Mexicans: the Original Urban Hipster

Gustavo Arellano, of Ask a Mexican fame, shared some hilarious insights about the newfound frugality of America this week. I couldn’t hope to say it better myself:

Canning. Food trucks. Knitting. Urban homesteading. Home brewing. The rise of these DIY activities amuses me. Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for people growing their own food and sewing their own clothes. These are the new ways of life in middle-class America, a way to save money during the recession. But I gotta ask: What took you guys so long to become Mexican?

I think many Latinos can identify with Arellano’s point. I remember growing up that my abuelitos would save everything, we would sew our own clothes, crochet decorations for the house and try to fix things before buying new ones. Arellano continues:

All these trends are, well, old habits for my circle of relatives and amigos. Butchering a pig? My Tia Maria can do that, and doesn’t have to blog every organ of it. Preserving your own food? My mom devotes an entire wall in her garage to jar after jar of pickled cactus. She’s ready for California’s much-feared big earthquake. Organic gardening? Her sisters each grow specific crops, then they trade produce.

Once I landed in the Yuppie corporate world the emphasis in my environment shifted to newness and consumerism…it didn’t last long. By 2009 I, like millions of my fellow Americans, was back to frugality by necessity. We all have a lot to learn from our parents and grandparents who came here from another country, who are able to fully appreciate the differences between “needs” and “wants.”

These days, I am back to mending my own clothes (thankfully I learned how to sew), I also freeze food instead of eating out, mix my current batch of nailpolishes to avoid buying new ones (hipster anyone?), combine trips to save gas and take other measures my family taught me to save money.

I guess the moral of the story is that my parents and abuelitos were right about everything after all!