DENNIS
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CHILANGO....WHAT DOES IT MEAN
Going through some old boxes of books, I came across this newspaper article that I saved for just such a moment as right now and rather than rewrite
the whole thing, I went to the archives of the SD Union and payed a couple of bucks for it.
Keep in mind the date of this article, 1990.
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The chilango chill
A warm welcome isn't likely for Mexico City transplants in the nation's 'provinces'
Gregory Gross Staff Writer
PUBLICATION: San Diego Union, The (CA)
SECTION: LIFESTYLE
DATE: May 13, 1990
EDITION: 1,2
Page: D-1
You say you're tired of being seen as "the ugly American," weary of being told "Yankee go home," fed up with having people abroad look upon you as
the scum of the earth?
Cheer up. It could be worse. You could be a chilango.
Chilango is slang for a person who hails from Mexico City. And in much of Mexico, especially northern border states such as Baja California, people
think of them with the same fondness they might have for, say, an outbreak of malaria.
Or worse.
"Chilangos are worse than the AIDS virus," said one Tijuana journalist, who, like many sources in this story, talked on condition of anonymity. "At
least AIDS kills its victim and leaves him in peace. Chilangos never go away."
Regional rivalries are nothing new on either side of the border. Witness, for instance, the resentment of Pacific Northwest residents over the influx
of Californians. Chicago columnist Mike Royko has all but made a career of poking fun at his more rural Midwestern brethren in Iowa.
But this is different. It's different when you hear of families from Mexico City being ostracized socially and their children harassed in school, of
businessmen who have to hide their capitalino roots or risk losing business.
It is a conflict with roots in Mexican history and in the modern rise of the northern states, whose residents resent being treated as distant
stepchildren by Mexico City, the seemingly all-powerful center of political, economic and educational life.
It also represents a clash of lifestyles, the relatively calm manners of the north vs. the aggressive urbanized ways that typify Mexico City. They're,
pushy, arrogant, rude, say the nortenos. They cut you off in traffic, cut in front of you in line, they park on the sidewalk if they feel like it.
Chilangos, for their part, often see themselves as being on a higher educational and cultural level than their cousins living in what Mexico City
residents call "the provinces."
"Chilangos think they are superior. They think they have the best opportunities, the best culture, the best connections. We hear this complaint
frequently in Tijuana," said Samuel Schmidt, a political science professor at San Diego State University and a chilango himself.
One local lawyer put it another way: "How would you like it if people were coming from 2,000 kilometers away and trying to tell you how to do
everything?"
Schmidt, who lectures once a week at the Autonomous University of Baja California, tries to disarm the anti-chilango biases of his Tijuana students
with a bit of humor.
"Before we talk about national politics, I say, 'I know you hate chilangos and I am a chilango, so let's not discuss it,' " he said.
Not funny are the bumper stickers and posters that used to appear here and there in northern Mexico: "Serve the motherland. Kill a chilango."
"It's not a joke," one journalism student said. "A lot of people here hate them, absolutely hate them. My father thinks they're invading us."
Until he was murdered two years ago, Hector "Gato" Felix Miranda, the controversial columnist in the Tijuana weekly Zeta, frequently railed against
chilangos in his weekly column. He even appointed himself secretary-general of the mythical Committee for the Eradication of the Chilango in Baja
California.
Nor is this hostility limited to the north. "Chilangophobia" extends as far south as Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city. There, chilangos are
blamed for everything from reckless drivers to a lack of rainfall.
In 1987, Mexican newspapers carried accounts from the northern city of Hermosillo of a 9-year-old boy beaten to death by a group of schoolmates. The
reason: He was a chilango and he "talked funny."
"They hate us, they detest us, they attack us," Manu Dornbierer wrote in the Mexico City newspaper Excelsior in 1988. "We are the enemy within."
How did it get like this?
Chilangophobia has its roots in two factors, in Schmidt's opinion.
The first, he said, was the Spanish conquest of Mexico, which left Mexicans leery of domination by outsiders, even regional ones. The second was the
rise of a powerful federal government that ruled from Mexico City. Finances are one example of that rule, Schmidt said. The border states generate
much of Mexico's financial wealth, but have little control over it. The federal government draws tax money from the states and then redistributes it,
to the great irritation of nortenos.
"They feel they are subsidizing cheap life in Mexico City," Schmidt said, "and in some ways, it is true.
"One trip in Mexico City by subway costs 100 pesos, about 4 cents. One trip in Tijuana in public transportation system can cost 1,000 pesos, or 40
cents. They look at this and say, 'We are subsidizing the Mexico City subways.' It's a centralization of power that nobody likes."
It does seem at times that all roads lead to Mexico City. When the federal judicial police made a major cocaine seizure last year in Tijuana, federal
anti-narcotics officers had to fly to Mexico City with the confiscated coke to make the announcement there.
