The Fresa Naco Divide

The Fresa-Naco Divide

On my Academia de Cruz Medina blog, Enrique Reynoso posted on the fresa-phenomenon that he situates as a response to the pejorative use of pocho against Americanized Mexican Americans.

I found this interesting 2009 popular article about youth culture in the Guadalajara Reporter that defines fresas in comparison to nacos:

"Naco, naca: classless, pretentious, obtrusive, the Mexican version of white trash.
Fresa: superficial youngsters many of whom come from a high class family."

The reporter goes on to point out the differences as centering around low vs. high culture, where low culture tends to be more related to "real" Mexican culture:

"More likely to be fans of cheap tequila, banda or mariachi music, lucha libre, street tacos and soccer, nacos are in touch with the grass roots of Mexican culture whereas fresas tend to look north, peppering their speech with English phrases. “Happy,” “sorry,” “fresh,” “que cool,” “super” and equally infuriating Spanish phrases like “que oso,” “o sea” and “vales mil” are the hallmarks of the fresa vernacular."

To bring it back to the context of the U.S. and without being fully familiar with the essence of the naco social construction, I'd speculate that nacos sound a bit like those who self-identify with the "patriotic"(bordering on nationalistic), "redneck" or "country" as is done in the U.S. The assertion that nacos maintain a sort of pretentious quality about them makes me wonder what a "redneck" crossbred with a hipster would look like?

Read the rest of Tom Marshall's article at:
http://guadalajarareporter.com/features-mainmenu-95/908-features/24877-youth-culture-101-nacos-a-fresas.html

There is a good amount of Naco material online. Here's an interesting image I found on photobucket from fatimitha19: