Mexican Crackers

Although most Mexicans are aware of the US political states, and probably have a cousin or two working in some of these states, acceptance of a state description, such as el texano, or el rhode islandiano, never made it into the Mexican mainstream.

If it barely speaks Spanish, it's a gringo. And that includes anyone looking or acting non-Mexican, such as French, German or Croatian visitors. Once known, the not-US folks get their own national hooks, like el aleman, el italiano, or etc.

Use of the tem "gringo" is not derogatory in Mexico, except in aggressive conversations usually accompanied by other qualifiers such as "pinche, chingado, or something similar.

The origin of the word "gringo" is hotly debated mostly by other gringos. But no consensus has been reached. Some reach back to Latin and its pejorative of "griego" (used as foreigner) supposedly bastardized to "gringo". Some others claim the term to be related to a popular song during the first US invasion of Mexico "Green grow the lilacs....".

Chauvinism in most cases prohibits the use of "American" for a gringo. After all, supposedly all this continent's people are Americans, although even Amerigo Vespucci in 1547 who is responsable for the name never called anyone that.

Surprisingly though, gringos have been very inventive when addressing Mexicans, usually derogatory, ranging from "beaners" and "spicks" to "wetbacks".

The Mexican chattering classes meanwhile have only made very few functional responses such as "yanki imperialista", but they have never achieved the quality of the black American insults such as "honkey", "white devil" or "cracker".

There seems to be room for the expansion of colloquial Mexican to describe those northern devils.