Chilango

Chilango is the term used to refer to a native or inhabitant of Mexico City, according to the Mexican Academy of Language.

The concept is controversial, mainly due to its marked origin of negative connotation, but its use has become so widespread in recent decades that most use the nickname humorously or naturally and in some cases in a derogatory or rejecting way toward Mexicans in the center of the country.

Different dictionaries read that the origin of the term is deeply derogatory, having its origin in two words, from the Nahuatl chile (fruit, hot pepper used widely in Mesoamerican cultures) and chango (colloquial word to refer to the arboreal primates of Africa) being chilango a derogatory mixture between both words. This demonym, according to some authors who could be influenced, supposedly was used exclusively to refer to people from the lower castes of the city. It is possible to understand this coming from the Mexica high castes who used derogatory names to refer to their vassals and their subjected enemies, as is the case of the derogatory word tarasco (brother-in-law) to refer to a native inhabitant of the town purepecha

According to this hypothesis, the word could have its origin from times when the city (Tenochtitlan) was governed by the Mexicas and many of its inhabitants were vassals who survived in a caste system, in which the lowest-ranking inhabitants rank and more numerous were systematically controlled by actions and social traditions of subordination and submission. Some anthropologists conclude that the people accepted this system because they did not have a social contrast with which to compare life in the Mexica manor with other social forms of life in Mesoamerica. However, more in-depth studies of life in other pre-European domains close to the Mexica empire, show that these peoples did not live under socially violent regimes as the one that has been discovered practiced by the Mexica. The cases of the Zempoala señoríos, the Otomi settlements, the Zapotec civilization in Oaxaca and the case of the so-called Purépecha empire, demonstrate that this affirmation of "social normality" of Tenochtitlan and the Mexica domains was not so voluntarily accepted by the inhabitants of the subjugated lower castes. The rapid destruction of all the Mexica architectural symbols by the people, although obeying the leadership of the conquering Europeans, is another historical fact that suggests that it was a massive popular reaction undertaken with conviction by the people once subjected to the Mexica terror.

History

Dario Rubio recorded it in 1925 in his work Lexicographic Studies. The anarchy of language in Spanish America. The term defeño is very recent and Juan Palomar de Miguel was the first to register it in 1991 in his Dictionary of Mexico. It seems to correspond to the moment in which Mexico City covered the extension of the Federal District, although it raises some administrative acronyms to the category of small homeland, having little acceptance in common speech.

The first lexicographer to record it is Alfred Bruce Gaarder in 1954 in his work El habla popular y la conciencia colectiva, in a list of Mexican adjectives, where it comes as “chilango... México. DF”. Francisco J. Santamaría defined it in 1959 in his dictionary of Mexicanisms as a "variant of shilango, used in Veracruz", stating that it comes "from the Maya xilaan, messy or frizzy hair" and that it is "nickname popular that in Veracruz is given to the inhabitant of the interior, especially to the peeled of Mexico ". Juan M. Lope Blanch, in The indigenous lexicon in the Spanish of Mexico (1969), accepts the Mayan origin of chilango and its pejorative character, including it in a list of indigenisms that "are part of the living vocabulary From Mexico City".

César Corzo Espinosa registered it in Chiapas in 1978 as Nahuatlism, from the term chil-lan-co (“where the colorados are”), this nickname being known to the inhabitants of the City of Mexico, alluding to the color of their skin, reddened by the cold, which was applied to the Aztecs by the Nahuas of the Gulf of Mexico”, also justifying that it is called "guachinangos" to the inhabitants of the Altiplano, alluding to the Lutjanus campechanus, a red fish, a species of red snapper, like the cheeks of the locals, as José Miguel Macías did, in Cuban Dictionary.

With the declaration of constitutionality of the Political Reform made on January 21, 2016, which contemplates the change of Mexico, D.F. for Mexico City, the adjective Mexican suggested by the ASALE Dictionary of the Spanish Language, in its 2014 edition, is proposed.

