Juan of Words

El Que Busca, Encuentra

He Who Seeks, Finds

No feelings were harmed in the writing of this blog.

Or so I am hoping…after months of agonizing over my personal battle of the bulge, embarrassing side effects and all, including increasingly larger love handles (a.k.a. lonjas or lonjitas) and diminishing levels of energy, I’ve decided to get off my butt and do something about it!  More accurately, after having the youngest of my four sisters bet me that I would not be able to lose weight again.

Again because six years ago this same battle was fought and won by me, hands down…Back then my weight was just five pounds more than what it is today, although the distribution of fat was not as proportional as it is today, thank God for that, and I was in much worse overall shape.  Still, through a self-paced regimen of better eating and constant exercise I managed to lose exactly 100 pounds in 12 months, which I kept off for roughly three years, until I began gaining again for some reason.

I think it was too much for too long – running five miles a day everyday of the week but Sunday – and in the end I couldn’t keep it up, I became too comfortable, trusting that the weight would just stay off because I had lost it.  As I began giving myself more leeway to eat what I wanted when I wanted the pounds just started packing back on.

Today, for the most part, aside from my bad habit of smoking, I feel pretty healthy, capable of doing just as much as the next guy, roughly my age and strength, yet I realize doing nothing means only one of two things: keep gaining weight or eventually hear the bad news from my doctor that I’ve got Diabetes, high cholesterol, or something worse.  So even though I’m now in my early thirties, not in my twenties, and my body cannot party or take as much as it used to, try as I may to prove otherwise, one way or another the 20 pounds at stake will be shed over the course of the next 90 days.

But never fear.  I am not giving up on my tortillas, carnitas, pan dulce, and other favorite platillos just yet – only figuring out how to cut back in order to have my cake and eat it too…no pun intended.

Deséenme suerte – ando buscando la manera.

Pastelitos De Mermelada

Our cakes were homemade.  Made of flour, baking soda, eggs, margarine and decorated with egg-beaten frosting, dyed with food coloring, sandwiching a thick coat of marmalade in between two rounded layers of bread.

The process was long, but it was always well worth the wait.  We didn’t even realize we could purchase already-made birthday cakes at the grocery store – at least I didn’t – until my mother stopped baking homemade cakes for us on our birthdays, or even just because she felt like it.

We took them for granted.  We never appreciated how much time and dedication it took her to make one of those pastelitos.

Instead we’d just grab a seat, wait for the candles to come on, blow them out, and gorge every last bite of those delicious concoctions as soon as they were ready.  In truth, I think she preferred it that way.  That in some way her pasteles hechos a mano were more gift than any silly toys or parties.

We didn’t need them – there wouldn’t have been enough cake to go around anyway!

Chongalicious Bai-Bee!

Chonga/Chola inspired beauty products.

Once upon a time, and quite honestly probably still for many of us, a derogatory term used to describe individuals of mixed Hispanic descent.  Equivalent to “mutt” or “dog,” later used as a symbol of revolution and rebellion against THE MAN, most recently adopted as a symbol of our heritage, almost a sentiment of pride for who we are, even if not all of us subscribe to the Chola/Cholo/Chonga lifestyle.

Seriously, how many YouTube Chonga makeup tutorials are out there now?

¡Que Chuntaro!

Is being a Chuntaro (Choon-tah-ro) bad? 

I hear the expression all the time   sometimes in a good way, others in a bad one.  ¡Hay no, que chuntaro!  ¡Ese chuntaro esta bien guey. ¡¡Orale, que chuntaro!!  Surprisingly, a lot of young people of Mexican descent like being characterized as chuntaros, or knowing the activities they are taking part in could be described with this adjective. 

Perhaps in the same way non-Mexicans enjoy the term ghetto.  (i.e. That’s so ghetto, ghettofabulous, etc.)

Frequenting Spanish-only clubs that play straight musica norteña and rancheras, as well as dressing up in boots, cowboy hats, and large belt buckles are among the activities that could deem these young people chuntaros, at least those are the defining attributes they factor into the equation.   

The online Urban Dictionary actually defines chuntaro as a Mexican slang word, or synonym, for naco: a.k.a. 1) an Indian or Indian-looking Mestizo or 2) an uncultured or lower class person.  Yet, for the most part, when we use the term chuntaro we don’t mean it in such a disparaging way.  More often than not it’s used as a satirical expression of something or someone we find amusing. 

