The Melting Blog

It's Hip to be Naco

Here's a story that should draw a chuckle from my Latino friends. As I drove to my lunch appointment yesterday, I heard this story about "Nacos" on NPR's Day to Day. What is a naco? Here's one definition from urbandictionary.com:

Naco: A poor looking tasteless no class tacky person.

Word is commonly used among Mexicans

Loria looks like a naca wearing here frizzy bangs, crusty long acrylic toe nails, "Just" Jeans, and her fake ass Coach bag.

"Don't be a naco dude, please don't put bull horns and a horse saddle on your 1981 beat up low rider truck".

As you can imagine, the term is generally a pejorative one -- albeit one that is widely used among Mexicans. The word also has racist overtones, as it's frequently used to describe indigeneous native Mexicans. But, according to the Day to Day story, the term is now being reappropriated by young people as something cool. Embrace your inner naco hipness:

All the young women agree that it's easy to point out the nacolike traits of others, but that you can never admit to being one yourself. That's not true for entrepreneur Carlos Meza, who's celebrating his inner naco. Meza and some friends started out three years ago selling naco pride T-shirts at rock concerts. The idea took off, and now the brand of clothing is sold in upscale boutiques throughout Mexico and Southern California. Meza says naco is more about personal style than class or wealth.

Mr. CARLOS MEZA: Some people would say that it attains to a lower class of Mexican, but I think that a naco is also the guy with diamond rings and a Mercedes-Benz with neon lights. To me that's more of a naco than somebody who doesn't have the money to buy that.

Meza's partner and company manager Fernando Garcia says the goal is to turn the concept of naco on its head. Being a little bit naco is now cool. Garcia picks up a black T-shirt with the word nakissimo, but it's spelled na-kiss-imo. This logo is familiar to anyone, like me, of a certain generation.
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Mr. GARCIA: All of the band members in KISS would be considered nacos if they were Mexican. I mean, if you go out on stage with makeup on your head and wearing tight pants and leather, that would be very naco.

Not everyone is amused:

But for Carlos Monsivais, this trend of cool nacoism misses the point about the word's origin. Monsivais has been one of Mexico's leading social critics for the past 40 years. He says that `naco' is a racist word and derivative of Totonaco, a tribe of dark-skinned indigenous people from Veracruz state.

Mr. CARLOS MONSIVAIS: It's so aggressive, it's impossible to redeem the word. When a rock group use naco, the name is tying to ironize.

Monsivais says irony has no place here, and that most Mexicans use the word as a put-down of both the lower class and indigenous people. Still, talking to people throughout Mexico City, it's clear that the word has changed over time and means different things to people of different generations.

Listen to the entire story here.

Posted by thomas at July 9, 2004 11:18 AM | TrackBack