What's In A Name?

Latino. Hispanic. Chicano. Spanish.




When people ask me what I am I typically say American. It usually begs a follow-up or clarifying question as to my background or ethnicity and I’ll let them know that my family hails from Mexico. Though it’s not a terribly important debate in political philosophy I think hyphens are a little silly and are very misleading. After all exactly what would make someone Mexican-American? Could someone be termed American-Mexican? And how Mexican does one have to be in order to be called both Mexican and American? And how far back to we go with ethnicity or cultural background? Mexico has plenty of people descending from natives to the land. The people were invaded or mixed with nearly every country in Western Europe, most notably the Spanish whose land was at different times dominated by Jewish people, the Romans, and the Moors. Does that also make me part African-American? The hyphens are silly and do little to accurately represent ones cultural background.



Getting away from the hyphens we have all of these other names with which to designate ourselves. Spanish seems like an odd one. Here in New York it’s the one I hear most often. “What’s his background,” someone may ask when referring to me or someone with a similar family history. “He’s Spanish,” is often the reply. I’m about as Spanish as Gary Busey is sane- it’s a place I’ve visited and perhaps share some ancient connection to it but it does little to accurately describe anything about me. Around these parts Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Cubans, they’ll all be referred to as Spanish. That would be correct if the question was about which language they speak but not about their background. Not really, anyway. I would hardly refer to George Clooney as “that English guy.” Bill Gates isn’t considered British. And Fernando Valenzuela is not Spanish. Javier Bardem, that guy is Spanish. Julio Iglesias, also Spanish. Antonio Banderas, that guy is Spanish as well. Me? Not so much. Obviously it’s easier to say Spanish than go through the litany of possible countries from which a Spanish speaker could hail, but we do have other words which we have agreed upon for such designations.



There is Chicano. I’ve found several stories detailing the etymology of the term but the one that appears the most is that it is a shorthand way of saying Mexicano and specifically refers to people of Mexican descent. The way I hear it, “Mexicano” was shortened to “Xicano” and since no one really knows what sound the letter X is supposed to make (is it a Z? An H? does it sound like KS), people agreed upon the CH sound. Some say it was primarily used as a derogatory term but I think it was used more out of naiveté or ignorance. This was around the time words like “negro” and “colored” were being used and while it would be terribly insensitive to use these words today political correctness and cultural sensitivity were not what they are today. Calling someone Chicano was the label for the children of Mexican immigrants and it was chosen and it became a way to label someone in the simplest of terms. In any event the term took on a negative connotation but eventually came to be embraced and used for a political movement. The Chicano Movement has its roots in the mid 1800s but didn’t really gain traction until the 1950s and 60s. It’s a fascinating time and I will address it in a future post but for now we’ll have to move on. Having grown up in the 80s and 90s, just a little bit after a great era of political and cultural awareness, I personally never associated the label of Chicano with a political movement. It was just another way people referred to people like me.



The terms Hispanic and Latino are often used interchangeably but don’t always mean the same thing. “Hispanic” as a word has its history going back to both the Greek and Roman Empires where the root word was used to describe the Iberian Peninsula, the area that comprises Spain, Portugal, Andorra and part of France. It eventually became the Latin word for Spain. As such, groups that have a primarily Spanish ancestry or influence are Hispanic but aren’t Latino unless they are also part of Latin America. It is thought that Latino was originally intended to refer to someone of Latin American ancestry. Thus it is accurate to consider a Mexican either Hispanic or Latino but someone from Spain can only be Hispanic. Either way I don’t see the need to split hairs as neither term is considered descriptive of race or specific ethnicity or background. When it comes to filling out that census information, in the eyes of the government I think I’m considered white. And let me tell you, I have some cousins who look anything but white.



