Rasquache Style: How Mexicans Make Art Out of Anything
From "Sunshine/Noir III: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana" (City Works Press, 2025)
by Angelica Yanez
Mexicans in the United States have a deep history of transgressing borders, making art out of their daily lives to craft something new. We transmute pain into masterpieces— render it Native, tender, and communal. We reimagine what has already been invented making it ours—deeming it better. Changed orange Cheetos to flaming red with spices, chile, and ancestral legacy. We belong to a lineage of people that make everything out of nothing create the most with the least. Sell our artistry on the streets, sanctify the concrete set up shop on sidewalks— puestos are divine altars of ofrendas that smell of fruit, flowers, and frijol. We prepare timeless recipes with the same ingredients and the kitchen serves as both an art studio and a magician’s stage. Crispy tacos to soft tacos, morph into enchiladas. Chips and salsa, with guacamole, become nachos. Burritos, a staple from sunrise to sunset, grace our plates at breakfast, noon, and night. We pray with plants, transform them into powerful medicine, self-sufficient healers of own bodies— we doctor ourselves up. Pay homage to the land and the four winds, kindling candles to cleanse, release, and bless. We breathe life into the used— repurpose plastic containers and glass, long before the “Go Green” movement took hold. Mole jars turn into drinking vessels and aluminum cans become currency in our hands. In the 1960s, we raised our fists and fought for a space beneath the Coronado Bridge, sang protest songs about Chicano Park. We adorned the lifeless pillars with murals of historical memory. The park, once forbidden by the City of San Diego, is now crowned a national treasure. You can find us cruising around the block, close to the earth in cars considered canvases, the paintwork on lowriders is more art than vehicle. My people reinvent science, spin aerodynamics on its head, hit the switches, drop ‘em low, bring style to the streets. To the world we gifted pizza, popcorn, chocolate, the concept of zero in mathematics, and color TV. Some may label our style as “rasquache,” Uto-Aztecan— meaning resourceful, poor, an underdog aesthetic, even vulgar. Our brown is known to make beautiful things from ugly— weave the scraps of America racism into cobijas and cover ourselves with protection. This cultural expression is born from necessity, rooted in our ability to thrive in harsh conditions, much like the enduring nopales that came before us. In the driest of environments, we water ourselves from the origins, mastering the art of relentless survival— we build home from turtle shells and sacrificed hearts. This is how Mexicans make meaning from the fabric of life, where struggle dares not confine the spirit of the people.
Dr. Angélica M. Yañez is a professor and poet. Also, the founder of The Ancestral Teachings Institute, a place for cultural learning and Indigenous wisdom, visit ancestralteach.com.
To buy Sunshine/Noir III: Writing from San Diego and Tijuana, go here.