Fake Mexicans: Why Julian Castro failed the Mexican test

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(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

Happy Hispanic Heritage Month? Money won’t buy you love

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It’s Hispanic Heritage Month. Break out a novelty sombrero and a bottle of Patron, because like a taco smothered in salsa, heritage is waay more palpable when it’s smothered in consumerism…

I often encounter people who don’t understand why I identify as Hispanic. I’ve given it a lot of thought and I think it comes down to this: they’re eating the shit sandwich.

The shit sandwich is served-up fresh daily by consumerism. Let’s process culture, strip it of all that gunk we don’t need (like knowledge and power), and behold — now you can buy a poncho at Urban Outfitters. Culture itself has no value outside the bounds of consumption.

Culture is no different than a box of cereal.

Mas…Happy Hispanic Heritage Month? Money won’t buy you love

Tia Lencha’s Cocina: Mexican flag three-color salsa for El Grito

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Happy Day of the Mexican Independence!

Is Tia Lencha here. Today we make a salsa that is the colors of the Mexican bandera (flag for you pochos).

Tia Lencha is all dress in her green, white, and red to celebrate El Grito, but all of her pocho and gringo friends is a little confuse. They are no in the streets today, wearing the big sombreros, fake bigotes (mustaches for you pochos), and drinking like pescados (fish for you pochos.)

This is the day for the Mexicans to celebrate 200 years free from Christopher Colombus and his amigos, and Indians turning on their own people, and diseases, and dying by the millions, and survive only to be treated like caca by the colonizers.

Thas a lot to celebrate if ju ask Tia Lencha.

Mas…Tia Lencha’s Cocina: Mexican flag three-color salsa for El Grito

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

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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

Sheriff Joe gears up for tough re-election battle, reveals secret weapon

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(PNS reporting from PHOENIX) Arizona’s toughest sheriff, Joe Arpaio, might soon be known as Arizona’s fiercest sheriff. Arpaio is gearing up for what he expects will be the toughest of his five re-election campaigns and he is pulling out all the stops this time by revealing his alter ego, “KoKo.”

No stranger to controversy, Arpaio is facing a determined effort from immigration rights activists and the Justice Department to push him out of office but says that “KoKo” will give him the edge this time in fending off his enemies.

A ruling in a lawsuit that alleges his department violated the civil rights of Latinos is expected any day now but Arpaio says that he will weather the storm with “swag and style” the likes of which Maricopa County has never witnessed.

Mas…Sheriff Joe gears up for tough re-election battle, reveals secret weapon

Pocho Ocho ‘Hispanic Heritage’ items we want in the Smithsonian

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Are you buying a new dress, ladies, perhaps a chingon chapeau? Inviting the family over for a Sonoran hot dog party? After all, National Hispanic Heritage Month 2012 starts on Saturday. Your special month is brought to you by the good folks at Tio Sam Dot Gov, the same people who thought “Hispanic” made sense on U.S. Census forms.

From the official website:

The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum join in paying tribute to the generations of Hispanic Americans who have positively influenced and enriched our nation and society.

While we’re sure the gente in Washington are doing their very best, we have our own list of the pocho ocho “Hispanic” iconic items that should be in the Smithsonian:

Mas…Pocho Ocho ‘Hispanic Heritage’ items we want in the Smithsonian

Cilantro haters, come out of the closet! You were born this way

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Cilantro is a key ingredient in Mexican cooking. The herb flavors Thai and Indian and Middle Eastern food too. But some people just can’t stand it and insist it smells/tastes like soap and looks “green as old vomit.”

You people — it’s OK. You can come out of the comida closet now. You were born this way.

From Nature.com:

A genetic survey of nearly 30,000 people posted to the preprint server arXiv.org this week has identified two genetic variants linked to perception of coriander, the most common of which is in a gene involved in sensing smells. Two unpublished studies also link several other variants in genes involved in taste and smell to the preference.

