Who Owns the Dead?

Apparently, dying isn’t the end of your problems. Even after you’ve kicked the bucket, crossed the rainbow bridge, or been promoted to the great beyond, somebody might still be fighting over your cultural identity.

And if you happen to be part of a centuries-old tradition, congratulations! You may have just become the subject of an international ownership dispute. Forget resting in peace. Why? Because…

They Won’t Even Let the Dead Rest in Peace

Not even a little! Come on, guys! Give the dead a break! Do we really need another cultural war over who’s entitled to them?

Your ancestors are now caught up in a cultural tug-of-war, with national pride on one side, historical claims on the other, and a whole lot of people ready to defend their heritage as if someone were about to repossess it —or even worse, possess the dead all over again.

Haven’t We Been There Already?

We’ve already been down this rabbit hole with Mexico, Peru, and Spain.

First came the question of who borrowed what from whom; then came the historical family reunion nobody seemed particularly eager to attend.

We started pulling at this thread in Do Mexicans Think They’re the Only Ones Who Die?, then discovered that Spain had a few things to answer for in The Dead That Mexico & Peru Stole from Spain.

When Cultural Pride Becomes a Trademark Competition

Who gets to claim the dead? Who gets bragging rights over the traditions surrounding them? And seriously, when did honoring your ancestors become some sort of a competition?

Like, everybody seems determined to prove that their dead are older, more authentic, and somehow more culturally significant than everybody else’s.

Because apparently, even death isn’t exempt from national rivalries. And while the dead may not have much to say about the matter—yet, the living certainly do.

The National Scoreboard

And once cultural heritage becomes a matter of ownership, the next question is almost inevitable: who gets the bragging rights?

Suddenly, we’re not just talking about traditions, ancestors, or the ways different communities remember their dead.

We’re keeping score—and, even worse, acting like teenagers arguing over whose school has the better football team. Nobody wants to lose, and nobody is particularly interested in admitting the other side might have a point.

I know! We’ve all been there

Part of It Is Understandable

Let’s be fair. People don’t defend their traditions just because they want to win an argument.

These traditions are part of who they are, their families, their ancestors, and the stories they’ve grown up hearing.

And when a community has spent generations being ignored, misrepresented, or conveniently left out of history books, you can understand why people might get a little too protective—and, of course, very defensive. And then what…

Traditions? Swipe ‘Em At Your Ass!

Especially if you get toxic about it!

After all, when somebody takes a swipe at your traditions, it feels personal—like they’re taking a swipe at your grandparents.

And let’s face it, defending a tradition is usually about defending the people who fought like hell to keep it alive. Culture is a living thing, bro.

There’s nothing ridiculous about that. Quite the opposite.

Hold on! Don’t get me wrong!

Don’t Confuse Dead with Toxic Bro!

So, let’s not confuse honoring your abuela’s memory with turning her ghost into a geopolitical football.

There is a massive difference between keeping a ritual alive around the kitchen table and letting internet trolls or government departments weaponize your heritage just to score points on an international scoreboard.

When “defending your roots” turns into a toxic trademark competition where you’re ready to sue a neighboring country over who invented a sugar skull, you can take that elite cultural pride and swipe it right at your ass.

Why? Because we know…

It’s About Your F*cking Ego…

…And not about your traditions anymore.

And because at that point, you’re no longer honoring the dead—you’re just gatekeeping the graveyard.

So… Why not leave the lawyers and internet warriors to their petty playground fights? As for us?

Us But no Ass, Tho!

Let’s just set up our altar, pour a shot of tequila, light the candles, and let our ancestors enjoy their well-earned cosmic vacation.

Trust me, the dead don’t give a sh*t about geopolitical borders or trademark certificates.

Why? Because… they just want to visit their families, eat some good food, and be left in peace.

Let the Dead Be Dead…

For God’s sake!

At the end of the day, the dead are doing just fine—they’re resting. It’s the living who are making a mess out of everything.

So instead of turning your heritage into an elite country club where nobody else is allowed to play, just honor your roots at home, share a drink with the spirits, and stop gatekeeping eternity.

Digging Up the Dead

After all, we’re all going to end up in the exact same ground anyway, no matter whose flag is waving above it.

You’d think that would put the whole thing to rest. But no. Some people would rather keep digging—especially when national pride is on the line.

And digging is what we do best when it comes to the dead, right?

When Pride Becomes a Pissing Contest

The trouble starts when pride turns into a national pissing contest, where another country’s cultural achievement somehow diminishes your own.

If their tradition looks anything like ours, they must have stolen it. If their cuisine is famous, naturally, they must have copied ours. And if their festival is attracting international attention, hold on a minute! Who gave them permission to take the spotlight away from us?

And just like that, history becomes a national scoreboard. Everybody wants to win, preferably by proving that somebody else cheated.

History Isn’t a Football Match

Here’s where things start getting messy.

Everybody wants to win the historical argument, but somewhere along the way, people start mixing up the rules, moving the goalposts, and treating completely different questions as if they were one and the same.

