Ask Gustavo Arellano

March 11, 2006 - 1:40pm — culturegroove

Gustavo Arellano is an investigative reporter and columnist for the OCWeekly in Southern California. Since 2004, Gustavo has been answering questions in his increasingly popular column "Ask A Mexican". In February 2006, the LA Times wrote an article on the weekly column and now, it seems, that everyone wants to talk to Gustavo. Including me.

CG: How did the Ask A Mexican column start?

GA: We used to have a column at the OCWeekly called Burning Bush where we would gather the conservative critics of George W. Bush and post their comments in our paper. That column was going to end with the November 2004 elections regardless of who won. So we were trying to figure how we were going to replace that space. One day my boss, Will Swaim, was driving down Main street in Santa Ana, California, the most latino city in the United States. He sees a billboard of a local radio DJ wearing a Viking helmet and he has his eyes crossed. It’s just this really bizarre image. My boss comes back and asks "Have you seen that billboard? That guy looks as if you could ask him a question about Mexicans and he’ll know the answer.” Why don’t you start a column called ‘Ask A Mexican’ and we’ll run it once and we’ll see what the reaction is and if it works then we will continue doing it and if not, then it’s just a one time only column."

CG: I guess it worked...

GA: Well what happened was we run the first question, which is the only question we’ve ever made up, “Dear Mexican, Why do Mexicans call white people gringos?” I responded “Dear Gabacho, Mexicans don’t call gringos gringos, only gringos call gringos gringos. Mexicans call gringo gabachos.” We just left it at that and thought ‘Oh, how funny!’ But it gets published with the stereotypical Mexican icon of the fat guy with the gold tooth and a sombrero. We receive so many reactions. A lot of it was negative like “Why are you using that racist stereotype?”, ”What’s this about? Who are you?”, “How dare you do all this!” We also got positive feedback. Both the positive and negative comments came from people of all races. Some of the positive comments were “This is the funniest thing I’ve ever read!”, ”This is hilarious!” More importantly though, and one thing we didn’t anticipate: we started receiving questions about Mexicans from the first issue. So we though ‘let’s try this for a couple more weeks, and we did that and we started receiving more questions. One week we didn’t run the column due to space constraints and we started receiving email saying ’Hey, where’s ask a Mexican?”, “Please don’t kill ask a Mexican!” Ever since then, with the exception of special issues, it’s run every week.

CG: Have you been surprised by any reactions to this column?

GA: I guess what surprises me is that people are sending in these questions. I knew that I was going to get negative and positive reactions. That goes without saying. That’s what happens with any column. I do get surprised that people still feel the need to ask somebody questions about Mexicans because Mexicans continue to be this obsession for the general American public.

CG: Lately I’ve been reading more about racial issues and I have found that there are very few public forums or opportunities to just ask questions and not feel that you are going to be reprimanded. I’ve seen websites that make fun of both white culture and black culture and there are things about white culture that apparently are stereotypes that I’ve never even heard of. That probably because I haven’t felt comfortable asking other people about these things. I have shown your column to a few friends and often their initial reaction is “I’m not sure I want to read this”. This is partially because of the title and…

GA: The picture?

CG: No, I showed them the Dirty Sanchez article [Gustavo laughs] which might not be the best thing to start them off on. But then they actually read your response which is of course funny, but there’s a lot of honesty, references to other cultures and a lot of intelligence there. Do you think that having other opportunities like this and having them published would be good for society to help tear down prejudice and get us over a lot of the stereotypes that we have?

GA: Absolutely. By trade I am an investigative reporter and one of my beats here has been the anti-immigrant movement based mostly in Orange County. I have also profiled hate groups, neo-nazi groups. I go after the scum of society. I am of the philosophy that the best way to combat hate and racism is to shine a light on it. When you do that, you’ll see how quickly it withers away. If we don’t talk about stereotypes then they are going to grow in stature and grow in menace and power because it’s not spoken of. If we don’t allow these grievances to be aired in some sort of public forum, that’s where problems can arise. But if you talk about these stereotypes you’ll see how ridiculous they are and you’ll see how easy it is to debunk them. And once you debunk them the stereotypes are proven to be a lie and now the stereotype is diminished. Is the power of it still there? Yes. But now it’s weakened. And if you continue to do that, it will make stereotypes weaker and weaker and I do think that it does allow for a better understanding of the culture and also more of an acceptance of it.

CG: In one of your columns you mentioned someone’s question “Why do Mexicans always run across the street?” You responded by mentioning the fact that the places where many Mexicans come from don’t have proper roads set up, never mind crosswalks, streetlights and the laws that go along with them. Unless someone is studying that specifically, when you go to another country, you are not going to know all of the rules of traffic and jaywalking. It made so much sense and at first seemed like a silly question.

GA: I get questions from all over the spectrum varying between the Dirty Sanchez and jaywalking. Some of the questions are just common sense like the one about jaywalking. Another one that I don’t believe I’ve answered in the column but in a recent radio show somebody asked me “Why do Mexican’s have bumper stickers pledging allegiance to the state they come from?” Well, it’s because they are immigrants. Immigrants are always going to maintain some sort of tie to their homeland. And this isn’t a Mexican thing. If you go back to the turn of the century where you had Italians, they weren’t even Italian. They were considering themselves Neapolitan etc. Immigrants are going to have an immediate tie to whatever region they came from. The nation state is really a myth. The only time a nation identity really emerges is when you are on the international stage. People in Mexico will call themselves Mexicans but really they are Jaliscienses, they are Zacatecanos they are from whatever region they’re from. To this day Mexicans are still viewed as this exotic race when in fact it’s just the same assimilation process that has happened with any other immigrant group.

CG: I think that as average Americans, many of us still know so little about many immigrant groups and it’s very unfortunate. I hope that your column continues to be published for quite some time.

GA: People ask me “How long is this column going to last?” and I say “As long as I have questions sent to me.” At this point, if nobody else were to send me any questions I have enough to last me for three years. I answer questions twice a week, every week. And that’s before this media storm with the LA Times story.

CG: Maybe you can publish a big book at the end.

GA: We’re currently in the stages of talking to people about an Ask A Mexican book.

CG: Do you have a favorite question that you’ve been asked so far?

GA: There’s so many questions.. week in and week out…

CG: Maybe the strangest?

GA: I think the funniest question that I’ve received, or at least the best response that I was able to give, was “Why is it that Mexicans, when they go to the restroom, throw their soiled toilet paper into the trashcan?” My response was “Congratulations! You’ve discovered how to tell the difference between a Mexican immigrant that has just arrived and a Mexican immigrant that has already been here.” In Mexico you do have that in fact, where you are supposed to throw away your soiled toilet paper into a trash can and not flush it. Because in Mexico, there’s very little in terms of water so the sewage system is almost non-existent. If you try to flush down toilet paper it might clog the system. So what I told the guy who asked the question was “Do me a favor and tell these Mexican immigrants that that’s not how us civilized Americans do it. We flush away our shit into the ocean.” The question was so bizarre and I thought about it and there was a logical explanation for it. And there’s that assumption by Americans that throwing away your soiled toilet paper is barbaric and that flushing into the ocean is somehow supposed to be better.

CG: Have you spent lots of time in Mexico? You were born in this country but seem to be very knowledgeable not only about life in Orange County but in Mexico.

GA: My great-grandfather came to the orange fields here in Anaheim as a teenager. So he grew up here. When it was time to have a wife, he went down to Mexican and had his family and would still go up to the Unites Stated to work. When my grandfather was of age, he also came up to Anaheim and was raised here as well. Of course when it was his time to have a wife the he goes down to Mexico and has his children. My mom immigrated here when she was 9 years old. My mom, still an immigrant and to this day barely speaks any English. I consider myself fourth generation. My father, on the other hand was an illegal immigrant who came here in 1969. So by calling me a fourth generation Orange Countian people assume that somehow I am assimilated but the fact it that I really wasn’t. Spanish was my first language and in fact I only spoke Spanish until about 1st grade or so. In terms of Mexico, we would go during December but the last time I went regularly was in second grade. I didn’t go again until I was about 22. My mom didn’t want us to miss any school and I didn’t have a chance for vacation. But what I tell people is that really there was no need to travel to Mexico because by the time I was born both of my parents’ ranchos, villages, in Mexico had all migrated here to the United States. So I essentially grew up in Mexico. I was growing up in the villages of my mom and my dad, but here in Anaheim. Most of my friends were the children of the immigrants. All the parties I went to, weddings, quincenetas, baptisms, it was all very insular. That was a Mexican upbringing. Some people accuse me of not being a real Mexican because I was born here. I don’t know what other qualifications you need besides the one I just told you. That’s about as Mexican as you can get.

CG: In noticed that you mentioned a MySpace page, but it doesn’t seem to be there anymore.