So is there a term that is more correct than others? Do I have a preference? Not really. I’ve heard all of the derogatory terms thrown around, too. I’ve been called a beaner and spic (though I had no idea what a spic was at the time- I’m still a little fuzzy about it). I’ve been called a wet-back. It’s extremely rare that I have heard those terms and when I do it does not make the person saying them any more powerful or vicious; if anything it makes them sound outdated or anachronistic. Those words carry very little weight because I think that mine is a culture that gives very little power to terms for which we have no use. It isn’t a matter of reclaiming pejoratives and making them our own because we don’t want or need those words. They’re silly and to use them, trying to give new meaning to them, would be a waste of effort because it would only give attention to the intended insult. But getting back to the terms like Spanish, Hispanic, Latino, or Chicano… As I stated above I think Spanish is really inaccurate. As for the others, I guess any of them will do if a label is necessary. Personally I prefer to go by Eric.

Why Do You Thound Different?

Growing up in Southern California, not far from Los Angeles, most everyone who spoke Spanish sounded the same as members of my family who spoke Spanish. The same inflection in the same places, same cadence, the same pronunciation… There were very little discrepancies in this social agreement of how the language sounds. Even the few accents that stood out, the few Puerto Ricans or Salvadorians that I knew, were not far off from what was familiar. The vagaries of encountering an unfamiliar accent were easily explained away by associating that particular accent only with that person. As a child it made sense that everyone spoke Spanish the same way and those who did not were completely unique in their pronunciation. When I heard Ricky Ricardo and the relatively direct and forward nature of the way his Cuban Spanish I assumed that was because he was always on the verge of slapping his wife. Outside of Ricky and a couple of others, everyone spoke the same way as far as I could tell.

The first time I heard a completely different system of pronunciation was when I was eleven years old and we took a family trip across Europe with stops in Spain. Their Spanish sounded different from what I’d heard my whole life to that point. It had a certain lilt to it. The emphasis came on different syllables than from what I was used to hearing. And of course there was the lisp. As a small child and I had quite the lisp. I was taunted and I was self conscious about it and I distinctly remember spending hours standing in front of the bathroom mirror staring at my mouth and forcing my tongue to stay in place when pronouncing those “s” versus “th” sounds. Then years later here was that lisp all around me! I realized the problem wasn’t that I had had a lisp as a child but that I was speaking Castillian Spanish! This was also my first encounter with a true class system which was really weird. There has always been the stereotype that Europeans are rude and see Americans as loud and obnoxious. Over the course of our trip those stereotypes had mostly gone unfounded. The Germans were stern and efficient but polite and straightforward. The Swiss and Italians were nothing if not welcoming. But Spain was a little different. For the most part we were treated kindly but on the edges of society, the café at the train station or the clerk at the local store, we were met with disdain. It was enough that we were American but we also spoke the language like Mexicans! Sin upon sin! Weird. Like I said, most everyone was nice but there were a few punks with bad attitudes.

FYI, people who are supposed to be Spanish have often claimed that the aforementioned lisp is in emulation of the adored King Ferdinand. There is absolutely no evidence to support this. Just wanted to let you know.

Once I got to New York there was an entirely new world of Spanish to hear. Mexicans are not the majority Hispanic culture as they are in Southern California. In New York there are Spanish speakers from the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and many other places off the mainland, places that we think of when we say “Caribbean.” As such the Spanish language has been influenced by so many other cultures including the natives of those areas, the other invading nations like the Dutch, French, and British, the slave traders and the slaves themselves. Everyone brought with them their own culture which influenced how the dominating language, Spanish, is now spoken. To my ears the Spanish spoken here in New York has a completely different rhythm. It seems more sing-songy to me, with the inflection continually ascending rather than descending. Mexican Spanish seems to share the same mode of pronunciation as American English in that as we speak we typically put the heaviest emphasis on the final syllable of the sentence unless we are specifically trying to make a point or draw attention somewhere else. The Spanish I hear around the Big Apple tends to have the heaviest emphasis at the beginning with the weight placed on the words tends to rise as the sentence continues. The slang is different too. They don’t even know what a “cholo” is around here (lucky bastards). Of course neither cited nor done any of my own scientific research, I’m merely going what I’ve heard around the water cooler.