And, surprise, surprise, that doesn’t make anybody’s case stronger.

Not Every Question Scores a Goal

Did a particular practice exist earlier in one place? Did two traditions share certain features? Did one community influence another? Did a modern celebration develop through several historical influences? And does a tradition hold a distinctive meaning for a community today?

Those aren’t five different ways of asking the same question. They’re five different questions, each requiring its own evidence.

Proving one doesn’t automatically score you a goal on the others. History doesn’t work that way, no matter how badly everybody wants to win.

One Tradition, Several Histories

An ancient practice in Peru does not, by itself, establish that modern Mexican Día de Muertos originated there.

The medieval European roots of the Catholic calendar do not establish that the entire modern Mexican celebration is European.

And the presence of Indigenous practices in both regions doesn’t prove that one was copied from the other.

No Ownership Certificates from History

History rarely hands out the neat little ownership certificates people seem to want. Traditions aren’t frozen in time, sitting in some cultural museum waiting for someone to claim them.

They travel, adapt, survive, mix with other influences, borrow—and may steal sometimes. And sometimes, in the process, they become something nobody could have predicted.

Traditions Are Free Spirits!

Sometimes two traditions share roots. Sometimes they develop on their own. And sometimes, no matter how badly somebody wants to prove otherwise, the evidence just isn’t there.

That’s the thing about history: it doesn’t always give you the answer you want, and it sure as hell doesn’t hand out trophies for being first. Not everything has to be a competition, bro!

Modern Borders, Ancient People

Now, here’s where this whole cultural ownership business gets even sillier.

Apparently, we can travel a few centuries back in time, find an ancient ritual, slap today’s national flag on it, and shout: “That’s ours!”

Well, hold your horses! History didn’t come with today’s political map attached.

Who Ordered Those Borders?

Now, here’s a little problem with this whole business of national ownership: apparently, people were supposed to wait for somebody to draw today’s political map before they could start moving around, trading, migrating, or sharing religious traditions.

Well, somebody forgot to tell our ancestors!

Why?

Because before Peru, Mexico or Spain…

Are the Accounts Contradictory?

Not necessarily on every point. The authors may simply be using the word origin differently.

Where did the Catholic calendar come from?

How did a modern celebration develop in Mexican communities? Are we talking about formal religious observances or the customs people practiced around them? Those questions overlap, but they aren’t identical.

Still, there is a real difference in interpretation, particularly over whether syncretism accurately describes the celebration’s development. We shouldn’t pretend both publications say the same thing. Nor should we conclude that historians have no idea what happened simply because they disagree.

There Were Just Humans!

People had their own lives to get on with. They had their rituals, their communities, their neighbors—and, I’m sure, their fair share of arguments with the people next door.

But they weren’t doing any of this under a Peruvian, Mexican, or Spanish flag. Those countries, in their present-day form, came much later.

Nobody was asking for a passport or checking which national anthem to sing.

So, whose flag exactly are we planting on their graves?

Not Everyone Is Buying the Story!

And while we’re busy handing out historical verdicts, let’s not assume everybody sharing some outrageous claim actually believes the damn thing.

Some people are genuinely convinced they’ve uncovered the scandal of the century. Others are defending their country, taking a swipe at a neighbor, trolling somebody, or simply having a laugh. And then there’s the person who shares something because it sounds hilarious. Checking whether it’s true? That’s apparently asking too much!

Welcome to the Internet!

By the time a post has been shared, mocked, reshared, and turned into a full-blown national argument, the original context may be halfway to another continent.

Suddenly, a questionable meme is being treated like an archaeological discovery, and everybody’s an expert.

Easy there, Indiana Jones! Maybe it’s just a Facebook post.

Nuance Doesn’t Win Football Matches!

Now, try telling somebody who’s spent their entire afternoon defending their country’s honor that the historical evidence is a little more complicated.

You might as well interrupt a football match to explain that both teams have interesting agricultural histories.

Nobody came for that!

Everybody Wants to Win!

Once national pride enters the picture, historical nuance becomes about as welcome as a referee’s bad call. Nobody wants to hear that the other team might have a point.

They want the goal, the trophy, and preferably a victory parade.

But History Isn’t a Football Match

If the evidence supports a claim, make it. If it doesn’t, say so. We’re not here to hand out participation trophies or massage anybody’s national ego.

Your ancestors’ achievements don’t lose their shine because somebody else’s ancestors also did something remarkable.

Outrage Is Good for Engagement

But here’s where things get interesting. What happens when getting people worked up becomes a business?

Well, let’s face it, the internet has never been short of people looking for a fight. And apparently, you don’t even need to pick one.

Just throw a little cultural accusation into the mix, sit back, and watch everybody lose their marbles.

It’s All About Clicks

Because social media doesn’t necessarily reward the most thoughtful, historically accurate explanation. It rewards whatever gets people to pay attention. And what gets more attention than telling an entire country that somebody else stole its culture?

Before you know it, you’ve got comments, shares, rebuttals, reaction videos, and enough outrage to keep everybody busy for days.

