Pachuco Cross
A design in the form of a small cross that is tattooed on the left hand, between the thumb and forefinger, with lines, or dashes, radiating out from it. George Carpenter Barker states that it must be seven rays, or lines, that radiate from the cross. It is a well-known symbol among Chicanos and has been traced to the era of the pachucos (1940s urban youth), hence its name. It is also known as the cruz del barrio (cross from the neighborhood) and has been found throughout major cities of the Southwest. Tattoos of Christian images have always been popular among Chicanos, and the custom of tattooing images of Jesus Christ, crucifixes, La Virgen de Guadalupe, and other Madonnas has a long history. In the Middle Ages the Crusaders cut a cross into Chris-tian converts on the hand a little above the wrist. Some social scientists believe that the pachuco cross was meant to symbolize violence and membership in a gang. But it is known that it was used as an initiation ritual among friends and peers, to show solidarity and allegiance to a particular barrio. In describing the tattooed cross Haldeen Braddy is of the opinion that each ray jetting out from the cross represented a six-month stay in jail. In his view, pachucos liked to stay in the jaula (cage, jail) so that they could “accumulate these ‘rays’ as souvenirs of their imprisonment” (1971, 142). There is no evidence to support this speculation.
References Barker 1974; Braddy 1960; Chicano Pinto Research Project 1975; Coltharp 1965; Demello 1993; Govenar 1988
Pachucos (-as) (1940s Urban Youth)
A name adopted by Mexican Americans and Mexican nationals to designate those who make up a fascinating urban subculture, detached from U.S. culture and from Mexican American urban life also. The first appearance of pachucos was in the El Paso–Juárez area during the 1920s and early 1930s. It is thought the word pachuco was a colloquial way of referring to El Paso. A person from El Paso was referred to as del pachuco. Sometimes a person considered a pachuco was called a chuco. Haldeen Braddy discusses the origin of the word pachuco, providing several theories. One is that the pachucos of the 1930s came from the city of Pachuca in the state of Hidalgo, Mexico. He also pre-sents the definition from the Diccionario General de Americanismos, stating that pachuca is a five-card poker hand in which all the cards are of different suits, or in other words, a poker hand with no value, a losing hand. Braddy believes this well describes the pachucos of El Paso (1971). The other theory is that pachuco comes from the Nahuatl word pachtli, which refers to a grass like hay that grows parasitically on trees.
Pachucos were identifiable by their clothing, hairstyles, and a distinct language with its own vocabulary. The men wore “zoot suits,” that is, pegged pants, long coats with padded shoulders, and pancake hats. Their hair was worn long and slicked back with a ducktail effect. Some also wore a long chain hanging from their pants, well displayed and connected to a belt. Pachucas were the girlfriends of the pachucos, but they also had a dress style all their own. They wore short, very tight skirts, with their hair high and long. Makeup was heavy, especially around the eyes. Supposedly they were very streetwise and liked to hang out with their pachuco boyfriends.
Large numbers of young men from El Paso, speaking the pachuco argot, settled in Los Angeles during the early 1940s, and it was there that they became recognized as an identifiable group, and considered to be gang members. Young men who relocated and settled in Los Angeles, even for short periods of time, upon returning home to the small towns of the Southwest, would spread the pachuco beliefs and jargon to their communities. In this way pachuquesmo, a Mexican subculture, became known throughout the Southwest.
The pachuco speech, a combination of English and Spanish, also called caló, was a fascinating fusion drawing from many linguistic sources. Caló was originally the language of the Spanish gypsies, or a dialect of Spanish showing traces of many languages acquired by the gypsies throughout their world wanderings. The pachuco argot utilized several linguistic sources in developing a vocabulary or jargon. These sources were southwestern Spanish, the older archaic Spanish from New Mexico, Mexican slang, standard Spanish from Mexico City, and also words invented by the pachucos themselves. The pachuco dialect was the product of an urban environment, and it is believed the language may have originated in the underworld and drug scene of El Paso. George Carpenter Barker pinpoints almost exactly where the pachuco jargon originated, from the 7-X gang who first met in the neighborhood of Florence and Eighth Streets in El Paso. Arthur Campa believes that pachucos originated as a linguistic group first and had no distinctive dress style. That came later as they moved into a more stable economic environment and had some financial resources.
