Ratoncito Perez

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student Worker
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/18/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Information:

Juan Lucero is a student at the University of Southern California studying Mechanical Engineering. He also works at the USC Bookstore in his spare time. He is from a Mexican (Spanish) background, and moved from Chicago, IL to Los Angeles, CA for college.

Folklore:

“My ancestry is Spanish. We made a joke about it in class and we called it the Rat fairy. I believe it’s called ‘Ratoncito Perez’. He would take like your.. he was essentially a tooth fairy, he’d take children’s teeth but if you’re naughty he wouldn’t leave you anything. There’s a longer story but I don’t remember it at this point.”

Q: Who told you about this piece of folklore?

“Spanish high school teacher.”

Q: Did you personally believe in the ‘Rat fairy’

“No. I learned about the Rat fairy when I was 18 years old, so I was a little too old to believe in it because I mean I had a job.”

Analysis:

The informant couldn’t provide the entire story because he had forgotten large chunks of it, so I did some of my own research to find out where this piece of folklore came from and what the actual story entails. The story first came to fruition after Luis Coloma was asked to make a story for Alfonso XIII. Alfonso had just lost his tooth, so Coloma took inspiration from that.The actual story involves the mouse that lived in Madrid in a box of cookies. He would frequently run away from his house and into bedrooms belonging to kids who lost their teeth.

Grandmother’s Spanish Rice

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student Worker
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/18/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Information:

Juan Lucero is a student at the University of Southern California studying Mechanical Engineering. He also works at the USC Bookstore in his spare time. He is from a Mexican (Spanish) background, and moved from Chicago, IL to Los Angeles, CA for college.

Recipe:

“Two cups of rice. Um, two teaspoons of tomato puree or a can of tomato puree. Two diced cloves of garlic. Uh two teaspoons of vegetable oil. Mix it all together and add five cups of water. Let it simmer for 50 minutes.”

Q: Who taught you this recipe?

“My mom. My grandmother taught my mom and my mom taught me.”

Q: When do you usually make it?

“Every other day… Maybe every other week.”

Analysis:

Though this recipe has a long history in his family, he didn’t want to call it a “family recipe” because he wasn’t sure if this recipe was specific to his family. When I look up this recipe of Spanish rice, it didn’t really resemble the other recipes completely. In other versions of this recipe, onions, as well as chicken stock/broth and whole tomatoes (not canned puree) were very common. Though the informant might not think this recipe is a “family” specific recipe, it is likely that this version of rice was modified uniquely by his family.

 

 

New Year Grapes

Nationality: American
Age: 20
Occupation: Student Worker
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/18/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Information:

Juan Lucero is a student at the University of Southern California studying Mechanical Engineering. He also works at the USC Bookstore in his spare time. He is from a Mexican (Spanish) background, and moved from Chicago, IL to Los Angeles, CA for college.

Tradition:

“We eat grapes on New Years Eve. Each grape represents a wish for the New Year.”

Q: When do you eat these grapes?

“10 minutes before midnight. My mom tried to make us eat them as the clock was counting down but we were like 8 or 9 so we didn’t want to do that.”

Q: What’s a normal wish that you yourself would make?

“Whatever game I was obsessed with at the time, whatever one I wanted.”

Q: Do you know of anyone else who celebrates this tradition? Is it common?

“I know some people, but I don’t know if it’s common”

 Analysis:

It surprised me that the informant thought this practice was uncommon, as this tradition is something that I am personally familiar with. I think this might be because we both have Spanish backgrounds, and because further research shows that this tradition is Spanish in origin. The informant’s way of practicing this tradition differed from the original practice, as well as my own. In Spanish tradition, the twelve grapes represent the twelve months of the year. Every grape eaten represents good luck for a single month of the year. In the informant’s case, they symbolized wishes for the New Year.

Three Kings Day

Nationality: American
Age: 21
Occupation: Student Worker
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/18/17
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Informant Information:

Juan Lucero is a student at the University of Southern California studying Mechanical Engineering. He also works at the USC Bookstore in his spare time. He is from a Mexican (Spanish) background, and moved from Chicago, IL to Los Angeles, CA for college.

Tradition:

“Every year after Christmas we put a little toy statue of one of the three wise men into a cake. As we eat it for the Day of the Three Kings. In Spanish we call them kings but in English it’s wise men. We cut up the cake and whoever gets the piece with the king in it, they have to make a bunch of tamales for Easter”

Q: Is this celebration normal in your culture?

“I think so yeah. I’ve seen other people do it”

Q: Does your family have a personal twist on the tradition?

“We don’t make the cake we buy the cake. Instead of tamales for Easter, we make and eat them the next weekend”

Analysis:

The informant’s celebration of the Day of the Three Kings is very standard. The cake as well as the figure hidden inside the cake remains true to the traditional celebration. The one thing the seems to differ is what happens after the figure is found. In the informant’s version, whoever finds the figure is required to make tamales. They also make the tamales the next weekend as opposed to Easter. In traditional celebrations, whoever finds the figure is required to purchase the next cake for the next year, not for Easter.

Freshman Traditions

Nationality: Mexican American
Age: 41
Occupation: Principle
Residence: Sante Fe Springs, CA
Performance Date: April 1, 2017
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

St. Mary was an all girl’s school and Cantwell that was an all boys school at the time, now they’re mixed, umm… but they made the freshman at Cantwell come and sell us rolls of toilet paper for a quarter and they were like “You wanna buy some toilet paper”(IN A DEEP VOICE) They were all like embarrassed about it and I was like “NO!”

My informant experienced this high school tradition while she was an eighth grader at school and freshmen boys were forced to sell toilet paper to the younger students. This came a tradition and sort of an initiation for the freshmen boys. I enjoyed this piece of folklore because it reminded me of the freshmen traditions at my own high school. The seniors would make the freshmen pay them money in exchange for a ticket to get in to the pool on the roof of the gym, however this pool did not exist. My informant grew up around the Montebello, California area where this piece of folklore took place.