The original claim might be buried under an avalanche of angry responses, but who’s complaining?

It’s still getting clicks!

Guess Which One Gets the Clicks?

A careful explanation of colonial religious history? Oh, fascinating! I’m sure it’ll keep everybody glued to their screens.

Now, accuse an entire country of stealing another country’s traditions, and suddenly everybody’s an expert, everybody’s offended, and everybody has something to say.

Funny how that works, isn’t it?

That’s Life Bro!

Somebody makes a provocative claim. Somebody else takes offense. Another person jumps in to defend their country. And then along comes the self-appointed historian to debunk the whole damn thing. Here we are!

And here’s the kicker: they’re all helping spread the original claim.

The post doesn’t have to convince anybody. It just has to get people talking. Or arguing. Or throwing a fit. Whatever gets the job done!

Everybody’s Helping to Spread It!

The person who believes the claim shares it. The person who thinks it’s ridiculous shares it to make fun of it. The person who feels insulted shares it to defend their country. And the person who wants to debunk it shares a lengthy explanation.

Different reasons, same result. Everybody’s giving the original claim another round of free publicity.

And the Best Part?

Nobody even has to agree with it!

Before long, the argument has acquired a life of its own.

The dead remain silent, but the engagement numbers are thriving.

Who Is Making a Killing?

Now, let’s not get carried away and start accusing the person behind this particular Peru–Mexico claim of making the whole thing up just to cash in.

We don’t know that.

Maybe they genuinely believe it. Maybe they’re having a laugh. Maybe they’re looking for clicks. We simply don’t have enough evidence to say.

But Here’s the Thing:

You don’t necessarily have to invent a controversy to benefit from one. The online attention game can reward provocative content regardless of what the person posting it originally had in mind.

And let’s not forget the potential audience. Peru and Mexico have substantial Spanish-speaking populations, and their cultural rivalries can attract attention well beyond their borders.

That’s a pretty sizeable audience for anyone looking to get people talking.

Nobody Has to Be the Villain

The distinction matters. We can criticize the incentives without inventing a villain.

And there’s an uncomfortable irony here. People may believe they’re defending their national heritage while helping turn it into a shouting match.

They may be trying to correct misinformation while giving it an even bigger audience.

And they may be outraged by the suggestion that someone is stealing their culture while inadvertently helping turn that culture into somebody else’s content.

Online, Everything Becomes a Competition

The internet can turn almost anything into a competition: food, language, music, clothing, historical achievements—and now the rituals through which people remember their dead.

Perhaps the next dispute will concern which country invented grief.

I wouldn’t rule it out. Someone will produce an ancient carving, somebody else will post a screenshot, and a third person will insist that the carving is actually a receipt.

So, Who’s Really Making a Killing?

The joke works because the mechanism is real: outrage attracts attention, and attention can have value.

The most successful participant in a cultural dispute may not be the person with the strongest historical argument. It may be the person who keeps everyone arguing.

While Peru and Mexico debate who owns the dead, somebody else may be counting the clicks.

Defend Your Roots, Not Your Ego!

By all means, defend your traditions! Celebrate your ancestors! Be proud of where you come from! Nobody’s asking you to surrender your cultural heritage at the nearest border crossing.

But for crying out loud, not everything that looks remotely familiar is a cultural robbery! Not every historical disagreement is an international incident!

And not every tradition needs a bloody birth certificate stamped by the Ministry of National Identity.

History Is Messy

People move around. Traditions travel. They mix, mutate, pick up a few things along the way, and sometimes become something nobody could have imagined a few centuries earlier.

That’s how culture works, folks!

It doesn’t sit around waiting for modern countries to draw borders and issue ownership papers.

And here’s the thing: your ancestors don’t become any less impressive just because somebody else’s ancestors did something remarkable too. This isn’t a damn talent show. Nobody’s handing out trophies!

Give the Dead a Break!

And what are we actually accomplishing here? Winning an argument on Facebook? Getting the last word in a comment thread? Or keeping some cultural pissing contest alive long enough for everybody to forget what the original argument was about?

For God’s sake, the people we’re fighting over are dead! They’ve got better things to do—or, depending on what you believe, absolutely nothing to do!

Don’t Make Ammunition Out of Tradition

Meanwhile, we’re busy turning their traditions into ammunition, their history into bragging rights, and their memory into internet content.

So go ahead. Honor your ancestors. Keep your traditions alive. Put flowers on the altar, light the candles, pour a drink, eat your pan de muerto, or whatever the hell your family does to remember those who came before you.

Loving Isn’t Owning

Just don’t confuse loving your culture with owning everybody else’s.

You don’t have to own the dead to remember them. And you certainly don’t have to bury somebody else’s culture to celebrate your own.

Now, for crying out loud, can we let the dead rest? We’ve got enough trouble with the living!

The post The Dead: The Business of Making People Angry appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

When Three’s a Crowd!

Just when we thought we had enough trouble deciding whether Mexico stole Día de Muertos from Peru, along comes another suspect to complicate the family reunion— or shall we call it the Cultural Appropriation Trial?