Expressions and vocabulary used by Chicanos today come from the pachuco argot of the 1940s. For example, such words as órale (what’s happening, or O.K.), bato (guy, as in bato loco), califas (California), hay te wuacho (I’ll be seeing you), and la pinta (jail/prison) have been used for generations. The film Zoot Suit, written and directed by Luis Valdez in 1981, depicts the dress, language, and problems of Mexican American youth and especially pachucos in Los Angeles in the 1940s.
During the 1940s a caricature of the pachuco was created for the Mexican media in the person of Tin Tan, whose real name was Germán Valdéz (1919–1973). He was an actor and performer who dressed as a stereotypical pachuco and zoot-suiter. Tin Tan made several Mexican films portraying the Mexican American pocho who code-switches between English and Spanish, and speaks caló.
The pachuco was disdained in the U.S. by both the Mexican American and Anglo communities, and likewise in Mexico by the media and the intellectuals. Octavio Paz, much quoted, disparagingly discusses the phenomenon of the pachuco in his book The Labyrinth of Solitude, published in English in 1961. Although almost any urban Chicano who was young in the 1940s was affected by the style and language of the pachuco, the stereotypic pachuco was often associated with violence and deviancy. The zoot-suit riots of 1943 are held up as the epitome of the pachuco experience, totally disregarding previous and later experiences. According to Alfredo Mirandé, “The pachuco has been an especially visible symbol of cultural autonomy and resistance. His distinctive dress, demeanor, mannerism, and language not only express his manhood but set him off culturally from the dominant society. To be a chuco is to be proud, dignified, and to uphold one’s personal integrity as well as the honor and integrity of the group. It is at once an affirmation of one’s manhood and one’s culture” (1985, 179–180). The pachuco is the precursor to the bato loco, the cholo, and the low rider of more contemporary times.
The pachuca was the counterpart of the pachuco of the 1940s but also the home-girl archetype that comes together in the young Chicana growing up in an urban ghettoized environment. During the 1940s, pachucas were the girlfriends of or those who hung around with pachucos. They developed their own style of dress, wearing very tight short skirts and sweaters and doing their hair in a pompadour style. Their behavior was loud and brash: they smoked cigarettes in public, wore lots of eye makeup, and supposedly were quick to fight. Pachucas knew the vernacular of the times, speaking pachuco and scandalizing their families. They were not necessarily gang members, but they can be considered the precursors of present-day cholas.
See also Caló; Cholos; Low Rider; Pocho; Tin Tan; Zoot Suit
References Barker 1974; Braddy 1960, 1971; Campa 1979; Cerda and Farias 1953; Coltharp 1965; Cosgrove 1989; Fregoso 1995; Griffith 1948; Hinojosa 1975; Katz 1974; Keller 1985; Luckenbill 1990; Madrid-Barela 1973; Mazon 1984; Mirandé 1985; Montoya 1977; Orona-Cordova 1992; Paz 1961; Plascencia 1983; Valdez 1992

Paintings (Religious) 
See Retablos
Palomilla (Group of Friends)
A term used primarily in south Texas during the 1940s and 1950s to describe an informal group of guys that hung around together. Paloma means “dove,” so a palomilla is a flock of doves. One rarely hears the expression today, but it is occasionally used in literature, such as the short stories of Mario Suarez. A palomilla would be one’s peer group, or a very close group of friends, but not a gang. Consisting of a core of three or four males, with a few fringe members, a palomilla was an important socialization unit that provided a safe space for young men to joke and express themselves. Arthur Rubel writes about the supportive social environment provided by the palomilla of young coming-of-age Chicanos in the barrio of New Lots in south Texas. Joseph Spielberg describes the quick wit and aggressive bilingual humor found among the members of his palomilla during the early 1960s, and how their jostling and jesting allowed for the full bloom of each person’s personality.
References Cerda and Farias 1953; Limón 1994; Rubel 1965; Spielberg 1974
Papel Picado (Cut Tissue Paper)
The craft and final product of cutting out intricate designs and patterns on sheets of tissue paper. In Mexico the artists who do this work have been doing it for several generations and can cut through fifty or more sheets at a time. A pattern is made and used as the top sheet while the outline design is cut out with different-sized chisels. Most often the small banner-sized sheets are made to decorate altars and nacimientos (nativity scenes), or for such celebrations as Cinco de Mayo (the Fifth of May) and El Diez y Seis de Septiembre (the Sixteenth of September). Mexican restaurants are often decorated with streams of colorful papel picado. Some of the cutout designs are scenes related to specific holidays, such as skeletons for Día de los Muertos (the Day of the Dead), dancers, floral patterns, the Mexican flag, and other patriotic scenes. In Mexico, experienced paper cutters can make large wall hangings and tablecloths out of papel picado. Papel picado is often taught in public schools, although on the small eight-by-eleven-inch paper.