GA: I wrote an entire column devoted to plugging my MySpace page. The day before it gets published I received an email saying ‘Your MySpace account has been deleted.” I thought it was just spam. I go along my merry way and a couple hours later I go and try to update my space and it wasn’t there anymore. Then I go and actually read the email and it said that it could have been deleted for any number of the following reasons: spamming, getting too many friends to fast, being offensive. I am still at a loss as to why it was deleted. I sent them a couple of emails and they never responded. Now whenever people ask me “What happened to your MySpace page?” I tell them to email Tom and say “What the fuck?” Or in Spanish “Gue chingada?” I would like to know that answer. Because every single sin listed as a reason, every other MySpace page violates it. Are you going to tell me that these strippers with MySpace pages where they are half naked that it’s somehow not offensive but my Ask A Mexican column is?

CG: These websites,(MySpace, Tribe) because they are free, seem to take a lot of liberties...

GA: They are the ones who ultimately lose out. They are going to get emails form people saying “Where the hell is the Ask A Mexican MySpace page?” At least here in Orange County it makes me more of an outlaw celebrity saying “Oh my gosh! He’s so controversial that even MySpace, which allows strippers, deleted him.”

CG: Yeah! You got banned from a free website!

GA: And how many people can claim that?

do you have any idea?

how often i check the lovie blogs?

it's like, no, it's NOT a disease. it's an ease. no dis.

yes i do so understand it takes hours to devote to posting a blog in addis. dang, i barely got online while i was there.

and yes i do so understand that while you are in college, and a senior who's also a junior, there are many other fish to fry, thank you v much.

just so you know, ladies, you are my heart. s.

and david doesn't have a blog, so i look for chattability and slo-mo email from mehico. mahn.

i just got back from lev dinner, which was really - surprise - it didn't exactly ROCK, but comparatively, it was entertaining.

first of all, it's the first lev dinner i've attended at someone's home. which was nice. it was at monique lentz'. i brought something. anything. i had about 30 minutes and thought of going to publix for flowers, but opted for scouring the yard and came up with a nosegay of rosebuds and confederate roses.

so that was a decent idea. i talked to monique for a good while, a couple of times. DO YOU KNOW that her mother is from Marianna, Florida? Yes! The very place, in the panhandle above Destin, where i resolve every time i drive through that if i ever am in a witness protection program, to which i will surreptitiously move? just go there, if you don't remember. it's slow and pretty and lovely. doesn't feel hoity-toity, but definitely florida, and definitely southern, kinda quaisi-georgian.

the den is where i chose to sit, dinner in lap, alone. the tables in the dining room and in the kitchen were full, and i was attracted to the marilyn monroe in her white skirt hanging on the wall. i love marilyn.

after i learned of the Marianna connection, i got a word in edgewise (monique is a talker, would you like to go to disneyworld? i can tell you it is a place i might now return based on our conversation, or her dissertation, however you'd like to describe it) and mentioned marilyn.

she said that hillary did that work when she was a sophomore at prep. ("let's gooo, preeeeeep!" comes to mind immediately)

oh well. so. monique suggested that elizabeth go to emory for a phD. but she was 32 when she started or became, no, i'm sure it was started, med school. but she can do so much more with a phD.

okay. so. the next time at home we meet will be aug 20 at 2725 ww.

mais bien sur!

oh and i talked about africa, and that may indeed be a sunday school topic in a few months.

maybe good shepherd can have a medical team.

one can dream.

ready to go

in six minutes i'm due to go to dinner at monique lentz' house. remember the lentz' diana? of midsummer night's dream, eds version? anyway, it's a lay eucharistic minister dinner.

so i'm checking email and bookin.

first day back at work after four days and it's a good thing.

well now i'm down to four minutes.

ishi~

teresa lee's suggestion well taken

teri gave me mrs mohler's recipe for crab that prompted me to go buy two ingredients i don't have: mushrooms and sherry.

i wish i could remember the title of the recipe: i'd have googled it to make sure i remembered correctly and got the proportions right. it's something like crab a la baron. but it was wonderful even as i plowed ahead.

here's what i remembered her saying as i was driving down I20 on the last 30 minutes of my return voyage home: saute mushrooms in some butter with onion and maybe a little garlic. (i used
a shallot and a bit of garlic). add crabmeat topped with a little sherry.

that, with a simple romaine and walnut and cheese salad and a glass of dry rose, and i slept like a rock in a couple of hours.

teri, if you read my blog: please do tell me what i may have omitted to make this a better experience.

i didn't go see diana in athens as i had semi-planned, because she was quite busy yesterday.

lovies who read this: i know the ones in africa can't post, but send me news of what's been going on. maybe i can google chat with someone soon.

home again, home again, jiggity jig

Alas, to be home and sitting in the captain's chair, feet on an ottoman, listening to light traffic on walton way, laptop, er, atop my lap!

