Interesting dynamic observed.

[Greg in LA]

I had some old friends from Chicago visit me last month. They were staying in Costa Mesa and we met in LA. I wanted to take them out to dinner, I took them to a Korean restaurant, It was great to see them as I hadn't seen them for seven years.
My friend and her elderly mother were originally from Cuba and her husband was from Honduras.

After we ate I wanted to take them to a cafe so they could have some coffee. The cafe that I wanted to go to was about 2 blocks away, but my friends elderly mother couldn't make it all the way, so we had to stop after a block at a Mexican bakery. The place was pretty nice, it had tables and seats and a nice selection of Mexican bakery items, I wanted some place that was a bit more upscale but, this place would have to do.

After we sat down I noticed all of my friends started to get a bit uncomfortable. They pleasantly ordered their food in Spanish, but after the waitress left my friends started to complain how they didn't really like Mexican pastries. Later my friends started to whisper to me " we've got to do something about all these people here". "It's not right that so many of them are here". Although we were going to be in the Cafe for just a short time, I could tell that my friend didn't want to be there at all.

I had never really talked to these these friends about how I feel about the Mexican invasion, Most of my thoughts on the subject were really formed after I moved to California. My friends are Hispanic, so naturally I tip-toed around the subject.
What amazed me was how uncomfortable My Cuban and Honduran friends were with the LA Mexicans. Although they all spoke Spanish, they didn't want to associate with them at all. Even being in a Mexican bakery for a short time was really uncomfortable for them.

It was a strange dynamic for me to witness. I was wondering If you have ever seen Hispanics from different origins (South American/ Caribean/ Etc.) not mixing so well with Mexicans.

[ilbegone]

Take your Cuban friends someplace that is wall to wall chock full of noisy Puerto Ricans and watch for body language.

[Greg in LA]

That's a good one .

[ilbegone]

If you are serious with the question...

There is a multitude of different people in the Hispanic world, not all generally get along.

They speak different versions of Latin American Spanish with all kinds of dialects and localized versions of slang within those dialects.

Two Mexicans from different, far flung parts of Mexico might have difficulty immediately fully understanding each other's Mexican Spanish but both can immediately identify someone who learned Spanish in the home as a child in America. Certainly they're going to pick up on Cuban Spanish, which may or might not have been the source of your friends unease.

You could even dress up US Congressman "Working for Mexico" Joe Baca in second hand Salvation Army clothes and send him down to the swap meet to have some "cultural interaction" with some of the south of the border vendors. Before he gets close enough to even open his mouth and confirm it they will know he's American born. Doesn't matter how much Spanish he might have learned or how "real Mexican" his parents may have been nor how much he might wear UCR ethnic studies professor Armando Navarro's ass for a hat, they will know before he opens his mouth. And they won't be impressed in the slightest with his pretend "Mexican - ness". However, they might cynically kiss his ass for a freebie if they know who he is.

I personally saw a couple of occasions where Puerto Rican Spanish required some time for Mexican variant Spanish speaking (American born, learned Spanish as children in their homes) translators between English Speakers and Puerto Rican islanders (born American citizens who resisted English - knew more than were letting on) to catch on to the different Spanish (slang, manners of speaking, perhaps words of the trade).

Your friends might feel a lot more comfortable in Miami, which seems to me to be more Cuban than Los Angeles is Mexican. Very important differences between Miami and Los Angeles, not the least that Cuban immigrants are generally educated and I believe Miami actually has something financial going for it (in great contrast to Los Angeles).

Besides, what is meant by the word "Mexican", and who exactly were you dealing with in the panaderia? And was the panaderia Mexican or Guatemalan? Were the employees first generation immigrants or third generation Americans?

Lots of cracks and fissures in the Latino world.

"Pocho" is a Mexican term for someone with Mexican ancestry who is not fully of the Mexican culture, doesn't speak Spanish "right", maybe not up on the customs and tradition, and only slight Americanization qualifies one for the tag. "Pocho" might mean something roughly like "coconut", brown on the outside, gringo on the inside. As well, "coconut" is tossed out among some Americans with Latin American ancestors who either play the goofy (and packed with insecurity and inferiority complex) "I'm a more authentic Latino than you are" game, or by American brown supremacists who are describing a brown someone else who doesn't agree with or measure up to their racial nonsense.

"Pocho" might even be used by American cholo gang bangers to describe another American born who is not like them, but they are pocho themselves to a Mexican.

A few years ago Mexican woman once fairly spit out at me in angry tones that "those born here might eat beans and tortillas, but they aren't Mexican". She also said that when she had been detained by the border patrol that she would rather have been be handled by the white officers rather than the brown officers, because the whites treated them better. She was married to a white American and had two children by him when she said all this to me (struck me as ironic on a couple different levels).

As well, Guatemalans are to Mexico what Mexicans are to the United States, quite often not a lot of love lost between the two groups. As well, while Mexican nationals greatly object to their children becoming Americanized, Guatemalan parents in the San Fernando Valley fret over their children becoming Mexicanized in California.

Frothing at the mouth racist Reynaldo Berrios was born in El Salvador but became a Mexican - American style knife fighting street cholo who also bought into a deep end version of Chicano racist belief, wrote a book about it. I read it, the man is a racist loon ("The whites and N****** are pushing our barrios into the ocean!)

