Hispanic Fanatic

I was well into young adulthood before I realized that I had once been an official at-risk kid.

Bear in mind that my childhood – except for a disastrous turn on the monkey bars when I was five – wasn’t all that risky. But by virtue of being a Latino kid in a lower-class neighborhood (see my earlier post on this), I apparently was thisclose to indulging in a life of crime, drugs, and promiscuous sex. It all sounds very boyz in the barrio, but mostly, my childhood and pre-adolescence was about “Galaga” and “Friday Night Videos.”

The temptation to join a gang was minimal for me. I assume this is because the few gang members I knew were all idiots. They never said anything funny or clever. They just slouched around in perpetual poses. They were, to be blunt, pretty fucking boring.

It didn’t take great moral courage to avoid hanging out with these dullards. Mostly, it just took a better offer, which I found with the geeks and oddballs whose company I preferred.

If the perpetual idiocy of the gang members wasn’t enough to keep me away, there was always the official initiation. Bear in mind that I never actually witnessed one, so this may all be urban myth. But more than one vato told me that the induction to the gang was as follows:

Established gang members surrounded the inductee and pummeled him for minutes on end. If the guy tried to defend himself, he was showing disloyalty. If he cried out, he was a pussy. Either way, they beat him harder, and he wasn’t allowed in the gang. If he could take a throttling, however, he was one of them, and he enjoyed all the benefits of membership, which I guess included a meager cut of the drug money and a better position on the corner where they hung out.

Even as a kid, I couldn’t understand why I would let people beat me up, especially if they were supposed to be my friends. I might get my ass kicked (would probably get my ass kicked, in fact), but I wasn’t going to just take it. Far from appearing tough, I thought these guys were cowards.

My attitude toward such compliance has persevered across time and cultures. It’s one of the many reasons I never joined a frat in college. All the hazing those rich kids in Greek-lettered sweatshirts performed on each other may have been less violent (or not), and it was certainly more socially acceptable. But it’s still made up of guys willing to be humiliated just to be accepted by older, stronger alpha males. I always found that sad.

After all, what’s the difference between taking a punch in the gut from the top gangbanger or choking on warm beer because the senior brother forced a bong down your throat? The chief difference seems to be that one guy’s parents paid tuition for the privilege.

Of course, I’m not much of a joiner. So when I make my inevitable millions and retire to a life of leisure (oh, it’s coming; just you wait), I won’t be applying to any country clubs. I won’t be clamoring to be let onto exclusive golf courses or into private dining rooms.

Mostly, that’s because the whole class-apart thing seems, well, pretty fucking boring. But it’s also because those kinds of places exist solely to keep other people out. The hazing, in this case, is economic, but otherwise the members might as well be in a street gang.

At my day job, we recently had a brainstorming session. We had to come up with ideas for an industrial video to illustrate abstract psychological concepts, which is primarily what I write about for my company. It’s a niche living.

The videos are set in white-collar environments, and we try to make them as diverse as possible. This is why each vignette is so perfectly balanced in regards to gender, race, and ethnicity that viewers are forced to marvel at this workplace nirvana of cultural harmony.

Still, it has led to some borderline deceitful behavior. For example, our last Hispanic character was played by a very dark Jewish man. We simply couldn’t find a local Latino thespian.

In any case, we were discussing casting for the latest video when the Bitca informed us that we were running short on older, white male actors. It seems that we’ve used them all in previous videos.

I found this shocking. How can you run out of old white guys? Is there a shortage that I haven’t been informed of? Are they endangered within the general population?

We discussed having an open casting call, and this caused me to picture hordes of white men in business suits, hanging around parking lots, all of them just waiting for that truck to drive up and offer them acting gigs for the day. The men would jostle each other for the opportunity to be trabajadores, and they would climb into the back of the truck, where someone would hand them fake IDs and tell them the job was cash only, under the table. And then they would sweat under the hot lights of the set, avoiding the suspicious glares of the director and sound technicians and boom operators. Then they would do it all the next day.

Ultimately, it’s true: these guys are just taking the acting jobs that no one else will take.

One of my recent pieces (“Muy Fabuloso”) also appeared on the Huffington Post last week. The post was about homophobia in Latino culture. On the Huffington site, I received numerous comments.

Many were supportive. Several were insightful and thought-provoking. Others were diatribes. But as usual, what I focused on were the bitchy ones.

