Rumor is that tonight, Barack Obama’s speech will include an initiative to start registering new voters, especially Latinos.
“Voting Latinos”, one could whisper this into my ear only to watch the passion start seeping out of my pores.
I’ve written before about what the Democratic Party, particularly the Ohio Democratic Party, needs to do in order to court Latino Voters. I hope someone will take note (below is a shorter version of the original post and includes six ways to reach potential voters.
I went to the grocery store in the suburb of Grandview, Ohio, tonight. I saw two things that left me somewhere between puzzled, slightly offended, and amused.
I was looking to buy some tea which was right next to the Hot Chocolate. I noticed, that Hershey’s has what they call their “Cacao Reserve” line that includes both the “Spiced Aztec Blend” and “Classic Mayan Blend”. Great, Abuelita got bought by Nestle a few years ago. And now everyone is getting in on this Mexican Hot Chocolate. I can’t articulate why I dislike it so much. It isn’t just that since Nestle bought Abuelita the tablets don’t taste as good and are smaller. Part of it is that with time we get further and further away from Xocolatl and more owned and re-appropriated by the white dominate culture where it becomes bastaredized and cheap and no longer smells or tastes like mornings before school. And even if it did still stimulated the same senses, it is no longer ours.
After looking for my tea, I went by the “bakery” and saw something that made me burst out laughing. There were bags of white rolls and above them a sign that read: Bolillos - a typical Hispanic bread.
Hilarious! A definition for the mainstream dominant white culture of Grandview of a bread that we use as a moniker to define them…bolillos.
I am constantly shocked by the changes in my city and state. The change has been tremendous from the time back when my family got excited that Meijer grocery was selling chili peppers to today when I saw it. I stopped at a gas station on my way to work this morning, a gas station near the OSU campus. I say this because most Mexicanos in Columbus live on the West side of the city. So, there I was at a gas station in central Columbus and right by the cashier (not buried away in an “ethnic section”) was my favorite junk food, Sabritones! According to their website “a puffed wheat snack from Mexico that combines the authentic flavors of spicy chili with tangy lime”. At first I could never get Sabritones in Columbus. Then I could only get them at the Mexican grocery store. And now? Now they are at my gas station next to the mints. I am amazed. You Xicanos in Cali, and Chicago and in the Valley just don’t get it; This is amazing!
(Thank you to Irasali’s husband who tipped me off).
SHEETROCK® Brand drywall is currently hosting a contest in Chicago: El Mero Mero Drywalero.
El Mero Mero: The one, The Magnificent, the very best and only; a pure Mexican idiom.
Drywalero: One may argue a “pochismo” — a water downed Mexican-Americanism, but I wouldn’t call it a pochismo. I would call it a Mexicanism made by the immigrant because there is no word for el drywalero. It is a term of necessity and acquisition, rather than a pochoizing of an English word for one that already exists in Spanish.
This all reminds me of a translation of a document I did. The document was for housing code violations and what needed to be fixed. The problem was that the words I was translating were words that the “Spanish reader” knew in English not in Spanish. For example wafer board, dry wall, oriented strand board, and plywood while some of the words may exist in Spanish (though for the most part not) they are words that are generally not encountered until el imigrante gets to the United States and works in construction. Anyway, I love the idea of a competition of El Mero Mero Drywalero almost has much as I love the title of it.
One of my favorite memories was in tercero de secundaria (equivalent to 9th grade) when I was living in Taxco. Class started at 730am and so I was up bright and early. I would wake with the dawn and walk down the mountain to class.
It was that wonderful amazing part of morning, when the air is fresh and crisp, where everything seems perfect. The coruscating sun shinned just the right amount, the temperature was ideal, few people are out, it was peaceful and it gave me that feeling of the world being mine!
I would only pass two types of people, either the nuns on their way from mass at Sainta Prisca back to the convent, or the bread delievery boys. The bread boys would have big basket-hats, the kind that could carry 100 individual pieces of sweet bread. I loved it when they passed me because the bread was fresh and warm and the smell wafted to my nose.
I would stop at a bakery on my way to class and buy a sweet roll, my favorite were the borrachos coated in sugar and strips of pink dye through the inner doughy layers. I would eat while either drinking a steaming cup of cafe con leche or atole.
This morning after work I passed a Mexican bakery. You must understand I am in Columbus, Ohio, the first Mexican grocery store in Columbus opened 7 years ago, and now we have multiple grocery stores, bakeries, salons de fiesta, dulcerias, it is exciting. I drove by the bakery, a new bakery, Bakery Otro Rollo, I have never been to. It is the best one I’ve been to in Columbus. Their slogan is only understood by us bilingual people! Ready?! Here goes?!
Our Flavor, Service and Quality is just …”Otro Rollo”
I asked the cashier at the bakery what time they open (seven am) so that I may return right when they are opening because that is the best when the bread is still warm. Oh my, anyone who wants to go with me is welcome.
