"Mexicanada" defined

We Americans utilize the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.  And when something finally DOES break, our hard-earned dollars, or our “Obama money”, or both, provide us with the convenience and liberty to choose between a repair or simply purchasing a new one.  There happens to be a little-known third option which may be a foreign concept to most Americans: dealing with it.  Because the first two choices cost money, Mexican salaries usually render repair or replacement impossible, leaving my slightly-tanner countrymen forced to simply deal with it when something falters.  I think a more appropriate saying would be “if you can make it work, it never even broke in the first place”. 

And this philosophy gives birth to the mexicanada.

While a literal translation of the word mexicanada would have to be something like “mexicanized”, mexicanada is slang for “jerry-rigged” (or if you’re from the Central Valley maybe you said “okie-rigged” as a kid), something quickly thrown together, something that shouldn’t work but does, certainly something that doesn’t operate exactly as it was constructed or intended to. 

Some examples:

--Brenda can’t remember the last time the bathroom door at her house closed completely.  Possibly never in her life.  Instead, there’s an old-fashioned metal iron on the floor of her bathroom that you have to butt up against the door when you do your business.  And this still doesn’t close it ALL the way so no matter what anyone in the living room hears everything.

--Their toilet seat had plastic-coated cushioning on it once.  If I had to guess I would say about a decade ago.  Now the cushioning has worn away so much that you end up sitting on some sort of checkerboard honeycomb matrix instead.  Melanie attested to it actually hurting.  But hey, as long as it separates your ass from the toilet water it’s still doing its job.  I took her mom out one afternoon and after hours of looking for the exact shape and color I splurged on the $14 heavier-duty model.

--One of Brenda’s friends has to take out her earring and use the post to poke somewhere in order to turn on her iPod.  (On that note, ANY mp3 player down here is called an “iPod”, even the lightest-weight little stick that takes a AAA battery and displays only Chinese characters)

--Brenda gave me the CD player that she used at her old job.  The volume knob broke off long ago and volume was then adjusted using a pencil or, again, an earring.  At this point it has been poked and prodded so much that it’s useless to me. 

--Recently a friend asked me to take a picture for her.  The whole time I had to hold the battery casing closed in order to operate the damn camera.  As soon as I relaxed my grip to hand it back to her the camera shut off.

--A neighbor lady picks guavas from her tree outside using a mangled little fork that she fastened onto the end of a ~9-foot pole.

--This one is more ingenuity than mexicanada… Brenda’s sister spilled red wine all over her black and white blouse.  I imagine most of us would have forfeited it to Goodwill or even the trash.  However, with the help of bleach she now has a brown and really really bright white striped blouse. 

Hopefully this more or less explains the title… Vida Mexicanada.