Because apparently, when it comes to the dead, nobody can simply let the dead be dead.

¿Pero, por qué? Well…

“Dos son compañía, tres son multitud”, meaning “Two’s company, three’s a crowd”.

Who is it now?

The Unwanted Guest!

Or better yet, call them invaders! Mmm… what? Things, now, are getting uglier—not even color de hormiga, sino de cucaracha: sí, la que no puede caminar.

Well, well, well! Let´s get down to business.

Apparently, the dead have been caught up in a much bigger dispute than we first imagined. First, Peru supposedly wants its tradition back from Mexico.

¡Cuando la madre patria quiere su tajada!

Now Spain enters the picture, and suddenly we’re looking at a different kind of family reunion. If we’re going to start demanding that countries return what supposedly belongs to somebody else, perhaps we should put the ancestors in lost-and-found and ask everyone to bring proof of purchase.

Something tells me this little dispute isn’t going to be settled quite so easily.

The Day that Death Passed Away

The title sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? Good. Because the idea that an entire tradition belongs neatly to one modern country—and that another country must therefore have stolen it—is worth questioning.

But seriously, who gets to decide who owns a tradition? Spain brought Catholic observances to the Americas, but Indigenous peoples weren’t sitting around waiting for Europeans to teach them what to do with their dead.

But Hold on to Your Minutes

The judge just repealed!

If Peru accuses Mexico of stealing its dead, and Spain enters the picture, are we about to discover that the original crime scene was somewhere else entirely?

Watcha talkin’ ‘bout Willis? Perhaps we were looking at the wrong suspects all along.

Before anybody starts returning the dead to their rightful owner, we’d better figure out what we’re actually talking about.

The Church that Brought Us Death

And much more! Yeah, yeah, we knew it!

Spain brought Catholic observances to the Americas, but Indigenous peoples already had their own beliefs and practices concerning the dead.

So what happened when those histories met? Did one tradition simply replace another? Did everything merge into one celebration? Or did centuries of conquest, religious imposition, adaptation, and resistance produce something that can’t be reduced to a single origin story?

When History Refuses to Cooperate!

Traditions don’t come with receipts, and history doesn’t always leave us a neat paper trail.

What people celebrate today may carry traces of different beliefs and practices, shaped over generations in different parts of the world—and under circumstances that were anything but equal.

Of course, we all die! Neither Peru, Mexico, nor Spain invented death.

That Matters Especially Here, Your Honor

Spanish colonial rule wasn’t a lovely family picnic, and Indigenous traditions didn’t simply vanish because a new religious calendar arrived.

But just because ancient practices existed doesn’t mean they automatically explain everything about today’s celebration.

To understand how Día de Muertos took shape, we need to look at the history behind the dates, the beliefs, and the traditions—and begin with the Church.

Enter the Church—and Her Histerical Issues

So, what about November 1 and 2?

Before anybody starts waving ancient calendars around as evidence, let’s look at the other calendar that entered the picture.

And that calendar didn’t exactly originate in the Americas either.

Día de los Santos, no es de los Muertos

The Catholic Church distinguishes between All Saints’ Day, on November 1, and All Souls’ Day, on November 2. Both observances have medieval European roots and arrived in the Americas during Spanish colonial rule.

As Spain conquered territories across the continent, Catholic institutions established churches, rituals, and calendars among peoples who already had their own beliefs and practices concerning the dead.

When Two Calendars Collide

That matters, of course. But finding ancient traditions involving the dead doesn’t automatically mean that today’s Mexican celebration has survived unchanged since pre-Hispanic times. Still, let’s not jump to the opposite conclusion, either.

The European origin of the Catholic dates doesn’t mean everything associated with Día de Muertos arrived from Europe, ready-made, in a colonial shipping crate.

A calendar can cross an ocean without every practice attached to it remaining the same.

When Similar Doesn’t Mean Equals!

When Catholic observances arrived, Indigenous communities already had their own beliefs and customs—and colonial rule meant the two didn’t meet on equal terms.

What happened next wasn’t simply a matter of replacing one calendar with another. Communities preserved, adapted, and reshaped traditions in ways that varied across time and place.

History Doesn’t Fit in a Shipping Crate

And that’s where the story gets even more colorful. Yeah! Color cucaracha. No nice, huh?

The modern celebration cannot be explained by pointing exclusively to either pre-Hispanic traditions or Catholic observances.

Its history involves Indigenous practices, European religious calendars, colonial power, and generations of communities living through the consequences.

These weren’t two finished traditions politely introducing themselves and agreeing to share the same date.

Imposition Doesn’t Always Work

This wasn’t a meeting of equals. Spain had the power to impose its religious calendar; Indigenous communities had to navigate what that meant for their own traditions.

So, if we’re looking for the origins of modern Día de Muertos, we’ll need more than a calendar and a national flag. We’ll need to examine what actually changed, what survived, and how the celebration took shape over time.

A Living Tradition, Not a Museum Exhibit

Imagine a family preparing to honor relatives who have died. Food is being made. Flowers are arranged, candles are lit, and offerings are placed where they belong.

