Cholo
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- Cholo is an alternate name for the Emberá languages. For the 1986 video game, see Cholo (computer game).
Cholo is an English- and Spanish-language word which, broadly, is applied to persons of mixed Amerindian and Spanish ancestry. However, its precise usage has varied widely in different times and places. It is used in the masculine and neuter; the feminine form in Spanish (and sometimes in English) is chola.
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[edit] Origin and history
The term is used in a book, Los comentarios reales del Inca Garcilazo de la Vega (a writer from Peru, published in 1609 and 1616). He writes (in Spanish) "Cholo is a word from the Windward Islands; it means dog, not of the purebred variety . . . . the Spaniards use it for insult and vituperation."
In Colonial Mexico, the terms cholo and coyote co-existed, indicating mixed Spanish and Amerindian ancestry, or a poor background, or both.
Cholo as an English-language term dates at least to the early 1900s. Isela Alexsandra Garcia of the University of California at Berkeley writes that the term can be traced to Mexico, where in the early part of the last century it referred to "culturally marginal" mestizos, or people of mixed Spanish and native American origin.<ref>Garcia, Isela Alexsandra. Yxta Maya Murray’s Locas: A Failed Vision of Latina Cholas.</ref> She cites James Diego Vigil’s Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California as a source.<ref>Vigil, James Diego. Barrio Gangs: Street Life and Identity in Southern California. University of Texas Press, 1988. (ISBN 0-292-71119-0)</ref>
An article in the Los Angeles Express of April 2, 1907, headlined "Cleaning Up the Filthy Cholo Courts Has Begun in Earnest," uses the terms cholos and Mexicans interchangeably.<ref>Author unknown. "Cleaning Up the Filthy Cholo Courts Has Begun in Earnest", Los Angeles Express, April 2, 1907.</ref> The term cholo courts was defined in The Journal of San Diego History as "sometimes little more than instant slums as shanties were strewn almost randomly around city lots in order to create cheap horizontal tenements."<ref>Curtis, James R. and Ford, Larry. "Bungalow Courts in San Diego: Monitoring a Sense of Place". The Journal of San Diego History. Spring 1988, Volume 34, Number 2.</ref> The term in these articles indicates that it means simply poor Mexicans.
The term has two somewhat different meanings, one in the United States, Canada and Mexico and another in the rest of the Americas.
In modern times, unattested references on the Internet, often copied word for word from one site to another, have stated essentially as follows:
[edit] Mexico and north
In Mexico and north, Cholo is a term implying a typically Mexican mestizo gangster. A cholo is stereotypically depicted as wearing baggy chinos (khaki pants) or khaki shorts with white knee-high socks, so-called wifebeater sleeveless t-shirts, flannel shirts buttoned all the way to the top or unbuttoned except for the top button, and a shaved head or slicked-back hair. Popular "cholo" brands include Dickies and Ben Davis. This same designation may also be associated with black ink tattoos, commonly involving gang calligraphy, or family names and art. A cholo might also stereotypically own a lowrider, prefer music like Zapp and Roger's "More Bounce To The Ounce" and "Doo Wa Ditty." He might also employ the Chicano term of ese in a way to call someone dude, like "What's up, ese?" or "¡Órale, ese!". This word in Spanish means that one or that guy), but it also is the letter S, which some have said stands for Sureño, a member of a certain street gang. Another term with essentially the same meaning is Vato, which can be used in the same way.
It is this particular image that Cheech Marin drew on in the Cheech and Chong films. There is also a reference to "the cholo" in Assault on Precinct 13. In the 2004 film Napoleon Dynamite, Nano and Arturo De Silva play characters simply referred to as "Cholo No. 1" and "Cholo No. 2". The usage was reportedly more prevalent in the 1970s and 1980s than today, though the usage was still fairly widespread in some areas in the 1990s.
In South Texas, cholos are sometimes referred to as chongers.