See also Cinco de Mayo; Día de los Muertos; El Diez y Seis de Septiembre
References Carmichael and Sayer 1991; Lomas Garza 1999; Trenchard 1998; Vigil 1998
Paredes, Américo (1915–1999)
Considered the foremost scholar of Chicano folklore, Américo Paredes was a professor emeritus of English and anthropology at the University of Texas, Austin. His classic work, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, first published in 1958, has become a standard work in Chicano studies and American folklore. A whole generation of Chicano scholars regard Paredes as their intellectual role model and mentor, and his original research on Chicano folklore engendered a new wave of scholarship and academic achievements.
As a young man, Paredes was always interested in music, corridos (ballads), and singing. His early published scholarship focused on ballads and ballad heroes of the Texas-Mexican border, and through this research he developed a theory about the formation of Chicano folklore. The resistance to an encroaching foreign culture, the loss of political and economic power, feelings of social marginality, and the resulting conflict of cultures all contributed to the creation of folklore in the form of legends, jokes, and songs by the Chicano people. His research and publications encompass various disciplines from anthropology to literature to social history.
Américo Paredes was born in Brownsville, Texas, on September 3, 1915. He attended Brownsville Junior College in the early 1930s, earning an A.A. degree in 1936. In 1944 he joined the army, wrote for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes, and worked in Japan for a couple of years. Returning to Texas in 1950, he earned a B.A. degree from the University of Texas in 1951, an M.A. in 1953, and a Ph.D. in 1956.
The distinguishing feature of Paredes’s scholarship has been his humanistic approach to conducting research. Besides knowing and studying his own culture and ethnic community, he was able to bring another consciousness to the study of folklore in general and to Texas-Mexican folklore in particular. He taught that the examination of a cultural or folkloric phenomenon cannot be divorced from the social context in which it is performed or expressed. Before the publication of Paredes’s work, most of the Hispanic and Chicano folklore collected was classified, published, and placed on a library shelf. Paredes’s research emphasized the importance of the informant’s culture, and the social setting and history of the community of the informant. It was in his book, With His Pistol in His Hand: A Border Ballad and Its Hero, that Paredes proposed his theory of the development of Chicano folklore through a process of cultural conflict generated by the invasion of Anglo culture and values into south Texas in the 1800s. Many writers have dedicated their books to him, and the journal Aztlán devoted a double-issue volume to him in 1982. Besides publishing over sixty articles in academic journals, he was editor of the Journal of American Folklore from 1968 to 1973 and published Folktales of Mexico in 1970 and A Texas-Mexican Cancionero: Folksongs of the Lower Border in 1976.
Besides his scholarly writings, Paredes was a poet and novelist. His first publication was a collection of poetry titled Cantos de Adolescencia in 1937. Most recently he has published George Washington Gomez: A Mexico Texan Novel in 1990, Between Two Worlds in 1991, and The Shadow in 1998. Don Américo died unexpectedly in April of 1999.
References Leal 1987; Limón 1980a, 1986, 1992, 1994; Paredes 1958, 1976, 1978
Los Pastores (Shepherds’ Play)
A religious medieval nativity folk play. Also known as La Pastorela, the complete title of this folk drama is El Coloquio de los Pastores, and it is written in verse and performed on Christmas Eve. It is an ancient mystery play, brought to the New World by the Spanish Franciscan priests, and is performed throughout the Southwest. As a folk production, it is performed for entertainment, but it is also a religious presentation that is maintaining a long tradition. The full title means “the dialogue of the shepherds,” and it is an interpretation of the dialogue and reaction the shepherds may have had when they learned of the birth of Jesus Christ. It narrates the story of the shepherds who are visited by Michael the Archangel who informs them of the birth of the infant Jesus and urges them to go to Belén (Bethlehem). Before the shepherds decide what to do, they are visited by Lucifer, who is angry about the birth of the Christ child to the Virgin Mary. Lucifer tries to challenge the shepherds but Michael the Archangel returns just in time to defeat him. The shepherds then continue on their journey to Bethlehem bringing gifts for the infant Jesus. The structure of the play is formulaic, and so the sequence of acts can be rearranged into many different patterns, with jokes, songs, speeches, and other events added at different points. The underlying story of the drama is the universal battle between good and evil. It has evolved from the literature of sixteenth-century Spain and the indigenous traditions of Mexico, and for this reason the play has provided a political format for the poor masses throughout the last 400 years.