Someone visits the cemetery; someone else prepares a dish associated with a loved one. Photographs, familiar objects, and memories bring particular people into the occasion.

These aren’t just rituals performed because a calendar says it’s time. They’re just ways of remembering specific people and keeping family ties alive. Yes! Even after death.

Not Every Family Celebrates the Same Way

The details vary from community to community, and not every Mexican family observes Día de Muertos in the same way. In some places, the celebration involves elaborate altars and public gatherings; elsewhere, customs take different forms.

The objects aren’t interchangeable decorations, and their meanings can’t always be understood simply by looking at them.

Nor should we invent one imaginary Mexican family and pretend it represents the entire country. Mexico is not one enormous household following a single set of instructions for remembering the dead.

Traditions Don’t Sit Still

Traditions survive because people keep practicing them, teaching them to their children, and adapting them as life changes.

Día de Muertos isn’t an archaeological specimen preserved under glass. It’s a living tradition, interpreted and transformed by communities over time.

And here’s where our investigation gets particularly more color de hormiga. Why? Because…

When the Historians Disagree

Well, well, well. Just when we thought we had the case figured out, the witnesses start disagreeing.

Mexico’s own National Institute of Anthropology and History, or INAH, has published two accounts that frame the historical relationship differently. You’d think the country’s national heritage institution might hand us one neat explanation. Apparently, history didn’t get that memo.

The Catholic Calendar Takes the Stand

In El origen del Día de Muertos, archaeologist Víctor Joel Santos Ramírez argues that the November 1–2 observances originated in medieval Europe.

He distinguishes those Catholic dates from earlier Mesoamerican funerary practices and argues that, strictly speaking, modern Día de Muertos is neither pre-Hispanic in origin nor the product of Indigenous-European syncretism.

In other words, ancient Mesoamerican practices involving the dead don’t automatically make today’s celebration pre-Hispanic. Santos Ramírez draws a firm line between those practices and the Catholic observances.

Then Comes the Plot Twist

Another INAH publication, Día de Muertos, un sincretismo religioso, tells a different part of the story.

It describes the celebration as emerging during the colonial period through the interaction of medieval Catholic observances and pre-Hispanic autumn festivities honoring the dead. It identifies elements associated with both traditions.

So, wait a minute. One publication argues that syncretism isn’t an accurate description of the modern celebration’s origins; another presents religious and cultural interaction as central to its development.

¡Pónganse de acuerdo pues, carajo!

That’s not quite the tidy verdict our cultural courtroom was hoping for.

Are the Accounts Contradictory?

Not necessarily on every point. The authors may simply be using the word origin differently.

Where did the Catholic calendar come from?

How did a modern celebration develop in Mexican communities? Are we talking about formal religious observances or the customs people practiced around them? Those questions overlap, but they aren’t identical.

Still, there is a real difference in interpretation, particularly over whether syncretism accurately describes the celebration’s development. We shouldn’t pretend both publications say the same thing. Nor should we conclude that historians have no idea what happened simply because they disagree.

History Isn’t a Beauty Contest

Before we declare a winner, we need to examine what each account actually says, what evidence it uses, and what part of the tradition it’s trying to explain.

That’s historical inquiry: evidence, definitions, arguments, and disagreements. It isn’t a beauty contest in which the country with the oldest-looking mummy automatically takes home the crown.

Colonialism Was No Tea Party

The colonial context deserves more than a polite mention. Spain didn’t arrive in the Americas with a calendar in one hand and a gift basket in the other.

Spanish rule involved conquest, exploitation, religious coercion, and efforts to suppress Indigenous practices. This was cultural interaction under unequal conditions, with one side wielding the power to dictate the terms.

Yet Indigenous communities were not simply waiting for Europeans to teach them how to remember their dead. They retained, adapted, and transformed traditions, often under circumstances they had never chosen.

The Calendar Was Only Part of the Story

So far, we’ve got several pieces of evidence on the table: the Catholic calendar, Indigenous traditions that existed long before the Spanish arrived, and centuries of colonial rule that changed the lives of the people who lived through it.

No single piece of evidence settles the case.

And we can’t simply pick the piece that makes our preferred country look like the rightful owner and send the rest back to the archives.

Was It a Family Picnic?

This wasn’t a neat cultural exchange in which Spain supplied the dates and Indigenous communities added a few colorful decorations.

There was power, there was resistance, and there were communities adapting to circumstances they hadn’t chosen.

History, unfortunately for anyone hoping for a quick verdict, rarely cooperates with a simple script.

Who Gets to Own the Dead?

And there goes the prosecution’s dream of a quick conviction.

You can’t flatten centuries of history into a sentence declaring that one civilization invented the entire celebration and another simply stole it. That’s not historical analysis; that’s a national ownership claim dressed up as a verdict.

If finding an ancient tradition involving the dead gives a modern country exclusive rights to every later celebration that remembers them, we’d better prepare for a very crowded courtroom.

Death Is as Old as Life Itself

So, nobody gets to claim exclusive ownership of remembrance itself!

