Canto CCCLVII: Lo Barato Cuesta

Gentle cabrones:

I’m not sure where I learned to be a cheapskate.

It wasn’t from my dad, who never missed a mortgage/insurance/car payment while he had a job, but also liked to drop cash on nice tejanas/shirts/poker games a bit too much. It was probably my mom, who took us to swap meets and thrift stores — but she always made sure to dress us nice every school year with clothes from Montgomery Ward’s and whose outfits were straight out of Designing Women.

That’s why it always annoyed her when I started buying my own clothes that I mostly stuck to Dickies/Chucks/Marshall’s.

“Lo barato cuesta,” she would say, and my dad would actually say that as well.

What’s cheap is expensive. (The full saying is lo barato cuesta mucho, Google tells me. Or lo barato sale caro. But you know us rancho libertarians — eliding like crazy!)

I always scoffed. If you’re trying to save money, don’t you want to find, well, the least expensive thing? So I always went for the cheapest tacos/medicine/socks. Even though sometimes that led to wildly inferior products that would’ve been just normal if I had spent just a dollar more, I stuck to the lowest cost for decades.

I eventually learned you should should always look for a bargain, but you should find quality products more. I really absorbed that lesson as a food critic, and especially for my KCRW #TortillaTournament which is forthcoming in some capacity, pardon the interruption of an election year.

But I learned my lesson once and for all a couple of months ago when I went to the late, sometimes great 99 Cent store when my wife and I needed ear swabs. I could’ve gone to a Target or even CVS and gotten Q-Tips, the most popular mainstream brand. But I figured ear swabs are ear swabs, right? And so I bought a bagful of them at the pink-and-turquoise Hall of Thrift.

My wife was the first to complain, because she always Cosmo-shames me. She said they were too flimsy/threadbare/laughable and demanded I buy sturdier ones.

I scoffed, and then I took a shower. And then I cleaned my ears – OUCH. And ewwwww.

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My compa Carlos Salgado used to sell $18 tacos at his late, great Taco María– rather, two of them for 18.

I would tell this to people, and they would immediately roll their eyes and chortle that that was white people prices, that Carlos was white aligning and all sorts of other stupidities.

And I would stop them and ask them to compare and contrast between the tacos that they were implicitly lionizing – bought from a truck, at two dollars apiece in these inflationary times – and those that Carlos sold.

I first told them that the idea that Mexican food should always be cheaper than everything else and cannot be expensive was patronizing. And then I would do a breakdown.

I would tell them that Carlos made his blue corn tortillas fresh from masa he milled and nixtamalized, and he sourced the blue corn from heirloom growers. The beef that he used for the arrachera tacos I would always order? Grass fed and hormone free – to paraphrase Mr. Gold, the cattle where that meat came from had a nice life and just one bad day.

The produce came from farmers markets, grown no farther than Kern; Carlos‘s workers got paid a fair wage, and he treated them with respect. Carlos and his wife Emilie were literally a mom-and-pop shop — and shouldn’t they be able to live a good life on their sweat equity?

And then the tacos themselves: tortillas so delicious they won my KCRW #TortillaTournament twice. A toasty, furtive salsa macha. The best beef of your life. Charro beans spiked with thick slabs of perfect bacon.

Then I switched over to the two dollar tacos.

The tortillas most likely came with a bunch of preservatives, most likely from GRUMA, the Thanos of the tortilla world, because they were always about 50 cents cheaper than local tortillas. The meat came from animals no doubt pumped up with antibiotics so they could live in the filth of industrial farms, slaughtered by exploited workers. Exploited workers also picked the onions and cilantro that topped the tacos and the limes and avocados most likely came from areas where cartels had taken over, or shipped from Chile.

And the workers who made those tacos? Crap wages, if they were lucky – and no wage if they were family members. And the tacos? Whatever.

So tell me, I would tell the Taco María critic: do you want cheap like that? Or do you want the bargain of the year in $18 tacos?

Lo barato cuesta.

Multiple studies have shown that the stuff folks buy at Dollar General or Dollar Tree or other “bargain” outlets end up costing consumers more. We as Americans are so obsessed with what’s immediately in front of us, and what people tell is is better than what actually is, that we screw ourselves over again and again.

We don’t study. We don’t search. We satiate.

And here we are.

We just finished the shitty ear swabs this week. I went to Rite Aid, but they didn’t have Q-Tips. Instead, they had another somewhat mainstream brand that I can’t remember but cost about a quarter less than Q-Tips.

Sturdy/smooth/soft.

Lo barato cuesta.

