Cholos, Cholas, Cholo Power, and Cholita Brown
Before moving to Peru, I misunderstood the term ‘cholo‘ to mean what it means in the States. In America, cholo has morphed into meaning Mexican gangster – the stereotype having a shaved head, tattoos, and knee-high ankle socks pulled up. The 70s and 80s era cholo was stereotyped with the slicked-back hair, maybe under a hair-net, and a tank-top muscle shirt or flannel with only the top button fastened.
So when I moved here and heard the word, I assumed they were talking about gangsters or thugs. It wasn’t long before things didn’t make sense and I got clarification. As I understood it under my first clarification, cholos are the indigenous people, descendants of the original people who inhabited the land before the Spanish colonization. The women with the hats and the long, braided hair. They carry their babies like a backpack in a blanket wrapped tight around their bodies. This was a slight misunderstanding. I have since been explained that it means anybody with indigenous heritage, which is basically everybody.
Before my second clarification, I misunderstood a cholo question with my basketball team after a game. José asked me if I liked cholas (ending with –as means female). I told him I hadn’t had one but that my girlfriend was rather brown. The whole team broke out in a laugh. I was sort of trying to get a laugh but didn’t expect such a reaction. After the initial laughter induced by the surprise of the answer, there were aftershock laughs. I didn’t understand why it was so funny because I hadn’t gotten my second clarification.
I don’t remember how it came up, but I was telling Rosa this story a few weeks later. She argued with me that she was not brown. She told me she is very fair-skinned and white, even compared to girls I named who I consider pretty white. I told her she’s out of her mind and that she is brown. She told me that ‘we are all cholos,’ that all Peruvians are of mixed heritage. I’ve found this to be the politically correct line that people profess in public. In private, however, you can hear ‘cholo’ used in a derogatory way towards the poor people who can’t read or are ghetto in some way. Not all Peruvians were created of equal bloodline. There is a higher concentration of whiter, Spanish blood on my basketball team (height) and in my company (education).
Some time later, I told the cholo story to some friends including Rosa’s answer. They all laughed hysterically and created an office nickname for my girlfriend: Cholita Brown. Whenever they invite me to something or ask me what I am doing over the weekend, I say I don’t know and they all say, “Aahh, La Cholita Brown!”
Rosa is not so cholita given our trip to the gym last week. My new gym is on Octavio Munoz, a street that is supposedly packed with thieves and scoundrels. People from the educated class of Peruvians (who seem to be the only ones I meet) tell me it’s dangerous and to be careful. Not only have I never had a problem around there, I have never felt unsafe. I took Rosa to the gym and, almost immediately, she told me she didn’t like it because “es muy cholo,” or it’s ghetto.
Most of the time, I can’t tell what is ghetto and what is not. Besides the very nicest parts of town and the dirt-poor, homemade shanty-towns, everything looks the same. When comparing everything to America, and everybody is brown and speaks Spanish, how do you discern what is ghetto?
My gym plays American music. Yes, I got stared at my first few weeks going there, but I get stared at everywhere I go. After a few weeks, the regulars stopped staring and I even got to know some of them, as I would in any American gym. The weights are ancient unlike any nasty gym I have seen in America, but this is Peru. There are two large rooms with dance classes, which are always packed. There’s one room with five heavy bags and bag gloves. There’s a kickboxing team that occasionally trains in there. There’s a café, a computer lab, and a game room with ten pool tables. All of this under one roof for 1 sol ($0.33) per entry. But, I will yield to the locals and accept the fact that, given its location and Rosa’s impression, it is a cholo gym.
There is a T-Shirt they sell in the tourist shops. It resembles the logo of Inka Kola, a popular Peruvian soda brand, but it reads “Cholo Power.” I got the great idea to wear this shirt around Arequipa. It’d be funny because nobody would call me ‘cholo.’ Unfortunately, I can’t find that fuckin’ shirt in XL!
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4 Responses to “Cholos, Cholas, Cholo Power, and Cholita Brown”
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Hey, very entertaining blog. The blow-by-blow of someone getting to know Arequipa brings back a lot of memories. I’ve spent quite a bit of time there, probably back early-ish next year, see:
http://bidsta.blogspot.com/search/label/Arequipa
http://bidsta.blogspot.com/search/label/Peru
http://www.andean-observer.com/ (still putting this site together)
Peruvians definitely have a mass of complexes to do with race, ethnicity and class. As far as I can gather, there’s at least three different senses of cholo/a:
1. people call each other ‘cholo’ in a buddy-pally kind of way, a bit like huevón/boludo/cabrón in Chile/Argentina/Mexico (or like Colombian girls calling each other ‘marica’). Peruvians may sometimes refer to themselves collectively as ‘cholos’ in the way your girlfriend did.
2. But, to describe an individual or group in normal conversation as ‘cholo[s]‘ is often interpreted as disparaging, and people can get pretty offended if you use it too loosely (‘indio’ is worse). This is because of the underlying racism and the tendency to look down on ethnic origins, despite the outward recognition that ’somos todos cholos’. In a group of Peruvians I know here in NZ, a girl from Ayacucho got really upset at another girl from the coast using ‘cholo’ in what the second girl thought was an inoffensive way.
3. ‘Cholita’ is different again, when used in an affectionate way with a girl. My arequipeña ex-girlfriend used to like me calling her ‘mi cholita’ — it being kind of a generic thing, like ‘gringo’ is for us. It’s also milder to talk about a girl of indigenous appearance as a ‘cholita’, especially if she’s young and pretty, although again you wouldn’t necessarily say it to her face at first.
Anyway, as a gringo you get forgiven most things, but there is a lot of sensitivity around this, and (as in the US or anywhere) a lot of it depends on who s saying and what the tone or context is.
look forward to reading more posts.
Simon Bidwell
lol she is actually kinda light compared to my chola… lol
Lol thanks for your Definition Cholo
The “Lean Like a Cholo” video can out a couple of years ago. After that “Lean Like a Chola” really expoloded on YouTube, it is quite funny.