The witnesses would stretch back thousands of years, the evidence would cross continents, and the deceased might even have to take the stand.

And if even the history of one Mexican tradition resists a simple origin story, perhaps the whole idea that a country must own the practice of remembering the dead deserves a closer look.

Does the Rest of the World Have Dead People Too?

Of course: People drop like flies everywhere.

An International Lineup of Ancestors.

Before Peru and Mexico take their dispute to the International Court of Cultural Copyright, we should probably invite the rest of humanity to testify.

China, for instance, has Qingming, the Tomb-Sweeping Festival, when families visit graves and honor their ancestors. In India, many Hindu families observe Pitru Paksha, a period dedicated to rites for deceased relatives.

Apparently, Peru and Mexico aren’t the only countries with ancestors. Who knew?

When Other Suspects Get into the Room!

And Europe and North America? They have their own suspects to bring into the room: Halloween, All Saints’ Day, and All Souls’ Day.

Halloween itself is commonly associated with the Celtic festival of Samhain, Christian observances, and customs that developed over centuries.

Halloween Takes the Stand

Halloween may look like costumes, candy, and spooky decorations today, but its history is considerably more complicated. Library of Congress offers useful historical context.

But before anyone starts shouting cultural theft, let’s remember that these traditions aren’t interchangeable.

Their dates, beliefs, rituals, and historical developments differ. Finding similarities doesn’t automatically prove that one culture copied another.

Death Doesn’t Need a Passport

The point isn’t that everybody copied everybody else. It’s that people all over the world have found their own ways to remember their ancestors, honor their dead, and keep family ties alive after someone is gone.

Different places, different customs, different explanations for what happens after we die. One universal problem, though: sooner or later, somebody has to figure out what to do with the dead.

And no civilization had to import death from abroad.

Who Gets to Claim Remembrance?

Just because two cultures have similar ways of honoring their dead doesn’t mean one stole from the other. Maybe they influenced each other. Maybe they arrived at similar practices independently. To establish that one borrowed from the other, we’d need more than a resemblance.

Otherwise, we may have to investigate whether every culture that prepares food for a funeral has infringed on somebody else’s intellectual property.

The Case of the Stolen Funeral

Imagine the paperwork.

The first complaint might arrive from an ancient civilization. The second would be filed by a medieval monastery. The third would accuse both of stealing an idea from somebody whose name has been lost to history.

At some point, the legal department would resign and open a funeral home.

Remembrance Isn’t Intellectual Property

Jokes aside, there’s a serious point here: a tradition can be uniquely meaningful to one culture without that culture being the only one in the world to honor its dead.

Recognizing similarities does not diminish a tradition’s importance. And recognizing a tradition’s distinctiveness does not require us to pretend that no one else has ever done anything remotely similar.

No Need for a Dead Inventor

We can appreciate the specificity of Mexican Día de Muertos and the historical importance of Andean ancestor practices without making one the counterfeit version of the other.

Humanity does not need a single inventor of remembrance.

It needs better ways of understanding why remembrance matters.

The post The Dead That Mexico & Peru Stole from Spain appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

The Alleged Crime Against the Dead

Apparently, we’ve reached the point at which even the dead can’t rest in peace without somebody accusing somebody else of cultural appropriation.

The alleged crime? Mexico may have stolen Día de Muertos from Peru.

Yes, you read that correctly. The dead have barely had time to decompose, and already somebody is disputing ownership of their cultural heritage.

In the International Cultural Appropriation Court:

The Usual Suspects!

We may be dealing with a historical crime of unprecedented proportions. The suspects are two countries with civilizations, traditions, and relationships with the dead that long predate the internet—and, for that matter, the modern nation-states now arguing over them.

The crime scene spans centuries. The witnesses are archaeologists, chroniclers, historians, and people who may or may not have read past the caption of a Facebook post. The evidence includes ancient rituals, Catholic calendars, colonial history, and competing claims about who got there first.

Will Mexico Have to Return the Dead to Peru?

At this point, we don’t even know whether to call the police, an archaeologist, or an intellectual-property lawyer. Perhaps all three. The archaeologist can examine the remains, the police can look for suspects, and the lawyer can explain how to sue somebody on behalf of a corpse.

One question remains: if Peru wins the case, will Mexico have to return the dead?

Before we start issuing extradition orders for deceased ancestors, however, we should probably establish what the accusation actually is. What does it mean to say that Mexico stole Día de Muertos from Peru? Are we talking about a particular date, an ancient ritual, a religious belief, a collection of customs, or the modern Mexican celebration recognized around the world?

Does It Matter to Death?

Of course, it does! Those are not interchangeable things.

But distinguishing between them would require a little historical patience, and patience has never been the internet’s most marketable product.

So let’s open the case file. The dead have been around for thousands of years, but the intellectual-property dispute is a very modern invention.

Does Death Belong Exclusively to Peru?

Or would it be willing to negotiate a settlement with Mexico? Only time will tell!

Because one thing is certain:

“…in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes,” as one of the Founding Fathers famously put it.