usually when i return home alone it is dark and late, but not this day. i turned onto wheeler road right at 4 pm and i have the hoses going, attending to the tomatoes and roses, which have missed personal attention this past week. oh my! i have the whole evening ahead, and a pound of fresh crabmeat, shrimp and grouper directly from sexton's in destin, awaiting whatever meal i make with them.

it was a good visit with my sister and her son and husband and my husband. we went to the beach for a couple of hours yesterday, enough to get pink noses. i do so love to go to florida.

i could not get online at teri's much and i have to check on hedda. i miss that rascal.

just as i imagined

oh so long ago, when david bought this house with the side porch. i saw myself writing here.

mind you, this is not exactly the sort of "writing" i saw, but there wasn't a specific kind. so why not a blog post?

after the y i hied to lowe's and purchased some tomato stakes. that was my intention. oh! these daisies are interesting. no, they are growing and budding now, do you need more? but what ho? in yonder aisle i spied my heart's desire, several times.

lastly, i looked for stakes and found myself in vegetable baby plants. why not get another pepper or two? and what of this zucchini? why not eat blossoms or fruit?

so here i am on the porch. i've weeded (after a fashion, not fastidiously because it will be in sore need when i return from the southerlands of florida and mobile, but nipping some annoyances in the ... well, bud.

i have some lovely flowers to plant. david and i had a lunch on the lawn, which is somewhat documented with his new camera. (ugh. i know i look a mess. after all, i've got a wonderful haircut but it doesn't look so great after it's salty and wet from the y.)

so now, i must plant.

horrifying skittles parties

on my way to the y this morning, i heard of a terrible way to use skittles.

now, who ever heard of "using" skittles?

mainly kids between the ages of 12 and 17 are having drug parties, mixing skittles with encapsulated coracidal and/or robitussin to induce oh darn, whatsitcalled, when you see things.

the story played part of a you tube video (well, audio) in which a girl is hallucinating. that's the word. hallucinations.

yuck.

well, i now have to get into the yard posthaste.

arrivaderci!

weeeellllllllll

it's been an evening of food, wine and discussion with friends. we were 8 at laurie's tonight. i brought pea salad which was well received by some, and happily, there was enough because i wasn't sure i was a little light my requisite.

david is downstairs now watching tv, and i'm in the dark living room blogging wirelessly in the pink robe with fuzzy socks on. it's windy and cool outside.

i happily looked for word from a daughter. that's really what i look forward to these days. alas, they have better things to do! so surely do i.

parenting. i wonder if my mother feels this way, believing she might. i think of the daughters' father, how he might not, and how fathers might not, as a group. life goes on, tra la la. ob la di.

note: give.

a new sushi dive

oh ye of sushi desire!

did we ever find the dive to long for!

yesterday at mid happy hour, anthony called us to see what we were doing for dinner. donna worked last night at parent's night and he'd been in the yard all day and was ready for some grub and personal interaction, i guess.

so we raced to the bistro for hh. he'd never been, and it was a good intro as the bar was our very own and the bartender steven we had to ourselves. steven made me a mexican martini up (tequila, cointreau, a splash of cranberry juice and another spash of rose's lime) and after a while we ordered sauteed calamari.

we decided sushi was in order, and had decided on takosushi around the corner when a server we've known since the now-defunct cafe du teau days started talking about his (and steven chimed in) favorite spot, something like kinja.

we are definitely taking loved ones there. it was the old guy from mikoto behind the sushi bar. man! the atmosphere was not the reason to go. it was in the area of shannon's, behind applebee's on washington road, in a strip that had to be the cheapest rent within ten miles. and they clearly had no startup money. the tables were ugly, so were the chairs, and i didn't see any flowers or tableclothes.

but the sushi! among the specials were "wasabi shrimp dumplings" and talk about wonderful. they were not fried, but a shrimp paste surrounded by layers of wasabi leaves and steamed. anthony ordered a number of rolls (california, tuna, etc) which were all great and then another special and piece de resistance, spicy lobster hand roll.

get this: jamie will love to know: everything cost 3.95 each! we all had tons of food, and each a large beer or sake, for $54.

yessir. we're going back.

Woman Uses EBay to Declutter her Life

as i was driving to the y this morning, i heard this story on the radio station i have so loved for almost 30 years.

she is selling her possessions. which are nice ones. to make her life bigger and her things fewer.

it reminded me of africa.

and, of course, jesus.

i resolved to consider the point. a 'real simple' point.

