See this painting that is supposed to depict the first Thanksgiving? It’s wrong wrong wrong. What really went on at that epic feast so long ago? We’ve got eight little-known factoids right here:
8. The frozen string beans in the casserole were past their sell-by date
7. Pilgrim Zephaniah Winslow = silent but deadly
6. Squanto’s succotash was really delivery from Uber Eats
Mas…Pocho Ocho little-known factoids about the first Thanksgiving
I love it when my vocation and avocation converge as they do in this wonderful comic installment of Wonder Woman from the one and only Pappy’s Golden Age Comic Blogzine. Pappy explains:
This delightfully oddball tale is set in Mexico with a beautiful eight-foot-tall señorita, bandits with bandoleros, Wonder Woman’s invisible plane, chains, bondage, and even Wonder Woman in bare feet walking over hot coals. Wow.
This Mexican melange is drawn by H.G. Peter, and is scanned from Sensation Comics #45 (1945).
An illustrator and lover of classic comics and a curator of artifacts focused on constructions of “Mexicans” in U.S. mass culture, rarely do I chance upon an artifact that blends these worlds (not to mention my not-so-secret fetish for fantastically strong women!)
Here’s a page from the issue featuring bandit “Mexicans,” Wonder Woman, freakish “Marya the Amazon maid” y mucho mas more [click to enlarge.]
Mas…Wonder Woman and Marya la Giant fight Mexibandidos (1945 toon)
“What exactly IS all this pocho talk?” you might ask.
This Latino Field Study anthropology video examines a culturally-distinctive mannerism many Anglos find confusing – the difference in the way Latinos perceive time. The experts also show you how to calculate when to expect a Latino for a 5 PM appointment – so-called “Latino Time.”
PREVIOUSLY ON LATINO FIELD STUDIES:
Mas…Latino Field Studies: ‘Differing Perceptions of Time’ (video)
This second Latino Field Study anthropology video examines a culturally-distinctive mannerism many Anglos find confusing – what the researchers refer to as Emotional Loudness.
PREVIOUSLY ON LATINO FIELD STUDIES:
Mas…Latino Field Studies: Understanding ‘Emotional Loudness’ (video)
They’re letting anybody fall in love and get married these days! But what if you don’t want a long-term stable, loving, mutually-supportive relationship. Try new Ratch dot com.
(PNS reporting from MIAMI) Gerardo Lamas, the official spokesman for all Hispanics in the United States, resigned Wednesday night.
“This is a bullshit job and I’ll never be able to please anybody,” he told PNS in a late-night phone call. “I mean, I’ve been at this for a while, and let me tell you, it hasn’t gotten any easier. Que effin’ lastima, right? I’m throwing up my hands!”
“The truth is it’s ridiculous to expect one person to be able to speak for millions from diverse backgrounds, geopolitical situations, economic castes and region-specific cultures,” he said. “Rachel Maddow calls, Fox News calls, Esteban Colberto calls, and even your guy Al Madrigal from The Daily Show calls. Thank God for Caller ID!”
Mas…Official spokesman for U.S. Hispanics quits: ‘It’s a bullshit job!’
(PNS reporting from EDINBURG, TX) Eddie’s Raspas, the sunny yellow shack out on Sprague, used to be the place to be on a scorching Valley afternoon.
“People would come from all around and say, ‘Eddie, which of your five delicious flavors shall I have today?’” Eddie Cardenas recalled fondly. “It was great.”
Until six weeks ago, that is, when an electric-blue trailer moved in across the street.
Cardenas said that newcomer Chuy’s Famous Raspas is stealing his business, and shaming the shaved ice industry as a whole.
“It’s trashy,” he said, speaking over the pop music coming from the nearby trailer. “You give people so many flavor options, they feel paralyzed! Now I’m hearing whispers about burritos and Frito pies? It’s war, I’m telling you.
Mas…Cold war chills Rio Grande Valley town as raspa rebellion heats up
White folks in sombreros and serapes. Spanglish beer commercials every few minutes. Yup, pretty ridiculous, señor.
I agree with most of my friend Gustavo Arellano’s Cinco de Mayo video rant, mas o menos.
