Notes on Chapter Two
EL PUEBLO QUE FUIMOS
"THE PEOPLE WE WERE"
Isaac Rogel

(1)  Lechero is a pretty funny false cognate.  That which it appears to be in English is so far from the meaning in Spanish!

(2)  Cantina can be roughly translated as "bar"--but of a certain kind.  The only women who were ever found in a traditional cantina were there on business (you can guess what business), and particularly in cantinas in cities, many Saturday nights would end with a shooting or a stabbing.
In a little pueblo, like Tepexco in the story, it would be more like a neighborhood bar--but still no women.  In recent years calling fairly fancy restaurants "cantinas" has become fashionable inn the U.S. and even in Mexico.

(3)  Ladera Bronca is impossible to translate directly into a meaningful English term.  Ladera means a slope, hillside, foothill; bronca used as an adjective comes from the noun bronca meaning "quarrel", "dispute", "row".  Ladera Bronca is used in the story to describe the people who live there: quarrelsome, troublemaking braggarts.  So, Ladera Bronca would mean something like "Troublemaker Hill".

(4)  Tigrillo is in English an ocelot.  The ocelot is a fairly small wildcat, weighing from about 20 to 40 pounds whose original range was from south Texas to northern Argentina.

(5) La llorona (the weeping woman) is supposed to be the ghost of a woman who wanders the earth looking for her lost children and weeping.  The myth of la llorona is one of the oldest still current in any Spanish-speaking country, in this case Mexico.

(6) Semental is almost exclusively used for a bull or a stallion used for breeding purposes, a stud.  And yes, the root comes from the word you probably already guessed.

(7)  Sombrero can be used for any kind of hat, but in this story it's a particular Mexican sombrero as you probably already know.

(8)  Chamacos is a Mexican colloquialism for muchachos (boys); chamacas is muchachas (girls).  Chamaco and chamaca are used quite commonly.

(9)  Here is a website with as much (and probably more) than you ever wanted to know about tequila.

 (10)  The phrase ...a mí dame...  is an example of a "redundant construction" in Spanish.  Literally, "to me give me", the redundant construction is usually used for emphasis, or to avoid ambiguity.  

(11)  A curious detail about the Spanish language.  As taught in Level I of Platiquemos, Spanish nouns must be either feminine or masculine--there are no neuter nouns in Spanish as there are in many other languages.  The gender of a noun has nothing to do with sexual gender, except in the case of people or animals who are clearly either male or female.  This leads to the curious situation where even the most macho of men has a feminine alma (soul or spirit).  Also note that Goyo, in referring to his alma calls it "she" (ella).

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A tigrillo.  Looks cuddly, no?

 

Goyo or his ghost? Who knows.