Because of its ancient history there are many variants of Los Pastores, and several versions have developed a comic dialogue between Lucifer and Cucharón, Bartolo, and the other characters. One character is named Bato, as in bato loco (crazy guy), a phrase of contemporary usage among Chicanos today. Variants of this play have been collected in Texas, New Mexico, and California, and it has been performed in Mexico since the sixteenth century. In San Antonio the performance of Los Pastores at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church as been ongoing since 1913. Richard Flores, both as an ethnographer and as a performer, presents a thorough analysis of the historical conditions that continue to provide an environment for the performance of Los Pastores as both ritual and drama. In 1991 El Teatro Campesino produced a video film of their production of Los Pastores titled La Pastorela—The Shepherds’ Tale.
References Bandini 1958; Cole 1907; Espinosa 1985; Flores 1995; Herrera-Sobek 1995a; Igo 1985; Lea 1953; Lucero-White 1940; Ortega 1973; Pearce 1957; Rael 1965; Robb 1954; Robe 1957; Romero 1984; Silverthorne 1990; Wright 1920
Pedro de Urdemalas
Also known as Pedro di Urdemales or Pedro Ordimales, meaning “Peter of the holy water font,” he is a rogue folk hero with hundreds of tales to his name. This trickster character is known throughout the Spanish-speaking world and the Southwest of the United States. He is the classic Spanish picaro (rogue), who incorporates “three ancient literary types, the wanderer, the fool, and the have-not,” according to Claudio Guillen. He is the trickster figure who is constantly dissatisfied, always wanting more, yet is always outwitting everyone and acting as the social critic along the way. Pedro de Urdemalas lives by his wit, has no shame, and at different times makes a pact with the devil, God, the Virgin Mary, and St. Peter. Tales of Pedro de Urdemalas collected by Aurelio M. Espinosa in Spain and in New Mexico were published in the Journal of American Folklore in 1914. Ramón Laval gives a brief literary history of de Urdemalas and publishes a small series of tales collected in Chile in the late nineteenth century. Cervantes wrote a play about him in 1615, Comedia Famosa de Pedro de Urdemalas, so we know Pedro de Urdemalas was already a folkloric character in the seventeenth century. Wardropper states, “Pedro de Urdemalas is a shadowy, even elusive, figure in the oral tradition of Spanish folktales. Because these tales were not—as far as we know—collected in the Renaissance and because, like ballads and songs, they must have been subject to endless variation and mutual interference, we cannot now know the Pedro de Urdemalas who endeared himself to the folk” (218). But it is clear that Pedro de Urdemalas is a Hispano precursor to Don Cacahuate, el pelado, Tin Tan, Cantinflas, and an antecedent of Chicano joking behavior.
See also Don Cacahuate; El Pelado; Tin Tan
References Guillen 1971; Lamadrid 1995; Laval 1943; Wardropper 1982
El Pelado (The Plucked One)
Literally, “plucked,” or “bald,” el pelado was a designation used for a clownish performer, an improvised character type developed by performing theater groups in the 1920s, in Mexico and in the Southwest. Also known as peladito, this comic hobo is the underdog, a nobody who is criticized and made fun of by the whole world. The pelado was a verbal artist who, according to Samuel Ramos, “has created a dialect of his own, a diction which abounds in ordinary words, but he gives these words a new meaning. . . . His terminology abounds in sexual allusion” (1962, 59). Many carpas (tent theaters) featured pelado or peladito characters, and the agringado (anglicized) and the pocho (half Mexican) were special targets of his comic wit and satire. Beloved by working-class audiences, the peladito, using caló (Spanish slang) and pochismos (Americanisms), particularly poked fun at the acculturation of Mexicans who couldn’t speak Spanish and pointed out to them American discrimination against Mexicans. Similar to Charlie Chaplin, and later developed by the Mexican actor Cantinflas, el pelado was a homeless type who in dialogue could state the unthinkable and mock everything and everybody. Many Chicanos, who may not have known the appellation pelado, nonetheless became familiar with the comic vagabond through Mexican films. El Teatro Campesino (the Farmworkers’ Theater) effectively used this character type in skits and actos (dramas) and succeeded in intensifying, with humor, the serious social issues presented in their performances.