A Viral Claim Looking for a Crime Scene

In October 2026, reports brought renewed attention to social-media claims that Día de Muertos did not belong to Mexico but originated in Peru.

One reported statement complained that Mexicans were unaware of the supposed true history of the celebration and suggested that they had liked Peruvian culture so much that they adopted Peruvian customs.

The Mexican outlet El Informador covered the controversy on October 18, 2026, discussing the competing traditions and the historical confusion surrounding them.

Who Is the Mastermind Behind this Crime?

But before we identify the mastermind behind this alleged cultural heist, a small procedural detail: the original authorship and complete context of the particular viral claim have not been independently established here.

An image credit, a repost, or an article describing a social-media controversy does not automatically identify the person who started it.

It Wasn’t the First Time!

Of course, we knew it!

We also know that this was not the first time Peru and Mexico had been dragged into an online argument over cultural ownership. In September 2025, a Peruvian TikTok account called @peru.no.es.clave circulated a video claiming that Mexico had borrowed everything from Peru, including tequila, tacos, tamales, and Día de Muertos. The Mexican sports publication RÉCORD reported on the dispute.

Whether that earlier account was responsible for the specific claim circulating in October 2026 is another question. We shouldn’t merge two controversies into one tidy origin story just because they fit the same plot.

But, regardless…

Cultural Appropriation Seems to Be the Major Crime Here

Still, the recurring theme is unmistakable: somebody claims that another country has stolen something, and the internet gets to work.

And what a convenient accusation it is. Cultural theft sounds serious. It suggests a victim, a culprit, and a debt that must be repaid. It transforms complicated history into a morality play with national flags.

The problem is that history rarely cooperates with a good courtroom drama. Traditions travel, change, overlap, disappear, survive underground, and reappear in forms their original practitioners might not recognize.

We can suspect anyone at this point; nevertheless, we can only conclude one thing:

Death Has Never Respected Borders!

What a shame!

Nevertheless,…

Sometimes there is clear evidence of borrowing. Sometimes there is a complicated history of cultural exchange. Sometimes two societies develop similar practices independently because human beings, regardless of their passports, eventually have to deal with the same universal inconveniences: birth, hunger, love, taxes, and death.

And death, unlike a national trademark, has never respected a border.

So let’s examine the evidence. Not to crown Peru the winner or hand Mexico a certificate of innocence, but to find out what the historical record actually tells us.

The Ancestors Were Here First

Before we start handing out medals for being the first civilization to remember the dead, let’s get one thing straight: the ancestors were around long before Peru and Mexico became modern countries. They weren’t checking passports at the cemetery gates!

Finding evidence of ancient rituals involving the dead is one thing. Proving that an entire modern celebration was stolen from one country by another is quite another.

Only if They Could Testify

If the ancestors could testify, they might have a few things to say about our modern obsession with borders, ownership, and who gets to claim the dead.

But even their testimony wouldn’t automatically settle the question of who invented Día de Muertos as we know it today.

Siempre hubo Muertos

True that! People have always dropped like flies. Death is inherent to life.

And documenting an ancient tradition first does not, by itself, establish that another culture borrowed it.

What it does establish is that the history of remembering the dead is considerably older—and more complicated—than an argument on social media can accommodate.

So let’s begin with what an Indigenous chronicler actually recorded, long before anyone could drag Peru and Mexico into court over the dead.

Before Peru Had a Passport

Let’s fire up the time machine and head back several centuries, way before the modern republic of Peru existed, before passports and national anthems, before anyone could post an angry video accusing another country of stealing a tradition.

Our guide is Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, an Indigenous chronicler writing in the early seventeenth century under Spanish colonial rule. His manuscript, El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno, places the Inca month Aya Marcay Quilla, associated with bringing out the dead, alongside November in the European calendar.

Not a Modern Tourist Brochure

Guamán Poma’s account is not a modern tourist brochure. His manuscript preserves a written description and an illustration of the practice.

But documenting an ancient tradition is one thing; proving that another country stole its modern celebration is quite another.

Bringing the Dead Back Into the Community

You approach a pucullo, a burial place described by chronicler Guamán Poma. The dead are brought out, given food and drink, and dressed in fine clothing, with feathers placed on their heads.

These aren’t ancestors being remembered from a safe distance. They’re being brought back into the community of the living.

When the Dead Take to the Streets

The deceased are placed on andas—carrying platforms—and the procession sets off. You follow as the dead are carried from house to house, through the streets and into the plaza. People sing and dance with them. No need to settle for a family story about Great-Grandpa: he’s making the rounds.

Eventually, the procession returns to the pucullos. The dead are put back in their resting places, accompanied by food and vessels. The living have brought their ancestors into the community and then accompanied them home.

And centuries later, we’re arguing over which modern country owns a tradition involving the dead. Too bad the ancestors didn’t leave us their lawyers’ contact information.

What the Chronicler Actually Tells Us

We should be careful not to invent sounds, conversations, or private emotions the chronicler did not record. But the actions he does describe are vivid enough. Imagine the physical work of carrying the deceased, the garments and feathers visible along the route, the food prepared for the occasion, and people gathering as the procession passes through familiar surroundings.