Even local complaints about alleged abuses of suspects by federal judicial police in Tijuana form a part of the regional schism, Schmidt said.
"The people look at this as another abuse from the center," he said. "So when they see all these chilangos coming up here, controlling everything,
they hate them."
Anti-chilango feelings even surfaced last year in the politics of Mexico's dominant political force, the Institutional Revolutionary Party, the PRI.
The PRI's candidate for governor of Baja California, Margarita Ortega Villa, didn't enter the race through local politicking, but was tapped for the
nomination by the PRI hierarchy in Mexico City, Schmidt said.
When she became the first PRI candidate ever to lose a governor's race, local PRI loyalists pointed their fingers to the PRI delegates sent from
Mexico City to run the campaign, Schmidt said.
"After Margarita's defeat in Baja, in the first PRI assemblies, they were blaming the chilangos," Schmidt said. "They were screaming, 'Chilangos go
home. We don't need help from the center.' "
Then there is the matter of culture.
"You have to talk in terms of chilangos vs. nortenos," a local lawyer said. "Chilangos say, 'You nortenos always shout when you talk.' Nortenos say,
'You chilangos sing when you talk.'
"Nortenos consider themselves to be very open, very frank, very hard-working, very direct.
"Chilangos consider themselves very sophisticated, better prepared. To them, the best of the best is in Mexico City -- operas, theaters, concerts,
galleries, writers, attorneys. To them, Tijuana is a cultural desert."
Baja residents and other Mexican nortenos chafe at this image, perhaps justifiably. As of 1980, five of the six northern Mexican states had more
residents with 12 years of education than the national average -- and the one that didn't was only one-tenth of a percentage point behind.
Still, the "country bumpkin" image persists, and with it, norteno resentment.
Mexican writers and thinkers throughout the country have decried this anti-chilango feeling, calling it "regional xenophobia," a "pathological hatred"
-- even, in the words of a full-page ad from a Mexico City expatriate in Tijuana's El Mexicano, "northern neo-N-ziism."
"It's absurd, it's incredible," journalist Jorge Aviles Randolph wrote of the hostility. "But it's happening."
But while one may not see "Kill a chilango" posters and bumper stickers anymore, nortenos and chilangos alike agree that the attitudes that inspired
them still run strong.
"It's a cultural problem," Schmidt said. "How to do away with that, I don't know."
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DavidE
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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Or you could be "El es de San Ignacio" So lazy they don't even bother to cross the street to walk in the shade.
Not long ago during the influenza scare chilango license plate cars were ambushed on the cuota entre Mexico y Acapulco and dozens of windshields were
smashed.
The word "Okie" can still provoke a violent reaction in the states.
I am careful how I phrase people and places in Mexico. You never know...
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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Dave
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That's what the wife calls it.
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by DavidE
I am careful how I phrase people and places in Mexico. You never know... |
No. You never do, but that caveat seems to have been ignored by the chain of popular restauants, "CHILANGO'S."
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Whale-ista
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Mood: Sunny with chance of whales
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I made the mistake once of saying "chilango" within earshot of 2 DFistas/enses- they were not pleased.  So now I call them "DF-istas." I suppose I should say "DF-ense", like "Tijuanense."
Made it up. I don't know if it's technically correct, or used by others, but it makes the point, hopefully without offense.
As with US regional biases, these terms can be fun and playful or mean and spiteful. Eg tourists coming to San Diego from Phoenix are
technically"Phoenicians" but they are often called, derisively, "Zonies." Canadians and others who are thawing out are often called "snowbirds."
Which, I hope, is ok.
Related: On days when the weather dips into the mid-50s, if I encounter one of these visitors from the snowbelt, I apologize for our brutal winters.
\"Probably the airplanes will bring week-enders from Los Angeles before long, and the beautiful poor bedraggled old town will bloom with a
Floridian ugliness.\" (John Steinbeck, 1940, discussing the future of La Paz, BCS, Mexico)
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Whale-ista
tourists coming to San Diego from Phoenix are technically"Phoenicians" but they are often called, derisively, "Zonies." |
That's derisive? I wouldn't have thought that.
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Whale-ista
Canadians and others who are thawing out are often called "snowbirds." Which, I hope, is ok.
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Ohhhh....go ahead and call them Canuckleheads. They don't mind. 
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DavidE
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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T'was nothing compared to SUBARU'S grand Debut in Mexico City a few years ago of the...
PUTA
Naw this ain't an April Fools. It really happened. It was hysterical. Many camera shots of young ladies hanging onto each other to keep from toppling
over with hysterical laughter.
And of course there was Petroleos Mexicanos oh-so-accurate moniker of the low grade of gasoline...
NOVA
Spanish "No Va" (Won't Go).