Even when used as an insult the translation is not so literal. 

For example, if a Mexican tells you you’re dressed all chuntaro they usually mean you’re appearance is less than appropriate for the place/event you are at.  Perhaps you’re wearing a prom-looking gown to Sunday mass, you could be wearing unintentional holes in your jeans or shoes, or just maybe the shimmer on your shirt or blouse is so strong it reflects the sunlight onto a nearby wall. 

By the same token, if you are at a specific location with a Mexican and they describe it as chuntaro they simply mean it is not up to their particular standards.  It might be a kid’s birthday party where there are more adults drinking than there are children playing, perhaps a quinceañera where the second-floor dance floor is so small and crowded it feels like the whole party might come crashing down onto the first floor at any given moment, or it could just mean the Mexican you are with is a little snobby.

Herein lays the problem of using the word chuntaro.  Since beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what I consider appropriate and up to my standards could be hideous and very chuntaro in your opinion.  So I am sad to say the fights / debates about what is or isn’t chuntaro will continue. 

On the flip side there are a lot of “chuntaro, and proud of it” folks out there, myself included.      

What do you consider Chuntaro?

Life In Prison: My Two Hours In Jail

A mixture of relief and excitement took hold of me as one door slammed behind us and another one jerked open in front of us.  This was my first time inside an actual jail, and it was much more than I had anticipated.  All at once I felt sad for the young faces locked up behind those concrete walls, angry about the illegal aliens – “mostly Mexicans” detained for illegal reentry – who made up the largest part of the prison population, proud of our tour guide for making it clear even inmates deserve to be treated like human beings, and tormented by the fact that some of the people I care about have had to endure the hardship of spending even one night in a place like this. 

At one point of our tour at this Federal Detention Center we walked among the general prison population in their living quarters.  Some guys were playing cards on long school-cafeteria-style tables; others were playing basketball and exercising behind a glass wall; a few did nothing but stand still; several guys nodded at me (I nodded back); and all of them stared at us in disbelief and confusion.  The tour guide told us federal prisons are no longer allowed to offer weight equipment that would enable inmates to build up their arms and upper body.  Instead they must do it the old fashion way: sit-ups and push-ups.  The bad thing is they are no longer exhausted and ready to sleep at lights out, creating a whole new set of challenges for prison staff.

I’d seen all the prison movies, heard all the stories from people who had been on the inside, but nothing could have prepared me for walking into that cell and experiencing it for myself.  As the solid metal door shut behind me I looked around at my surroundings and felt immediately hopeless.  The room was just a few inches larger than a standard freight elevator.  It had one tall slender window in the corner.  The glass was hazy either from old age or dirt.  The width of it was smaller than my leg.  A single bunk bed sat less than a foot away from the toilet.  And on the immediate other side was a desk the two inmates who share this room have to share with each other.  I can’t begin to fathom what it must be like to spend one day, month, or year after the other within four walls such as those. 

Those young faces, years more juvenile than my own, are what are causing me to pause.  I can’t help wondering why they are sitting there.  Not the crime they were convicted for, but what course of action in their lives (what moment) led to them spiraling into a life behind bars.  It made me want to be a better parent.  It made me want to be a better person.  It made me want to do something to stop these young people from rotting away in jail. It made me want to yell.   

It made me want to cry.

¡Ando Bien Contenis!

Contenis, as in happy, excited, overjoyed, in good spirits, and a host of other positive-feeling adjectives.     If you’ve ever heard a Mexican say this word and wondered what he or she was talking about, you should know this variation on the Spanish utterance for happy is just that.  Another way to express a feeling of joy!

Not anything relating to tennis shoes, unless we are excited about a new pair of sneakers and use it to express how contenis we are.  For Example:

Q:  ­¿Que onda guey?   What’s up dude?

A:  Aqui nomas.   Just here.  

Q:  ¿Como andas?   How are you?

A:  ¡Contenis!   Happy!

My favorite morning radio deejay uses this word all the time, in so many different ways, that it has just become one of my favorite Mexican Spanish slang words.  It’s very flexible, can be uttered in various intonations, can be applied to virtually any friendly exchange, and is just more fun to say than contento, feliz, agradable, satisfecho,etc.  Yet if you look it up in the dictionary of the Real Academia Española (the worldwide leading authority on the Spanish language) there is no definition for contenis.

Still contenis makes me happy!  How do you use this expression?