He says it’s ridiculous, only serves some limited purposes as far as educating about the evils of Imperialism, or the promotion of self-determination, y todo eso. Battle of Puebla my ear. Sure. OK, guey.
However, I think Gustavo misses one big fat Manuel’s El Tepeyac Hollenbeck Burrito-sized point:
Steven Alvarez, POCHO amigo and Assistant Professor (Writing Rhetoric and Digital Media, Latin America Studies, English) at the University of Kentucky, teaches a course called Mexington, about the growing community of Mexican Americans in UKY’s hometown, Lexington.
Here’s a student podcast interview with the Profe (he’s on the Twitter, too) and a few selected photos from the recent field trip he led to Mexington.
Mas…Mexicans + Lexington, Kentucky = ‘Mexington’ (photos, audio)
Who are we?
In my journey as a community activist and Chicano advocate, I’ve experienced many fascinating elements that have inspired me but also scarred me to my very soul.
I have fought the Chicano politician who capitulated in the selling out of his community, broke bread with the “Old Man” whom lent the little he had but gave unselfishly of his wisdom, and have shared space with our sons who have fallen victim to a privatized prison system.
I have fought the white dragon of racism and today… today will begin the telling of those many travels.
There are many obstacles preventing the Chicano people from achieving American uni-culturalism, but none more profound than the many differing points of view available within the Chicano community itself on what it means to be Chicano.
Mas…Chicanos: How did we become America’s new slave culture?
The Aztecs and Mayans released the magic of chocolate (originally, xocolatl) to the world, only to lose the industry to Europe. Now, growing and processing chocolate in Mexico is virtually an An Act of Resistance. Video by The Perennial Plate. To find out about food tours like this, check out Intrepid Travel.
Where are you from?That is a simple question, isn’t? Well, for some of us, the answer is not so straight forward.
My experience in London in the past four months has included fascinating dialogue with people I have come across. It is one thing I have come to expect from such a global city where you are bound to meet people from so many places around the world.
Such interactions have sparked in me the need to explore my conception of identity as part of my own self-discovery process. Primarily because most of us conflate place of origin and ethnicity with identity.
If I claim to be from a certain part of the world, what does that mean about the way others expect me to look, speak, act and be? In engaging in this inquiry, the first realization I have made is that the answer to the question of “Where are you from?” is very telling not only about one’s own perception of identity but also of the one imposed by others.
Ladies and gentlemen, give it up! On vocals, Mountain Chief of the Blackfoot.
Mas…Know your cultural history? What’s wrong with these pictures?
See this painting that is supposed to depict the first Thanksgiving? It’s wrong wrong wrong. What really went on at that epic feast so long ago?
We’ve got eight things right here:
8. The frozen string beans in the casserole were past their sell-by date
7. Pilgrim Zephaniah Winslow = silent but deadly
6. Squanto’s succotash was really takeout from Naco Bell
We found this blog called Stuff Educated Chicanos Like | Information on those kids from Aztlan and it’s like it was conceived and written about us here at Pocho, but no.
The blog started in 2008 and hasn’t been updated since 2011, but it still makes us LOL.
(We stole just eight headlines from the original 23 entries for this Pocho Ocho list, so you’ll have to read this post and find the link at the end for the extensive original story.)
¡Mira! Pocho Ocho things educated Chicanos like, with links to POCHO examples:
8. Salma Hayek
POCHO’s Subcommandanta del Ñews, Sara Inés Calderón (@SaraChicaD on the Twitter), wants to know why Latinos shame each other over culture.
(PNS reporting from HOUSTON) Sara Maestas placed a two-foot-high cruz on her only son’s lawn early this morning — a cross in remembrance of his latest failed relationship.
The 32-year-old transactional lawyer got dumped Saturday night by his novia, less than 20 minutes after he blew off a dinner date. And now his mother’s white polystyrene cross, adorned with flowers, sits front and center on Benjamin Maestas’ lawn in Montrose.
Just before a scheduled 6 PM Saturday rendezvous at Hugo’s Regional Mexican Cuisine, girlfriend Vicki Gardea got a text from Maestas saying he couldn’t meet due to “a short deadline to close on a shopping center for a multinational client.”