Admittedly

i have not read the blogs aforementioned by slate.

still. assuming one can get a good idea from the synopsis:

"hubris" is the word i continue to believe describes the subject person. i don't care what hip hop lyrics...well, it's not that i don't care. REGARDLESS of other people's lyrics, isn't one responsible for what comes out from one's lips?

if he had said "stupid blonde hos" regarding a group of women, I WOULD THINK HE IS THE SAME IDIOT HE HAS ALWAYS BEEN. he managed to piss off enough people to finally call him on it.

this from slate

today's blogs

And Quiet Flows the Don By Michael Weiss Posted Friday, April 13, 2007, at 1:44 PM ET And quiet flows the Don: After a weeklong media blitz and a spate of complaints from figures like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, CBS fired Don Imus from his radio show on Thursday for his reference to Rutgers women's basketball players as "nappy-headed hos." No one online seems to have had much affection for the shock jock, yet chatter focuses on how shambolic it was to have "race-baiters" and "hypocrites" inter a man who said nothing worse than what one might find in hip-hop lyrics. To continue reading, click here. Michael Weiss, a writer in New York, is co-founder and managing editor of Snarksmith.com.

betsyisbest

some things never change, eh, girls?

diana, you're it: that is my pw till you do something else. i'd feel more judicial about, say, heatheranddianardear. but judicial was never the name of that game.

i'm dressed and ready for ZUMBA in forty five minutes.

africa. well. i really wish i could have posted while we were there. it's overwhelming to consider how to concentrate one measly post to represent those two weeks. so it won't happen. gotta start somewhere though.

for now, let me make this clear: just as important as experiencing a new continent, if not MOST important, and time will tell, was spending so much time with daniel and his wife. i just took my first sip of ethiopian coffee for this morning, and was transported to the coffee shop that we went to before we left to buy 2 kilos. daniel had had his eye on the bookstore a couple of doors down and darted into that shop while elizabeth, david and i went to the shop hailie had suggested we visit to take back the national product. product isn't the word, though: it's much too casual a word for a substance that encompasses what coffee does for ethiopia.

doesn't it practically define ethiopia? i foolishly thought that americans were "dependent" on the substance. myself included, though not in a harmful way. i'll need to research it, but coffee exports comprise a majority of the gross domestic product. oh oh oh: instead of the economic choice of guns or butter, there's a relationship between guns and coffee in absynnia. most of the annual budget of ethiopia funds wars. so wouldn't that mean that coffee is doing most of the trick? dark as a coffee bean, that relationship. hmmm.

when we arrived in addis ababa, it was late at night. two coworkers of elizabeth's, derek and jim, came with her to the airport: daniel was on a field trip with eighth graders in the northern cities of ethiopia such as lallibella (i have to fix that spelling likely) and axum. as we assumed and was later confirmed by daniel's subsequent mugging at six pm, after dark is not to be experienced alone here. we were thankful to meet the two. tears welled in my eyes as we waited in the throng at customs and final security to get out of the airport. in the crowd waiting for passengers, i saw a hand go up in the middle. i could see no face, and certainly couldn't identify the hand, but i knew it was heather. i bit my lip and wiped my eyes, foolish emotron, goober: get a hold of yourself. here's what happened to ioster the emotion: somehow, the stage had instantly changed from the addis airport to the first dance recital she was in at the age of four, twenty one years before. and she was on stage, looking for me, Inspector Gadget style. i cried then; why wouldn't i cry now? (i'll admit it: i'm crying now, remembering)

soon we were united with them, and clambering aboard a Bingham vehicle that Heather confidently commandeered.

at that hour, our first impressions of ethipia, the city, were muted. which is a good way to start with such a new place: tiptoeing in.

the airport was certainly different, and there were surprising numbers of strollers at near-midnight as we traversed the city from southwest to northeast, but the sense that i hold dear was not cranked up yet: smell. that came later the next day, and then, BAM, assaulted.

but now, dear reader (dear ones), i must to zumba.

ta ta!

it will take time

still processing the trip to africa.

oh, man

sabbatini is now the leader of the tunament.

last day in addis! we are practically packed and ready to go home tonight. almost. we hope to go to haregewoin tefarra's orphanage this afternoon.

elizabeth is picking us up at noon here at the hilton, and taking us to the orphanage if we can figure out where it is, then to bingham for a last hurrah at their home, then to a last ethiopia meal (gotta have that injera hit one last time) and THEN to the airport...3 hours ahead of time to depart.

ah, the joys of travel! we have loved being in africa, and being with daniel and elizabeth (known locally as betsy) for two weeks.

god is good, indeed.

now let's see if the dad blasted post will go through!