See also Agringado; Carpas; Pocho; El Teatro Campesino
References Broyles-Gonzalez 1994; Kanellos 1990; Limón 1998; Ramos 1962; Spielberg 1974
Penitente Chapels 
See Moradas
Los Penitentes (The Penitents)
A Catholic fraternal order of men, formally known as La Fraternidad Piadosa de Nuestro Padre de Jesus Nazareño, or informally as Los Penitentes. This lay religious society related to the Roman Catholic Church is still found in rural northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Originally it was organized for religious observances and practices, including pious prayer and bodily penance, but the society eventually became very important in providing mutual aid to the local communities. Los Penitentes cared for the sick, arranged funerals, and conducted the religious rituals associated with wakes. Their social role in contemporary New Mexico is not as pronounced but some moradas still remain active.
Their primary religious ceremonies commemorated the passion and death of Jesus Christ, during the celebrations of Semana Santa, “Holy Week.” It is speculated that the starting date of the brotherhood is somewhere between 1790 and 1810. The origins of Los Penitentes have been debated for years, but it is likely they were heavily influenced by the Franciscan Third Order, who were the friars in New Mexico until Mexico separated from Spain in 1821. Los Penitentes became a strong institution in rural New Mexico because there were too few Catholic priests to oversee the religious life of the people during the early nineteenth century. The village chapters governed themselves without benefit of the few priests in the colony. Consequently Los Penitentes had strong influences in conserving the language and culture of the Spanish Americans of New Mexico. Membership consisted of between thirty and fifty adult men per chapter (called moradas) and were divided into two groups: common members, called hermanos disciplantes (brothers who discipline), and officers, called hermanos de luz (brothers of light). By the early twentieth century the various chapters had become secret societies with restricted membership.
Journalism about Los Hermanos Penitentes has been sensationalistic, with lengthy descriptions of their Semana Santa rituals, especially when Anglo Americans migrated to New Mexico during the late nineteenth century. Their custom of self-punishment, in the form of flagellation during the Holy Week ceremonies, aroused much interest and was reported widely in many East Coast publications. The most sensitive and nonjudgmental writing and research have been conducted by de Cordova, Henderson, Sprott, and Weigle. A worthy, contemporary (1970–1986), descriptive account of the ritual ceremonies associated with Holy Week in Cordova can be found in Charles Briggs (1988).
References Boyd 1974; Briggs 1988; Brown 1978; Darley 1968; De Cordova 1972; Espinosa, G., 1972; Henderson 1937; Horka-Follick 1969; Rael 1951; Sprott 1984; Steele and Rivera 1985; Weigle 1970, 1976; Woodward 1935
The People 
See La Raza
Pichilingis (Elves)
Elves or leprechauns that Anthony John Campos refers to as little people, pichilingis are goblins who perform mischievous pranks. Santamaria’s Diccionario de Mejicanismos’ definition for pichilingo is chiquito, muchachito, and niño pequeño, meaning “very small” and “little child.” The word piciligue, which comes from the Aztec, has the meaning of “to become small that which was thick or large.” Another closely related word also found in Santamaria is pichilingui, which is a common word for pato silvestre (wild duck), which is found in lakes in the interior of Mexico. Pichilingis are similar to duendes (goblins) and are possibly the indigenous version of a duende, and have only been found in the folklore literature of New Mexico. Duendes are very common in Chicano folktales, and many people still believe in them. They are often invisible yet their presence is felt because of the annoying tricks and antics they concoct.
See also Chanes; Duendes
Reference Campos 1977; Santamaria 1978
Pilón (Bonus)
A custom, often expressed only after it occurs, of giving a little extra when making a transaction or closing a bargain. For instance, when buying candy, the vendor may add one extra piece, de pilón, to surprise and make a child happy. John Bourke writes about an ancient custom in Mexico still used in the late nineteenth century: a merchant kept a tin cylinder for each customer, and after each purchase he’d drop a bean into it. After the total number of beans reached sixteen or eighteen, the customer was given six cents in money or goods. This was the pilón, a type of dividend given to the client for purchasing from the same merchant.
The phrase de pilón is used when referring to the occurrence of an unplanned episode or accident. In narrating a personal story with an unhappy ending, an individual might add, “Y de pilón me caí” (and to top it off, I fell down). Although it is not found in common usage among contemporary Chicanos, many will remember how their parents used this expression. The word has several meanings, including “a heap of stuff,” such as a heap of grapes, a heap of mortar, a heap of something, but it also means a lump of sugar. In her personal memoir A Place in El Paso, Gloria Lopez-Stoppard has a delightful de-scription of the use of pilón during her childhood. Thus de pilón may express something positive, or something unexpectedly negative.
References Bourke 1895; De Leon 1982; Lopez-Stoppard 1996
Piñatas
A colorfully decorated clay pot or papier-mâché figure filled with toys and candies, confetti, or party favors that is brought to celebrations such as birthdays, Christmas festivities, and other parties. Often it is decorated as a star or an animal, such as a burro or elephant, but it can also be a fruit or a puppet. The size varies from small to very large. Piñatas have traditionally been a part of birthday and Christmas celebrations, but are now also brought out for other holidays. In Mexico a piñata was always broken on Christmas Eve, especially among the poorer classes, so that children would receive small inexpensive gifts from the piñata. The real Christmas gifts were not presented until Día de los Reyes on January 6, also known as Epiphany in the Catholic calendar.
A game is made of breaking the piñata, and a song accompanies the game. The piñata is hung from a tree, with a long rope that is manipulated by an adult, who is able to move the piñata up and down, so it won’t be broken too quickly. A child is blindfolded, twirled around three times, handed a bat, and led to the piñata. Everyone will usually have a turn or two, and finally the manipulator allows someone to break it. The candy and prizes fall to the ground and everyone jumps to grab some.
The custom of breaking a piñata during the Christmas Mass celebrations was introduced by the Augustine priests in the seventeenth century. Later the custom of celebrating many Christmas Masses evolved into Las Posadas (Christmas pageant). The piñata was considered to be a symbol of evil, with the clay pot representing Satan or his spirit and the colorful decorations serving to tempt humanity. The candies and goodies inside the piñata were the unknown pleasures that Satan held out to attract man. The blindfolded child was supposed to represent innocence and faith, which must be blind to combat the evil spirit. The breaking of the piñata symbolized the struggle that man must sustain to destroy evil and receive the gifts and pleasures of God (the candy).
The word piñata derives from the verb apiñar, which means to cram, tie, or join together. In Italy pignattas were hung from the ceilings during masquerade balls. It is accepted that there is an oriental influence, since piñatas are always decorated with colorful crepe paper. It is thought piñatas originated in China and were brought to Sicily and Spain by the Arabs and to New Spain by the Spaniards.
See also Las Posadas
References Burciaga 1993; Gallegos 1991; Griffith 1988; Ortega 1973; Perl 1983; -Silverthorne 1990; Verti 1993
Pintos (-as) (Prisoners)
Pinto is a term used for prison and also for a Chicano prison inmate. A pinto is a male prisoner, a pinta a female prisoner. La Pinta, referring to prison, is believed to come from the word penitenciaria, or “penitentiary.” Other common words for prison are bote, meaning “can,” and corre, which is short for “correctional institution,” referring specifically to one in Texas. “Joint” is another word frequently used to mean prison.
There has been a lot of sociological literature written about the formation of gangs in prisons as a means of surviving incarceration in the United States. The media, including 60 Minutes, has done stories about the activities of the Mexican mafia and La Familia. Often ignored is the subculture of the pinto experience that is exhibited in behavior, art expression, and published poetry. In the early 1970s several Chicano magazines devoted whole issues to literature and art by pintos, always referring to it as pinto art and pinto poetry. A combination of Mexican and prison cultural values dictates the behavior of pintos inside prison and out on the street. Chicano prisoners have a strong sense of family and community and feel they are constantly being watched by their barrio, family, women, and their home-boys peer group. Most Chicano convicts have little education, speak primarily in Spanish, and have a strong sense of Mexican nationalism. Regardless of place of birth, mexicanismo and machismo are a very important part of being a pinto. Ex-pintos are often identifiable by their mannerisms, gestures, language, haircuts, and dress. They are usually extremely clean and well groomed, have very short hair, wear well-pressed pants, and are in excellent physical shape. Within the prison world pintos have established a well-defined and -structured social environment, which they carry to the outside world when released. In discussing the film American Me, Rosa Linda Fregoso states that Edward James Olmos depicts extremely well the expressive behavior of pintos both in prison and outside. In her words, “Besides rendering a Chicano pinto presence in the rhythms of speech, Santana [the movie character] represents it in the stylized walk and prose of a pinto, a stance honed in the corridors behind prison walls or in the barrios of East L.A.” (1993, 130).
The pinto experience is a subculture of the Chicano experience. Because of the low socioeconomic status of a large percentage of Chicanos in the United States and the lack of equal opportunities in education and employment, many Chicano families have been inadvertently introduced to this subculture. A special issue of the Chicano magazine De Colores, vol. 3, no. 1, was devoted to “Los Pintos de America,” and the issue was published as a separate monograph in 1976 by Pajarito Publications. Female Chicana prisoners also undergo the pinta experience, and one scholar, Letticia Galindo, has written about the specialized language use and street experiences of pachucas, cholas, gang members, and female prison inmates.
