The continued popularity of the molcajete (mortar) and companion tejolote (pestle) is a living example of the principle “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
history
LatinoUSA: Malinche, Mexico’s Eve, the mother of all mestizos (audio)
Malinche: You love her, you hate her.
LatinoUSA calls her Mexico’s Eve. Antonia Cereijido reports:
La Malinche, often referred to as “the mother of all mestizos” is one of the most controversial figures in Mexican history. She’s been called a traitor and a victim. She was a Nahua woman who acted as interpreter for the conquistadors in the early sixteenth century. She had a child with Hernan Cortes named Martín and he is often called the “first mestizo.” Mestizos are the mixed race people of Mexico that make up 60% of the country. Her legend led to the creation of the term “Malinchista.” A Malinchista is a traitor, or someone who denies their Mexican culture in favor of another.
But since the 1950s, female writers have been trying to reclaim and vindicate the story of La Malinche – not just in Mexico but also here in the U.S. Chicana writers relate to La Malinche. They too are stuck between two cultures: their Mexican heritage and the U.S. culture they live their daily lives in.
Here’s the radio report:
Mas…LatinoUSA: Malinche, Mexico’s Eve, the mother of all mestizos (audio)
Native American tacos at Phoenix’ Fry Bread House (video)
The Zagat foodie channel checks out the famous Fry Bread House in Phoenix, Arizona, to find out what the huh fry bread is. And “Indian Tacos”? What the heck?
Thankfully, Sandra Martin explains how Native Americans turned Uncle Sam’s lemons into lemonade. And tacos.
Mas…Native American tacos at Phoenix’ Fry Bread House (video)
Allman Bros, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young ‘Southern Man’ (#TBT videos)
At a 2000 concert, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young kill it with Young’s song Southern Man. Did the supergroup predict the future? Has Dixie learned from the past?
Mira los lyrics:
Mas…Allman Bros, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young ‘Southern Man’ (#TBT videos)
Randy Newman: ‘Sail Away’ to Charleston, America’s #1 slave city
Attention, you Africans, sings Randy Newman. Sail Away to Charleston, SC. In America, you’ll get food to eat, and won’t have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet!
Charleston was America’s top port of entry for African slaves.
Mas…Randy Newman: ‘Sail Away’ to Charleston, America’s #1 slave city
Out of the night, when the full moon is bright! America’s first superhero
“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
Pocho Ocho Important Facts for Mexicans about El Ocho de Mayo
Our Mexican friends have many misconceptions about today’s American celebration of El Ocho de Mayo. It is NOT the day the British burned the White House, for example, and it is NOT the day Gerry Rivers became Geraldo Rivera.
Help a hermano out with the Pocho Ocho Top Facts Mexicans Should Know about El Ocho de Mayo:
8. Best (Hellman’s in the East) Mayonnaise — El Jefe de Mayo — first introduced on this day in 1915.
7. Mayo West did not invent the life vest but she did flash her chichis to the sailors of the aircraft carrier USS Hooter on this day in 1942.
6. The Mayo Clinic — originally established to seek cures for La Cruda — opened its doors on this day in 1955.
Mas…Pocho Ocho Important Facts for Mexicans about El Ocho de Mayo
Area man doesn’t care what Cinco de Mayo is all about, yo!
(PNS reporting from EAST LOS) Ruben Covarrubias astounded family and friends here Sunday night when he admitted that the history of Cinco de Mayo didn’t concern him and he’d always thought “May 5 was Mexican Independence Day, so like so what?!”
“I don’t care what it’s about, yo!” he told everyone within earshot of the backyard grill. “I just always celebrated it with MEChA and at school. Partay!”
Friends and family at the Covarrubias’ weekly carne asada were aghast. Some reconsidered whether they’d be driving back to El Sereno next week, multiple witness reported.
Mas…Area man doesn’t care what Cinco de Mayo is all about, yo!
Me? I’m drinking a cerveza and contemplating Cinco de Mayo
I approach el Cinco de Mayo with excitement and ambivalence.
I learned the history of the Battle of Puebla as the son of proud Mexicans, who happened to be immigrants. The story goes: On the fifth of May 1862, a small Mexican army kicks French butt. Bueno.
My dad and grandmother worked at the Cinco de Mayo restaurant on Pacific Coast Highway in a small L.A. harbor town. My association with the day is food, drink, familia, history, cultura.
Mas…Me? I’m drinking a cerveza and contemplating Cinco de Mayo
Puebla, MX narco cartel killers crush French gang invaders
(PNS reporting from PUEBLA, MX) Federales have finished cleaning up the streets of this southeastern city after a three-day battle between area gangsters and a French gang left 83 locals and 462 gabachos dead, PNS has learned.
The Marseilles gang (“La Eme”) — sent to collect a drug debt allegedly owed by the Puebla-based Ignacio Zaragosa clika (the “Zetas”) — was overwhelmed by the fierce Mexican gangbangers.
Faulty HUMINT (human intelligence) was also a factor.
Based on bogus tips from informants who called themselves “los mentirosos,” which La Eme interpreted as “mentors,” the frogs engaged the enemy at noon. La Eme expected the Zeta sentries to be taking siestas with their sombreros pulled so low they couldn’t see the advancing gunmen. And the close-by burros? The French plan relied on the overhwhelming odor of naturally estanky donkeys to mask the telltale scent of French breath-de-fromage.
But the Zetas were not asleep and those weren’t your mother’s burritos.
