When is the term Gringo used in a positive sense? Americans sometimes use it non-pejoratively to refer to themselves, but I've lived in San Diego near the Mexican border for 50 years and I've never heard it used by Mexicans, and especially Chicanos, in other context than pejorative. It's the equivalent of "beaner" for Mexican.
When is the term Gringo used in a positive sense? Americans sometimes use it non-pejoratively to refer to themselves, but I've lived in San Diego near the Mexican border for 50 years and I've never heard it used by Mexicans, and especially Chicanos, in other context than pejorative. It's the equivalent of "beaner" for Mexican.
I'm Cuban American and I met a Chicano a couple of years ago at a mutual friend's birthday party. We were seated at the same table. Since I am 6'3'', white and blue eyed, he assumed I was "Anglo".
When he began to complain about how "Hispanics" cannot succeed in the USA, I switched the conversation from English to Spanish, much to his surprise, and told him that I was "Hispanic" myself and was doing quite well although my father and I landed in the USA when I was 6 with nothing but the clothes in our suitcases.
He then said that was because I was "Gringo". "Since every ancestor in my family tree came from a Spanish line, why do you say that I am a Gringo?", I asked him. His reply was that I was white. To him, a Gringo was simply anyone who was white and not of Indian blood.