I heard that I was fanning the flames to turn this into a racial issue. I was accused of saying all Hispanics were Catholic and all Catholics were homophobes (could someone Venn diagram this for me?). I found out that I was “scapegoating Latinos” and “pitting minority groups against one another.” I discovered that I was spreading “anti-religious heterophobia,” which I’m pretty sure is a brand-new term (and concept). Finally, I learned that I simply “don’t understand the dynamics” of California, which is hilarious considering that I lived in the heart of Los Angeles for half a decade.

But my point wasn’t about California. It wasn’t about Catholic dogma. It wasn’t about Hispanics and blacks and gays all fighting it out, like we’re fireflies shook up in a jar. It wasn’t even about Proposition 8.

It was about homophobia in Hispanic culture.

As I said in my response on the Huffington Post, Hispanic culture has a powerful one-two punch in traditional machismo and religious upbringing that makes homophobia tough to eradicate.

I stand by that.

Again, using Proposition 8 as a rough gauge, we see that more Latinos supported rescinding gay rights than did the general population (53% versus 52%) The fact that it was close diminishes in comfort when one sees that an actual minority of white and Asian voters (49% of each) supported the proposition, meaning that only blacks were more likely to vote yes on this.

Add to this the fact that Hispanics voted overwhelmingly for Obama (Asian voters were less enthusiastic, and whites were more likely to pick McCain), and we see that it is not a powerful strain of social conservatism that drove the vote. Hispanics are more likely to agree with Democratic or even liberal ideas. So clearly, there is something in the culture specifically about gays that many Latinos don’t like.

The glimmer of hope, as some commentators pointed out, is that younger Hispanics are rejecting the gay-bashing of their elders. As such, they mirror the general population, providing further proof that assimilation is taking place, despite what so many conservatives insist (but that’s another topic).

Still, the feedback has prompted me to emphasize once more what I’m trying to say with this blog. My goal has been to praise and celebrate a culture that is largely ignored (except during election season) by mainstream America. However, my additional goal is to point out the flaws in this culture in the hopes that they will be rectified.

I may not always be successful, but I will continue to strive for that balance between lifting up and tearing down.

First, let me thank Raul Ramos y Sanchez for his thought-provoking comment on my previous post.

Second, let me give you a warning. If you should ever walk down the street of a major American city with my wife, you should not (by her own admission) listen to her she asks the innocuous question, “What’s over there?” I speak from experience. Her curiosity about hidden doors and blinking marquees has mistakenly led us into shady dives from coast to coast (imagine my surprise at walking into an S&M bar in Hollywood).

One evening, “what’s over there” prompted us to enter a covert LA nightclub, where the doorman smiled and waived the cover charge. I had assumed he did so because it was Ladies Night. But when we walked in, I saw that he had not let us in for free because of my wife. It was because of me. It was a Latino gay bar, and the doorman assumed that I was a non-straight who had brought along my hipster female friend. To make things more interesting, a talent show for drag queens was just starting. What could I do but order a beer and watch the performances? My wife and I agreed that the Christina Aguilera was pretty close to the real thing.

I was not surprised that Hispanic gay men might establish a safe house off the beaten path. Loathing of gays shows hydra-headed persistence within Latino culture. We are the society, after all, that defined the word “macho.” The old-school standards for strong Hispanic males include getting into brawls, avoiding the kitchen, and womanizing at will. They do not include an affinity for techno music and an interest in Jennifer Lopez’s wardrobe.

As such, possibly the worst insult that one can lob at a Latino male is the dreaded M-word. To call someone a “maricon” is to take the nearest English equivalent (“faggot”), triple its intensity, add several layers of hatred and disgust, and square the result. In my generation at least, nobody jokes about this word or uses it lightly.

In contrast, American gay activists have adopted the words “queer” and “dyke” in an attempt to rob them of their degrading power, similar to the way in which many African Americans throw around the fabled N-word. It’s a subject of fierce debate whether these tactics work or are self-sabotaging, but in either case, I’m pretty sure nobody in Latin America is even trying that with “maricon.” In fact, being gay in Latin America ranges from affront to God (we’re talking about heavily Catholic countries) to active death warrant in the small villages of Central and South America.

I was talking with the Bitca about the level of homophobia in Hispanic culture. She said, “But you’re not homophobic” and added that this is one of my very few redeeming qualities. Then she said, “So I guess sometimes you’re an individual and not just a stereotype after all.” I thanked her for her high praise.

But she got me thinking.