See also Cholos; Pachucos
References Chicano Pinto Research Project 1975; Coltharp 1965; Davidson 1974; Estrada 1971; Fregoso 1993; Galindo 1992, 1993
Placas (Insignias)
The word placa means “an insignia of an order,” and in the United States it also means the license plates of a car. But within cholo and youth gang culture it refers to the sign and name of a gang or club as it appears on the walls of buildings in the barrios of Chicano communities. What may appear as graffiti is actually the placa of a person, or of a gang. Where the placa appears signifies that territory as belonging to that gang, and it may also serve as a challenge to other gangs. The use of public walls for asserting a fraternal identity is really an ancient tradition, and within Chicano culture it can be traced back to at least the 1930s. Chicano street culture uses plaqueasos as a system for conveying information about territory and youth socialization customs. If one placa is written over by the placa of another gang, it is accepted as a challenge to a confrontation.
A placa also refers to the individual name of a gang member. Nicknames are very common among Chicanos, but a placa is specifically a gang-related name and often very well describes the person as perceived by friends or other gang members. Names, such as “Sad Girl,” “Diablo” (devil), “Joker,” and “Malo” (bad) could be names used within a gang, and may signify sadness, wildness, or craziness. Sometimes the writing of names on walls is referred to as plaqueasos, or in contemporary terms, “barrio calligraphy.” In more recent times the individual who writes on walls has been called a tagger, and the art of writing is tagging. Many Chicano taggers use a stylized medieval writing, such as Old English and German Gothic forms.
Sanchez-Tranquilino has analyzed the displacement of graffiti by murals in Chicano communities and finds that murals can be an extension of the barrio calligraphy rather than an attempt to control gang vandalism, as is sometimes assumed.
See also Cholos; Con Safos; Graffiti
References Chabran and Chabran 1996; -Cockcroft 1992; Cockcroft, Weber, and -Cockcroft 1977; Harris, M., 1988, 1994; Kim 1995; Sanchez-Tranquilino 1995
Pochismos (Americanisms)
A term that describes the use of English expressions in Spanish, or Americanisms interjected into conversations when speaking Spanish. Sometimes this kind of speech is called Spanglish, or Chicano Spanish, or just pocho talk. Examples of some pochismos are words such as parkear, meaning to park (the car), and wachar, meaning to watch (hay te wacho, “I’ll see you”), also spelled guachate, meaning “watch out.” Other simpler examples are dona for doughnut, el dompe for the dump, troque for truck, and yarda for yard. According to Manuel Peña the word jaitón, meaning “snobbish,” evolved from the words “high tone” when one was discussing music. It came to be used to mean pretentious high class, as in “se crea muy jaitona” (she thinks she’s real high-class), but at the same time it can mean that one has elegance or style.
Various dictionaries of Chicano Spanish and Chicano slang have been compiled that list many other pochismos. Chicano novelists and poets have consciously incorporated the use of pochismos in literary works to reinforce the precarious cultural and linguistic status of Chicanos in American society.
See also Caló; Pachucos; Pocho
References Campa 1977; Galvan 1985; Hernández-Chavez, Cohen, and Beltramo 1975; Peña 1985b; Vasquez 1975
Pocho (Half Mexican)
A pocho is a term used in Mexico to describe a person of Mexican heritage born and raised in the United States. It is meant to describe a person who may not be fully fluent in Spanish, or “Mexican enough,” culturally and linguistically. The word can also mean “discolored,” “truncated,” or “small.” It has been adopted by some Chicanos to describe and ridicule themselves as they survive within an antagonistic and discriminatory environment. The word became more nationally known in 1959 with the publication of the novel Pocho by Jose Antonio Villarreal, which depicted the coming-of-age of a Chicano growing up in the Santa Clara Valley of California during the 1940s.
Mexicans like to call Chicanos pocho, ridiculing their sometimes poor Spanish and their lack of knowledge about Mexico and Mexican customs. Mexicans who have spent time in the United States and have acquired the mannerisms, values, and the English language may be considered pochos because they’ve become agringados (anglicized). In the 1950s and 1960s the Mexican cinema produced several films depicting the lives of pochos, from both sides of the border, but emphasizing the importance of maintaining mexi-canidad. Titles of some of these films are Soy Mexicano de Acá de Este Lado (I Am a Mexican from This Side) (1951), Los Desarraigados (The Uprooted) (1958), México de Mi Corazón (Mexico of My Heart) (1963), and El Pocho (The Half Mexican) (1964).
