Mexican Mousketeers & Mexican-less California 

Dear Mexican: You once asked why Mexican bands don’t hit it big in the good old US of A. I think the simple answer is that there are no Mexican Mouseketeers. You don’t get to be Justin Timberlake by picking a guitarrón. Slater from Saved by the Bell doesn’t count. The real question is why Disney, a company that started with its first big park in Anaheim and introduced us melanin-deficients to topiary and churros, denies its Mexican heritage? —Paddy O’Furniture

Dear Mick: Disney and Mexican heritage? What herencia—Donald Duck in the enjoyable World War II propaganda piece The Three Caballeros? Those old Tijuana Bibles showing Minnie Mouse walking into a room and finding Mickey sodomizing a grinning Donald? The thousands of piratería statues, piggy banks, piñatas and every imaginable tchotchke sold by enterprising Mexicans from tourist spots in Mexico to stateside swap meets? Exploitative working conditions that inspired a memorable protest outside Disneyland last summer featuring cops arresting hotel employees dressed as Disney characters? That cantina scene in A Bug’s Life where the Kevin Spacey-voiced grasshopper gave a thinly veiled screed warning against the Mexican invasion of America? Surely, you don’t mean to reference Walt Disney’s supposed Mexican heritage? Actually, the myth is that Disney was born Jose Luis Girao, the illegitimate child of Spaniards summarily put up for adoption in the United States. The most thorough Disney-as-Spaniard examination appeared in a Nov. 30, 2001, article in the Guardian British newspaper, but no concrete proof exists. That doesn’t stop some Mexicans from trying to claim him (along with Thomas Alva Edison, Jimi Hendrix and Chewbacca) as one of their own, including people who should know better—the Library of Congress once included Disney in a display at the hallowed institution honoring Latinos a couple years back.

Do Mexicans really think A Day Without a Mexican is a good movie, and that California would completely, instantly collapse if Mexicans suddenly disappeared? Isn’t that what psychologists and psychiatrists call “delusions of grandeur”? Do Mexicans think non-Latinos cannot operate the sophisticated piece of technology that is known as a “gas-powered leafblower”? And they do realize that millionaire musician Beck, one of the most Anglo guys out there, used to be a landscaper with a leafblower? —Bottles y Cans

Dear Gabacho: Where to empezar … how about disputing your assertion that Beck is muy gabacho? He isn’t—named an album Guero (missing the umlaut over the letter u, it literally means “light-skinned” but is slang for a gabacho—if you’re learning this for the first time, read this column more closely!). Not many Mexicans, gabachos, chinitos, negritos or anyone really liked A Day Without a Mexican; the 2004 film grossed only an estimated $4.1 million at the box office, and it’s yet to become a cult classic among Mexicans like Born in East L.A. or the Charles Bronson canon. Mexicans do believe this country can’t exist without cheap immigrant labor—it’s not called “delusions of grandeur” but rather “knowing American history and how capitalism operates.” Finally, of course, we know gabachos can operate leafblowers— that’s why you’ll never see one use it to make a living unless their education is at Guatemalan levels of stupidity.

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