland Steamer (“the act of leaving a shit stain on the rib cage of a woman while receiving penile pleasure from friction between the mammaries”), a Dutch Oven (“entrapping an unsuspecting sleeping partner in a world of ass odor by farting under the covers and pulling them over her head”) and the mysterious Greek (“the act of using your 'glue stick' and gluing your gal's eyes closed with your man seed”).

But do Mexicans invoke the Dirty Sanchez during sex as much as they do the name of the Santo Niño de Atocha? No. Although Mexicans are fond of anal, poop porn is the domain of your culture, Soiled Schliemann. Gentle readers: go to Spanky's and rent a scheizer (“shit” in German) film. The mixture of genitalia and excrement in those movies makes a Dirty Sanchez seem as chaste as an exposed ankle.

Dear Mexican,
Why do Mexicans drive trucks that cost more than their homes? You drive through SanTana, and Lincoln Navigators are parked outside tenement slums!
Stuck With My Kia

Dear Pocha,
You say it like it's a bad thing, Kia, but rejoice: if Mexicans spend more cash on their cars than their casas, that's justfurther proof we're assimilating into American life. A telltale trait of gabachismois conspicuous consumption, the phenomenon identified by American economist Thorstein Veblen in his 1899 classic The Theory of the Leisure Class. Veblen theorized that commoners buy the most expensive and ostentatious products in the name of achieving social status—keeping up with the Gonzalezes, if you will. Conspicuous consumption, not thrift, is the true American way. Look at George W. Bush, for instance—talks about fiscal responsibility yet spends more and more on war follies without care for the health of his nation. But who cares about ballooning federal budgets or having to rent out your garage to five perverts from Guerrero to make rent as long as you can show off the chingo bling?

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