Puerta Rican Sonia Sotomayor & Street Spanish | Ask a Mexican | Salt Lake City Weekly

Puerta Rican Sonia Sotomayor & Street Spanish 

Pin It
Favorite
art8546widea.jpg

Dear Mexican: The mainstream media are making big noise of Sonia Sotomayor likely being the first Latina Supreme Court justice, and that all Latinos should be proud. But, Puerto Rican ain’t Mexican! The Supreme Court won’t have a shade of brown until a Mexican is among Roberts and Scalia. What does the Mexican think of Sotomayor’s nomination and likely appointment? —Legalingo

Dear Pendeja: Sotomayor not brown? Yeah, and George Lopez is as guero as Conan O’Brien. The Mexican beams with pride at the thought of Sotomayor on the Supreme Court, not just because she’ll be the first Latina/o to sit on the nation’s highest judicial branch but because she forces gabachos to remember the nation’s other problem brownies: Puerto Ricans, who weren’t good enough for independence like the Philippines or statehood like the Mexis of the southwest United States but have instead lived for over a century as vassals in their own homeland. Gracias a Diós that I’ve heard only a few instances of Chicano chauvinism like your case, Legalingo, and you few need to crack open a Coors with Know Nothings and talk shop. Sure, it would’ve been chido if a Mexican replaced David Souter, but boricuas and other Latinos deserve a spot in the Reconquista, too, and President Barack Obama rightly, sadly, figured a moderate Puerto Rican is easier to stomach for gabachos at this point in the American experience than a moderate Mexican.

Having lived in San Antonio for a number of decades, I’ve learned a smattering of street Spanish. That experience has caused me to cringe when I hear the word cojones used in American movies or television as a referent to testicles when the writer is trying to have the character talk dirty. In San Antonio, a person would use huevos in that context. Which is the correct Spanglish, or is a matter of cojones being used in California and huevos being used in Texas? —Big-Balled

Dear Gabacho: I’ve only heard gabachos use cojones, while Mexicans use huevos. Both words are linguistically correct, politically incorrect and both derive from Latin (cojones comes from the singular cojón, testicle, from the Latin coleo—sack—while huevo actually means egg and derives from ovum). So, the real question in your inquiry is how gabachos came to use cojones more commonly instead of huevos as slang for balls. The answer is Ernest Hemingway, a man who introduced more misinterpreted-as-Mexican overused Spanish terms (mano a mano, macho and maricón, to name the most notorious examples) than any other writer except me. Gabacho writers began introducing cojones into their works to emulate the faux-authenticity of Papa, and their audiences made the word a part of American Spanish, just like gringo and Drinko por Cinco. Mexicans, meanwhile, try to teach gabachos about huevos but remain puzzled why gabachos consistently prefer fey Castilian over our crude idioms.

ASK A MEXICAN BOOK CONTEST!
In 25 words or less, tell me your favorite local Mexican restaurant and what makes it so bueno. One entry per person, one winner per paper, and contest ends when I say so!

Ask the Mexican at themexican@askamexican.net, myspace.com/ocwab, facebook.com/garellano, find him on, Twitter, or write via snail mail at: Gustavo Arellano, P.O. Box 1433, Anaheim, CA 92815-1433!

Pin It
Favorite

Speaking of...

More by Gustavo Arellano

  • Uptight Gringo Ladies

    Also: Why the bedsheet dresses?
    • Nov 7, 2011
  • B to the W to the S-Words

    The three anti-Mexi slurs you used are so 1950s—the only people who use those words nowadays are old gabachos and Alabamans.
    • Nov 1, 2011
  • Conquests & 9/11

    Also: Is 'Mexican' Offensive?
    • Oct 24, 2011
  • More »

Latest in Ask a Mexican

  • Uptight Gringo Ladies

    Also: Why the bedsheet dresses?
    • Nov 7, 2011
  • B to the W to the S-Words

    The three anti-Mexi slurs you used are so 1950s—the only people who use those words nowadays are old gabachos and Alabamans.
    • Nov 1, 2011
  • Conquests & 9/11

    Also: Is 'Mexican' Offensive?
    • Oct 24, 2011
  • More »

© 2024 Salt Lake City Weekly

Website powered by Foundation