Origin

The Mexican essayist Gabriel Zaid in his article "Chilango as a name" writes that chilango is a variation that was made in the State of Veracruz of the word chilango that comes from maya xilaan meaning "disheveled". In the same article reference is made to César Corzo Espinosa who proposed that chilango has a Nahuatl origin in the word chilan-co which means "where the red ones are" and that alludes to the skin color of the inhabitants of Mexico City.

It also stands out that Dr. Miguel Escalona^[who?], who championed the movement of the poorest regions of the Federal District during the Pastry War, he called his handful of armed men into the chilangos platoon.

It is also said^[who?] that the term was used for the first time in Veracruz. In the past, most of the convicted criminals were sent to the Federal District to concentrate them and later send them to the San Juan de Ulúa prison in Veracruz. Upon arrival at the port, the prisoners were tied by the hands and lined up in a similar way, they said, to a chilanga, known at the time as a bundle of chiles. Hence, the chilango is associated with those "delinquents" from the Federal District.

Another theory is that the term chilango was referring to a lagoon where several rivers converged; By analogy, the arrival of people from abroad to Mexico City was compared to the arrival of rivers to the lagoon, or to the great lake where the Great Tenochtitlán was established.

According to various versions compiled from popular folklore, the name chilango was assigned to visitors from the capital and from Edo. of Mexico by the locals of the beaches of Edo. from Veracruz. The term was awarded to walkers due to the similarity of arriving massively at the beaches, in holiday seasons as red snapper do, gulf fish of red color, using it as an archetype to the color acquired by walkers after their exposure to the sun and degenerate of red snapper. to chilango from mouth to mouth and from generation to generation.

In Yucatán there is a particular case, since there they are called "huaches" and there are several hypotheses as to why this name is given:

• In the mid-1910s, the Gral army. Salvador Alvarado entered the city of Merida, Yucatan, and the majority of the contingent’s militants calzaban huaraches and hence derived the word Huach to refer to such strangers.
• It derives from the expression "watch out" that the locals of the Yucatecos pronounced in the face of the mistrust and fear that the members of the alvaradista army infused them.
• Another possible origin is the expression "uá-paach" (high and thin) used by the ancient Mayas when referring to the Aztecs.
• An urban legend says that when the troops marched, their boots emitted screams that seemed to say "uach" repeatedly.
• It could derive from huachinango is the term used to name fish that pass from clear waters to turbid waters, and that besides the apocope Huach, Chilango (as synonymous with huach) is a transformation of Chinango (the second part of the word).

The reality is that it is an atavism used to name the huachichiles. The term originally meant "red head" because these people painted them red (Amador 1887). In Yucatán, its meaning has undergone variations over time, for exampleː "thief" (Amador 1887), "dirty" (García 1930) or "foreigner" (Press 1975) when referring pejoratively to the inhabitants of the Mexican highlands.

Currently the term huach is used in Yucatan with humor and naturalness, in the same way that the adjective chilango is used.

Discussion

It should be clarified that the definition of the concept chilango is full of inaccuracies, since not everyone agrees on which inhabitants are chilangos and which are not. The various conceptualizations of chilango show a markedly territorial variation, since these differ according to the different political entities that make up the metropolis. Among the inhabitants of the suburban municipalities of the state of Mexico, the opinion prevails that the chilangos are exclusively the inhabitants of Mexico City, while they would not be.

On the other hand, the perception of the concept is also diverse. Thus, while a large proportion of the inhabitants of Mexico City and its metropolitan area deny being called that way, and disqualify the concept and its application for both moral and etymological reasons, another large proportion claims it as a source of pride and accepts and uses it on a daily basis. This has resulted in different words being proposed to describe the same thing, such as capitalino, defeño or mexiqueño; even mexiquense; but none has turned out to be adequate, nor universally accepted.

In reality, there is no demonym to describe all the inhabitants of the metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico, but rather demonyms that describe the inhabitants of the different territories of which the metropolis is made up. The former director of the Mexican Academy of Language, José G. Moreno de Alba, has argued that the absence of a demonym for the metropolis is mainly due to the fact that the name of Mexico City is the same as that of the country., and one of its federative states. This favors that the word chilango, used as a demonym, lends itself as a solution to an old conflict: that of granting a demonym to all the inhabitants of the metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico.

