Sal and Isela are a husband and wife duo from Lake Elsinore, California, with fond memories of El Tortillero, the guy with the grocery truck who rolled through the hood. He was hecho en Mexico, just like his mazapan, and saladitos, and pastelitos de gansito, galletitas Maria, y chocomilk and ….
Mas…‘El Tortillero’ brought the goods to our neighborhood (video, lyrics)
Live from her bedroom, California-native high school senior Allison Reyes explains the heartaches and joys of Being Hispanic. SPOILER: If she had to do it all over again, she wouldn’t change a thing.
Pablo Martinez, owner of Carlos Shoe Repair, learned the trade growing up in Mexico from his father. Will his shop, in the East Bay community of Martinez, survive the glut of cheap imported shoes? Does a family business like his matter? [Video by Rachel Aston for the Martinez News Gazette.]
Mas…In Martinez, CA, Pablo Martinez repairs shoes, shares wisdom (video)
Just so we’re all on the same page, let’s agree on terminology:
In addition, Quitapenas makes the following assertions about Valle Moreno. Dark Valley is:
Mas…Quitapenas ❤️ Cali’s Inland Empire: ‘Valle Moreno’ (video)
Hooray! We found a new video upload from the same white winger who gleefully shared the dancing Raza 1 Racists 0 video.
This new upload features the irony-impaired videographer and his know-nothing posse out on the streets waving American flags and ranting about “illegals.” Then two different guys drive by and stop their trucks, get out, and confront the H8RZ. [Adult language, F-bomb.]
Mas…Two drivers stop, get out, and confront anti-immigration H8RZ (video)
I was born and raised in El Paso in an area known as The Second Ward because of its political designation in city government.
In the greater community, it was most popularly called South El Paso. However, the approximately 25,000 mostly Chicano people who lived there referred to the neighborhood as El Segundo Barrio. It was a barrio that was like an island sandwiched between the Rio Grande Mexican border and downtown El Paso.
In this isolated area, about a third of the families were of second or third generation Mexican descent like ours. Another third was made up of mostly migrant newer arrivals and the rest were in transition. However, it was the Spanish language that served to unite the whole community. Although Spanish was prevalent, lots of exposure to English came through, school, work, movies, radio, music and TV, which was then in its infancy.
Although I love that I am bilingual, I was recently reminded that I am, in fact, trilingual. You see, this third language was unique to our Segundo Barrio culture because it originated there. It started as the jargon for the criminal element in our midst. These outlaws were widely know as “pachucos” because of the Los Angeles bent to their style of clothes. Most of us called them Tirilis and for all intents, they were the precursors of today’s gang members.
Mas…English is my third language; I grew up speaking Spanish and Caló
POCHO’s Migrant Editor Al Madrigal – who lives in Los Angeles – had to make lifestyle changes because of the California water shortage. In New York, where there’s more than enough H20 to go around, Al can let it all hang out, as he explained to Jon Stewart on The Daily Show.
PREVIOUSLY ON CALIFORNIA DROUGHT:
Mas…Californian @AlMadrigal is all about the H20 on Jon Stewart (video)
(PNS reporting from RIVERSIDE) After a decade-long quest to duplicate his Oaxacan abuela’s mole poblano recipe, UC Riverside food scientist Miguel Jimenez, 33, declared defeat Sunday.
Microbiologist Jimenez had hoped to identify the ingredients in the mysterious chocolate chile sauce his abuela puts on chicken.
“She won’t give anyone the recipe!” said Jimenez, as he kicked his chair and wiped away tears at UCR’s Chucheria Research Facility. “Abuelita just pinches my cheek and tells me to portarme bien and go to church more.”
Mas…Scientist’s quest to reproduce abuela’s mole recipe ends in failure
“The Zorro story, invented in 1919 by pulp fiction author Johnston McCulley, tells the tale of an aristocrat in Spanish California who dons a mask to fight against corrupt colonial officials on behalf of the oppressed,” writes Marlon Bishop of Latino USA.
Mas…Out of the night, when the full moon is bright! America’s first superhero
Rula the parrot, from Tracy, in San Joaquin County, is a dirty-mouthed bird according to Spanish-speaking — and Spanish-HEARING — neighbors. Or not. The animal authorities have been advised of the situation, but none of their on-staff critter wranglers are bilingual.
PREVIOUSLY ON PARROTS WHO ESPEAK SPANISH:
Mas…Neighbors complain local parrot curses in Spanish, or not (video)
How long will it take competitive eater Matt “Megatoad” Stonie to polish off the 2-pound Burritozilla from Iguanas in San Jose, CA? [POCHO NEWS INTERJECTION: San Jose will soon to be re-named Sanjay, CA.] The last time Megatoad tried to scarf down a Burritozilla, it took him 15 minutes.
PREVIOUSLY ON EATING CHALLENGE VIDEOS:
Mas…Watch: Competitive eater Megatoad vs 2-pound ‘Burritozilla’
Where has all the water gone?
Screw your liberal “climate change” answer that’s really a code word so-called “progressives” use to steal from people who work for a living instead of sucking Obamacare’s socialist welfare titties.
Where has all of California’s water gone?
It’s the immigrants, stupid!
Victor David Hanson reports for the National Review:
Mas…Breaking the Ñews: Massive immigration caused California drought
After the United States passed the openly racist Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, migrants from China went to Mexico instead. And the legacy of those immigrants is still found today on both sides of the border: Chinese-Mexican food.
Lisa Morehouse of KQED reports:
Mas…Chinese-Mexican food and a side order of history (audio)
Here in Los Angeles, we like breakfast burritos. We like the breakfast burritos so much that breakfast burritos can be enjoyed in Jewish delis, Chinese restaurants, Greek diners, burger stands, sushi joints, lunch trucks, Mexican restaurants, old-school coffee shops and fancy places near the beach.
