Author Archives: Juan Bravo

Mexican Piñata Song

The informant is a 47-year old civil engineer working in California, originally from Michoacán, Mexico. He lived a modest life as a young adult, studying to be an engineer. He then moved to the United States with his wife to raise their family and make his career. He primarily speaks Spanish with English as a second language.  He shall be referred to as JB.

“Dale dale dale dale, no pierdas el tino, porque si lo pierdes, pierdes el camino! Dale dale dale dale dale, dale y no le dio! Quítate la benda porque sigo yo!”

“Go go go go, no lose the aim, because if it loses, lose the path! Go go go go, went and no it did! Remove the blindfold because follow I!”

“Go go go go, don’t lose your aim, because if you lose it, you lose the way! Go go go go, he went and didn’t make it! Take off the blindfold because now it’s my turn!”

This is a song commonly sung at parties when small children (or adults that are drunk enough) are hitting at the piñata. The piñata is hung with a rope from a high tree, and an adult holds the rope and pulls it up and down to increase difficulty (depending on the reach and age of the child at bat). The child swings a stick while blindfolded, trying to break the piñata to release the candy inside, at which point all the children swarm around to grab candy. JB explains it is something of a taunting song, but made in good spirits. Every person gets as much time whacking at the piñata as the time it takes to finish the song, thus turning the process into a narrative in and of itself. “Go go go go” refers to actually hitting the piñata, very much the way a catcher might distract someone at bat with a “Hey, batter batter batter” taunt. If the player has not succeeded in taking of the blindfold by the time the crowd reaches the end of the rhyme, they literally take off the blindfold and whoever’s next in line will shot the final “Porque sigo yo!”

I found a sense of democratization in this song. When it is played at a party, there is usually a huge attendance made up of cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, other extended relatives, and friends. Thus, there might be a large number of children waiting to play. While JB didn’t relate this with this particular folkgame, he did explain that waiting your turn was a common practice in Catholic families which would include many members. As this is a children’s game, it teaches little ones the importance of sharing and recognizing when it is their turn for something. It also fosters some sense of community, as it is usually an older sibling (around twelve years old) that breaks the piñata so that the smaller children can enjoy the candy, at the same time recognizing the ability and seniority of the older sibling. The line of children to play is usually ordered from youngest in the front, oldest in the back, ensuring that the smaller children get the chance to play before an older child likely succeeds in breaking the piñata. Again, while there is some level of competition between the children to break it, the arrangement of the game reflects adults instilling familial values in the children.

Southern Egyptian Proverb

The informant is a nineteen-year old student born in Australia who’s lived in Egypt for two years, England for two years, Jordan for four years, Egypt for two years, India for four years and currently resides in Los Angeles, CA for university.  He is the son of an Egyptian ambassador and speaks Arabic, English and French. He shall be referred to as SH.

“If your mother’s a garlic and your father’s an onion, how could you smell good?”

As SH explained, this proverb is delivered with a sarcastic, deadpan sense of humor he claims is very common of Egyptian culture. He explains that it refers to how if your father’s one way and your mother’s the same way, a child can never expect to be any different. Thus, it addresses the anxiety of the example set by parents and how it can be difficult for a child to break away from that.

To me, the proverb suggests a certain amount of devotion to tradition in that culture. While in western culture we believe that a person can lift him or herself out of any circumstances, this seems to suggest that a person cannot escape his or her nature of birth if their parent’s nature is so set. As it is used negatively (with two smelly vegetables), one can imagine that it is used in a derisive manner. At the same time, the proverb addresses this in a lighthearted way, as if to encourage the person listening to embrace their identity no matter what it is, even if it does not seem desirable at first. Thus, there does not seem to be the same flexibility of identity as there is in Western culture.

Mexican Folk Remedy- Pulling Back Skin

The informant is a 47-year old accountant working in California, originally from Michoacán, Mexico. She lived a modest life as a young adult, having to take care of her family at a very young age while still finding success in management. She then moved to the United States with her husband to raise their family and now works in accounting. She primarily speaks Spanish with English as a second language.  He shall be referred to as MB.

“Jalar el cuero,” “jalar el piel”- The informant, MB, explained that this is often a “tough love” approach to curing a stomach ache. The child lies on his or her stomach and the parent begins pinching and pulling at the skin on their back repeatedly (but never to a point beyond moderate discomfort). The informal way of referring to this is to “Jalar el cuero” (“Pull the skin,” “pulling the animal back skin”), as “cuero” refers to the meat taken off an animal’s back.

This animal reference (“el cuero”) to the child’s back is largely reflective of MB’s origin living on a ranch in her childhood. Being very practical people, they turned to any basic solutions to medical problems before consulting a doctor. I believe it is a term of endearment, as MB is also aware of other ranch-related nicknames for children. Attributing an animal status to a child can be good-naturedly mocking, but as with animals, they are the objects of close care and nurturing.  The parent thus uses that term to express their compassion for the child in a humorous, not overly sentimental manner.