**

Enough rambling. This was the semana that was:

IMAGE OF THE WEEK: The booklet to Encuentro, the quadrennial gathering hosted by the Latino Theater Company in downtown Los Angeles. Went up last night to see the play based on my former columna one more time — it’s the bawdy schizophrenic romp of the season. Just one more performance — maybe ever!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK: “What! Would you have the Lord find me idle when he comes?” — John Calvin

LISTENING: “El Tren,” Lucha Villa. OK, I promise to index Gustavo Arellano’s Weekly soon, because I just realized that I had written about bullies before and I don’t like to repeat myself! Same with FINALLY creating my playlist, because I don’t like to repeat artists, either! So I’m sure I’ve mentioned Lucha Villa before, but if I’m repeating myself here — to quote Tom Leykis — I DON’T CARE! A gem of a song, with her vastly underrated voz, and those old-timey steam-engine sounds that you just don’t here anymore, and with the strums of the guitars sounding just like the chug. You don’t see corridos tumbaos ever doing THIS.

READING: “Distracted Boyfriend”: Know Your Memes is exactly what it sounds like: authoritative, exhaustive, written somewhat dryly — but that allows it to have a mordant wit because they just tell the history of a meme, which is frequently wacky. You know this meme — the one with the guy looking back at a smiling girl while his girlfriend looks on in disgust. But do you know what happened afterward? Know Your Memes does!

BUY MY NEW CO-BOOK! People’s Guide to Orange County tells an alternative history of OC through the scholarship and reporting of myself, Elaine Lewinnek, and Thuy Vo Dang. There’ll be signings all year — in meanwhile, buy your copy TODAY. And, yes: I’ll autograph it!

Gustavo Events  

Nov. 10: Go check out the last performance of Interview with a Mexican, the play based on The Former Columna that’s part of the Latino Theater Company’s quadrennial Encuentro in downtown LA. My theater year continues — buy your tickets here!

Nov. 16, 1 p.m.: I’m going to be in conversation with the legendary essayist Ilan Stavans, co-author of Sabor Judío: The Jewish Mexican Cookbook, at my wife’s Alta Baja Market, 201 E. 4th St., Ste. 1010, SanTana. There will be books for sale AND snacks to follow. Lecture and snacks, FREE; books, BARATO.

Nov. 20, 12:30: I’ll be in Zoom conversation with Alta Journal chingona Beth Spotswood about my story on the century-long fascination with Zorro. The link isn’t up just yet, but you can eventually find it here, and it’s FREE!

Gustavo in the News

“Fernandomania Forever” and “The Election Show”: The Latino Newsletter — no, seriously, that’s its name — plugs a columna of mine.

“November 8th, 2024: Requiem for Fernandomania”: The Latino Media Collective has me on to talk about El Toro with some exceptionally thoughtful questions.

“JOSE GASPAR: CSUB recognizes local labor icons”: The legendary Bakersfield columnist shouts out an appearance I made at Cal State Bakersfield.

“Part 127: The Madness of Donald Trump – Hopefulness and Resistance in Los Angeles“: Legendary whistleblower Zachary Ellison mentions me in a story of his.”

“How a Drastic Drop in Latino Support in California Could Cost Democrats the House”: Mother Jones reporters really like me!

“‘This time, we will be ready.' LA immigration advocates brace for second Trump presidency”: KNBC-TV Channel 4 interviews me about why Latinos went with Trump.

Gustavo Stories 

“Grítale a Guti”: Latest edition of my Tuesday night IG Live free-for-all.

“Election results in Orange County could reshape Congress”: My latest KCRW “Orange County Line” commentary talks about my homeland.

"Ysabel Jurado leads Councilmember Kevin de León; Hutt and Nazarian also ahead” and “With Jurado victory, L.A.’s audio leak scandal takes down another Latino politician”: I contribute to Election Night coverage for my brilliant colleagues Dakota Smith and Dave Z.

“Political novice Ysabel Jurado celebrates on her road to Eastside history”: My latest L.A. Times columna is there on Election Night with CD14’s new councilmember. KEY QUOTE: ““You did it!” Raman told Jurado. “Incredible. Now, the real work begins.””

“Why it’s wrong to blame Trump’s victory on Latino men”: My next latest L.A. Times columna focuses on the latest liberal piñata. KEY QUOTE: “Rancho libertarians were seen as antiquated vendidos — sellouts — who would drown in the progressive blue wave that had covered California due to GOP xenophobia and that was now spreading across the country. Well, who’s treading water now?”

“The sad, desperate, Hispandering end of Kevin de León’s career”: My still next latest L.A. Times columna is a political eulogy for a politician that was equal parts Oliver Twist and Jay Gatsby. KEY QUOTE: “But history will now also remember him as the Joe Biden of the Eastside — someone who stayed way past his expiration date, ended his political career with a whimper and cost his base their political power because he refused to leave.”

You made it this far down? Gracias! Follow me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram while you’re down here by clicking on their logos down below. Don’t forget to forward this newsletter to your compadres y comadres! You can’t get me tacos anymore, but you sure as hell can give them — and more — to the O.C. Catholic Worker!