Dear Readers: I don’t like to rerun columns ’cause it makes me look like a lazy Mexican, but I realize that as my column invades foreign terrain (Chattanooga! Columbia, South Carolina! Steamboat Springs, Colorado!) new readers might not understand some of my commandments. Following, then, are the two most frequently…

Dear Mexican: I’m half-Catalan, and the women on my mom’s side of my family have spent most of our lives being hated by Mexicans. I’ve never understood it. My mom and aunts warned me as soon as I hit junior high that I was going to have a target on…

Dear Mexican: What is an anchor baby? I am a 45-year-old male born in the United States of America. My mother was born in ex-Yugoslavia (now Serbia), and my father was also born in ex-Yugoslavia (now Croatia). My father arrived to this country via a green card about four years…

Dear Mexican: I am a chica struggling with the choice to come out to my parents about my sexual orientation. My family is Catholic, and my parents are old-school. While we are very close, I am scared of how badly this can go. My parents have been living in the…

Dear readers: The Mexican’s new book, Orange County: A Personal History, is in your local bookstore on September 16—by pure coincidence, Mexican Independence Day! In honor of and to shamelessly promote my muy caliente libro, which deals with America’s Gomorrah, the Reconquista, and John Wayne, I’m answering historical questions this…

Dear Mexican: I’m an illegal alien. Got here on a tourist visa and stayed for a job. My gabacho employer knows about it and doesn’t give a crap. I don’t apologize about it, as ever since I can remember, the United States of America has meddled around other countries’ business…

Dear Mexican: Why do Mexicans paint stripes on their donkeys in Tijuana? —Avenida Revolución Reveller Dear Gabacho: Same reason we put worms in tequila bottles, celebrate Cinco de Mayo and star in Beverly Hills Chihuahua: to cheat gabachos out of cash. To paraphrase the classic dictum: a gabacho and his…

Dear Mexican: I am the proud uncle of five Mexican-redneck kids who recently moved to Wausau with their mamá Wisconsiana after living in la Capirucha all their lives. I’ve talked to them on the phone several times a week since they left for la tierra de los sueños materializados, and…

Dear Mexican: As a Mexican, I’m always ashamed of the fact that a lot of Mexican women just come to the United States to have babies and to use this country’s welfare. I know a lot of them that just keep having children, and they do not pay a dollar…

Dear Mexican: Where I recently started working, Latinos make up about 95 percent of the workforce. We are, however, prohibited from speaking Spanish. Our supervisor tells us that if we can so much as speak one word of English, that we cannot speak in Spanish. We are constantly being threatened…

Dear Mexican: What’s with calling yourselves “La Raza”? Being Mexicans, Chicanos or whatever isn’t enough—now you’re THE race? Sounds pretty racist to me. —The Race Is On Dear Gabacho: Few things annoy the Mexican more than the Know Nothing Nation’s deliberate ignorance with this most nebulous of Mexican idioms. Despite…

Dear Readers: Gracias, merci, obrigado for the many submissions in our contest asking readers to argue in 25 words why corn tortillas are superior to flour, or vice versa. Below are the winners for some of the cities that carry the Mexican; see the full list at dallasobserver.com. Don’t see…

Dear Mexican: Why are there Mexicans in the Border Patrol? What a hypocritical thing to do to our people. —Carne Asada Carlos Dear Wab: Not only are Mexicans in the Border Patrol, but la migra’s own figures show that Latinos make up about 52 percent of its force, comfortably outnumbering…

Dear Mexican: What’s the fascination Mexicans have with Elvis? —Good Roceando Tonight Dear Gabacho: Your question is spot-on, but it’s taken a while for Elvis to achieve icon status amongst Mexicans. As recounted in Eric Zolov’s 1999 book, Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture, the King largely sparked…

Dear Mexican: Whenever I have an immigration debate with my Chicano hermanos who support open borders and get angry at any type of immigration control, they don’t seem to understand the basic laws of economics, such as the fact that migrant workers who pick fruit, work in construction and do…

Dear Mexican: What do you think would happen if U.S. citizens could as easily buy land and set up businesses in Mexico as Mexicans can do in the United States? Might that be a big boost to the Mexican economy? I know there are provisions in the Mexican Constitution that…

Dear Mexican: I recently went to a Los Angeles Dodgers game at Dodgers Stadium. It was good to see the familias having fun with their children, pero I then saw and heard something disturbing. There will always be rivalries in any sport, of course, pero the white people cheering for…

Dear Readers: The Mexican has previously published only one Best Of column in his nearly four years living under his cousin’s identity in this country, but I must pull this week’s first pregunta out of the archives because ustedes keep asking it—obviously, not enough of you bought my paperback since…

Dear Mexican: First, it was the Native Americans, then it was the blacks, then the Japanese. For a while, Muslims. Now, I fear that American prejudice will soon overwhelm Mexicans. It’s one thing to get called a dirty Jap or border hopper, but tell me: Is it possible that America…

Dear Mexican: I’m a Mexican-American, but I always lie and tell people my ancestors were from Spain and immigrated to the United States in the 1920s. My whole family says this. We feel embarrassed if we tell people that our heritage is Mexican because Mexicans in the USA are so…

Dear Mexican: Why did the Mexican comedian Cantinflas never catch on in Hollywood? I thought he was supposed to usher in the Mexican wave of actors and movies that would help transform Hollywood. Instead, that movement ended up flat as a tortilla. —El Curioso Dear Curious Gabacho: Do people even…