I believe that the seemingly non-medicinal nature of these remedies is reflective of MB’s Catholic origin. As the town was made up largely of the devoutly religious, they were unlikely to question that which made no scientific sense and instead function more on faith. After all, there doesn’t seem to be any scientific reasoning for this remedy, but MB insists that it worked.

Chinese Eating Habits and Health

The informant is an eighteen-year old student from Los Angeles. He was born in Taipei and received schooling in America. He had been studying in Taipei before moving back to the United States for university. He speaks Chinese and English and will be referred to in this transcript as “GS.”

GS: Back home, we have a lot of like, superstitions, or folk beliefs about what we eat. So the most common one is that uh, you are what you eat. Or in, uh, I guess that’s the English translation, but in Chinese culture we say, uh, you grow, or you give a boost to whatever you eat. So, um, if people have an eye problem, uh, relatives might say oh, you should eat more eyes. To get better eyes. If you have a liver problem they might say eat more livers to get better livers. Yeah, if you have, you know, let’s say, a dysfunctional problem, you might have to eat more, you know, uh, eat…phalluses. To, uh, get better, uh, at that. So like there’s this, this whole consideration of like, you are what you eat. So uh, once again, if you’re short on blood you might eat congulated, coagulated, like, duck blood or something like that. So, yeah. We also have this conception that eating fish makes you smarter. I dunno why, eating fish makes you smarter and then that uh, uh that’s about it, but-

Interviewer: So what do you think is the-

GS: Significance?

Interviewer: Yeah

GS: Okay, so most of the time that you say this, you might say it to somebody who’s sick or something like that, but we don’t’ really believe in that. I know, like, whenever my grandmother says it to me, she’ll go like, ‘oh, you wanna get buff so you eat more chicken,’ and then she’ll just take a big bowl of chicken and like put like five pieces in my plate. And of course her being my grandma I can’t reject that. So I was like, ‘okay, okay, thank you,’ and then she’ll say this, she’ll say in Chinese it’s called ‘tse te bu ge,’ okay so that basically means ‘tse’ is eat and then ‘te’ is chicken and then ‘bu’ is, uh, like boost or, uh, grow or increase and then ;ge’ is also, also means ‘chicken,’ but it also means ‘muscle,’ so she might say something like that or ‘tse gan bu gan.’ Which once again, eat liver, gan is ‘liver,’ um, ‘boost liver,’ ‘increase liver,’ so she’ll say that and then she’ll put a bunch of food in my plate. So, I mean, I think that rather than a true belief it’s more of like, excuse to make people eat more. Which I think that every culture has some form of that.

As GS is able to provide a perspective from both within and outside of Chinese culture, his assessment sufficiently touches on this tradition’s significance. What I find interesting is that the phrase “you are what you eat” has a completely different connotation in the United States: It is often used to describe health, in the sense that if you put healthy food in your body, you will be healthy, and vice versa. Alternatively, it is used as a pro-vegetarian statement (since nobody wants to be considered a cow or pig). This Chinese version instead represents a very Zen idea, that being that energy constantly flows from one to place to another. In that sense, eating eyes boosts eye health because of that transfer of energy.

At the same time, GS makes the observation that while the phrase is meant this way, but is usually used to encourage someone to eat more. I believe this is the case in a family context, as it is common for families to share compassion by sharing food with each other. This is especially the case in Chinese families, where all relatives are very close and there’s a high chance of cross-generational interaction such as between the grandmother and grandson in the case of the boy. The example he gave about eating chicken to promote muscle growth is also indicative of the reinforcement of the classic male image as the strong protector of the family. The grandmother, coming from an older generation, wants to continue the idea of men being strong, so she passes on this idea in the form of an endearing proverb to encourage the grandson to eat more.

Mexican Cooking Good Luck Ritual

The informant is a 47-year old accountant working in California, originally from Michoacán, Mexico. She lived a modest life as a young adult, having to take care of her family at a very young age while still finding success in management. She then moved to the United States with her husband to raise their family and now works in accounting. She primarily speaks Spanish with English as a second language.  He shall be referred to as MB.

MB explained that when she was first growing up, she lived on a ranch with a traditional adobe stove, heated by an open fire fueled by firewood. MB states that every morning, her grandmother would make tortillas from scratch, but the first tortilla would always get tossed into the fire. MB says her grandmother did this to “feed” the fire and keep it happy, to be sure it behaved properly throughout the rest of the cooking process in the morning.

According to MB, this tradition didn’t carry over with her mother or herself because of their transition to a consumer gas stove when they moved from the ranch.

To me, this personification of the stove fire reflects the great practicality of life on the ranch. Unlike modern households, where we are separated from so many of our amenities (we don’t see the fire in our stoves when we cook, and our dishes are cleaned within the confines of a dishwashing machine), those who actually do that work with their hands have a greater respect for such basic things as fire and water. This could explain the personification of a fire as something to be kept content for the sake of the people cooking, almost like a religious offering (considering how devoutly Catholic MB’s grandmother was). While MB and her mother didn’t carry on the tradition and attributed it to a lack of adobe stove, she appeared to have been willing to do so had it not been for the dangerousness of throwing a tortilla into the small fire of a gas stove.