Mas…Mom puts cross on son’s front lawn to mark another failed relationship
(PNS reporting from WASHINGTON, DC) The U.S. Postal Service has released a new stamp to mark Hispanic Heritage Month 2013, which begins September 15.
The El Borracho stamp kicks off the Hispanic Male series, the brainchild of Joe Sendembach, who left the Border Patrol to join the USPS as an artist and rose to Director of Creative Services.
“It honors the way us veterans of the MIGRA-Industrial Complex feel about the Hispanic male,” according to Sendembach.
“We plan other cultural stamps along these lines, including a Drug Mule series,” Sendembach wrote in a press release distributed this morning.
Polanco, they say, is the Beverly Hills of Mexico DF, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t illegal taco carts on the street. They serve trendy tacos de guisados to area workers during the day, Daniel Hernandez reports, and to partying pinches borrachos at night.
If you find yourself in the Navajo Nation (in Arizona) on July 3, you’re in the right place at the right time for a once-in-a-lifetime experience — the premiere of Star Wars, translated into Navajo.
The 1977 classic has been translated into many languages, and the latest effort is the brainchild of Manuelito Wheeler, director of the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Ariz.
“We needed a way to preserve our culture,” Wheeler tells NPR’s Robert Siegel. “Language is at the core of a culture. And I felt we needed a more contemporary way to reach not just young people but the population in general. And so, that’s when the idea of translating a major movie into the Navajo language came up.”
Here’s the NPR interview:
The Disney Corp’s new princess-inspired quinceañera gowns are but the first in a new line of Latina Rites of Passage gowns, PNS has learned.
The new dresses for tweens and teens are “designed to honor the milestones in young Latinas’ lives in the passionate, spicy way Disney defines Hispanic identities,” a Disney spokesperson said. Aside from the quinceañera gowns (photo) Disney has eight other dresses ready to mark these Rites of Passage:
8. First minimum wage job
7. First walk of shame
6. First boy gets to second base
Mas…Disney’s quinceañera gowns intro new Latina Rites of Passage line
Wikipedia: The [totally cute] axolotl, or Mexican salamander (Ambystoma mexicanum) is a neotenic salamander, closely related to the tiger salamander.
Larvae of this species fail to undergo metamorphosis, so the adults remain aquatic and gilled.
It is also called ajolote [ɑːhɒˈlɔte] (which is also a common name for different types of salamander).
The species originates from numerous lakes, such as Lake Xochimilco underlying Mexico City.
Axolotls are used extensively in scientific research due to their ability to regenerate limbs.
They are also totally delicious when deep-fried in Osaka, Japan:
Mas…Fried axolotl, you’re the juan, you make dinner full of yum (photos)
An Open Letter to the Denver Public Library Commission:
I am writing in response to the so-called “ire” that was reported in the Denver Post regarding the new West Denver library being named after Rodolfo Corky Gonzales.
I am an author/publisher and a Denver native. I am also Chicano. My roots in Denver run deep and though I may live far from the Mile High City now, Denver will always be home.
How can one convey to you in such a limited space how iconic Gonzales is? The man is legend, not just in Colorado but nationally. Though the Chicano/a movement is not what it used to be in Denver, its roots are still there. There are those who would balk at this library – those who would like nothing more than to wipe Corky’s memory from the history books, just as they are trying to do with our books and history in Arizona, despite the fact that these things are as American as anything else. Ignorance speaks volumes.
I don’t consider myself a photographer but I do enjoy walking through car shows, up and down the aisles admiring the bombs, lowriders and classics and snapping a few pix while I’m there.
I photograph the rides and sometimes their owners standing beside them. I started off using the camera on my Samsung phone but it’s 3.15 megapixels proved to fall way short when I decided to try to print the images.
Compliments from friends family and Instagram followers convinced me it was time to upgrade to a real camera and take my hobby to the next level.
I began dragging my wife and kids to as many car shows as I could find and then getting home, going through the camera roll to see that day’s catch.