According to Gabriel Zaid, when the word capitalino is used, it refers to Mexico City, the capital of the country, although with the drawback that this is a generic term for all the capitals of states and countries. The controversy has led to proposals as diverse as citizens of the capital and city mexiquenses; but, in the end, it is expected that custom will impose the final concept. It should be clarified that capitalino or any other proposal excludes the rest of the inhabitants of the metropolis, which is not made up exclusively of Mexico City, but also by municipalities of the state of Mexico.

On the other hand, defeño seems like a word that corresponds to the moment in which Mexico City covered approximately the extension of the old Federal District, territorially equivalent, and which borrowed its initials― D.F.―, to use them as the name of the place. Despite the fact that Mexicans colloquially understand that the Federal District and the Deefe were two names for the same territory, the validity of this word has ended, while the District Federal of the United Mexican States, and has condemned the term to disuse. In addition, although this concept is understood by Mexicans, it is not so by foreigners, without previously knowing the meaning of the acronyms. In addition, this concept also has the drawback of exclusively including residents of the former Federal District, today Mexico City, and explicitly excluding the other inhabitants of the rest of the metropolis.

Finally, the word mexiqueño, which is recent, proposed in 2001 by the Dictionary of the Spanish Language with the collaboration of the Mexican Academy of Language. It is the most recent of all the terms, the product of a social phenomenon, especially among the population of medium and high social level, and is the name officially self-proposed as the name of Mexico City, in January 2016. Again, this word is defined as a native of Mexico City, capital of the Mexican Republic; and it also suffers from the same fundamental disadvantage of most of the terms proposed as demonyms, since it exclusively includes residents of Mexico City, and explicitly excludes the other inhabitants of the rest of the metropolis..

However, historically and throughout the country, the term chilango has described the people of the capital city, regardless of whether Mexico City has exceeded its political limits to reach adjacent territories when it grew. This gives as a result that, by extension, the demonym covers all the inhabitants of the metropolitan area of the Valley of Mexico, which includes the territorial demarcations of Mexico City―formerly known as the Federal District (Mexico)―; to the metropolitan municipalities that surround Mexico City to the west, north and east, whether they are conurbations or not, which belong to the State of Mexico; and finally, possibly also, to Tizayuca, the only metropolitan municipality in the State of Hidalgo. This adjective can also be used as a noun, to name someone from Mexico City and its metropolitan area, or something from it. It should be mentioned that, on occasions, the term also refers to the inhabitants of the center of the country, regardless of whether or not they live in the metropolis of Mexico City; however, the context in which it is used helps to differentiate this ambiguity.

Social aspect

Many times, the main stereotypes of this sector of the country's population are the merchants and vendors, known for their bad reputation as opportunists and calculators, so it happens that some of the other residents of the Republic generalize like this to all of this origin.

Due mainly to the excessive growth of Mexico City in the last three decades of the XX century, the differences between the capital and the rest of the country grew to give new impetus to certain historical grudges -for no valid reason- among Mexicans. At present, the vision that both groups have of each other en masse, can be summed up in that for the inhabitants of the other parts of the Mexican Republic, based on prejudice and ignorance, the chilango is aggressive, rude, disrespectful, dishonest and manipulative, in fact, the unfortunate phrase that is a sample of the xenophobia and racism that prevails in Mexico is memorable and memorable in the context

"Make your country, kill a chilango".

On the other hand, part of this group has tried to give the term a less derogatory connotation by using it in magazines, logos and pamphlets, assimilating it to the general meaning of inhabitant of the Federal District. Although in a strange way they relate the mid-level economic area of the city to all of Mexico City or the Federal District, so it is common for them to consider areas of the federal entity as a strange and distant area of the country, in many cases with derogatory aspects both for the rest of the inhabitants of the Federal District and the country, when in the territory of the Federal District there are towns with more than 500 years of age with a native population that is recognized by its own names, such as chimperino for example of the inhabitants of the town of San Pedro Cuajimalpa in the Cuajimalpa Delegation of Morelos, or that of Tepiteño for the native of the old neighborhoods of Tepito.