I don’t like menudo* yeah, my mother  is from Mexico, I’m from New Mexico, clearly my  the other side of my family loves latin things, obviously here I am. But it’s not even a strictly mexican/latin american thing  I don’t like ingesting the organs  of other  animals, even the heart wich many  tell me is quite good  it’s still a little too  hanibley and  weirdly poetic, again in a hanibley teen -angsty kind of way: “she broke my heart … so I ate hers with  a side  of  lima beans and a nice chiante ” that kind of thing.

   but in all seriousness the eating of menudo  in my family  has become the dividing line   at the dinner table  between the  true mexicans and  their “chicano” progeny, really? C”mon  my american family is a mixture of  french/scotch irish/ and american indian your basic heinze 57  american  I don’t eat haggis, or frois grase, or  buffalo heart I  don’t like organs, heart is actually very tasty  but again  ewe.  So here goes kids  ….my trauma

” one  day after  my uncle  had spent literally  two days boiling the you know what out of some pre cubed blocks of menudo, yes blocks  as menudo is commonly sold  in frozen cubes of 4-6 kilo- that look  like human albino flesh / fat  in cube form, so  he’s cooking this tripe  and  he fishes out a peace and he’s like  “tome mihijta el sabor de  mexico que rico!” ... the house smelled like th urinal of a mens sports bar  so i politely told him I would go out side to “enjoy” that nugget of national pride, as I went outside  there  was a little chihuahua ,homeless,  skinny ribs showing , licking trash wrappers  for nourishment so  in a very benevolent gesture I throw  the tripe  towards him,  and he  walks over , and sniffs the  flesh.. licks once and then does like a  dog sneeze .. wrinkles his nose and recoils  looks at me  with disgust and walks off!! why would you want to eat meat that a homeless  starving dog would reject ?!and the dog was mexican so it’s not just me.

So that afternoon I thought about it   , up to this point  I had always pretended  to  eat the tripe by chewing once then putting it in a napkin, I know its gross, but on this day I truly was thinking about this soup  and how it related to my  heritage .. and it was time to take a stand….” Ama, I said  I am not going to eat tios menudo, its the food of slavery, and oppression{ yeah I went that route sue me}… What?! said my mother , your tio worked long and hard  fixing this meal, yes I said  he spent two days  boiling the crap out of  it ,  at this point I was in serious trouble because I had brought up the  fecal origins of our meal at the dinner table   ,in front  of the cook… and yes there was a futbol match in the background i was being a hater….. “ok pues miss america  why  do you think that” ? it was the slow controlled way that she said it  that worried me  latin woman use that tone in two  instances 1, you’ve been caught doing something and  your about to be punished 2. it’s a novella of some kind and some one has been caught and is about to be pushed down the stairs so I knew this wasn’t good  I was about to cave but then I  thought of the dog  the sniff and  him walking away … well I said it all started when  the Spaniards came to mexico…  land owners  who were originally from spain  were  the only  ones who really had any  social benefits , they were penisulares , it was illegal to mary an indian … so you gotta figure  menudo wasn’t a native food it was a food made from the left overs .. I picture  a rich   Spaniard giving his  legitimate children huge slabs of  roast beef while his poor indian , enslaved mistress  had to serve menudo to  the mestizo  children he wouldn’t openly acknowledge , and at some point decides  with a quiet dignity  ” were just going to say we  like it until we do ” and after many generations they did  , SO you see I say,  now that  we are a fully mixed people and were no longer segregated, and oppressed and impoverished  I should not be  obligated to eat  organs  we shouldn’t as a people  have to do this any more ….” ok zappata my mother says …. tom`e tu posole solo` .. dramatista  creida .”

 so there you have it ,  sure my history may be skewed  but I have confessed  the sins  of my palete mother forgive me .

*{ in this instance I’m referring to the   soup with the red broth not the pop  group  from the 80′s , staring Ricky martin…  another girlhood   love lost to the boy’s team}