CULTURE WATCH : Pocho Power?

“Hunger of Memory,” Richard Rodriguez’s memoir about growing up Mexican American, introduced English-speaking readers to the Spanish word pocho. Meaning, literally, “pallid,” pocho, Rodriguez explained, was used disparagingly of those who had assimilated to the dominant American culture. Other nonwhite groups have comparable words or metaphors about whiteness. Thus, an “apple Indian” is red on the outside, white on the inside.

But the history of many an insulting epithet is that the insulted eventually claim it as a badge of honor. That seems to be happening with pocho in the songs of Chicano Roots/World Music bands like Dr. Loco’s Rockin’ Jalapeno Band, appearing later this week in three Los Angeles venues.

In the group’s 1992 CD, “Movimiento Music,” the cut “Mexicanamericanos” ( sic , which is to say neither Spanish mexicanoamericanos nor English Mexican Americans ) is described as “puro pocho pride played en polka time” and includes the refrain: “ Por our mothers somos Mexican/ por destino americanos/comprendemos el English / and we speak el castellano /we’re bilingues to the bone/we’re puritito Chicanos.”

The exponents of “English Only” must wince at these lyrics, but 800 years ago any exponent of Anglo-Saxon only or French only would surely have winced at the ungodly mishmash of the two that was beginning to catch on in England. Are the Chicanos the 20th-Century equivalent of the Norman French? Maybe not, but check out the latest McDonald’s billboard: “Eggs traordinario Desayuno. “