Why can’t my girlfriend stop worrying about being deported?
Dear Mexican: How can I get my new Mexican girlfriend to calm down about Trump and being deported? We live in a sanctuary city. I have no intention of just marrying her unless something horrible happened, but I want to help her. She is a kind, rational human who has simply bought into the fear-mongering Donald Trump is instilling. How can I get her to realize that we are not in a place where she is going to get deported unless she blatantly breaks a serious law?
Good Gabacho
Dear Gabacho: Wow, you’re a special kind of jerk. A sanctuary city status means nothing to Trump or to U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who is threatening to cut federal funding to such cities. Sanctuary cities can’t stop la migra from picking up people for no other reason other than they’re undocumented. And the Mexican knows of cases where people were deported for riding their bike on the sidewalk. You aren’t Mexican or undocumented, and you’re obviously some deluded wimp whose gabacho privilege blinds him to his supposed love’s serious concerns. Are you sure you didn’t vote for Trump?
Dear Mexican: Over the years, I have worked with, and gone to college with Mexicans who were usually Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Latter Day Saints and other Christian religions. However, about 10 years ago, I was blessed to work with two Jewish Mexicans. What is the history of Jewish Mexican culture?
Goyim but Great
Dear Gabacho: A very long story short: Jews accompanied Hernán Cortés in his conquest of Mexico — indeed, the man who built his ships was the judio Hernando Alonso. He also was burned at the stake in 1528 for practicing Judaism, because Spanish Catholics were the ISIS of this day. Due to such terroristic ways, many Jews either hid their religion or moved to New Mexico, as far away from the Inquisition as possible. Flash-forward 500 years, and Mexico City now has a significant Jewish community, and Mexican Jews have long been accepted in the country’s upper circles, with the coolest one being celebrity chef Pati Jinich. But not all is kosher: As I wrote in one of my first columnas back in 2004, “For instance, when a Mexican thinks someone is a slob, we call the person a cochino marrano — a dirty Jew.
And don’t believe your Spanish teacher when she pulls out the Webster’s and reads that marrano means “pig” — Webster’s doesn’t know [anything] about Spanish etymology. Marrano does mean pig but was also the term used to ridicule Jews who hid their beliefs in order to survive the Spanish Inquisition.”
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