Mas…Cilantro haters, come out of the closet! You were born this way

Pocho Ocho best words the French gave to Spanglish

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The French have contributed a great deal to pocho culture, including some choice palabras. We got a few of them together for your review:

8. Mamón You might think it means “asshole,” but in French it sounds like “mother.” Don’t be a douche.

7. Chingadeaux It sounds fancy when you spell it in French, but in Spanish it’s an expletive.

6. Le Cuchí In French it means “smart woman.”

Mas…Pocho Ocho best words the French gave to Spanglish

5PM Live Stream! Pochopalooza at Cypress Park Library: ¡Ban This!

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POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz joins an all-estrella Xican@ literary line-up at the Cypress Park Library Tuesday night Sept. 11 to read from ¡Ban This!, the anthology edited by POCHO contributor Santino J. Rivera.

An Evening of Mass Education starts at 5PM and features Alcaraz, Rivera, POCHO Subcommandanta del News Sara Inés Calderón, Gustavo Ask ¡A Mexican! Arellano, writer Gina Ruiz (we have her science fiction short story here) and many more.

The cool peeps at the library have lots more information on their blog.   Look for live Tweets during the gig with hashtag #BanThis.

We’ll be streaming the evening here:

Mas…5PM Live Stream! Pochopalooza at Cypress Park Library: ¡Ban This!

Pocho Ocho reasons Latinos weren’t turned on by political conventions

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The political conventions are finally over and the poll results are in: Latinos don’t really care.

How can this be!? The Democrats saw the GOP’s Rubio and raised them two Castros!

To help our political friends understand, here are the Pocho Ocho reasons Latino voters were not turned on by the conventions:

8. No piñatas crafted in the opponent’s likeness.

7. No sophisticated flamenco dance numbers performed by kindergarteners.

6. No midgets.

Mas…Pocho Ocho reasons Latinos weren’t turned on by political conventions

Why do I discipline my daughter – and dance – in Español?

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As a small girl, I refused to speak Spanish with my mother.

She was born in Sonora, MX and grew up speaking nothing but Spanish so this must have frustrated her. Now, I think, wouldn’t it have been easier to just learn the language while I was small?

Thankfully, I finally realized the value of being bilingual in my teen years and made a commitment to become fluent in Spanish during high school.

I watched only Spanish TV and every summer my mom would drop me off in Hermosillo to be immersed in the culture and spend time with my cousins. It was a lot of fun, and it worked.

Now that I am a mom, I think I might have figured out why I refused my mother’s native language for so long. Just the other day, my daughter acted out in public over the absence of her sippy cup and the first words that came flowing out of my mouth were, “Mi hijita, no me grites. Espérate por favor.”

The situation caught my attention when everyone around us stopped what they were doing and looked at us, confused. That’s when I realized I raise my daughter in English but I discipline her in Spanish.

Mas…Why do I discipline my daughter – and dance – in Español?

ZOMG! Mainstream media discovers pochismo for profit

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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

If every picture tells a story–does this one? Caption contest! *UPDATED

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*We have a winner! Scroll down for all the entries and the best caption.

Caption this image to win something cool from us and perhaps the esteem of pochos everywhere!

Contest begins now and ends at midnight PDT tonight. POCHO decisions final. Bribes accepted but no guarantees, OK? Deal? Deal. Write your caption below to enter. Captions posted on Facebook don’t count, even with bribes. You can’t win a prize if you don’t enter a real email address.

Image borrowed from The Chita’s Clitoris, a Tumblr well worth your adult eyeballs; the pre-cholafied painting is here.

Ñewsweek: Japanese cholas, @MexicanMitt sings, DNC delirium

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Is brown the new black?

That’s the question POCHO asked in a massively-popular photo essay that featured Japanese women who dress like cholas. They make ‘gang’ signs, they pose and they mad-dog the camera. Is this a good thing?

Political coverage broke most of the ñews this week as just-released-from-Twitterham-jail @MexicanMitt Romney debuted a music video and had lots to say about the Democratic Convention in Dixie, especially that Bill Clinton guey.

Here are POCHO’s big estories:

Mas…Ñewsweek: Japanese cholas, @MexicanMitt sings, DNC delirium

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