The passage of Proposition 8 in California, which bans gay marriage, received ample support from Obama backers. Much of the coverage of this oxymoronic outcome has focused on the high percentage of black people who shouted, “free at last” when they voted for president and then muttered, “damn the homosexuals” as they revoked a basic civil right.

But California has a high number of Latinos (ask any right-wing demagogue for verification of this fact), and Obama was hugely popular with them (see my previous two posts on this). It is indeed a sad fact that a great many Latinos mimicked their African American brethren on Election Day.

To be specific, 53 percent of California Hispanics voted for the proposition. While this is not an overwhelming majority, it still tops the percentage of overall voters who approved of the ban (52 percent). It is also contradictory to their supposed enthusiasm for a liberal president.

Is it possible that my old boogeyman, the Catholic Church, is somewhat responsible for the invincible strain of homophobia in Latino culture? To the surprise of absolutely no one, the answer is yes. Hey, is the Pope homophobic… I mean, Catholic? Yes, that’s what I meant.

Statistics from Hispanic Business show that 64 percent of Latino Catholics voted for the proposition. Just 10 percent of non-religious Hispanics voted the same way.

So it’s not just burly macho hombres who hate gays that are tipping the vote. It’s quiet, polite Latina grandmothers who are willing to overlook Obama’s pro-choice tendencies, but can’t bring themselves to acknowledge that gay people have rights. Let’s be clear: When pundits talk about social conservatism among the otherwise Democratic-friendly Latino population, this is what they’re talking about.

However, despite the fact that homophobia is strong in Hispanic culture, Latino gays still find ways to burst out from underground. These manifestations range from the intellectualism of the great Cuban writer Reinaldo Arenas to the pop-culture pabulum of Hank Azaria dancing around in “The Birdcage.” And what would a gay-pride parade be without at least one Carmen Miranda impersonator?

It’s a broad range of expression. Perhaps it’s hopeful, or maybe it’s pathetic. I can’t tell you, because I’m just a guy who walks obliviously into gay bars. 

In a previous post, I mentioned that my grandmother makes the best pupusas in the history of Western civilization. It is best not to argue this point with me.

The pupusa, for those of you who don’t know, is more or less a tortilla stuffed with meat, cheese, and/or beans that is then fried. There are numerous variations. I’ve heard it compared to the meat pies of Great Britain, but I reject this characterization on the grounds that English food sucks.

In El Salvador, November 13 is National Pupusa Day, which gives you an idea of how seriously this dish is taken in that culture. It also shows how people who don’t celebrate Thanksgiving still want something to fill that calendar void before Christmas.

Years ago, one of my friends was so taken with my grandmother’s pupusas that he attempted to make them himself. He is a male who cooks, which would incense my grandmother (see my previous post for her opinions on guys in the kitchen), and the fact that he is white gives him a theoretical disadvantage in making a Salvadoran dish. But he is a Yale graduate and a pretty quick study, so I believed he had as good a chance as anybody at mastering exotic cuisines. In addition, he has spent so much time with my family that my mother refers to him as her other son, and I must admit that his Spanish is possibly better than mine. So he’s pretty much an honorary Hispanic.

So my friend strapped on an apron, which must have been comical because he’s a towering man who played college football, and set to work slapping patties and cooking chicharrones and scooping queso. Everything seemed to be going well, right up until the moment the first charred pupusa set off the smoke alarm. Alas, things did not improve after that, and the resultant mess of crumbly dough and gooey innards could hardly be called authentic pupusas.

I give my friend credit for expanding his cultural horizons. But in the end, this highly educated, muscle-bound man had to admit that a 90-pound octogenarian had him beat.

If you are bold enough to think you can outcook my grandmother, by all means, give it a try. Here is a recipe for pupusas. If you really want to do it right, sprinkle them with some curtido. If, as I suspect, you fail miserably at this culinary endeavor, head to a Salvadoran restaurant, which are in every major city. Order a pile of pupusas, and tell them the Fanatic sent you.

Among my numerous flaws is the fact that I’m not very charitable. Yes, I give money to worthy causes and all that, but I’m stingy with my time. My wife does volunteer work, which is one of the eight thousand things that I admire about her. Still, I’ve never found the energy to join her on her endeavors or to paint a dilapidated inner-city house or to devote a holiday to working in a soup kitchen or to do something else community-driven and altruistic.

My reluctance may be due to laziness or cynicism. Or it could be that my youthful stint doing volunteer work in the barrio of my hometown was less than satisfying.

