What does it mean to be Chicano?
It means you’re a lean mean taco-eating-machine.
It means posted like a post, kicking old school, chillin’ like a villain, kicking it with the homies, real or imaginary.
It means, drinking a fria while smoking a gallo with one foot in L.A. and the other in Mexico. Salud!!!
It means the eyes on the street are safer than police as you cease to ease, your pelos on back crease, the way porquipines fear and spike their fur-skin like fileros in the night when their livelihoods are in danger, a threat from a stranger, a wager between life and death. Just like the way a lioness protects it’s cub from a white Forest Ranger.
It means you are borderless, sometimes cultureless, clueless and oblivious to both English and Spanish, conscious and unconscious, all at the same time. Ora!
It means you’re a member of the cosmic race, an Olmeca, Chichimeca, Azteca, Huasteca o Purepecha, Mizteco, Zapoteco, Totonaca, y Tlaxcalteca, a slice, a splice, like a slice of a multi-layer chocolate cake.
It means eating an elote con chile on one hand and chicharrónes de harina on the other.
It means chili-cheese fries and wet green chili burritos, a large Horchata, Jamaica or Tamarindo representing the soul, blood and sweat of the people who build this country…