Charlie Powell

"Puta Madre" It is a kind of cry against the world. A bellow of astonishment.

A gringo is caught in traffic, say. He’s in a good mood. His car’s chock-full of plaster Bart Sanchez banks, pinatas, incredible bargain blankets, and tin Rolexes. At least one of his kids is wearing a sombrero. You’ve seen him a thousand times at the border, waiting in line. He’s probably buying six dollars’ worth of Chiclets from the insistent street vendors. Someone either cuts in front of him or isn’t moving fast enough, so the gringo honks his horn. But, to be friendly, he taps out that peculiarly American-sounding five-beat rhythm that we call “shave-and-a-haircut.” He might even add the two-beat fillip at the end, which makes it “shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits.” Hey, everybody knows it. Even Doc Severinsen ends the Johnny Carson theme with it every night. However, the person cutting in, let’s say he’s Mexican, does not seem amused. In fact, he seems downright insulted. In fact... oh my God ... here he comes! The gringo gets trounced.

It happens.

Why? The answer lies in the complexity and creativity of Mexican cussing. The exact same rhythm of “shave-and-a-haircut” translates in Spanish as chinga tu madre (“fuck your mother”). If we add the pleasant “two-bits,” it’s an even worse Mexican insult. Then you’re saying, “chinga tu madre, cabron.” You’ve called the guy a son of a bitch, for good measure.

Mother is a dangerous area for comment in Mexico. What every gringo should know about Mexico is that nobody messes with our moms. And every one of our moms, it goes without saying, is a virgin. So you’d better not suggest copulation of any sort.

Because of this, it might be safer to mention someone’s mama (“mommy”) rather than his madre (the actual word for mother). Madre carries with it the implicit chinga tu. You have to be awfully close to mention someone’s madre without there being trouble.

Cabron, for example, is much less charged than tu madre (“yo mama”). Like Australians calling each other bastard, Mexican men tend to refer to each other as cabron all the time. Listen to them at the bars in TJ: it’s cabron this and cabron that. However, a terse tu madre, cabron tends to be the introductory statement to a flurry of punches and bottles flying.

Then there’s the ever-handy ni madre. Literally, this means “not mother.” The “fuck,” of course, is strongly implied. Since there is no object — it’s not really anybody’s particular mother being discussed — this phrase is considered strong but not necessarily deadly. It is a way to emphatically say no.

“Do you want to go to jail?”

“Ni madre!”

(Don’t say this to a cop, by the way, unless you do want to go to jail.)

Since ni madre is such a strongly obscene quip, you might hear bowdlerized versions, like the nonsensical ni papas. Yes, it means “not potatoes.”

Another form of mother appears in the lascivious appreciative comment mamacita (“little mama”). Men say this to women. Curiously, both feminists and fundamentalists have curbed this practice, since both camps chafe at the implication, which is, basically, “You cute little thing, I’m going to deliver a load of manhood to you.” Dimwits who think they’re pretty sharp make wordplay with mamacita and say instead mamasota, which means “great big mama” but actually implies “you have ten times the sex appeal of a mamacita."

A word you might mistake for a mom-derivative is mamon. This word means “sucker.” It actually implies sucking, either of breasts or of penises. Sucking a breast here is not macho but insulting; ultimately, it means you’re babyish. Mexican men will tell each other, ' 'No seas mamon” (“don’t be a sucker”).

Also, there is the anachronistic use of madre to denote something really good.

You will hear a Mexican announce something is a toda madre. The best I can do with this is “at total mother.” As you can surmise by now, the use of madre makes the term rude and unacceptable for general public consumption. You’ll never hear one of the slick variety-show hosts on Spanish cable saying, “Julio Iglesias — that song was at total mother!”

The polite way to say it is a todo dar. At total give. At ultimate deliver. It reminds me of Arsenio Hall urging us to “give it up.” A todo dar is quite metaphysical, when you think about it. One is hard-pressed, by the way, to find out whether at total give or at total mother came first.

There is another interesting way to handle this question. It has worked its way up to us from Mexico City. You simply say padre (“father”). If you like it, you just say, “It’s father.”

Como te gusta el Sting?”

‘‘Es padre!”

Apparently, we haven’t yet found fathers to be as obscene as mothers.

Or at least they’re not as highly charged

If you really like something, it’s padrisimo. This would translate as “super father,” or “fathermost,” or perhaps "ultrafather-itious.”

"Como te gustan los New Kids on the Block?”

“Son padnsimos!”

Meanwhile, back on the mother front, there’s another phrase that is cunning and baffling, and some philosopher should tackle it. That phrase is no tiene madre. “It/he/she has no mother.” It doesn’t seem to be obscene, but madre could imply a little nastiness. For some reason it is used to suggest something so good as to be without further description. Say, the ultimate mamasota. Some cad, writhing in ecstasy at the memory of her, would say, ‘ ‘Esa vieja no tiene madre!” (“That old woman” — “broad,” actually — “has no mother!” Warning: vieja is even ruder than mamasota, and women all over Mexico resent its use. Oddly, when you’ve been married for a while, it becomes a term of endearment.)

It seems curious that in a culture as mother-crazy as Mexico something with no mother would be prized above all others. Perhaps it’s that the woman — or movie or horse or job or cigar or boxer — in question is so transcendent as to have apparently descended from heaven. Perfection incarnate.

All these mothers tend to have sons and daughters. One could write an entire book about being the child of some obscenity in Mexico — or at least a chapter (as Octavio Paz did in Labyrinth of Solitude). By now, you can easily see that hijo/hija de tu madre (“son/daughter of your mother”) is dreadfully insulting and should lead to a sound thrashing for the fool who said it to you. This can be augmented, depending on your desire for bodily damage, to florid heights: Hijo de tu chingada madre (“son of your fucked mother”). There is also hijo de tu pinche madre (“son of your goddamned” — or “low-life,” or “fucking” — “mother,” depending on your outlook).

Hijo de puta pleasantly suggests you are a son of a whore. A variation of this is the terse puta madre (“whore mother”). This is not especially personal. It is a kind of cry against the world. A bellow of astonishment. My godfather, for example, was fond of this phrase. We’d be watching wrestling on Saturday afternoon. The Destroyer would pull a foreign object out of his trunks and rake it across Pedro Morales’s eyes, blinding him. My godfather would shout, “Puta madre!”

Consider it to be a terse way to say, “By gum — this twist of fate is beyond my immediate comprehension!”

Finally, there is the most existential of all Mexican parental curses. It is a curse so bleak, so cold, that it denotes a vast cultural despair better than a juicy dirty word. It is hijo de la chingada.

“Son of the fuck” (or “son of the fucked”).

Think of it. In this one phrase, there is the entire sad history of Mexico. Blood and torment, conquest and failure and rape. (If, as some historians suggest, the mestizo who populates Mexico today is the product of the rape of Indian women by invaders, this curse becomes even more apt.)

When a Mexican is at the end of his rope with you, when his rage and despair have led him to the brink, he calls you hijo de la chingada. It is a final, deadly thing to say.

You will find, too, if you listen long enough, that Mexicans who turn philosophical invariably tell each other that they are all hijos de la chingada. No gringo could ever enter into that solitude. It is a darkness borne with some perverse pride, but it is ultimately damning and tragic.

We are alone. We are abandoned. You do not belong here. We Mexicans — and we alone — are the bastard sons of the fuck.

Think about it the next time you honk your horn.