I was a teenager, and I accompanied my mother on her rounds giving food to poor people. Again, I went not because I was bursting with the milk and honey of human compassion, but because my mom told me to. She needed someone to lift the heavy bags of donated foodstuffs, and I was informed that I was this person. So we drove around town, and I lugged clunking sacks up flights of stairs, entering each family’s hovel with the slump-shouldered, sullen indifference of the American teenager.

The families were overwhelmingly Hispanic, most of them recent immigrants who were still struggling with English. The land of opportunity was a lot harsher than many of them thought it would be, and they were, without exception, grateful for our help.

In fact, they were excessively grateful. I was hugged numerous times, and more than once a weary-looking Latina mother would burst into tears or repeat, “Gracias” over and over again.

This was not a moving experience for me. On the contrary, I got embarrassed. I didn’t like people falling over themselves praising me, especially when all I had done was carry some groceries. Plus, none of this charity work was my idea and all of it was against my will.

But still they went on in rapid Spanish, until my mother interrupted them to hand over the bill. You see, the food was free – but it still cost something. The price for being fed was a lecture.

The lecturer was my mother, and the topic was birth control.

My mother and I had noticed that most of the households were overrun with shrieking children. The Latino obsession with family (which I have addressed in these posts more than once) was in full flower. This was one of its negative outcomes.

So my mother tried to explain to these destitute women that they didn’t have to keep cranking out babies. She pointed out the obvious – more children meant more mouths to feed – and she tried to convince them that in America, they had freedom and choice and other abstractions that didn’t exist in their home countries.

But the lectures were not popular with the receipients. Many of the immigrant mothers were mystified about basic birth control, as if my mother were trying to convince them to buy a magic talking chimpanzee. It was just that exotic.

Those who knew about condoms and pills and IUDs usually dismissed them out of hand. It was against God, they argued, by which they really meant it was against the Catholic Church’s teachings. This showed me at a young age, as if I needed any further proof, that religion can do more harm than good and that people will abdicate responsibility for their own personal disasters under the guise of being holy. It also convinced me that Hispanics will never improve their quality of life as long as they remain fanatically devoted to the pope (see my earlier post on this).

Other excuses popped up. Some women implied that it was their culture’s way to have lots of children, oblivious to the fact that they were in America now. At least one woman said that her husband refused to wear a condom because it wasn’t manly. This was a special moment when my mother translated this particular item for me (and not awkward in the least!).

In any case, many of the immigrants had come to expect my mother’s sermon. They had to choose between having their belief system questioned or receiving those enormous rectangular cubes of cheese that exist solely for poor people’s consumption. It was their Sophie’s Choice.

So they listened, and then they said, “Gracias,” and then we left to repeat the whole futile process again.

And that’s why I don’t volunteer anymore. Or maybe I’m just lazy.

As I’ve mentioned before, my family emigrated from El Salvador. But I have never set foot in that country.

The nearest I have come to this familial motherland was when I was fourteen, and my mother took me to Nicaragua. As part of the trip, we climbed to the edge of a volcano (yes, my mom took me cool places when I was a child). On the climb down, my mother pulled me aside and pointed to some verdant mountains in the distance.

“That is El Salvador,” she said.

This glimpse is the extent of my first-hand experience with my family’s birthplace.

A natural question is, why did my mother and I stop at Nicaragua? Why didn’t we keep going into El Salvador?

The answer is simple: We didn’t want to die.

At the time, (circa 1985), my mother was on a Salvadoran government hit list. If she exited a plane there, she would be shot. Anyone who thinks I’m exaggerating doesn’t realize how ruthless and bloodthirsty the junta running El Salvador was at that time. My mother was a rabble-rouser in the United States, and she spoke out against the Salvadoran government (see my previous post on this). This got her noticed in her homeland. They certainly weren’t going to send some international assassination squad after her in the Midwest (it’s not a Bruckheimer movie for damn sakes), but my mother found out through her friends in El Salvador that she was on the small list of Americans who would be quickly picked up if she ever returned. Two of her siblings had already been murdered (see my previous post on this as well), so this was no joke.

For this excellent logistical reason, we were not going to El Salvador any time soon. The war has since ended, of course, and my mother has returned a few times. But I haven’t yet made the trip.

Time, money, and the myriad responsibilities of adulthood have prevented me from packing a suitcase and yelling, “Next stop, the tiny village of San Vicente.”  In fact, although I’ve lived in several cities and seen more of America than most people have, my international jaunts are limited. Besides that journey to Nicaragua, I’ve been to Mexico (which will be the subject of a future post) and traveled about nine feet into Canada once. I finally made it to Europe a few years ago, where my wife and I hit London and Paris. And that’s it.

