¡ask a mexican!

Meet our new satirical, humorist columnist

Gustavo Arellano is the editor of OC Weekly, an alternative newspaper in Orange County, California, author of Orange County: A Personal History and Taco USA: How Mexican Food Conquered America, and lecturer with the Chicana and Chicano Studies department at California State University, Fullerton.

Gustavo Arellano

He writes “¡Ask a Mexican!,” a nationally syndicated column in which he answers any and all questions about America’s spiciest and largest minority. The column has a weekly circulation of over 2 million in 39 newspapers across the United States, won the 2006 and 2008 Association of Alternative Weeklies award for Best Column, and was published in book form by Scribner Press in May 2007.

Arellano has been the subject of press coverage in national and international newspapers, The Today Show, Hannity, Nightline, Good Morning America, and The Colbert Report, and his commentaries regularly appear on Marketplace and the Los Angeles Times.

He is the recipient of the Los Angeles Press Club’s 2007 President’s Award and an Impacto Award from the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and was recognized by the California Latino Legislative Caucus with a 2008 Spirit Award for his “exceptional vision, creativity, and work ethic.”

Arellano is a lifelong resident of Orange County and is the proud son of two Mexican immigrants, one whom was illegal.

By GUSTAVO ARELLANO

Dear Mexican: Magdalena has worked for me many years—15, to be exact. She came over as a mojada with her two little girls when they were four and six. The girls went to school but only until middle school because they are undocumented; they can’t get a job or a bank account or a driver’s license for the same reason. One of them is almost thirty and has three kids; somehow she manages to work regularly. The other one has been sitting in jail for nearly two years because she hung out with the wrong cholo crowd in her neighborhood. Never shot anyone, never killed anyone, no record, no papers, no school, no money, no car; she didn’t want to clean homes like her mom. What is she supposed to do in Mexico, where they’d consider her a pocha and where she knows no one? What can she do here as an undocumented American? She came with her mom, grew up here, and her main language is English. Of course, Obama has taken a small step to keep Mexis voting for him in November, but at least it is recognition that the problem exists. Why not just allow these kids to live here, pay taxes, and be a part of the social fabric? Que chingadera, como diríamos en México…

Good Gabacha

Dear Gabacha: Although your question is problematic (you didn’t tell me what the jailed sister is up for and you should be more judgmental of your worker for letting her girls drop out of school as teenagers—for crying out loud, you have DREAMers getting advanced degrees, and if they can do it, Magdalena’s hijas could have, as well), you also brought up an inadvertent point that should give pause to those Know Nothings who want immediate deportations of all illegals. During the 1980s and 1990s, the United States government deported young Central American illegal immigrants who had joined the gang life. What did they do? They started gang chapters in their home countries, which connected with their cliquas up here, and turned a local problem into a transnational nightmare, with nearly 80,000 such gang members in Central America alone, according to a 2006 study by the USAID Bureau for Latin American and Caribbean Affairs Office of Regional Sustainable Development. The same thing happened in Mexico, except those deported cholos usually ended up in the services of the drug cartels—and we know what’s happened there. Mass deportations of all illegal immigrants is much like Mitt Romney: seemingly plausible in paper, but a nightmare if it in fact happens.

Dear Mexican: I’m a small woman, certainly too small to be pushing my car down the street towards a gas station when it breaks down, as it frequently does. My fellow Americans, driving new, big-ass-wheeled trucks wearing their faux gangsta apparel, appear to think I am doing this to piss them off and slow them down because their response is to honk and scream at me. It is those gallant men in their beat-up vehicles (often packed with gardening equipment) from south of the border who pull over, jump out and lend me a mano. What’s up with that?

Pequeña y Agradecida

Dear Dear Petite, Grateful Gabacha: You know why—because Mexicans, since the beginning of time, are AWESOME. Except for new president Enrique Peña Nieto, of course—pinche puto pendejo baboso.

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Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, be his fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter @gustavoarellano or ask him a video question at youtube.com/askamexicano!