It’s End of May Day! Donate to POCHO now to help us break the ñews!

Can you donate $20 or $50 so we can make more ñews y satire?
MR. POCHO SAYS ¡GRACIAS!

With only hours left in the Merry Merry Month of May, please make a small donation now so we can continue breaking the ñews! POCHO needs money to upgrade our webservers, money to fix our broken computers and, more than anything, money to pay our editors and writers and videographers and cartoonists who have contributed a year and a half’s worth of amazingly chingon content for free.

Every $10, $20 or $50 helps. Click on the donate button now. Thank you, pochos!

Please donate to POCHO right now to help us break the ñews!

Can you donate $5 or $10 so we can make more ñews y satire?
MR. POCHO SAYS ¡GRACIAS!

As we start our second year online, we need your small change.

Please make a small  donation now so we can continue breaking the ñews.

POCHO needs money to upgrade webservers, money to fix our broken computers and, more than anything, money to pay our editors and writers and videographers and cartoonists who have contributed a year’s worth of chingon content for free.

Every $10, $20 or $50 helps. Click on the donate button now. Thank you, pochos!

Please donate to POCHO now to help us break the ñews!

Can you donate $5 or $10 so we can make more ñews y satire?
MR. POCHO SAYS ¡GRACIAS!

With only a few hours left in the Year of the Chancla, please make a small holiday donation now so we can continue breaking the ñews! POCHO needs money to upgrade our webservers, money to fix our broken computers and, more than anything, money to pay our editors and writers and videographers and cartoonists who have contributed a year’s worth of amazingly chingon content for free.

Every $10, $20 or $50 helps. Click on the donate button now. Thank you, pochos!

We love you and want to move our relationship to the next level

MR. POCHO and all the Pochodores love you. We love you all night long.

We love you so much we built this joint and wrote these articles and created these toons and videos and stuff. For you. POCHO has no “pay walls” or user registration to stop you from playing along and our pinche funny original content is turning traditional thinking about Latino media upside down.

Can you kick in
$5 or $10 or $25
so we can
make more ñews y satire?

Por Plis?

MR. POCHO SAYS ¡GRACIAS!

And what do you give us back? You give us love and LULz, and that’s cool. But we want to take this relationship to the next level with more and better stuff for you, but, you see, there is this problem.

We don’t get paid. Huh? That’s right. No money for the “staff.” No money for our contributors.

Mas…We love you and want to move our relationship to the next level

Fake Mexicans: Why Julian Castro failed the Mexican test

(PNS reporting from SAN ANTONIO) Can you speak eSpanish like Mexican Mitt? Can you dance around a sombrero at a moment’s notice? Do you crease your Dickies until they can cut through glass? If you answered “no” to any of these questions then you might be a fake Mexican, just like San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro.

In the latest “fake Mexican” scandal, Castro made headlines across the country as the first Latino keynote speaker at the Democratic National Convention earlier this month, but his glaring lack of forced Spanish catch-phrases has some people questioning his Mexican card. Some have even dared to call the vato a pocho…

Mas…Fake Mexicans: Why Julian Castro failed the Mexican test

Ñewsweek: Romney? Ya No Más, I wish I were Latino; iPhone La Raza

Que busy ñewsweek!

Say hello to Angry Abuelas, pochos. The new iPhone 5 — code-named La Raza — is especially designed for Latinos.

Two  videos broke the news: GOP presidential wannabe Mitt Romney wished he were a puro Latino and his campaign released a new Spanish-language ad aimed at “white Hispanics.”

In science ñews, cilantro haters breathed a sigh of relief as genetics proved it was not their fault and the new African monkey species looks familiar somehow.

Here are the links:

Mas…Ñewsweek: Romney? Ya No Más, I wish I were Latino; iPhone La Raza

ZOMG! Mainstream media discovers pochismo for profit

Mainstream media has finally awakened to the profit potential of pochismo, according to the prestigious Columbia Journalism Review:

Lalo Alcaraz [photo, right] has always embraced the word pocho. It refers to Mexican-Americans who have lost their Mexican culture and speak English, and it’s what relatives occasionally called Alcaraz when he was growing up in San Diego. He has leveraged it ever since. In the 1990s, Alcaraz and a friend founded POCHO Magazine, which led to pocho.com. Both projects used English when, for years, “Hispanic media” usually meant Spanish-language content. They satirized Latino issues and poked fun at biculturalism. “We had the National Pochismo Institute,” he says, “where we would send out a fake survey and ‘rate your pochismo.’ ” Currently, Alcaraz hosts a radio show called the “Pocho Hour of Power” on KPFK in Los Angeles.

