American Funnymen, Mexican Pastiche

Nacho Libre (2006) and Casa de mi Padre (2012) share a Hollywood approximation to Mexico in which an American comic stars as a humble, big-hearted Mexican struggling to do the right thing. In Nacho Libre, Jack Black is a listless monk who aspires to help the orphans he serves by winning fame and fortune as a luchador, while in Casa de mi Padre, Will Ferrell is a dim-witted rancher who must defend his father's lands from the narco-fueled bad decisions of his older brother.

Nacho Libre--a Nickelodeon-funded kids' movie, after all--is the sweeter of the two films. The only violence to be found is in the overwrought theatrics of the lucha libre style wrestling. Goofy but melancholic tag-team sidekick Esqueleto (Héctor Jiménez) is the perfect foil for Black's earnestly ridiculous Nacho, making the pair of luchadores something like a fat Quixote (Nacho) with his skinny Sancho (Esqueleto). The unattainable Dulcinea of the film is Sister Encarnación (Ana de la Reguera), a nun whom none can have yet all covet. Nacho's "dates" with Encarnación (dry toast, tight pants), and his outrageous song of dedication to her, are some of the funniest moments in the film. In the climax Nacho does manage to defeat his luchador nemesis, Ramses (César Cuauhtémoc González Barrón), and then celebrates by taking the orphans on a field trip--in a new bus--to Monte Albán. The soundtrack, with memorable and original contributions from Beck, Danny Elfman, and Black himself alongside classics from Mister Loco, Caetano Veloso and Eddie Santiago, is outstanding. There was talk of a follow-up, but I think ultimately the sequel was "outsourced" from Mexico to China: Kung Fu Panda (2008), in which another portly and comical Jack Black character overcomes the odds to excel in a physically demanding discipline.

In contrast, Casa de mi Padre is a jarringly and explicitly violent film, in spite of the ham-handed meta-cinematic production error jokes. Ferrell's film is all the more disturbing and acerbic, precisely because it's funny even though it has a serious message about the violence of drug trafficking. An offbeat love scene between Ferrell's Armando Alvarez and Armando's brother's fiancée Sonia (Génesis Rodríguez), featuring the absurdly prolonged squeezing of bare buttocks, is contrasted with the graphic violence of a ripped-from-the-headlines wedding party narco-massacre. Entre broma y broma, la verdad se asoma / Much truth is said in jest: the final dialogue, after a US federal agent turns on his corrupt boss to save Armando and Sonia, sums up the lesson with an exchange something like, "No todos los gringos son malos" / "No todos los mexicanos son narcotraficantes." The film features terrific performances by Diego Luna (Armando's brother Raúl), Gael García Bernal (narco kingpin "Onza"), and the late Pedro Armendáriz, Jr. (the Alvarez paterfamilias), as well as an original soundtrack with contributions from Ferrell and other cast members, and Cristina Aguilera. 

While Jack Black plays his character with a comic Mexican-accented English in the English-language Nacho Libre, Will Ferrell actually delivers his lines in Spanish alongside the rest of the Spanish-speaking cast of Casa de mi Padre. This makes the latter a subtitled film in the American market - a gamble the producers must have been willing to take based on Ferrell's fame and on the importance of Spanish-speaking audiences worldwide.

I find that the people who tend to appreciate these two films the most, are those who are familiar with both Mexican culture and United States culture. Especially the symbolically rich visual detail of Oaxaca and the nuanced musical references in Nacho Libre get lost on viewers unfamiliar with Mexican cultural expressions. Likewise for Casa de mi Padre it helps to have a visual and plot-based familiarity with Mexican telenovelas and classic films of the Epoca de Oro. Ultimately, both of these films are silly and self-conscious in their winking Mexican-ness, but all in good fun, and while simultaneously offering up lessons on humility and ethical courage.

Altarcito del Día de los Muertos

The dancing flames, the featherweight papel picado, the aromas of fresh pan de muertos and ground coffee and marigolds: the altar appears earthbound but it's all about the air.

The wafting, the waving, the ethereal invitation to the spirits: come animate, ánimas, come show your presence on the breeze. Flickering and lingering both, bring back to us the memories of you alive.

La fuga de Julián (calavera Julian Assange)

Andaba Julián fugándose—

el fundador de las fugas—

a ver si hallaba refugio

de soldados y patrullas.

Y es que fue él que hizo la wiki,

sea verdad o farfulla,

el sitio de los secretos,

la wiki que todo ilustra.

De Australia salió el gran hacker,

país de las cacatúas,

con el rabo entre las piernas

y haciéndose de las suyas.

Mas pronto se vio querido,

hasta en la lista “se busca,”

metido en muchos problemas,

mentado en bandos y bulas.

Entre suecos y británicos

y bajo la misma luna,

de los Estados Unidos

temía las leyes justas.

Cuando de repente escoge

de las embajadas, una:

la del Ecuador, sorpresa

entre las tantas y muchas.

Dieron asilo político.

Las naciones, iracundas,

tramaron complots y atajos

para esta maniobra inmunda.

Pero dio el fin de la historia

la mera mera Huesuda.

Vino por Julián directo.

No contaban con su astucia,

pues Assange merendaba—

de todo un poco le gusta—

comida ecuatoriana, y ¡zas!

se ahoga con un pan de yuca.