LA.Eater, for example, just published a list of three dozen breakfast burrito destinations, which includes Mid-City 24/7 Lucy’s Drive-In (Gustavo Arellano’s go-to place for chile relleno burritos), Anthony Bourdain pick Tacos Villa Corona in Atwater Village (photo, above) and ∼$12 burritos at the The Farm in Beverly Hills which are filled with aged cheddar cheese and applewood smoked bacon.
But breakfast burritos are an anomaly in some parts of Texas, where breakfast tacos are the norm.
Mas…What’s for breakfast? Breakfast tacos or breakfast burritos?
California-born Yari Rodriguez wants to be a crew member on that one-way trip to Mars – but she’s scared.
For Smith College engineering grad Rodriguez, the most terrifying thing about a one-way trip to Mars isn’t a rocket malfunction, lack of oxygen, or the probability of death on Mars, she told Fox News Latino. It’s the cameras.
“It’s the scariest part about the whole mission,” Rodriguez, 27, said. “I’m really shy and nervous…I’ve been coming to terms with being on TV.”
Mas…Pocha Yari Rodriguez wants to live (and die?) on Mars (video)
When Los Angeles was a still a little pueblo in the northern part of Mexico known as Alta California, Spanglish was born.
Public Radio International’s Global Nation explains:
…living in the a rancho just north of the pueblo was a young Scottish adventurer named Hugh Reid. In the 1830s he left the old world for the new — Mexico. And in his adopted home he was rechristened with an additional Spanish name, Perfecto Hugo Reid. Reid would eventually settle down on a ranch in southern California near the San Gabriel mission in what’s now Arcadia, a suburb of Los Angeles, where he married a local woman, Doña Victoria.
Robert Train has been obsessed with Hugo Reid’s backstory for the last few years. Train is a professor of Spanish at Sonoma State University. We met recently at the Huntington Library archives in Pasadena, to read Reid’s extremely yellowed letters.
Mas…Spanglish is no Juan E. Come Lately to California (audio)
You say tomato, I say tomahto, and when a migrant farmworker visits the produce aisle at a local supermarket he sees an entirely different picture.
PRI’s Monica Campbell reports:
In the produce aisle of a supermarket in Madera, in California’s rural Central Valley, Francisco surveys the fruits and vegetables on display in the produce aisle. He’s 40 years old and stocky. He’s also undocumented, and he asks to use his first name only.
It’s a biopic! It’s history! It’s a music video!
It’s long and complicated, so we’ll let them explain:
Algodón y V.I.N.O. is a music video written and directed by Jeremiah Joe Ocañas that follows a 12-year-old boy’s days of working in the cotton fields of Danevang, TX, to following his dream of moving to California and today, while living that dream in the mural adorned Highland Park, he reminisces on the journey as an adult.
Mas…I guess we’re not in those cotton fields back home anymore! (video)
* UPDATE: School officials in Orinda have reversed their decision, according to the ContraCosta Times.
********
In the true spirit of the season, the Orinda, California School Board has gone after the most egregious criminal in their school.
How did the Northern California district know this 7-year-old chica (screen cap from Merky News) was a law breaker? Well, they probably just suspected it at first, since she was one of a few brown-skinned Latina children in the overwhelmingly white elementary school. Then they hired a private investigator.
Profiles in courage!
Yes, this vicious scofflaw had the nerve to attend school with her second grade friends in the same neighborhood she lives in nearly all of the week, as the daughter of a local live-in nanny.
Mas…NorCal school hires private dick, expels 7-year-old Latina *UPDATED
Your California Department of Motor Vehicles has standards, you know, and not every request for a personalized/vanity license plate can be accommodated, even though they still hope you’ll like them on Facebook. It’s not personal, dude, no hard feelings. K?
“Welcome to the Department of Motor Vehicles’ office of vanity plates,” SFGate.com esplains, “where three full-time state employees review some 90,000 applications for personalized license plates each year and, citing poor taste, turn down thousands.”
Here’s our list of the Pocho Ocho rudest vanity plate requests declined by the DMV:
Mas…Pocho Ocho rudest vanity license plates refused by the DMV
Chinese and Mexican immigrants to the U.S. have a lot in common. And in the Los Angeles area, they live next door to each other. A Chinese-Mexican-American Angeleno explains it all to your official Voice of America (VOA.)
Mas…Your VOA Reports: Chinos + Mexicanos = The new Americanos (video)
(PNS reporting from VATICAN CITY) The recent earthquakes in Southern California are a message from God, according to Pope Francis. The Almighty, he told a visiting delegation of American Catholics Monday, will shake things up until they are more gay.
“Lord knows this mortal world needs some bright flashes of color that aren’t suicide bomb explosions in crowded markets,” the Pontiff said.”And maybe some marigold-print cafe curtains in that drab nook over there.”
In Delano, the California Central Valley agricultural community where Cesar Chavez began the work that led to the formation of the United Farm Workers (UFW), immigrants and their children are now in charge.
Public Radio International Reports:
Mas…Immigrants now leaders in town where Chavez began [PRI audio]
Garbage/trash/recyclable truck driver Manuel Sanchez, in Ojai, California, has a fan in young Daniel, an autistic boy on his route. Daniel likes to watch the truck’s weekly, predictable routine. But no one was happier than Daniel when Sanchez got out of his truck with a surprise.
PREVIOUSLY ON GARBAGE MEN:
Mas…In Ojai, garbage man Manuel Sanchez delivers joy (video)