Mas…ZOMG! Mainstream media discovers pochismo for profit

Kinky: In ‘Despues Del After’ a robot does the Chinese dougie (video)


Monterrey technorock superstars Kinky and an illuminated robot amigo shot this new video in Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong. (Despues Del After = After the After.)

And we love this older (possibly NSFW: side boobs) English-language Kinky production with an eight-bit video game look, the band’s tribute to Those Girls:

Mas…Kinky: In ‘Despues Del After’ a robot does the Chinese dougie (video)

Mainstream media wants to know: WTF are ‘pochos’ and ‘nacos’?

I have long said it is a Pocho Planet, and maybe you can make the case that it’s a Naco World as well!

We all know what a pocha or a pocho is, and the greatness and prestige that designation implies. But if you aren’t clear, or wondering what the hell naco means, watch this mun2 video featuring Gustavo Arellano, Jenni Rivera, Commander Adama plus many other cool folks. And me.

Thanks to the gente at mun2 for having me!

Naco was the Word of the Day at the Daily Texican in 2004

Complete ‘Hey Vato!’ NSFW existential angst of Chuy y Smiley (videos)


When we heard one of our favorite Hey Vato! episodes (The Tattoo) would be screening at the San Francisco Frozen Film Festival we knew it was time for a special Sabado Ponchonte Saturday Night Video Festival featuring EVERY episode of our favorite web series, in order, so here they are. Hey Vatos! Orale!

Mas…Complete ‘Hey Vato!’ NSFW existential angst of Chuy y Smiley (videos)

And you may ask yourself ‘How did I get here?’


People come to POCHO for unexpected reasons, or at least reasons we never expected. Did they see a link on Facebook (most of our traffic starts there)? Did they get a link in email? Did they see something on Twitter? Did they search with Google? Did a link on another site lead to POCHO?

We like it best when PNS Pocho Ñews Service stories snare the unwary — it’s like we have passed the “truthiness” sniff test and our faux news seems real enough to make people believe.

We get thousands of visitors looking for a certain fictitious Vegas casino, pit bull owners concerned about their breed’s reputation and gossip-lovers seeking the latest news about Eve Mendes.

Do these random visitors know where they ended up?

Mas…And you may ask yourself ‘How did I get here?’

Pocho Ocho ironic nicknames that aren’t as insulting as they seem

El Flaco (left) and El Gordo

8. Gordo/a – This word (it means “overweight”) seems like an insult, but  it’s just another way to say, “Hey you!”  You don’t have to be fat to get this nickname.

7. Flaco/a –  And you don’t actually have to be skinny to get this nickname. Of course, you could be relatively skinny compared to everyone else in the room, but it’s just a way to speed things along.

6. Viejo/a –  This word (“old”) could be used to refer to one’s significant other, parent, or friend. Whether or not one is actually old depends on those involved in the conversation. 

Mas…Pocho Ocho ironic nicknames that aren’t as insulting as they seem

Ollin rocks your shamrock for Día de San Patricio

East L.A. pochos  Ollin channel Irish band the Pogues in Ollin’s Tenth Annual St. Patrick’s Day Pogues tribute at the Satellite in Silverlake tonight. And for us that’s a good excuse to feature this video as well as the super cool poster for the show (below.) Mira! The shamrock and the chile share the musical and artistic stage. Also we get to use this green font. Meanwhile, what is the deal with the Irish in Mexico?

Mas…Ollin rocks your shamrock for Día de San Patricio

Los Brioles: ‘Hombres muertos no hacen ruido al caminar’ (videos)


TGIF Music Videos: Los Brioles are a crazed psychobilly trio from Spain. Dead men, like dead puppies, probably don’t have much fun, but they sure do rock!

But wait — there’s more! Dig this local cholobilly music video from Los Bandits who describe themselves this way:

Psychobilly, Rockabilly, Punk, Spanish guitar, Cumbia, and Mexican music that has an infiltration of Chicano based lyrics.

Mas…Los Brioles: ‘Hombres muertos no hacen ruido al caminar’ (videos)

Standing While Brown: A white lady tried to get me to valet her car

I was not dressed like this

Representing Pocho.com, I was a panelist along with a table full of young, savvy Latino digital media types as part of last night’s Digital LA Latino Content event.

