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.

The Mission

Like any well mannered young person moving to a new city to attend college, my priorities in my new home in San Francisco were as such: find a place to live, find a place to get food, and most importantly, find a place for cheap beer. Within the city limits of San Francisco that last requirement is found by so many dedicated students in the Mission District. Nestled pretty close to the center of the city, the Mission sits surrounded by SoMa to the west, Bernal Heights to the south, and the Castro to the east. For such a small city it has always been incredible to me how it can sustain so many distinct neighborhoods with their unique characteristics. Even the most aloof resident of the city (and there are many) can tell what part of the city they are in by the architecture, the shops and restaurants, the bars and attractions, the geography. The Sunset is not Twin Peaks. Pac Heights is not the Presidio. You try to stay away from Hunters Point. And still no one exactly knows where Excelsior is. When it comes to the Mission you will know you’re there by a few distinct traits beyond the cheap beer: due the geography of the city it is probably the warmest and sunniest part of the city; there are two BART (subway) stops; and it is the largest Latino community in the city.

The area has had a Spanish influence since 1776 when Spanish priest Francisco Palou founded the Mission for which the city is named- after St. Francisco de Assisi. Prior to that the area had been inhabited by the Yeluma Indians for over 2000 years but as everyone knows, whenever you mix Europeans and natives… one of them is going to disappear and it will probably the ones who haven’t been making use of gun powder for 1000 years. The Mission that currently stands was built in 1783, probably with forced Indian slave labor. The surrounding area with owned by various Spanish rancheros with names that are still important to the city of San Francisco like Valencia, Bernal, Noe, Guerrero- these are currently names of streets and neighborhoods throughout the city. Eventually the land was ceded in the deal that ended the Mexican-American War. The Gold Rush came and went and along with the rest of the city, the Mission District grew economically by leaps and bounds; it was home to California’s very first professional baseball stadium and had a couple of others over the following century which were home to teams like the San Francisco Seals and the Mission Reds.

Throughout most of the 19th and well into the 20th century, the Mission was mainly a German and Irish community. After the earthquake of 1906 so much of the city’s economic and commercial center in the downtown and financial districts had been destroyed or disrupted that the Mission became the main commercial thoroughfare for a short time. The area saw an influx of Polish immigrants as well but like so many other places, once World War II arrived everything changed.

When so many men left to join the war effort, their families returned to their families or simply moved on. As such this left a void in the housing market and prices and populations dropped. Enter a new group of immigrants, the Mexicans. The Germans, Irish, and Poles had left and the Mexicans seized the opportunity for inexpensive housing. This started happening in the 40s and went well into the 60s and the neighborhood has been a Hispanic community ever since. In the 1980s, civil unrest and instability in the Central America brought many more immigrants to these here United States and many of them reside in the Mission District which is why their Mexican food is substantially subpar when compared to Southern California efforts, but it is probably the best place to get a plate of pupusas.

Over the past decade or so, since it has become the trend for young urban white people to gentrify neighborhoods because it’s “more real” (see Brooklyn; see Oakland; see Echo Park), the Mission has seen a dramatic increase in the white population along with increased housing prices- even Dave Eggers’ charitable foundation, 826 Valencia, is based there. Despite this, the district remains a destination for Hispanic immigrants.

A few things to see and do whilst in the Mission include a visit to actual mission which still stands on Dolores Street, not far from Dolores Park. My favorite rock climbing gym, Mission Cliffs is there. And the Mission is home to many Latino art galleries and cultural centers like Galeria de la Raza, and so many murals all over the neighborhood that were commissioned by the Chicano Art Mural Movement of the 1970s. The Mission has become synonymous with great burritos, too. In fact, there is a restaurant not far from my place in Upper West Side Manhattan that boasts “San Francisco Mission Style Burritos”. Mission and Valencia streets are home to dozens upon dozens of bars, bookstores and restaurants that are host to the annually literary event LitQuake in October. It was home to a punk scene for a while and was even characterized as a Bohemian community akin to Greenwich Village though it’s difficult for any neighborhood close to Haight and Ashbury to co-opt that moniker.

So the Mission isn’t exactly a Mexican neighborhood anymore but it does have strong Mexican ties and a rich heritage. One of the drawbacks to San Francisco’s fantastic BART system is that it ceases to run by 1:00am on the weekends. With the bars going until 2:00am this can cause a crisis of priority. Countless times I’ve found myself enjoying a cold beverage with friends as single tolling of a bell drew near. One more, my friends would say- and I would relent. Then, with just moments to make the last train, I’d run out of Zeitgeist or the Latin-American Club or the Elbo Room, as fast as I could. Half the time I made it, saving myself a $25 cab ride home. The other half of the time my comrades would smile as I walked back into the bar with a bacon wrapped hot dog in my hands as I’d sit down to another beer.

