Pachuco, Pachuca.

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 week. But first, a bit of housecleaning: In answering a pregunta a couple of weeks ago about pachucos, I was pendejo and thus forgot to explain the word's origins. Thankfully, many of ustedes aren't tontos like me and wrote in with etymological theories. Below are the two most accepted by linguists:


Sacra Memo


I do want to mention that you omitted Lalo Guerrero in your reference to the pachucismo that our youth in those days embraced. Lalo Guerrero is often called the Original Chicano, and he owned a nightclub in East Los Angeles that was all the rage for pachucos and their rucas and their music during that time.

Chuco Suave


Now, onto a question:

Dear Mexican: Why, despite the richest of Spanish colonial, Mexican-era heritages and histories in California, is Orange County so seriously lacking in public awareness and presentation of that history? Sure, we have a few streets named after mis primos — Yorbas, Avilas, etc. — but where are the park statues of vaqueros y mujeres, the replica carretas, the public PA systems blaring "This Land Is Our Land" in Spanish? Is the current crop of Caucasians too cheap or red in the neck to pony up a few pesos to honor the real first citizens of the county?

A Longtime Californio

Dear Readers: I swear I didn't pay this guy to ask this question. To make it relevant to ustedes outside Orange County, I'll limit my discussion to Mendez vs. Westminster, a 1946 case that desegregated schools in California for Mexicans and served as precedent to the more-famous Brown vs. Board of Education. This is a landmark in American civil rights, an important part of the American experience, yet for decades, the only history book that mentioned it was Carey McWilliams' 1949 North From Mexico: The Spanish-Speaking People of the United States. In Orange County last year, original plaintiff Sylvia Mendez asked to be included in Huntington Beach's Fourth of July parade (the largest west of the Mississippi) but was rejected because organizers said she didn't provide enough entertainment! The contributions of wabs to our national tapestry are traditionally neglected outside of conquistadors and Manifest Destiny for the same reason other subaltern histories get short shrift: Any examination forces gabachos to deal with the actions of their ancestors. Know-nothings argue ethnic studies lead to the Balkanization of America, a false dichotomy that never acknowledges that disciplines like Chicano studies would've never emerged if previous generations of gabacho instructors did their damned job.


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