One word I especially try to avoid is CABRON. Much worse than CHINGA. Hell I had a parrot named CHINGUS. The ladies almost wet their shorts when the
bird screamed "YO CHINGUS"
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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toneart
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Chilangos, as explained within the text of the article, is pretty accurate. They are Mexico City natives. They are more sophisticated, arrogant and
downright rude, according to residents of small towns. They roll in and kinda take over, and expect snap-of-the-fingers service and then they are poor
tippers (kinda like Canadians). Hey! I didn't say that! 
This is the way they were perceived when I lived in San Miguel de Allende, even though San Miguel is pretty sophisticated, the Chilangos
are...well...different.
People from the hinterlands of the United States tend to view New Yorkers this way.
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by DENNIS
| Quote: | Originally posted by DavidE
I am careful how I phrase people and places in Mexico. You never know... |
No. You never do, but that caveat seems to have been ignored by the chain of popular restaurants, "CHILANGO'S." |
This got me thinking about terms that are rude or derogatory, but through high usage, shoved into the common venacular. I believe Chilango is getting
close to that state.
Another that is well used, but seems to be avoiding commercialization is the deogatory term, "gringo."
Many say it's not deogatory, but it is..... and for that reason it has more or less been overlooked as a catchy name for restaurants or other
businesses. I've yet to see or hear of an establishment called "Gringo...This or That", but times, as we see here, are changing and perhaps there's a
"Gringo's Mexican Restaurant" being built today.
I once saw a Mexican Restaurant named Blainey's.
.
[Edited on 4-1-2013 by DENNIS]
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DavidE
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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"Gringo" is common. However the light changes from green to yellow when I hear "P-nche Gringo".
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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durrelllrobert
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| Quote: | Originally posted by Whale-ista
I made the mistake once of saying "chilango" within earshot of 2 DFistas/enses- they were not pleased. So now I call them "DF-istas." I suppose I should say "DF-ense", like "Tijuanense."
Made it up. I don't know if it's technically correct, or used by others, but it makes the point, hopefully without offense.
As with US regional biases, these terms can be fun and playful or mean and spiteful. Eg tourists coming to San Diego from Phoenix are
technically"Phoenicians" but they are often called, derisively, "Zonies." Canadians and others who are thawing out are often called "snowbirds."
Which, I hope, is ok.
Related: On days when the weather dips into the mid-50s, if I encounter one of these visitors from the snowbelt, I apologize for our brutal winters.
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...and never refer to the home town of people from San Francisco as "Frisco"
Bob Durrell
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durrelllrobert
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| Quote: | Originally posted by DENNIS
| Quote: | Originally posted by DENNIS
| Quote: | Originally posted by DavidE
I am careful how I phrase people and places in Mexico. You never know... |
No. You never do, but that caveat seems to have been ignored by the chain of popular restaurants, "CHILANGO'S." |
I've yet to see or hear of an establishment called "Gringo...This or That", but times, as we see here, are changing and perhaps there's a "Gringo's
Mexican Restaurant" being built today.
[Edited on 4-1-2013 by DENNIS] |
Right in your old hood:
www.elgringo.com
Voted Best Mexican Restaurant. Three Locations- Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Redondo Beach. El Gringo Mexican ...
www.gringostexmex.com
This one's in Houston
www.tripadvisor.com.mx/Restaurant_Review-g30375-d2229924-Re....
This one is in Birmingham, Alabama of all places
www.gringoscantinasamui.com
the best Mexican restaurant and BBQ beergarden in Koh Samui.
(whereever that is)
and lots more if you Google it
Bob Durrell
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DENNIS
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| Quote: | Originally posted by durrelllrobert
and lots more if you Google it |
Yeah...it's a big world out there, but who wouldn't know about a Mexican snack stand in Houstin.
Anyway...I didn't say there weren't any. Just said I hadn't heard of any. As far as I'm concerned, nothing has changed.
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neilm81301
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Where can I get this exchange rate?
Did I misunderstand this?
"One trip in Mexico City by subway costs 100 pesos, about 4 cents. One trip in Tijuana in public transportation system can cost 1,000 pesos, or 40
cents."
Isn't $1000MNP about $80 USD?
Neil
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DavidE
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Mood: 'At home we demand facts and get them. In Mexico one subsists on rumor and never demands anything.' Charles Flandrau,
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Remember when cash registers had windows wide enough to display nine numbers? I think that is what the person is referring to as far as peso prices.
A Lot To See And A Lot To Do
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bufeo
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| Quote: | Originally posted by neilm81301
Did I misunderstand this?
"One trip in Mexico City by subway costs 100 pesos, about 4 cents. One trip in Tijuana in public transportation system can cost 1,000 pesos, or 40
cents."
Isn't $1000MNP about $80 USD?
Neil |
The article Dennis posted is from 1990. At that time I think 100 Mexican Pesos were worth about 1¢ U.S. currency.
Allen R
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