I guess the root of it all is that whenever you have a language spoken by disparate groups of people they are going to develop their own ways and rules for how to speak that language. That’s why Latin became French, Spanish, and Italian. That’s why I could barely understand what anyone was saying when I visited Ireland, though remarkably the more I drank the easier it was to comprehend. And that’s why I have something to write about today.

Also, for those of you visiting from Brazil, stop asking if I speak Spanish only to start speaking Portuguese because I have no idea what you are saying. IT’S A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE.

Mexican Food in America

It used to be very rare that I would get a craving for Mexican food. Nights out at the bars and clubs, when others wanted to hit up King Taco (On Cypress in East LA- or the one in Pasadena), I was more partial to grabbing a burger or one of those hot dogs wrapped in bacon from the street vendor at the corner. When meeting with a group of friends and trying to decide what to do for dinner I rarely supported the option of going out for Mexican. That’s not to say I didn’t like Mexican food; I frequently got a delicious burrito from Boca Del Rio or tacos from Mexico Taco in La Habra. The whole family would get together for certain birthdays or holidays at the El Cholo or El Torrito Grill. I was never disappointed. Enchiladas, tamales at Christmas, carne asada… it’s all good. I think the reason I never wanted to go out of my way to get is because it was always around growing up.

My dad used to make bean burritos for me to take to lunch when I was a kid. (Just a little side note- I know that burritos aren’t exactly Mexican food but more like tex-mex, but that’s a topic for another post). Staying with grandma in the evenings she was always making chile rellenos or albondigas or chilaquiles (which remarkably has no chile) or something to that effect. So it was all readily available and, if not that, there were plenty of wonderful Mexican restaurants all over the place.

Then I left Los Angeles.

San Francisco, for all its wonderful cuisine and gastronomic tantalization really has second rate Mexican food. You can find some a palatable burrito here and there but they truly are few and far between. This was confusing to me as San Francisco has the Mission District which is a hub of Latin-Americans. In my naiveté I presumed that would mean there are lots of Mexicans. There are many but what I came to find out is that there is an even greater concentration of peoples from El Salvador. This really puts a damper on the Mexican food for me because it never tastes quite right. Don’t get me wrong, if you want a good pupusa this is the place to go but as for their Mexican food… Well, it’s like kissing your stepsister. It’s better than nothing but it certainly is not ideal.

Then I left San Francisco.

New York also has a wealth of restaurants of every possible cuisine from Ethiopian to Thai to Scottish to Argentine… unfortunately their Mexican food is absolutely bland and tired. Every place I’ve gone has been a disappointment. I’ve only been here a year and tried just a handful of places but each one has given me less of a reason to try another. There is supposed to be a wonderful street vendor in SoHo called Calexico but I’ve yet to get to it. I’ve been told that there are a couple of great places out in the Bronx or in Brooklyn but that’s a trek and I don’t see myself heading out that way for what may just amount to be a Taco Bell is disguise. When it comes to my food, absence does make the heart grow fonder. Now, every time I get back to LA I hit up my favorite Mexican food places. If I’m headed through downtown I may even make a stop at Olvera Street to the place at the end where you can still find the ladies making the tortillas by hand. Standing in line as a child, my brother and I would always head up the steps that looked over the kitchen where we could peer over and watch their hands clap-clap-clap as they formed the tortillas.

My experience with Mexican food in America is limited to California and New York. I’ve been through Arizona and New Mexico (that’s right, there’s a New Mexico!) but I don’t remember my reaction to their Mexican food well enough to comment on it. I’m sure it’s great though. It seems to me the closer you get to the border the more likely you are to find something delicioso y sabroso. Next week I’ll get into some specifics about how crazy Mexican food can get, like eating tongue and brains, roasting up a goat head or the process of making carnitas from scratch. Good times.