October 20, 2004
How Latino Are you?
by Liza Sabater
Can't believe it took me so long to post this. I completely forgot I had written it back in August! I am posting it, especially for all you Feedster readers out there. That political blogs list needs a much needed injection of Latino culture and humor.
I got this from The Fat Man Speaketh: ARE YOU A LATINO? HOW CAN YOU TELL FOR SURE? via Latino Pundit. I laughed so hard I almost meé my pantis.
ARE YOU A LATINO? HOW CAN YOU TELL FOR SURE?
1) If you have ever been hit by a "chancla".
Chanclas are sandals like the cheapo ones you found in Chinatown that have become the objects of fashionistas' desires. Puerto Rican mothers are notorious for using them as boomerangs while atempting to discipline their children.
2) If you grew up scared by something called "El Cucuy".
El Cucuy [coo-cooee] is the boogeyman in Mexico. This is definitely a mexica thing because we don't have a cucuy in Puerto Rico. But we have brujas and muertos and two of the most terrible hallucinations of all time, Dios and La Virgen. Those scared the sh!t out of me; especially that all knowing, all watching eye (Sauron, anyone?) that would never leave me alone. And the Virgin? After watching The Song of Bernadette (1943), I just found the idea of a Virgin apparition just plain scary.
OH! I forgot. The biggest boogeyman growing up in my house was the policía --I kid you not. My grandfather was a sheriff. My mom had worked at the woman's prison in what is now Jefferson Market Library and my uncle Naval (yes, he was named after the Navy), was an undercover cop. My grandfather and uncle were alcoholics (boy, am I giving you a piece of my history here or what) and since misery loves company, cops would come in and out of my grandparents house all the time. All drunk. Needless to say, they were scary creatures to us and given that we were children with big ears, we were privy to a lot of the corruption and torture tactics that passed as "policing" in Puerto Rico. My mom must have picked up on this because she would threaten us with calling the police if we weren't good. Needless to say, la policía was something to worry about always.
Oh, right. We also have El Chupacabras, but that came after my time. I was an old hag by the time it hit the The X-Files.
3) If others tell you to stop screaming when you are really just talking.
OMFG! My aunt Lili fits this description to the tee. She drank kerosene when she was little and never was quite stright in the head afterwards. When she was young, she would use her "slowness" to get away with about anything. Was either invariably drunk as a skunk or scheming to fleece my grandfather for, well, more booze. And, by grock! The woman had the lungs of a banshee. She had the kind of boricua banshee screech that make dogs gnarl and cats hiss ---you can tell how much I like her. She's supposedly mellowed out, or so says my mom. Anyhow, I have not seen her in years but I still have her nasty, screeching voice encrusted in my head.
4) If you light a candle to the Virgin Mary on the night before your big test.
I never did but my mom did indeed for my College Boards, SATs, GREs, my gin-shot wedding and both my kids' births.
5) If you use your chin to point something out.
Very, very true; especially in Mexico and the Caribbean. I have no idea why. In Puerto Rico the gesture is a little bit more complex. We point with the chin and the lips as well; following the gesture with a little grunt or "hm!"
6) If you constantly refer to cereal as "con fleys".
This is the one that made me snort the hardest because it reminded me of a scene I witnessed eons ago in a movie theater in Puerto Rico.
Son: Mom, can I please have "poh coln".
Mom: Why should buy you something you can't even pronounce. It's not "poh coln", it's "pos coln".
7) If your mother yells at the top of her lungs to call you for dinner, even if it's a one bedroom apartment.
I am a mother. Now you know.
8) If you can dance merengue, cumbia or salsa without music.
