Caló: A Borderland Dialect
Caló is written and hosted by the program's founder, Oscar Rodriguez, who sometimes goes by the name "El Marfa."
The show honors the patois commonly called Caló and spoken from Denver, CO to Brownsville, TX on the U.S. side of the border and from Juarez to Matamoros on the Mexican side.
Oscar grew up speaking this language. He remembers the unique dialect filling the barrios and countryside of his childhood. Each week, Oscar presents Caló words and phrases then explores their meaning with a personal anecdote.
Oscar was raised in Ojinaga and the Permian Basin. He has lived in and out of this region since he graduated from Ector High School in Odessa in the late-1970s, including a couple of years in the late-1990s when he lived in Marfa and taught at Sul Ross State University. Oscar is also an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Tribe and an avid researcher of Native history in the La Junta (Big Bend) region.
He hopes that by sharing his knowledge of this colorful language he can help keep it alive.
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Órale, the onda this week of Caló is chucho. It means candy. It comes from the Romaní word for a mother’s breast, chuchai, as in the source of nourishment for a newborn. It’s indeed an exaggerated metaphor for mere candy, but the term speaks to the primal desire for candy, not so much the substance itself. It says humans want chucho because it takes them back to the first sweet they ever tasted. In this sense, even the best candy is a faint approximation of a chucho. -
Órale, the onda of this week in Caló is Cucuy. It means a non-descript monster. It’s origin is an Iberian mythical creature with a coconut-like head. The mythical figure migrated in stories from Southern Europe to the Americas with the Spanish, who took it up the Rio Grande. By the time it rooted in the local culture, it was only as a rumor—something nobody could describe that was lurking out there somewhere. Today it’s a catchall term for an unseen monster, same as the “boogey man.” It could get you, but nobody really knows how.
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Órale, the onda this week is La Llorona (the female crier), a scary mythical character that evolved from Spanish colonial times. There are many versions of the myth. All of them center on a woman who cries by the river for her children. There are many different stories about who she really is, why she’s crying and whether it’s a tale or a real story. La Llorona is alternatively crying because her children have been drowned by their father or because she drowned them. There’s also an interpretation that La Llorona’s a metaphor for La Malinche, a famous Aztec historical figure who married a Spanish conquistador in 1492 and divulged her country’s strategic weaknesses and divisions. In this version of the myth, the children for whom La Llorona cries are really her kin and countrymen who’d been metaphorically drowned by the conquistadors. The myth is retold from Chile to Colorado.
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Órale, the onda of this week is the word, tutú. It means a diminutive religious character or idol. It’s shorthand for the name, Jesús, but it’s not specific to any religion or creed. It’s also non-value laden. It simply means junior or baby idol. What’s intended to be conveyed with tutú is the image of a miniature statue of a religious character, like a saint or other religious icon. Perhaps the best example of a tutú is the statuette you’ll often find on the dashboard of a lowrider, typically the image of San Martin de Porres, a 1600th century Afro-Peruvian saint.
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Órale, the Caló word of this episode is churchillo. It means someone with holier-than-thou or moralizing personality. It comes from the English word, church. Every culture has churchillos. Caló is no exception. Their main strength is persistence. You see, they wanna save you whether you need it or not.
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Órale, the Caló word of this episode is Praire. It means someone with a priest-like personality or otherwise very given to praying and moralizing. It’s a word made up of two other words, prayor (supplicant) and friar, which in Spanish is pronounced fraile. A praire does not necessarily have to be Christian or, for that matter, a follower of any particular religion. They’re not unique to any culture, class or geographic region. They’re people who simply see it necessary and obvious to invoke the spirits to resolve worldly problems. While some people see gravity and the laws of physics controlling reality, they see providential intervention in everything. So why not go ahead and ask the spirits to intervene when you can’t solve a problem or predict an outcome?
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Órale, the Caló word of this episode is Huisa. It means a committed girlfriend. It comes from (is a mispronunciation of) the Nahuatl (Aztec) word for woman, cihua. There’s a comparable Caló word, ruca, but it speaks to the general category of women, not any particular social role, like sister, mother, wife or girlfriend. In other words, a huisa is a ruca in a courtship relationship.
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Órale, the word of the week is papas. In modern Spanish is means potatoes. In Caló, it means lies. The grandfather put his hand on his grandson’s should and said, “that onda about landing on the moon? Puras pinches papas”
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Órale, the word of the week is totacha. It means scant knowledge, as in a dab of a given language or subject. Totacha is at the opposite end of the scale from full command of a subject. It can’t be said you’re totally ignorant if you know totacha, but know totacha sometimes gets you in more trouble than total ignorance.
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Órale, the word of the week is catchar. It comes from the English verb, catch. In Caló, it means more that catch. It also means to be enchanted by a spell, as in captivated by someone attractive or devilish. “I was walking by, and you me catchaste.”
