Ask a Mexican!

Dear Mexican,

What is the reason for the colors of the Mexican flag? Is there any razón it resembles the Italian flag, minus the águila y serpent? Conozco más mexicanos que estadounidenses pero none of mis 'manitos morenos seem to know why . . .

El Girafe

Dear Male Giraffe Gabacho,

Good for you for having Mexican friends and learning Spanish to speak to them! And for having such cultured conversations instead of just whistling at hot chicas who pass by the workplace and talking trash on your kind! What's now the Mexican tricolor is technically older than the Italian tricolore—although Italian kingdoms had used red/white/green color schemes in their flags since the late 18th century, modern-day Italy really didn't form until the Kingdom of Italy in the 1860s, and it adopted the general design that still exists today in Italy's flag. Mexico's tricolor, on the other hand, dates back to shortly after the War of Independence for Spain and is based on the flag of the Army of the Three Guarantees, the unit led by Agustín de Iturbide, Mexico's first emperor; that flag was also red, white, and green, although the stripes were diagonal instead of vertical.

Reason for those color choices? Maybe Iturbide was a fan of Risorgimento, the movement that eventually unified all of Italy; maybe he wanted to confuse gabachos y Mexicans alike for centuries. Whatever the reason is, it's lost to history, like numerous Aztec codices and Salma Hayek's talent.



Dear Gabacho,

In 2004, the Center for Applied Research did a study for the Federal Highway Administration titled "The Pedestrian and Bicyclist Highway Safety Problem As It Relates to the Hispanic Population in the United States," which found a couple of interesting things. One stat was that Latinos are twice more likely to bike to work than gabachos. Another was that "Hispanics and Blacks are over-represented in pedestrian crashes"--the rate of Latino deaths in bike crashes was 2.88 per 100,000 population, while the rate for gabachos was 1.78 per 100,000. Also, a disproportionate amount of said deaths and accidents in general happened late at night, when most Mexi riders are returning or going to work.


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