Afterwards, I finished up networking and headed outside to leave. As I waited to get my car in front of the host restaurant in Beverly Hills, you’ll never guess what happened: A white lady tried to give me her car valet ticket. Twice.

You’ve heard this story a thousand times before; it’s a Latino cliché. Or is it a tradition?

Anglo person assumes brown person is a worker, there to serve them.

An old Chicano chestnut goes something like this:

I’m a Mexican-American, am married to a white woman, and I was mowing our lawn in front of our nice, big home. A white lady pulled up in a car and asked, “How much do you charge to mow a lawn?” My answer: Nothing. The lady of the house lets me sleep with her.

Mas…Standing While Brown: A white lady tried to get me to valet her car

Pocho Ocho words that should be in the dictionary

Sometimes finding the right word can be tricky, so you need to look them up. That’s why these eight pocho words need to go into the English dictionary:

8. Irregardless – That this word does not officially exist has never stopped anyone (including me) from using it. Why use regardless or irrespective when this one sounds so much better? If Sarah Palin can do it…

7. Expecially – Used to emphasize things that don’t really need emphasizing, such as “I love chocolate, expecially when it’s sweet.”

6. Libary – Often confused with library. No one really needs the second R and people will think you’re conceited if you use it. It’s still the same definition, just different a word.

Mas…Pocho Ocho words that should be in the dictionary

Tia Lencha’s Cocina: Nopales for gringos y pochos

Gwell, I am writing this blogue porque my son said that we went on the google because he was doing a reporte for school.

Y you know what happened when he typed “Mexican Chef”? He said a white guy from Oklahoma popped up first, like he was the most important chef in Mexico or something. So, he tole me I can make better tamales than this gringo with a white mustache and I tole him, yeah, I can.

My pobre son is a little pocho, so him and other pochitos out there have to learn how to make the real food from our homeland. None of that nouveau Latin cuisine shit. My comadre tole me I’m too Mexican for the Food Network. I tole her I don’t want to be on camera anygway cuz I hate my arms.

My blogue is not gonna be call “Spicy It Up” or “Super Delicioso” or nothing like that. There is no going to be no salsa music (whish is Cuban by the gway) playing in the background. Is just me, Tia Lencha, in my cocina with my apron and my son typing on his computer.

Mas…Tia Lencha’s Cocina: Nopales for gringos y pochos

Meet ‘Pocho’ the novel, its author, and their times

The interview is three decades old but still amazing. Listen to the man that started “pochismo!”

As the University of Texas presents the Mexican American Experience writes:

Jose Antonio Villarreal discusses his 1959 novel, Pocho, and the ways in which his own life and politics influenced his writing. Villarreal first discusses his experiences growing up in the pre-World War II era in California. He traces some of the similarities between his own life and that of his character, Richard Rubio, but he stresses that his novel is not a biography. Villarreal says he wrote Pocho because he wanted to introduce the rest of the U.S. to a group of Americans they knew nothing about.

Click to listen

The Pocho Ocho Spanglish words every pocho must know


8. Pants,  as in sweatpants, and it’s pronounced in Spanish, otherwise it wouldn’t count as Spanglish. Say “pontz.” These are what Richard Simmons should wear.

7. Chores, the seasonal opposite of pants, chores (pronounced: CHor-Essss), are even good to wear during the winters in most of the Southwest. Richard Simmons wears these.

6. Cornfleis,  you know, like America’s favorite good-for-you-finish-it-up cereal. Remember breakfast is the most importante meal of the day. And sometimes you get toys.

Mas…The Pocho Ocho Spanglish words every pocho must know

The Week in Ñews: Iowa analysis, death by chihuahua, looking ‘Mexican’

By Julio Salgado

Hatred of the poor edged out racism and homophobia in the Iowa GOP caucuses, a Fresno man was mauled by chihuahuas and died of shame, and the attempt to repeal the California Dream Act failed when the referendum’s backer (photo, right) couldn’t score enough racist jerkwad signatures to get their scheme placed on the ballot.

For these Pochostan stories and more, click here:

Mas…The Week in Ñews: Iowa analysis, death by chihuahua, looking ‘Mexican’

Who, exactly, IS a pocho?

Pocho used to be defined by what it wasn’t. But that was a long time ago.

Pocho, by my reckoning, used to be one thing but now it’s another. To be a pocho used to mean that you weren’t a legitimate Latino – and I use the word Latino in a very broad sense (I understand the whole Latinos-don’t-speak-Latin thing, but I use the term for a more utilitarian reason: it suits my purpose).

Mas…Who, exactly, IS a pocho?