El Cholo

If you’ve lived in, visited, or even just driven through East LA, you’ve probably seen a cholo. Cholo culture has many aspects and variations on the style. Sometimes a cholo will have a shaved head. Or he might have a long black mane pulled back in a tight ponytail. A mustache is not uncommon. Various tattoos may adorn the cholo’s body, usually in tribute to Nuestra Senora, the Raiders, his own last name, or a picture of his heina. Baggy clothes are also the norm but the style of loose fitting clothing is quite different from the urban hip-hop scene. When a vato wants to look good, he doesn’t look for baggier clothing and shiny, plastic bling. No, the vato is more likely to use some extra Tres Flores in his hair, make sure his mustache is trimmed, and while the clothes may still be oversized, he’ll want to look sharp which means pressed trousers, clean shoes, a starched shirt with suspenders, and a small gold chain that is visible when the vato leans back and looks out at the world before him. Casual wear consists of khaki chinos or very long shorts, Dickies that reach to or below the mid-calf, a white t-shirt or tank top, and on top of that maybe a long sleeve shirt that is only buttoned at the top. You can find him in a low-rider Chevy or Cadillac, on a low-rider bicycle, or kicking rocks. A bandana over the forehead, low to the eyes is typical as well, as is a hairnet, but of course not both at the same time. Plaid flannel jackets come out when the weather gets cold. Oh yeah, and knee-high white tube socks. Can’t forget the socks.

Cholo style is heavily associated with gang culture and this association is not unfounded. I’ve got a few primos who got into their fair share of trouble coming up in East LA. Luckily my parents had the drive and ability to see to it that their progeny did not grow up calling one another “ese”. Despite the bad seeds who might ruin a party, these are the guys with tear-drop tattoos and a big black 13 on their chest, there is some overlap with legitimate styles and cultures like the low-rider scene, various styles of art including graffiti art like Chaka and the tattoo art of the Mister Cartoon. A great example of how these characteristics merge with various aspects of black culture and Caucasian “style” would be to take a look at the Long Beach Dub scene that was enormously popular in the west coast during the late 1990s. But for a good, hard look at how the Mexican street gang culture has pervaded a segment of society, watch the 1993 film Blood In, Blood Out (Bound By Honor) or American Me from 1992.

The etymology of the term “cholo” is somewhat ambiguous and the way I am defining it is exclusive to the southwest, Southern California in particular. Anywhere else the term is used it is generally meant to refer to indigenous peoples, those of mixed race, and in its first written usage going back to the early 1600s was synonymous with “mulatto”. During the ethnic power movements of the 1960s the term was used as a point of pride but in general the title has negative connotations. Prior to that, the cholo scene seems to have evolved out of the pachuco fashion from the 1940s. I’ll spend some time on the Zoot Suit in the future, but this appears to be the starting point for what would become cholos. This is why the fancier cholos will wear the creased pants and may go for the fedora over the bandana from time to time.

Cholos like to drink and smoke (it’s not all Cheech and Chong but that is the ideal). If they are in a gang or rely on the streets to survive then it isn’t likely that they have finished high school- these are of course generalizations and not hard and fast rules. As such they will have their own localized method of speech, a spanglish all its own. This isn’t the typical spanglish where one might say carro instead of coche, or always answer with “que” when “mande usted” would be more appropriate. No, this is more like saying “watcha,” or “trucha”. They’ve also got a penchant for mariachi music though everyone has always got their own taste, from hip-hop to reggae and rock. And of course, there are the women, the cholas.

Oh, the cholas. A cholo likes a girl whose hair looks wet but when you touch it, it’s crunchy. Dark lipstick, eyebrows that were drawn in with pencil (or a Sharpie marker), and clothing not terribly dissimilar to their male counterparts; these styles have actually found their way into the mainstream as they have at times been picked up by pop stars like Gwen Stefani, Fergie, and Kat Von D. Typically the cholas are girlfriends or sisters of cholos but they have been known to be some pretty rough and tumble chicas in their own right.

So what do you do if you run on to a cholo or group of cholos? For the most part, just like anyone else you pass by on the street if you ignore them they will ignore you. But if by chance they want to engage in scintillating conversation they are likely to ask you where you are from. They are not planning a trip soon, nor are they eager to exchange pleasantries about the subtle differences from one sociological sample to the next. If a cholo asks you where you’re from your reply should always be “Nowhere. I’m from nowhere”. Just wanted to give you a heads up on that one. In the event you believe you will be deep in cholo territory for any extended period of time you may want to have some Raiders gear on or near you at all times so that a) they may take you for one of them, or b) you can give it as a peace offering or use it to distract them while you pull the knife out of your leg.

Also, don’t let their love of all things Raiders fool you into thinking you can have a chat with them about the NFL. You must never talk to them about football in any greater depth than by simply saying you love the Raiders. This is for two reasons: the Raiders suck and haven’t had a winning season in nearly a decade, and despite their professed adoration for them, cholos don’t know shit about the Raiders other than the colors and the logos.

Also, do not confuse the cholos I've described here with the Los Angeles and La Habra restuarant, El Cholo, which serves a delightful deep fried ice-cream.