I saw an associated press photo and loved it. I made it my desktop wallpaper. I searched Google hoping to find contact information for the photo journalist, Dario Lopez Mills. I want to email him and tell him that his work is amazing. That I want to see more of it. However, I can’t find a blog a portfolio or any contact information. Any recommendations?
Oh lord have I missed blogging. And dear lord do I know that this current blog is ugly. I have no idea where my years and years of old blog entries have gone. And once I find them I am not sure I will know how to upload them. I no longer know how to maneuver around wordpress (thought I still did). I have no idea how to get my RSS feed to stay constant, how to get my comment gravatars up and running. To find my old descriptive blogroll or definitions of terms. Nor how to filter the spambots more efficiently.
In a way though it matters very little. I had forgotten about my blogtitlan (a term I believed coined by Cindylu). I had forgotten about the community I had developed. The people who I was worried about and worried about me. The people who got me to grow and self-analyze.
I was first brought to blogtitlan by el Padrino de blogtitlan, Julio Sueco of Yonder Lies It. He left a comment on my blog and it startled the shit out of me. It was back when I blogged for shits and giggles, never thinking people would question me, or get me to think about what I was saying. I’ve come to expect and look forward to people having a real discussion with me and causing me to stop and think. I was also shocked that Julio added me to his blog roll and commented about me right next to Ana Castillo. Damn! I was shocked. An academic Xicano reading my blog?! An academic Xicano who would put my blog right next to Ana Castillo’s blog?! She was someone I read about in class. She was someone who had authority to speak about being Latino, about Xicanoism, about Latino Studies. Why link to me?
Two springs ago I went to the NACCS annual convention. It was there I decided I could be a Xicana (something I still struggle with) and a Xicana authority….because really all Xicanos are an authority on their own experience. I may not write nor do I desire to write for academic journals on the development of the Xicano identity within blogtitlan and the digital racial divide but I can tell my story. I can tell me story and accept it as Xicano fact. And I can try and accept myself as a Xicana, even though sometimes I think “No, I am a USian”, “No, yo soy Mexicana”, “Chicanos are those people that don’t really have a culture”. In the end blogtitlan and my Latino Studies classes taught me that I shouldn’t just accept myself as a Chicana but as a moxie Xicana.
Off course it still irritates me to be xicano in the vicinity of my gringo cousins because though I speak english I am not a US citizen. Here in Sweden they a saying about Germans: there is a little Hitler in every German. I can say this about my gringo Xicano cousins: there is a little migra in every US born Xicano.
I saw this sign yesterday at a market here in Columbus. They sell local foods, organic foods, and hard to find goods…or at least they try to. On Saturday’s farmers bring in their goods to sell.
Anyway, I found this banner to be hilarious. What does “Cinco d’ Ohio” mean? What is up with the D’, I don’t understand the apostrophe. And the “spice of life in Ohio” and “hot music”?
I am sure many of my readers have discussed in their Latino identity classes about how whenever describing our people and culture the words “hot” and “spicy” are used. Way to go North Market in using both in a banner that has less than 20 words.
I think I am going to have to write up a permenent entry with names and a quick sentence background on people in my life, and the approximate time they entered into the theatrical preformance that is my life.
Anyway, December 23rd an ex boyfriend from long ago (a few years ago) gave me a call that he was in town. We spent the day Christmas shopping for his immediate family. It was quite enjoyable. At the end of the day we drank mochas and wrapped gifts which are two of my all time favorite things. I would pay people to let me wrap their gifts. During our day together I told him “Man I wish we got along this well when we were dating. I like you a lot more now than I did then.” It is true though, we get along a lot better now as friends when we speak to each other once a month by phone, and hang out once every year or so.
Perhaps, what happend is that we both matured and just don’t need bull shit in our lives anymore. Neither of us our dishing it out anymore nor our we putting up with it. Now, if only I can apply the rules of this relationship to every other aspect of my life.
Merry Christmas everyone! To those of you who know me personally, I made Ponche and Tamales, come on over!
August 28th, 2008 by 
elenamary
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I am constantly shocked by the changes in my city and state. The change has been tremendous from the time back when my family got excited that Meijer grocery was selling chili peppers to today when I saw it. I stopped at a gas station on my way to work this morning, a gas station near the OSU campus. I say this because most Mexicanos in Columbus live on the West side of the city. So, there I was at a gas station in central Columbus and right by the cashier (not buried away in an “ethnic section”) was my favorite junk food, Sabritones! According to their website “a puffed wheat snack from Mexico that combines the authentic flavors of spicy chili with tangy lime”. At first I could never get Sabritones in Columbus. Then I could only get them at the Mexican grocery store. And now? Now they are at my gas station next to the mints. I am amazed. You Xicanos in Cali, and Chicago and in the Valley just don’t get it; This is amazing!