Oh. Hi. Is Tia Lencha here. Don’t talk loud. My cabeza hurts.
Tia Lencha went to a restaurante with mariachis and micheladas and little mini tacos jesterday. She had more micheladas than tacos, and gwell. Is not her fault. The tacos were spensive and the size for the dolls to eat.
So she stay at home putting ice on her cabeza, drinking the water and seeing the Food Network on the TV. And ju know what? They try to be Mexican for Cinco de Mayo.
The first thing I notice is the Cacique cheese commercial a million times. Not estrange except that the voice of an Americano says to go “awtenteeco” like they are translating for all the gringos. Then what’s his name (Aaron Sancho?) from the eshow Chopped appear and shows food and then says all the words in espanish right.
Mas…Tia Lencha’s Cocina: Food Network goes ‘Mexican’ for Cinco de Mayo
White folks in sombreros and serapes. Spanglish beer commercials every few minutes. Yup, pretty ridiculous, señor.
I agree with most of my friend Gustavo Arellano’s roiling denunciation of Cinco de Mayo, mas o menos.
He says it’s ridiculous, only serves some limited purposes as far as educating about the evils of Imperialism, or the promotion of self-determination, y todo eso. Battle of Puebla my ear. Sure. OK, guey.
However, I think Gustavo misses one big fat Manuel’s El Tepeyac Hollenbeck Burrito-sized point: We’ve got to celebrate with the holidays we have. Not the holidays we want.
(PNS reporting from TEXAS) Tejanos want singer Freddy Fender’s wig back.
The Música Committee of the Narciso Martinez Cultural Arts Center in San Benito last week demanded the British Museum effect “the immediate return of this important Tejano cultural item.”
The salt-and-pepper Afro-style toupee, called “Freddy’s Fro,” disappeared from the singer’s home shortly after his death in 2006 and reappeared this winter in the Museum’s “Ethnic Minorities in the United States” exhibit on a mannequin of the singer, best known for his 1970s’ hit Wasted Days and Wasted Nights.
Mas…Angry Tejanos demand British Museum return Freddy Fender’s wig
British synth-pop band Landshapes shot the music video for their new song In Limbo backstage at lucha libre in Bolivia. There’s a great writeup of the shoot here.
Meanwhile, what’s up with those cholitas all dressed up in Bolivan bowler hats? This video explains:
Mas…Backstage at lucha libre in Bolivia with Landshapes’ ‘In Limbo’ (video)
My heart is with my people as I await my procedure.
I await my procedure, Mi Gente. I await it this overcast Sunday morning, surrounded by the bells of the Churches, by my Angels, and the people whom I love. Yeah, I ended up in the hospital the other night. Which one….does not matter. I know people here, Mi Gente is here, and I make friends kinda easy, too.
I just got the word about a lady, who comes into the area, every Saturday, to sell her homemade tamalitos. I know where she will be next Saturday, she and her esposo. And I plan to be there, too.
I am going to get my tamalito de rajas, my fave. Maybe I’ll carry the travel coffee deal my sister gave us. Too cool for school. And I’ll bring my “whatta chair” and hang out in the area, under the beautiful trees, and see mis amigos e amigas.
Mas…Mi corazón esta con mi gente, my heart is with my people
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(PNS reporting from NEW YORK CITY) Tia Lencha, the homemaker and divorced mother of one who stars in the homespun internet hit “Tia Lencha’s Cocina,” is suing Mattel over its “Mexican Barbie” doll, seeking $750,000 in damages.
Tia Lencha’s federal lawsuit, filed in New York Monday, claims the toymaker is “engaging in the unauthorized use of (her) wardrobe, likeness, image and attributes” as a woman who wears Mexican folkloric dance outfits for no apparent reason.
Tia Lencha never gave Mattel permission to market the doll or use her endorsement to promote it, according to the filing.
The suit says that Tia Lencha has cornered the market on being unrealistically Mexican and that the doll “captures the essence of the stereotypically stereotypical Mexican lady as well as her sideways ponytail and flower adornment on her head.”
Mas…Tia Lencha sues Mattel over ‘Mexican Barbie’: They estole me!
