No me llames frijolero pinche gringo puñetero

What is a frijolero? and what is that word doing in a pinche gringo document like this one?

A frijolero (in English, beaner) is a Mexican, Mexican-American, or in fact any brown-skinned person of any nationality who comes from—or whose parents or grandparents came from—south of El Río Bravo del Norte (in English, Rio Grande) whether or not that person utilizes beans as a primary protein source.

For frijolero scholars, I cite lyrics from the song “Frijolero” by the Mexican group Molotov:

No me llames frijolero

pinche gringo puñetero.

Don’t call me beaner,

you fucking gringo pudthumper.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcwaDYc1IWY

(The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or of the Peace Corps.)

If I understand correctly my role as a Peace Corps volunteer, one of my primary goals during my two years of service will be to learn to pass for a frijolero or at least to behave among frijoleros in a manner that will less and less frequently provoke in frijoleros fits of helpless laughter.

And so I freely admit it—I'm no frijolero; not even a beaner wannabee. I’m only borrowing the name for a couple of years. Don’t forget: we call the Rio Grande—the very river which frijoleros would be forbidden to cross—by a Spanish name.

Huckleberry Finn

The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect the positions of Mark Twain or of his estate.

“You don’t know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer…” says Huck in the first sentence of the book that bears his full name. I could say the same thing in regard to my three months in Panamá between January and May of 2010. Those three months in Panamá represent the Tom Sawyer to this Peruvian Huckleberry Finn. A synopsis:

December, 2009. I withdraw my application to the Peace Corps and accept a job with a reforestation project (Azuero Earth Project) on the Azuero Peninsula in Panamá.

January 11, 2010. I begin working for Edwina von Gal, the founder of the Project, as a volunteer and also as a paid employee helping to maintain her private properties.

January 15, 2010. I decide: this is not a marriage made in heaven. Get me the hell out of here.

January 18, 2010, 2PM. I have yet to receive any communication from the Peace Corps in response to having withdrawn my application. I receive an e-mail from my Placement Officer saying, more or less, “Too bad you decided to withdraw your application. We found a spot for you in Small Business Development in Peru.”

January 18, 2010, 2:01PM. Is it too late to say yes?

It wasn’t. Edwina was kind enough to let me work for her until April and the Peace Corps was kind enough to let me work for her until April so I worked for her until April. Then I returned to the U.S. to prepare for Perú, and a “leave date” of January 10, 2010.

And so my Tom Sawyer could easily be said to have ended with the same words as did Tom Sawyer’s Tom Sawyer:

“Most of the characters that perform in this book still live, and are prosperous and happy. Some day it may seem worth while to take up the story of the younger ones again and see what sort of men and women they turned out to be; therefore it will be wisest not to reveal any of that part of their lives at present.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living”

“The unblogged life is not worth living,” or so Socrates might have said had he lived in 2010. That being the case, and against all my instincts and better judgments, I begin to compose this narrative of my 2-year enlistment in the Peace Corps, which, let’s hope, will be worth examining.

I'm going to Perú.

A few choice Perú factoids:

• Three times the size of California.
• Population 29 million.
• Capital, Lima.
• Monetary unit, the nuevo sol. Value, about .35US.
• Climate, highly variable. Temperate or even arid (45–90F) along the coast (see map); cold (0–50F) in the high central mountains (the Andes); tropical (65–95F) in the eastern, Amazonian lowlands.
• Favorite alcoholic beverage: pisco, a clear liquor distilled from grapes. From pisqu, Quechua for little bird.

I’ll be leaving for Perú on June 10.

And by the way: The contents of this website are mine personally and do not reflect any position of the U.S. government or of the Peace Corps. If that doesn’t keep you reading then nothing will.