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Órale, the onda this week is pela. It means a beating, a defeat, or an excruciating ordeal. In modern Spanish, I means to peal. In Caló, pela, invokes the image of a skull whose flesh has been pealed away. In other words, skull and bones. When you’re in a pela, you’re at risk of ending up as a skeleton. And who’s doing the pealing? The Pelona, the pealed one, AKA, Death.

Painted on cave walls where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande, the rock art of the Lower Pecos canyonlands casts a powerful spell. Its imagery is intricate, depicting human-like figures with upraised arms, geometric forms and animals like snakes, birds and mountain lions. And its scale is vast. Some panels span a hundred feet or more, and there are hundreds of such sites.

Órale, the onda this week is chafa. It means something cheaply made, defective, or a low-quality person or gesture. A bad haircut is chafa. A repair job that doesn’t last long is chafa. A slow thank you is chafa. A love interest that only thinks of the physical is chafa.

The Lower Pecos Canyonlands – where the Pecos and Devils rivers join the Rio Grande – contain globally significant rock art. But these same shallow caves have preserved much else from prehistory: bits of tools and textiles, plant and animal remains.

Órale, the onda this week is tartamoche. It’s a portmanteau, a word made up of two other words. In this case, the two base words are tartamudo, stutterer, and mochado, cut off. Together they mean something said or done completely wrong. The idea behind by the term is that of someone who stutters through a story and on top of that misses key points of it.

Kachina dolls are an iconic Indigenous art form. Their craftsmanship is striking, and non-Native people have long admired and sought to acquire them. But they’re just one element in an encompassing religious outlook.

Órale, the featured word of this episode of Caló is vide. It’s old Castilian for “I saw you (or it).” In modern Spanish, the term that’s used is simply vi. In Caló, vide solves the problem of having to decide to speak in the formal or familiar at the same time it allows you to make clear who or what it was you saw. In other words, vide says it’s not that you could see, but that you for sure vide the person or thing you’re talking about.

Órale, the next four episodes of Caló are going to be about the adventure of Boy and his friends bringing one of their carnales back to safety from the dark alleys. This first episode features the word piole, which means a group of steady friends. It comes from the Spanish word, piolar, which is the collective chirping of a brood of chicks. The term conveys the image of a pack of kids talking excitedly to each other in a playground or, in the case of the Southside, in the alleys.

Órale, for this episode of Caló, we’re gonna feature the expression le salió cola. In modern Spanish it means it sprung a tail. Nothing special. But in Caló, le salió cola means the situation became more complicated or difficult than expected— a surprise sudden turn for worse. You thought you could handle it, but then things got out of hand? Te salió cola, ese.

Órale, the feature of this episode is susto. In modern Spanish is means a fright. In Caló, it means a spell. The victim is the sustado. Now, in the world of Caló, many things pass as a spell, but nobody thinks it’s possible to casts sustos so fantastical that people are tuned into frogs. It is thought, however, that everybody tries to cast sustos of some kind, but not everybody can. And among those who can, there are some who are better than others. Also sometimes a susto comes from beyond the horizon, seemingly out of nowhere. Then there are the timeless sustos that are ever present in the barrio and land on a sustado only when conditions allow, maybe once a generation or two.