Dear Mexican: A few years ago, my girlfriend and I visited the beautiful city of Merida in the Yucatan. We were surprised to see a sentence in our guidebook warning us to be on the lookout for Mennonites peddling queso in the mercado. Sure enough, we bumped into a bearded, light-skinned Mennonite carrying cheese! As we left Merida and drove into the heart of the peninsula we noticed that the Mennonite farmers were the only ones to own modern farm equipment. After seeing two Mennonite farmers broken down on the side of the road, it was clear no Mexicans were going to stop and help them. Can you tell us more about this unusual population of Mennonites in a predominantly Catholic country? How did they get to the Yucatan, why are they seemingly better off than other Mexican farmers and how do Catholic Mexicans feel about them?
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—Ecumenical Eric
Dear Gabacho: Actually, Mexico's main concentration of its 26,000 Mennonites is in the northern part of the country, specifically in the state of Chihuahua. Their ancestors arrived in the 1920s from Canada at the invitation of then-president Álvaro Obregón, who's perhaps better remembered for erecting a monument in Mexico City to his blown-off arm. Obregón gave the Mennonites special economic protection, which allowed their religious colonies to quickly prosper, especially in the agriculture that Mennonites (God bless their Anabaptist ways) concentrate on even to this day. Mexicans generally like Mennonites — they're not heretics like Mormons or those pendejos Pentecostals and pose little threat to the Catholic Church. More important, however, Mexis can't get enough of their legendary queso menonita, milky cheese sold across the country, soft and mild and bueno. They remain the best Europeans to ever invade Mexico, with the exception of the Doors when they toured the country way back cuando.
Your two responses to the recent questions about Mexicans not wanting to migrate legally to the United States and how you would secure our borders couldn't be more guilty of skip-logic. There is a finite number of resources in this country, a finite number of jobs, housing, etc. It has nothing to do with what country you are coming from — if you enter illegally, you are breaking the law, and every day you are here illegally you are breaking the law. Period. Bringing in drugs, or more border guards or fences isn't the issue. You're criminals if you are here illegally. I don't care how crappy the water or housing or whatever in Mexico City is. Be born here, or come here legally; other than that, you are no different than a drunk driver or robber or carjacker. You're breaking the law.
—Made in 'Merica
Dear Gabacho: ... except that the crimes you mentioned are usually felonies committed with malice, while the act of entering this country illegally is generally classified as a misdemeanor for the first offense, and the super-vast majority of those initial offenders are coming in for a better life. Please take your Malthusian conspiracies elsewhere, pendejo.
GOOD MEXICAN OF THE WEEK: Is actually a gabacha: Enamorada Gabacho. In 2006, she asked the Mexican how she could calm down her nervous Mexi guy. My response was wisdom for the ages: Give him a blowjob. She just wrote in with an update five years later:
"Enamorada Gabacha and her gorgeous, kind Mexican guy are still together after all these years. We bought a house together not too long after my initial letter to you, so it definitely wasn't a one-night stand or a midnight run to the border. Must have been your marvelous advice! Best of all my white, Midwestern farm/ranch family loves him because, finally, I got a real man who knows how to work with his hands and build things instead of some dumb white city boy. It's all good!"
Gracias for the update — now, go make some beautiful tan babies!
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