Mexicans With Chainsaws
Mexicans With Chainsaws
Dear Mexican:
I’m interested in hiring day laborers. I plan on feeding them, hydrating them and so forth. Problem is, I can’t find them in Lawrence, Kansas, where I have a project. Where do I find day laborers? Should I feel good about providing them work or shitty about denying an American the job? And how do I ask, “Do you know how to use a chainsaw?”
Five Dollars, Five Hours
Dear Five:
Forget Lawrence — the Mexican’s Kansan cousins tell me that the best jornaleros hang out a few blocks east of the state line at Kansas City’s Westside CAN Center (2136 Jefferson in Kansas City, Missouri, 816-842-1298). But wherever you find your tool-wielding Mexican, pick him up with pride. Men like you — entrepreneurs who undercut the American worker by replacing him with cheap immigrant labor — pushed our country to glory. Do me a favor, though: Press Lawrence’s city fathers to open a day-labor center. Many municipalities across los Estados Unidos have solved their day-laborer problem by funding such locales; at the centers, the mad capitalist ballet of curbside jornaleros gets tamed into an orderly, litter-free exchange of labor. According to “Comparing Solutions: An Overview of Day Labor Programs,” a 2004 research paper prepared by the Idaho-based Day Labor Research Institute, many cities with day-labor centers found that taking jornaleros away from street corners put less burden on taxpayers than communities that allowed them to roam. “Not only was money saved,” institute director Lynn Svensson says, “but also police were freed up to deal with crime rather than what they consider nuisance calls.” So fight crime, gabachos — build a day-labor center in your neighborhood. As for the chainsaw translation question, it’s “Sabes cómo usar un motosierra?” But just say, “Trabaja hard, or I’ll call la migra,” and your Mexican will comprende.
Dear Mexican:
My gabacha friends and I marched in the May pro-amnesty rallies and wanted to show our support on our chests as well as our feet. We wore T-shirts that read “I only (picture of big, juicy lips) mojados” on the front and “Yo solo (lips) mojados” on the back. Some Mexican guys complimented the shirts, but my Chicano-studies-type friends got angry. They said I was colonially objectifying Mexican men as sex objects and that gabachos can’t ever use the word mojado because it’s like the N-word in English. They were pissed, and they dissed. I feel bad — should I?
Chica Against Making Immigrants Scapegoats, Enemies, Targets and Animals
Dear Chica:
Your unfortunate experience reminds me of an apocryphal quote attributed to Emma Goldman. After a comrade told the anarchist icon that her gaiety wasn’t helping the cause, Goldman supposedly replied, “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.” Similarly, the PC pendejos who trashed your smart, sexy mojado (wetback in Spanish) T-shirts show why most Mexicans and children of Mexican immigrants wish Chicanismo would go the way of the Frito Bandito. Protest with playfulness is a tradition in Mexican culture — witness Super Barrio, a corpulent masked wrestler who emerged to fight for victims of the 1986 Mexico City earthquake and went on to serve in Mexico’s congress. The culture of Chicano activism, while fighting the good fight, also creates insufferable, self-righteous bores whose idea of political humor is screaming, “GO BACK TO EUROPE, PILGRIM!” at geriatric gabachos. I blame Chicano studies, which corrupt the brains of young Mexicans with antiquated concepts such as victimization, objectification and grade inflation, all anathema to the libertarian Mexican soul. Besides, what male, straight or joto, doesn’t want to be sexually objectified? Oh, and mojado isn’t the N-word of Mexican Spanish; that honor falls to Guatemalan.
Got a spicy question about Mexicans? Ask the Mexican at mexican@pitch.com.
Don’t all men, Mexican
or otherwise, want to be
sex objects? ask a mexican