When we got 'serious', I asked Mark two things : Learn Spanish and learn how to dance salsa. The first one he did half-assed. The second one he did not do at all --he instead went and learned mambo and, may I add, rather well. For years he'd asked me to teach him how to dance salsa and merengue. I can't. I learned how to dance salsa and merengue the way I learned how to walk. By getting up one day and doing it. We can dance well together, but it is not the same as dancing with a "native". Man, the best salsa dancer I've ever been with is Ramón "Tito" Grosfoguel. To think he is a sociology professor, it's just plain mind-boggling. Sociology professors are not supposed to dance like that ;)
9) If you use "manteca" instead of olive oil and can't figure out why your nalgas are getting bigger.
The irony of this is that my nalgas got bigger after I moved to the United States and, supposedly, stopped eating manteca fried foods. There is so much more hidden lard in US foods; especially foods that are within the budget of a starving NYU student. The cheaper the food, the more hydrogenated fats (ie: fake lard) it will have. Think Oreo cookies. That white stuff? That's fake lard with sugar.
10) If you are in a five passenger car with seven people in it and a person is shouting "súbanse, todavía caben más!"
Several different elements come together in the latino circus car trick :
- The belief in charity and that no matter how little you have, there is always enough for all.
- A culture in which hope always springs eternal --how do you explain the thousands of people who risk their lives and even die either crossing the desserts of Arizona or Puerto Rico's treacherous Mona Passage.
- Which is, in a way, what feeds the trickster and tramp myths; people that cheat destiny, fate and even chance by pretending they can dematerialize their cuchifrito thighs to make room for one more.
"C'mon, we can fit one more" are the words of people who believe goodwill, a wink of trickery and endless hope can overcome anything.
11) If whenever you feel under the weather, you compulsively dab on some "Vic's Vapor Rub" all over your pecho and inside your nostrils.
I survived my childhood because of Vick's Vapor Rub. Really. I was asthmatic as a child and we did not have albuterol / nebulizers / inhalers. To this day, when I get sick, I need the smell of Vick's because it tells me, "it's OK nena, you're gonna get better".
12) Your mom packs your "lonche" every day even though you've just turned thirty-two.
My grandma used to make a little money on the side cooking fiambreras. I loved those. They were these Legos-like tins that you would stack one on top of the other. Hot food on top, cold on the bottom. My grandma used to prepare my uncle's and grandfather's lunches like that. Then friends of my uncle, who used to work for La Autoridad de Energía Eléctrica started paying her because my uncle would refuse to swap lunch with them. That's how she used to make some chavitos por el la'o.
13) If you call the North Americans "gringos," including Canadians,and call all Asian people "chinos" or "chinitos"and you call the corner store "the chinito's store."
The "gringo" part, even if you are "African American" is so true. We just called them "gringos negros". We'd laugh at them on el Alambique, when we'd see them putting on sun block. Dude! If you're black, you've got melanin. You don't need no stinking sunblock! That's why anybody coming from N. A. --sunblock in hand, big-ass chapeau and Speedos and Tangas all the way up their asses-- is called a gringo.
The chino part is a bit tricky. Puerto Rico had Asian people from the 19th century during the hey-days of Spain's sugar plantations and railroad building. Anybody from that time was considered a "chino", no matter if they really were from China or not. Then we had a second influx after the Cuban Revolution.
Across the street from my school in Mayagüez, there was an ice cream store owned by a Cuban-Chinese family. This was pre-Baskin Robbins and Haagen Dazs. Their only competition was Dairy Queen. People would drive miles for the "chinos" ice-cream because they had the funkiest yet freshest flavors : Corn, tomato, quenepa, maví, piña colada, mangó. That was our almost daily treat after school.
I, as always, would go for plain vanilla. There is nothing like a cone of rich and decadent, yet simply flavored vanilla ice cream. Pastry chefs honors are put on the line for that perfect pre-iced vanilla custard. I was the master "nose". That's until I became cow-milk intolerant in old age --and goat milk ice cream is, alas, not the same.
Oooh! Oooh! Their cherry ice-cream totally rocked too. Mmmmmmm. Cherries.
Ay bendito, this is such a trip down memory lane. I truly enjoyed it.
Posted by Liza Sabater in America Latina, Culture, History, Humor, Puerto Rico
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