As with the word cholo, individuals have attempted to find the origin of the use of the word pocho in reference to Chicanos. In his autobiography, Barrio Boy, Ernesto Galarza writes about the pochos he found in Sacramento, California, in the second decade of the twentieth century: “They had learned to speak English of sorts and could still speak Spanish, also of sorts. . . . Concerning the pochos, the chicanos suspected that they considered themselves too good for the barrio but were not, for some reason, good enough for the Americans” (1971, 203).
In Los Angeles, the writer Lalo Lopez has created a comic industry based on pocho caricatures that includes a comic strip, political cartoons, Pocho Productions, an Internet web page, Pocho Magazine, a political satire zine, and a calendar. He refers to a modern Aztec calendar as a Pochteca calendar, which features wisdom from the “wise guy ancestors of the modern day Pocha and Pocho.” The whole Southwest is referred to as Pocholandia. A Chicano who does not speak fluent Spanish may be said to speak pocho Spanish, but the reverse is never stated about a Mexican who cannot speak fluent English. Many English and Spanish words that have become altered by the opposite language, through cultural contact, are called pochismos. Some examples of pochismos are yonque for “junk,” tichar for “to teach,” and carro for “car.”
See also Agringado; Caló; Pochismos
References CHICLE 1995; Galarza 1971; Maciel 1992; Madrid-Barela 1976; Paredes 1993a; Vasquez 1975; Villanueva 1978; Villarreal 1959
Las Posadas (Christmas Pageant)
A tradition marking the beginning of the Christmas season with the dramatization of the search for lodging in Bethlehem by Joseph and Mary. It always includes a procession with singing and music and starts nine days before Christmas. The story, in the form of a novena (Catholic nine-days devotion), is based on the gospel of St. Luke. For nine consecutive nights before Christmas Eve, la Noche Buena (the good night), los peregrinos (the pilgrims) representing Joseph and Mary visit a different home each night, reenacting the search for an inn by Joseph and Mary. Los mesoneros, those who portray the innkeepers, keep refusing them lodging. Los peregrinos form a procession, and children and angels hand-carry the small figures of the Holy Family. When they arrive at a home they ask for shelter and sing carols. Las Posadas occurs from December 16 through December 24. Nine different homes are opened to the pilgrims and food and drink are offered after the peregrinos have been denied lodging. Most homes will have a nativity scene, a nacimiento, set up for the prayers and singers. An important tradition of these festivities is the piñata that is brought out and broken by the children. There is evidence that piñatas originated from this Christmas celebration.
Posadas are still held today in many Mexican communities in the United States. Some are organized by church groups, but recently others have been organized for commercial purposes by city entities. The reenactment of Las Posadas is an ancient tradition that can be traced back to the early conquest in Mexico and to the christianization of the Aztecs by the Augustine priests. They originated in the small village of San Augustin Acolman located near the pyramids in Teotihuacán. The Aztecs celebrated the birth of their god Huitzilopochtli for one night, and celebrations were held all of the following day in every home. This occurred about the same time of the year that the Catholic Church celebrated the birth of Christ. The Augustine priests saw the similarity between these Aztec celebrations and the Christmas festivities and chose this opportunity to teach the new religion to the Aztecs. While the Aztecs were celebrating the birth of Huitzilopochtli, the priests reenacted the pilgrimage of Mary and Joseph. The nine nightly journeys symbolize the nine months of pregnancy for Mary. These Christmas Masses, as they were called, were celebrated in the convents and churches, but eventually were moved to the haciendas, farms, and ranches, and finally to the neighborhoods. The celebrations ended with firecrackers and the breaking of a piñata. Today many cities in the Southwest reenact this pilgrimage for one night with a procession winding through city streets. In Monterey, California, the whole city comes out for Las Posadas, and in San Antonio, Texas, a posada is held during the Fiesta de las Luminarias (Festival of the Bonfires) that includes a procession on the Paso del Rio (river pass).
See also Nacimiento; Piñata
References Campa 1934; Chabran and Chabran 1996; Espinosa 1985; Heisley and -MacGregor-Villarreal 1991; Ortega 1973; Silverthorne 1990; Sommers 1995; Steele 1992; Verti 1993; Vigil 1998; Waugh 1955
Prisoners 
See Pintos
Promises 
See Mandas
Proverbs 
See Dichos