But with all the dream destinations in the world that I have yet to conquer – drinking wine in Italy, diving off the coast of Australia, trekking to the North Pole – why am I hung up on visiting a tiny country best known for warfare and which my family abandoned a generation ago?  

After all, few people go to El Salvador unless they have family there. I suppose there are those mega-travelers who hit every nation no matter how small or impoverished. But aside from that, people generally don’t get any closer to the place than the rainforests of Costa Rica or the beaches of Belize.

However, for those of us who are first-generation, there is always the pull of a land that we have never seen, the place where our parents come from. Their memories and stories have not been decayed by time, and we feel irrational nostalgia for a place barely removed from us. We ponder how we would have turned out if we were born and raised there (I have since found out that this is metaphysically impossible… but that’s another post or maybe even a different blog altogether).

This yearning for a lost homeland is not shared by most Americans. For example, my wife is descended from German immigrants who came over so long ago that she has no idea when they arrived or what their names were. Her desire to visit Berlin is roughly equal to her interest in roadtripping to Delaware. In contrast, one of my best friends is first-generation Serbian, and his life was incomplete until he walked through Sarajevo.

Similarly, I want to see the place where my mother and aunt grew up, and the nation where several of my cousins were born, and the focal point of so much joy and misery in the history of my family.

And of course, I have more incentive to see El Salvador ever since Cousin #8 moved back there (this will be the subject of a future post).

So I hope to someday go beyond the fleeting image of that landscape I viewed from a distant vantage point when I was a teenager. For all I know, it might be decades from now, when I’m an old man doing some kind of crazy circle-of-life final journey. But I will stand on top of that lush mountain that I saw long ago and say, “Damn, I finally made it.”

In Europe during the Middle Ages, lepers and vagrants were often assumed to have nefarious supernatural powers. The thinking was that too much exposure to the riff-raff would cause your hands to fall off, or your baby to die, or your wife to go mad. And if the local burgermeister couldn’t get it up with his mistress-wench, it must have been because that withered crone who begs outside his door had placed a hex upon him.

The reason for this odd logic, according to some historians, is that as cities grew, a permanent underclass developed that freaked out the respectable people. The upper classes feared these cretins who dressed in rags, and to deal with this dread of the unknown (or to assuage their guilt for not helping those less fortunate than themselves), they claimed that the wretches only appeared weak. So the myth grew that some manic with no teeth and gangerous limbs could take you out if you weren’t careful.

We’re much more civilized today, of course, and we don’t blame the poor for our calamities – well, except for all those homeless guys who are making downtown unsafe… and the welfare recipients who continue to sponge the system… and those illegal immigrants who are stealing our livelihoods… and…

Wait a minute.

Yes, we do indeed go after those who can’t possibly compete with the middle and upper classes. If we’re fortunate enough to achieve a certain level of comfort, but that final rung on the economic ladder is too slippery to grasp, we blame our distress on the equivalent of Middle Age witches.

This blaming necessitates the really nifty trick or assessing that someone has no power, and therefore won’t fight back, and then ascribing enormous power to them. The tactic is especially common in prosperous societies, where people have more possessions and, therefore, have more to lose.

A crazy homeless guy ranting about God reminds us of our potential to bottom out more than it would in say, Sierra Leone, where poverty is a widespread fact of life.

Similarly (and most importantly from this blog’s perspective) a team of illegal immigrants clambering over the neighbor’s roof, laboring mightily in the summer sun, invokes a fear in middle-class Americans that these hard-working strangers are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead – and that means they’re coming for our nice cars and fancy televisions and 80GB ipods and crème brûlée torches (by the way, this last item is real and exists solely for people who have way too much disposable income).

It’s been pointed out that immigrants are often the boogeyman for societal problems. Just look at Martin Scorsese’s “Gangs of New York” to see how despised the Irish were.

So now it’s the Latino’s turn to be scorned and feared.

Naturally, there are clear objections to the idea that illegal immigrants are modern-day scapegoats. Foremost among them is that undocumented workers are not cost-free to the economy, nor are they incapable of criminal behavior. In other words, negative reactions to illegal immigrants are not solely based upon made-up superstitions.

However, the depths of hatred for these individuals, and the vast influence ascribed to them, boggles the mind. Any sensible discussion of immigration reform is doomed once it’s declared that a guy making sub-minimum wage who lives in constant fear is really the secret strongman.

