A Mexican immigrant brings a taco truck to Brooklyn, helps the neighborhood, has fun, and makes money. It’s the American Dream!
Immigration
We didn’t cross the border, the border crossed us.
Music video for Trump: “No way, pendejo, it isn’t gonna happen!”
Video creators Greñudo Productions write that No Way, Pendejo! is “a measured and thoughtful meditation on the 2016 U.S. presidential election.” We’re pretty much in agreement, except we’d characterize the baboso Donald Trump as a “pinche pendejo.” [Editor’s note: A greñudo is a person with unruly, messy, unkempt hair.]
Top Taco Trucks Throwback Thursday #TTTTT (videos)
Because of you know who and you know why, we thought it would be chingon to take a look back at the taco truck videos that have graced POCHO’s pages over the years.
Did we mention we love tacos?
In no particular order:
From Michoacan to LA: ‘Chef Al Pastor’ and his American Dream (video)
His father wanted him to stay in Michoacan, work on the family farm, and do construction, but Raul Morales crossed over from Mexico at 17 to pursue his culinary dreams. Now, at 44, he’s his own boss, and a master of tacos al pastor. “Chef Al Pastor” was interviewed at his Los Angeles restaurant Taqueria Vista Hermosa.
Sing along! ‘The Taco Trucks Anthem’ (official lyrics video)
Sing along with America! The Taco Trucks Anthem was written on a taco truck napkin by POCHO amigo JIMWiCH and performed by the U.S. Marine Band and friends:
Oh beautiful for taco trucks
On every corner YES
Fresh salsa on tortilla chips
Our country God did bless
Mas…Sing along! ‘The Taco Trucks Anthem’ (official lyrics video)
A Year Ago Today: Something is scaring the sheeple of the GOP (toon)
Alvaro Huerta, Ph.D: The day my Mexican father met Cesar Chavez
Long live the farmworkers!
My late father, Salomón Chavez Huerta, first arrived in this country as an agricultural guest worker in the mid-1900s, during the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program represented a guest worker program between the United States and Mexico. From 1942 to 1964, the Mexican government exported an estimated 4.6 million Mexicans to meet this country’s labor shortage not only in the agricultural fields during two major wars (WWII and Korean War), but also in the railroad and mining sectors.
Like many braceros of his generation from rural Mexico, my father didn’t speak too much about the horrible working / housing conditions he endured while toiling in el norte. This included low pay, overcrowded housing, terrible food, limited legal rights, lack of freedom outside of the labor camps, racism, verbal / physical abuse and price gauging from company landlords / stores.
Mas…Alvaro Huerta, Ph.D: The day my Mexican father met Cesar Chavez
Why we fight for immigration reform and a ‘path to citizenship’ (video)
Donald Trump and the GOP haters want to split this beautiful family up and send the parents back to Mexico. We can’t let that happen. The President’s DAPA (Deferred Action for Parents of Americans) initiative is now stalled because the Republicans won’t vote on the Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, a judge who could potentially end the body’s 4-4 deadlocks.
CNN video: ‘Remittances’ from the U.S. keep this Mexican town alive
After a son leaves his small, impoverished Mexican town of Francisco Villa to find a better life in Chicago, he sends money to help his family — and hometown — alive. Racist Donald Trump says he would stop these “remittances.”
Xenia Rubinos: Brown people do it all in ‘Mexican Chef’ (video)
New York City alternative whirlwind Xenia Rubinos makes quite an exhaustive list of things that brown people do, including Mexican Chef. Brown cleans your house, for example, and brown takes the trash, brown even wipes your granddaddy’s a$$.
PREVIOUSLY ON XENIA RUBINOS:
Welcome to 2040 and life on ‘The Other Side’ (video)
Exterior, day: Destitute desert town in the year 2040. Audio: Spanish newsradio tells the story — unemployment is 86%, gangs are everywhere and food and water are getting scarce.
There’s only one thing a father can do — smuggle his family across the border to the prosperous country on The Other Side.
You can’t deport me! I’m Scotch-Irish, like President Obama! (toon)
Herr Trump can’t deport me! I’m of Scotch-Irish descent, just like President Obama. Here is my official CLAN POCHO tartan if you don’t believe me.
Watch: Pregnant mujer crossing border gives birth to ‘Alien’
Locked in the back of a van, desperate migrants must cross the Mexican border into the U.S. before one of them gives birth to an illegal alien. The Birth of an Alien (El Nacimiento de un Extranjero) is from Sumiko Braun.
To win playing BORDERS, you need to beat La Migra (video)
BORDERS is a game from Gonzalo Alvarez where players walk in the shoes of an immigrant to endure the danger of a journey across the desert. You only win if you can avoid La Migra and beat the heat by hiding under bushes and staying hydrated. Many make the journey towards the border with the promise of a better life, but only the fittest survive.
Mas…To win playing BORDERS, you need to beat La Migra (video)
Savage Wild West Adventures of the Border Patrol (1951 toons)
“Heroic” Border Patrol Agents of Lore: Or “That’s Not the Migra I Know!” More Tales of Greedy “Mexicans,” “Savage” Native Americans, and “Heroic” Uber Gringos!
Pappy’s Golden Age of Comics Blog is at it again — posting delectable artifacts from American comic book history that are also revelatory chronicles unraveling the collusion of race, ethnicity, violence, and more in popular “entertainments.”
Mas…Savage Wild West Adventures of the Border Patrol (1951 toons)
Deported moms in Tijuana long for families, work for reform (video)
In Dreaming in Tijuana deported mothers fight for immigration reform in the United States. The anguish of family separation has turned them into activists who promote the U.S. Latino vote from the Mexican side of the world’s “most transited” border. [Video via Univision.]
Got milk? Not without immigrant farmworkers! (video)
Check out this trailer for Farmworker: How Immigration Feeds America from freelance journalist Diana Prichard. She’s working on a film telling the story of how immigrants are critical to American agriculture.
And always remember who worked hard to get you that next glass of leche or bowl of hot queso.
Let’s get one thing straight: No human being is ‘illegal’
“Could the president grant deferred removal to every unlawfully present alien in the United States right now?”
That’s how Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts referred to individuals lacking the proper documents to be in the country during a recent hearing on DAPA (Deferred Action for parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents).
“Alien” is the legal term to describe these individuals, but Justice Sonia Sotomayor also referred to them as “undocumented immigrants.” She objected to the phrase “illegal immigrants”, which she considers too harsh. Justice Sonia Sotomayor even explained that “illegal immigrants” associates them with “drug addicts, thieves, and murderers.”
Mas…Let’s get one thing straight: No human being is ‘illegal’
Mexican immigrant parents: From my shame to my pride
When I first applied to UCLA, I wrote in my personal essay that I didn’t have any positive role models in my violent neighborhood.
Having grown up in East Los Angeles’ Ramona Gardens housing project, I wrote that most of the adults represented gang members, drug dealers, thieves, tecatos (heroin addicts), alcoholics, felons and high school dropouts (or push-outs). I also wrote about my disdain for housing authority officials and government workers for behaving like prison wardens and guards toward us: project residents who depended on government aid or welfare.
Moreover, I decried the police abuse that I had witnessed and experienced, like the time when a cop pointed a gun at me. My crime: being a 15-year-old making a rolling stop while learning how to drive.