Chicano rhetoric and belief is all born in America crap borrowing and modifying heavily from Mexico, it's not Mexican - and Mexican nationals who come here as adults generally have little time for Chicano crap, maybe not the least because it's American.

Then there are the Mexican Indians, who occupy the bottom rung of Mexican society. "Pinche Indio!!" isn't a compliment, means something like F****** N*****.

They might be brown or even white or black with Spanish last names, but they are not all the same. Nationality, whatever squabbles and differences the foreign born have brought with them, differences among and between the American born, differences between the foreign and American born, changes and differences through the generations, basically decent and incorrigibly criminal and all types in between, etc etc etc ad infinatum.

They don't all get along, and there can be any two groups looking down on each other as being inferior or otherwise objectionable in some manner or another.

Including between Chicago "Cubans" who've been around Chicago "Mexicans". Lots of "Mexicans" in Chicago. Ask your friends about Chicago "Mexicans".

Ask them about "Puerto Ricans" too, see what they say.

[Jeanfromfillmore]

I had two co-workers years ago (in the 70's), both women, one was from Puerto Rico and the other was from Brazil. They would both get so upset when someone would call them Mexicans. To them it was such an insult. I didn't understand why, but just listening to them chastise someone who made that mistake taught me how much difference there was and how many Hispanics don't want to be considered the same as every other Hispanic. That was 40 years ago!!!

[Greg in LA]

Thanks for informing me about this Ilbegone and Jean.

My experience with Hispanics are rather limited. My Brother in law is from Ecuador (now divorced from my Sister). He looks very Indian, sides with the illegals in general, and once got somewhat upset when I was talking about the subject of illegal aliens, but I can't say he has ever really associated with any Mexicans. In fact the only time I saw him around them he seemed fairly annoyed. My Sister said that he feels that they look at him and only want him money.

My Cuban friend in Chicago owns a house in Florida, but not in Miami. She told me she doesn't like to be totally surrounded by Cubans, so she stays away from Miami. Her husband is from Honduras, he associates with a lot of Hondurans and Cubans. Racially he is all White. No Indian in him.

A long time ago I asked my friend if there were Indians in Cuba, she said no, they were all killed a long ago.

I guess I am pointing out that Americans kind of think "Hispanic" describes everybody south of the Continental USA, and that everyone South of our border is united ethnically. As I have noticed and you have pointed out this is not true.

This situation reminds me of how Americans are somewhat naive and open minded towards foreigners, but the Immigrants don't always share our open-minded attitudes.

[wetibbe]

Seems that lots of Americans have quite a lot of contempt for the French, always putting them down. Not me.

But when we speak of likes and dislikes in Latin America we should, of course, remember that there are whites, browns, tans, bronze, blacks and colors in between. And lots of prejudice.

When I lived in Venezuela, I was on the east Shore of Lake Maracaibo in an oil town. I was visiting an American oil company office talking to an American client where locals were present. There was a Venezuelan from Caracas called Caraqueno and one from Maracaibo, a Maracucho. The Maracucho asked the Caraqueno a question in Spanish and the Caraqueno got a funny look on his face and turned to another asking: " What did he say" ?

I think I already told this one. I was in Florida last year for a christening. My son in law took me to a little strip mall restaurant that was Cuban, bustling with activity. He wanted a Cuban sandwich which is really delicious. You had to go to the counter, look in the display cases, make your selection, pay the cashier and carry your food to a table. When we finished and went outside several teen agers, boys and girls exited, boiling mad. I asked my son in law if he knew what their problem was and he said they were protesting the presence of those "Puerto Ricans" and wouldn't stay. Apparently they were Cubans.

Spanish is my second language but I can spot a true Spaniard in a heart beat from his "accent". I travelled all of the Latin Countries and it is indeed very true that accents vary from country to country a very great deal and from one social level to another, as well as words and the meanings of some words.

I worked with Latinos, over the years, from the top to the bottom of the social, economic scale. Ingenieros *( engineers ), licenciados *( generally degreed people with a college education ), obreros *( blue collar workers ), campesinos *( peasants/ hicks, country people of low education ). The different words and composition varies enormously. Some is very proper and some is slang loaded with expletives.

[ilbegone]

I worked with some French a few years ago, nose in the air types. I eventually got around the snubbing.

There was a French Canadian with them I got along with well. I asked him about the problems and dislike between the French of Quebec and the English of the rest of Canada, he simply replied that it wasn't between himself and I and moved on to another conversation. He did like a lot of Mexicans will do, started teaching me the French names for tools and such. I'd have liked to stay around them, but the superintendent found I had a certification for something he needed elsewhere so I was moved.

Some time ago I made a statement in a group (who had all been doing some drinkin') about people who worked for nothing and who shouldn't be here to start with. A gentleman whose parents were a Mexican national and an Arizona Indian (he identifies as Indian, claims to be Yaqui) angrily objected and got loud, yelling that I was a racist or something similar (but not quite those words, I don't remember exactly what they were). A white Mexican national from southern Mexico (who had French ancestry and was married to an Indian looking Honduran woman), maybe not catching all the English, launched on the Indian, yelling at him that I (the white American) was married to a Mexican woman (born in America to born in Mexico parents, she's been asked a number of times over the years if she belongs to one of the local Indian tribes) and that if the Indian didn't like it he (the white Mexican), himself a Mexican, was going to kick the Indian's American ass. The Indian was wide eyed, open mouth dumbfounded and I was thinking "???what just happened???"

That was surreal.