So do we go on blaming the powerless?

Personally, I’m going to try to take more responsibility for my issues – unless of course I can turn this around and blame someone much, much more powerful than me, like the government or Big Oil or the Bavarian Illuminati.

OK, now I’m on to something.

Football season began this weekend, and like millions of other people, I will spend far too much time over the next few months getting emotionally attached to meaningless events beyond my control. My mood on certain Sundays will depend on whether or not an enormous, steroid-enhanced millionaire in a bulky uniform can catch a weirdly shaped spinning object.

There are, of course, few Hispanics who play professional football. Genetically, we tend not to be that big, which is a serious disadvantage in a game based on brute force. Once you get past Tony Gonzalez of the Kansas City Chiefs and a few diminutive place-kickers scattered around the league, the NFL isn’t exactly awash in Latinos. Still, we will soon have at least one honorary Hispanic take the field.

Chad Johnson, a receiver for the Cincinnati Bengals, has legally changed his name to Chad Ocho Cinco. For those of you who passed freshman Spanish, you know that “ocho cinco” means “eight five.” It’s a reference to Johnson’s jersey number (eighty-five), although strictly speaking, he should have changed his name to Ochenta y Cinco.

He first slapped “ocho cinco” on the back of his jersey in 2006, when the NFL celebrated Hispanic Heritage Month (which, by the way, is in September). He wore it for pregame warm-ups, but had to remove the moniker for the game because the NFL pointed out that it wasn’t his real name. Well, it is now, and his jersey will indicate as much while we hear the pleasing baritone of sportscasters intone, “and the pass is complete to Ocho Cinco.”

As someone who also changed his last name to reflect Hispanic heritage, I can understand Johnson’s… I mean Ocho Cinco’s decision. Why not choose a name that better reflects your personality, and that has the added benefit of paying tribute to an oft-marginalized culture? And really, how attached could the guy be to the name “Johnson” anyway?

There are a couple of differences between me and Mr. Ocho Cinco, however. First, I’m truly Hispanic, and he’s not. Actually, I don’t have to enumerate any other points besides that one. But I will add that I chose my mother’s maiden name as my new surname, bypassing the megalomania inherent in picking a random number that celebrates just me and my greatness.

In any case, Ocho Cinco joins the very short list of celebrities who have changed their names to something Hispanic or, at the very least, expressed a desire to be Latino. It’s further proof that our hipness level is slowly, incrementally rising.

I am not a Bengals fan, but I hope Ocho Cinco does well this year. After all, if he sucks, we’ll hear, “He was pretty good, until he decided to get all Hispanic on us.”

I’ve been on this kick lately about the importance of children in Hispanic culture. I’ll complete my trilogy of rants on this subject (for now) by pointing out that while the overall national rate of teen pregnancy has declined, it has actually increased among adolescent Latinas.

One supposed reason for this is the tremendous grip that the concept of family has upon Hispanic culture. Young Latinas are apparently so baby-crazy that they just can’t wait for something as trivial as, say, a high school graduation before they get to reproducing.

Along those lines, I’ve heard the excuse that Latinas skip birth control because they believe it implies children are not important or that taking the pill means that they’ll never become mothers.

“Girls hear that they shouldn’t have kids, and they interpret it as a rejection of their goal to be a parent,” some earnest sociologist proclaims.

This rationale presupposes that a teenage Latina cannot comprehend the difference between such basic concepts as “now” and “later.” I would argue, however, that nobody is that stupid.

So what are the real reasons for the overactive ovaries of Hispanic teens? I certainly can’t answer that definitively.

I have some educated guesses however. I would argue that the importance of family and children is indeed a factor (as seen in my previous post). But there’s more to it.

Higher rates of poverty, which still afflict the Hispanic community more than other groups, are often correlated with teen pregnancies.

Old-world thinking from immigrant parents also plays a part. If mom and dad had their first kid at sixteen and cranked out twelve babies, then waiting until eighteen seems positively nun-like. The subtle, and occasionally overt message of many immigrant parents is that there is nothing wrong if little Maria gets knocked up.

And let’s not forget the influence of the Catholic Church, with its strong hold on Latino culture. Religious dogma can easily convince some pent-up adolescent that condoms are Satan’s Isotoners.

All of these reasons are not as blame-free or reassuring as the lame excuse that teen Latinas are simply confused about when to have babies. These reasons are part of the culture, and until they are changed or at least addressed, Hispanic girls will continue to answer to “mami” far too often.