Caught in the middle

While sitting outside with Pastor Kalke and Michael, a young staff person with the clinic and the HIV housing program, I was introduced to a new term: POCHO. As they described it to me, a pocho is someone whose parents were born in Mexico, but who was, themselves, born and/or raised in the United States. Michael described himself as a pocho.

Pochos live every day caught in between two worlds, with cultures and values that clash each other. For them, there is always a difficulty in trying to balance family, language, and tradition, with an urban American culture. An example they gave would be to check any number of the young people at CCLM’s ipods—you’d see half traditional Mexican music AND half pop/hip-hop.

This conversation struck me because it opens up a whole new world of risk to young people, particularly immigrant families. When young people have challenges maneuvering through their worlds, whether home or school/neighborhood, they are more likely to have trouble feeling like they fit in. When young people feel vulnerable like this, I’d imagine they’re more likely to turn other means of fitting in, which could be things like clubs or jobs, but can also be gangs and drugs. I mean, what do you do when neither world you live in truly understands the other, and therefore doesn’t understand you?

**In some places, pocho, I’m told, is a negative term for Mexican Americans who have lost their Mexican culture and/or who can’t speak Spanish properly. In San Bernardino, with PK and Michael it didn’t seem to have that connotation at all.