Mas…Puebla, MX narco cartel killers crush French gang invaders
Ask A Mexican: What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?
POCHO’s Associate Naranjero Gustavo ¡Ask A Mexican! Arellano answers the pregunta “What part of ‘illegal’ don’t Mexicans understand?” with his own question for pinches Know Nothing gabachos.
Mas…Ask A Mexican: What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?
Rare photos show Frida Kahlo in the 1950s
In 1950, photographer Gisèle Freund began a two-week visit to Mexico – and stayed for two years.
In Mexico City, Freund hooked up with artistic power couple Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Her black-and-white photographs of the pair are now available in the newly published Frida Kahlo: The Gisèle Freund Photographs.
Yo, New Yorkers! Don’t buy any gun, buy a ‘Gun With History’ (video)
There’s a new gun shop open in Manhattan where you don’t have to just settle for a newbie, inexperienced lethal weapon. The guns on sale here have a history!
Mas…Yo, New Yorkers! Don’t buy any gun, buy a ‘Gun With History’ (video)
The San Patricio Batallón: The Irish heroes of Aztlan (music videos)
This corrido by Orange County Celtic-rock homies The Fenians tells the tragic story of the San Patricios, the St. Patrick’s Battalion.
The unit of 200 mostly Catholic Irish immigrants deserted the United States Army and fought with the Mexican Army against the U.S.A. in the Mexican–American War.
Scots-British post-punk The Wakes Band offer their version of the story next. The video’s not much to look at but the lyrics are killer, so read along below:
Mas…The San Patricio Batallón: The Irish heroes of Aztlan (music videos)
A Day in the Life of a Woman: Las Cafeteras: ‘Mujer Soy’ (video)
In Mujer Soy, by Las Cafeteras, we see a day in the real life of Maryann Aguirre, a woman from East Los Angeles. Happy Women’s History Month! (Remixed by YUKICITO.)
Mas…A Day in the Life of a Woman: Las Cafeteras: ‘Mujer Soy’ (video)
Spanglish is no Juan E. Come Lately to California (audio)
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)
What are America’s Pocho Ocho Top Brownest Jobs?
The Atlantic analyzed the stats and guess what!? Some professions in the United Estates are positively teeming with white people — jobs like veterinarian, espeech sangwich pathologist and meelrye (chart excerpt, above).
Hurm, we said, perhaps we can fabricate a similar list of America’s brownest jobs.
“So let it be written, so let it be done!” said Pharoah, another white dude. And we did. Here’s our list of America’s Pocho Ocho Top Brownest Jobs:
8. Piñata Fluffer
7. Chief Cleavage Officer for Spanish Language TV Network News Division
6. Tia Guadalupe Gutierrez Santa Maria de Los Angeles y Zacatecas
POCHO History 101: Public Enemy, Arizona, MLK Day (video)
In the final decade of the 20th Century Public Enemy‘s epic By the Time I Get to Arizona spotlighted the Hate State of Arizona’s failure to implement the Martin Luther King Day holiday.
#blacklivesmatter
America pauses for Ricky Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2015
(PNS reporting from WASHINGTON, D.C.) America will pause Monday to remember the life and message of Ricky Martin Luther King Jr., whose Tengo a Dream y Dance! speech changed the nation forever.
Post offices and other public facilities will be closed, banks and stock exchanges are taking the day off and salsa picante and sweet potato pie – his favorite snack combo – will go on sale all across America. Monday’s holiday honors RMLK’s 39th birthday.
Despite his tragic death in 2007 (he was shot and killed by the president of his fan club before an appearance in Dallas) King’s promotion of “love, equality, justice, innocence, malice, refuge, oppression, freedom” has continued to resonate for confused African-Americans, Latinos, Afro-Latinos, Chicanx and Anglx alike.
Mas…America pauses for Ricky Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2015
La Cucaracha: Little-known immigration facts #2 (toon)
PREVIOUSLY ON LITTLE-KNOWN IMMIGRATION FACTS:
Pocho Ocho little-known factoids about the first Thanksgiving
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
Ask A Mexican: Why do Salvadorans and Mexicans hate so much? (video)
Gustavo ¡Ask A Mexican! Arellano steps back into the video limelight to ponder the question: Why do Mexicans (and Mexican-Americans) and Salvadorans (and Salvadoran-Americans) hate each other so much? Is it because Salvadoran horchata is better than Mexican horchata? And the fact that pupusas kick gorditas’ culinary nalgas? Or are they just following an age-old American tradition of hatin’ on the newbies that goes back at least to Benjamin Franklin?
Mas…Ask A Mexican: Why do Salvadorans and Mexicans hate so much? (video)
The Feathered Serpent’s tunnel is full of treasures (video)
Mexican archeologists last week announced the discovery of three new treasure-filled tunnels in the Temple of the Feathered Serpent (Quetzalcoatl) under the ancient city of Teotihuacan. The underground passageway was first unearthed ten years ago beneath the site, just outside of Mexico, DF.
Mas…The Feathered Serpent’s tunnel is full of treasures (video)
The Chavez Ravine’s hardcore musical tour of ‘Los Angeles’ (video)
When you’re named after an infamous chapter in L.A. history, like the band The Chavez Ravine, your musical tour of the City of Angels would be pretty hard core too! ¡Mira Los Angeles!
What’s the story on this band? Their Facebook esplains:
Mas…The Chavez Ravine’s hardcore musical tour of ‘Los Angeles’ (video)