In the English-speaking world of the United States, the word is most primarily and heavily used in Caló slang, but it in turn has infiltrated into mainstream American English use. Most specifically, the term "cholo" when used in American English is likely to be done so by people associated with American youth movements such as the Chicano/Mexican-American/white & black lowrider subcultures, African-American gangsters of the Western United States, or the hip hop scene in general.
[edit] South of Mexico
Under the Caste System of colonial Latin America, the term Cholo originally applied to the children resulting from the union of a Mestizo and an Amerindian; that is, someone of three quarters Amerindian and one quarter Spanish ancestry. More precisely, the term was specific to the Viceroyalty of Peru and neighbouring Andean regions of South America. In El Salvador, the word cholo means big, large (grande).
During the colonial era a myriad of other terms (mestizo, castizo, chamizo, etc.) were in use to denote other individuals of European/Amerindian ancestry in ratios smaller or greater of Spanish-to-Amerindian ancestry. The term is most commonly associated with Peru and Bolivia.
[edit] Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador
In modern-day Peru and Bolivia, cholo is still a widely used term which refers to people with noticeably greater amounts of Amerindian than European ancestry. Among Peruvians, the term mestizo (which in other Latin American countries is usually used for those of relatively equal amounts of Spanish to Amerindian ancestry) has also become increasingly common.
In recent years, the meaning of cholo has further shifted to include a vast number of people of exclusively Native American ancestry. In this latter context, the term often implies indigenous people who have attained a higher social status by moving from the rural or interior regions of the country to the urban areas and cities, have taken up western (Hispanic/mestizo) cultural practices, are bilingual (fluent in both Spanish and an Amerindian language) but deny any knowledge of a native language, downplay their native descendance and identify solely with their newly adopted cultural norms. [citation needed] In that latter context, the usage is somewhat pejorative.
During his winning presidential campaign, the former president of Peru, Alejandro Toledo, successfully reached out to the largest segment of the Peruvian population — 45 percent of which is composed of indigenous Peruvians in addition to the cholos — by proclaiming his indigenous heritage and identifying himself as a Cholo. Spanish-language media played on this title, and referred to him as El Cholo throughout the campaign and in the initial stages of his presidency.
In Ecuador, "Cholo" is also used to denote a greater affinity for Amerindian than Spanish heritage for mixed-race people. Unlike the way in which the term is used in other countries, the affinity is cultural, not one based on a person's looks.
Cholos in Ecuador reside typically in communities whose members are actually mestizos whose ancestry is both Spanish and Amerindian — often greater Spanish than Amerindian. Yet apart from their apparent Spanish descent and monolingualism in Spanish, their garb, culture and customs, their traditional occupations and many times their surnames are more typical of highland Quichua Amerindians than of Spaniards. This circumstance is in contrast to the evolution of mestizo identity and life throughout the rest of Latin America, where the emphasis has always been placed solely on the Spanish side. [citations needed]
A widely known example of the former are the "Cholas Cuencanas", from the colonial city of Cuenca in the southern region of that country.
When not specifically referring to the above-mentioned mestizo communities, the term cholo may also have the same connotations of greater Amerindian ancestry than Spanish of a mixed-race person as it does in other Andean countries.
The term as used in Ecuador is used as a supposedly neutral term to designate the group described above. It is used, however, as a pejorative term to generalize someone who is "low class," a designation usually reserved for those of greater Amerindian admixture.
[edit] Chile and Argentina
In Chile and Argentina cholo also at times may connote a person of unmixed Amerindian ancestry or predominatly Amerindian appearance.
In Chile the term is used almost exclusively to refer to Peruvians and Bolivians. It is usually intended as an insult. It may also be applied to anyone of unmixed Amerindian ancestry or predominatly Amerindian appearance, except if the person is a fellow Chilean.
Cholo and Chola are also commonly used as nicknames, not only for those who would be considered cholos. It is not considered a negative epithet and may be known or used only as a nickname, such as the case of Argentine football (soccer) player Cholo Simeone.
