chilango

A chilango has lived in Mexico City enough time to learn third-world’s paramount and old-fashioned rule of categorizing people by their wallet’s weight, hence their desperate need to cover by all costs any display that might expose their lack of money and will desperately reach unexpected lengths that includes calling random people by derogative names just so they can appear ‘above’ in terms of class, humiliating co-workers, talking excessively loud and making up stories and intricate phrases in order to impress others. He can usually be found gossiping or spreading “facts” behind the backs of fellow co-workers as a chilango is entirely convinced everyone is on to get his position, if not belongings. A chilango can often be heard giggling at phrases like ‘could you get some banana from the fridge?’, as their sense of humour is exclusively and proudly limited to anything that could denote sex, which can go from stupidly infantile to explicitely fun-breaking and obscene. Consequently, a chilango tends to laugh at his own jokes and last minutes at it so he can perhaps get the rest to enjoy it as much as he did. A chilango does not enjoy black, dry or too in-your-face sense of humour, especially not if it involves religious figures or god forbid, himself. A chilango will not tolerate to laugh at himself at ANY given moment. In terms of fashion, a chilango is not your season-changing type. A female chilango will obstinately stick to mom jeans, hard-to-find 1995-inspired platforms (adult chilangos can be all the way down to 4’5 tall), loose sweaters, lots of spray and a clean face with occassional red lipstick applied with a precision only a politician’s wife can achieve in the rest of the world. Males are usually found in ill-fitted suits (regardless of the day of the week) or wearing pants above the waist and tight enough in the bum area so you can see their sheer socks below, which vary in colours that go from mustard to pink, mint or nude. Same socks he wears with above-the-knee shorts for a weekend in what he calls ‘’provincia’’ (term known as the dead giveaway for any chilango since he’s 100% convinced he’s right on the cutting edge of urbanism). In general tastes, a conventional chilango will demonstrate an odd attraction for British top charts and its shining stars, a chilango is convinced The Charlatans, Oasis, Supergrass or similar forgotten bands are the best thing since sliced bread. In terms of food, anything that involves recycled oil (meaning it’s been simmered for days at the taco stand) will do it for chilango’s culinary demands. When carrying locally-adapted plates, a chilango can often be identified on the streets when he drives through pedestrians, forcibly does a red light right on a crosswalk, pulls over in bus stops and parks his car in the blue zone. A chilango will not drive considerably fast but he will make sure he’s right on your bumper as he firmly believes his ‘space’ is about to be stolen by the driver on the left. Chilangos are also known for driving obnoxious, tiny cars like chevy’s corsa, nissan tsuru and volkswagen golf. A chilango’s dream of living (from the upper middle class to poor and average ones) is accurately portrayed via ‘telenovelas’, in which wealthy people live in absurdly large houses, get their maids to wear corny uniforms, have a driver and make sure they display a level of disdain for others that validates them as members of some mentally-created ‘elite’. Thus, your average chilango finds himself emulating characters’ behaviour or vocabulary from whatever telenovela-of-the-moment dictates as he’s aware a telenovela is considered a reputable source for a majority of Mexicans. Although a chilango may luck out in selling the above-mentioned persona to nearby Southern naive types, a chilango is more often than not, repelled by others (except chilangos) and socially rejected in the North. Rejection he will incessantly claim to be nothing but admiration or envy, and maybe, in an usual attempt to appear honest and describe his situation, a chilango will just openly suppose that people peg him as ‘snobbish’ and ‘stuck-up’ for living in the city, when they’re ‘qualities’ that do not reasonate too well with his lack of evidence to be considered ‘modern’ in taste or manners.