Así fue que el fundador

del sitio de muchas fugas,

fugándose del destino,

no encontró, pues, fuga alguna.

Eat Your Colors

Sounds like fun!
Sounds like good pink fun.
A red fruit, orange, a yellow,
green, purple, even a white counts.
White: the only color the milk is not 
when invaded by bathing spheres of sugar cereal.
But surely that's not what's meant
by the folks who designed the food
pyramid.

All the better.

You tell me, "Eat your colors,"
and I feel
voracious.
You tell me, "You are what you eat."
Well.
Then sixty-four Crayolas are a
meager stack of colories.
I want, I need, to think, to eat
outside that box.

Give me maracujá! I love passionshout juice.
Where is my tropically impossible frosted açai?
I want to absorb, to imbibe
every blast drop of
sherbet streak from the sunscoop as it
oranges and
oozes
stickily
over the horizon's countertop.

I lick and sip the piquant triptych
of red, white, and green picante
in an unrestrained assalsa
on extreme health.
I know a brown enormously lush, 
moister than the tears that muddle it,
the bottom-line G resonant chocolate 
swirl of my daughter's flashpan eyes.
As much green as broccoli 
I could hold easily but I'd rather
burst
with the you-have-to-see-it-to-believe-it jade phosphorescence
of tomatillos in the blender.

Are you hungry yet?
Are you hungry now?
You need to come with me,
to color hunt.
There's always a shade in season
and I know where to ambush
fair-trade freesia, organic orchids, and bulk bold beautiful bounteous bougainvillea.

So wet your palate and whet your palette.
We'll be a feast for the eyes
cream.

tres pies al gato

le busqué tanto que lo aluciné
y no encontré la manera de
ni siquiera cuando pensé que

pero ahí estaba como esperando
no dije que siempre y cuando
me dijo que vivito y meneando

entonces ya estaba como quien dice
me libré pues ya la hice
tres pies al gato lo que yo quise

buscarle

rã rã rã

Da rã sou fã
Sou fã da rã
Da rã sou fã
e todo o clã.

E quanto ao sujeto do sapo,
Ele quis sabê, podê falá, po-
dê batê comigo um bom papo,
mas dou um pulo e dele escapo!

Da rã sou fã
Sou fã da rã
Da rã sou fã
e todo o clã.

E quanto à perereca,
que não é nem sapo nem sapeca,
da árvore pulou pra cueca,
e não quis sair pela camoeca!

Da rã sou fã
Sou fã da rã
Da rã sou fã
e todo o clã.

Mas os batráquios e os anuros,
e seus girinos imaturos:
todos eles são indícios seguros
de que ainda temos ambientes puros.

Da rã sou fã
Sou fã da rã
Da rã sou fã
e todo o clã.

Epazote for your Epizooties

My parents, who grew up in the 1940s in Ohio, spoke a word the other day that I did not recall having ever heard before. First my dad said it, then my mom confirmed it: "epizooties." The context was medical: something like, "Don't eat that, or you'll get a bad case of the epizooties."

My first thought was the word "epazote," an herb popular in Mexican cuisine. It's one of the herbs that I heard well-known Mexican chef Aquiles Chávez jokingly call the "hierbas nacas," along with cilantro and yerbabuena, as opposed to the "hierbas finas," such as basil, rosemary, or dill. After all, the idea that consumption of a Mexican foodstuff would have sickened an early 20th-century Ohioan, leading to the phrase "case of the epizooties," really isn't much of a stretch to imagine.

Besides, other Americanisms have Mexican origins, such as "jalopy," which derives from the Hispanicized spelling of one of my favorite Mexican cities, Xalapa (Jalapa), capital of the state of Veracruz. Just exactly how the association arose is hard to say. Maybe an early 20th-century convoy of beat-up Fords from Xalapa arrived in Texas to make an epic delivery of the better-known local etymological derivation: jalapeño peppers.

But no one sits down to eat a plate of epazote, just by itself. So I looked into the origin of "epizooties," and found that it comes from a French word (with Greek roots) for animal disease, or more specifically an epidemic afflicting a given animal population such as a herd of cattle. Cows, it should be noted, are certainly abundant in Ohio, and have been congregating there, so to speak, for at least a couple centuries. I've heard of bird flu and swine flu, but not cattle flu; in any case, maybe some cross-species bug, or just bovine sympathy, led to the phrase "you better rest, or you'll come down with a bad case of the epizooties, just like Bessie."

Unsatisfied with this explanation, I researched "epazote," which comes from the Spanish alteration of the Nahuatl "epazotl." I learned that the indigenous Mexican herb was often prescribed throughout the early 20th-century United States as a treatment for intestinal parasites, a fact which perhaps explains its vulgar-sounding English-language alternative moniker, "wormseed." This association with folk-healing brings me to propose a convergent etymology for the late 19th-to early 20th-century middle-America birth of the phrase "a case of the epizooties," deriving as much from a sickness (association to animal diseases) as from a cure (consuming epazote to get rid of parasites). Sometimes the remedy is worse than the disease, and the intestinal malaise caused by parasites reacting to epazote could have become regarded as a sickness itself.

As for me, I prefer the "hierbas nacas." All of them. With jalapeños.