The ancestors are not a distant abstraction. In this account, they are brought into the community’s shared space.

The Dead Were Not All Equal

Guamán Poma’s description includes another detail that is easy to overlook: the deceased were returned to their burial places with food and vessels. He distinguishes between vessels of gold or silver associated with important people and clay vessels associated with the poor.

Even in the afterlife, apparently, social inequality wasn’t taking the day off.

Death Also Reflected the Living World

That detail tells us something important: honoring the dead wasn’t just about affection for the ancestors. The ritual also reflected the world of the living, where status and wealth mattered—even when it came to how the dead were treated.

For an ancestor accustomed to being remembered only through an annual social-media post, this arrangement might seem like a considerable upgrade. But the historical significance goes well beyond the joke.

Death Has No Trademark

The account documents an Inca practice of honoring the dead in November. It does not demonstrate that the modern Mexican Día de Muertos originated in Peru, nor does it establish a direct historical line connecting this particular Inca observance to the modern Mexican celebration.

That distinction matters.

An ancient Andean ritual is evidence of an ancient Andean ritual. It is not a deed granting Peru ownership of every later ceremony involving ancestors, food offerings, or the month of November.

Let’s Take the Time Machine North

We’ve spent some time in the Andes, watching the dead make their rounds during Aya Marcay Quilla. But our investigation isn’t over. If we’re going to figure out who invented the idea of keeping the dead company, our little time machine still has some mileage left.

So let’s head north, to Mesoamerica, centuries before Mexico had a passport, a national anthem, or even a country called Mexico.

The Spanish Haven’t Arrived Yet

Modern borders are nowhere to be found. And the Indigenous peoples of this vast region already have their own beliefs about death, the afterlife, and what happens to the relationship between the living and the deceased when someone kicks the bucket.

Apparently, nobody needed a foreign consultant to explain that death was more complicated than a burial and a goodbye.

Not One People, Not One Afterlife

Now, let’s not turn Mesoamerica into one enormous village where everybody believes the same thing, follows the same calendar, and gets the same handbook on what happens after death.

The Mexica, Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec, and other peoples had distinct histories, beliefs, and practices. They weren’t members of one giant Indigenous club with a universal membership card.

Archaeological remains, inscriptions, codices, and colonial chronicles offer different windows into the past. Some traditions also survived through centuries of transformation.

How Do We Know?

Take the Mexica. In the sixteenth-century Florentine Codex, compiled after the Spanish conquest, Bernardino de Sahagún recorded Indigenous accounts of funerary rites. These included offerings for the deceased and the belief that a dog helped them cross a river on the journey to Mictlan.

This isn’t Día de Muertos as celebrated today. It’s a recorded Mexica practice of caring for the dead.

UNESCO Has Something to Say

The UNESCO description of Indigenous festivities dedicated to the dead in Mexico highlights offerings for deceased relatives, the agricultural cycle, and the importance of maize. It also recognizes the diversity of the communities involved.

Picture families preparing food, arranging flowers, lighting candles, and gathering to welcome their deceased. These aren’t interchangeable decorations on a national holiday. They’re living traditions with meanings rooted in particular communities.

Two Regions, One Very Old Question

So, yes: the Andes had rich traditions concerning the dead. Mesoamerica did, too. Both regions were home to Indigenous civilizations long before Peru and Mexico became modern countries.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. That doesn’t mean their practices were identical, that one necessarily borrowed from the other, or that every modern celebration can be traced directly to a single ancient ritual.

Spain brought the same Catholic calendar to both regions. So before we treat November as evidence of a Peruvian export, we’d better call that calendar to the witness stand.

History Is NOT a Museum

Traditions survive, adapt, mix, and acquire new meanings. History isn’t a museum where everything stays exactly where somebody left it.

And here’s where the prosecution’s case begins to wobble. If finding an ancient tradition involving the dead automatically gives a modern country ownership of every similar practice, the world is going to need a much bigger courthouse.

And a considerably larger waiting room.

No Smoking Gun, Your Honor.

Well, we haven’t exactly found the smoking gun. The Andes had their traditions involving the dead long before Peru became a republic.

Mesoamerica had its own, long before Mexico appeared on a map. Apparently, neither civilization needed to import the idea that the dead deserved some attention.

Death was nothing new to the ancient peoples of Mexico or Peru—or to any other civilization.

But Hold Your Extradition Orders!

Hold on, folks! Before we drag Mexico into court and demand that it hand over Día de Muertos to Peru, let’s remember one tiny detail: finding ancient traditions involving the dead in Peru doesn’t prove that Mexicans stole theirs. If it did, half the world would be suing the other half over who got to talk to the dead first.

We have ancient traditions, historical accounts, and plenty of reasons to keep investigating. The dead may have been around for thousands of years, but that doesn’t make every country with a tradition of honoring them a suspect in the same crime.

Does that Mean the Case Is Closed?

Not quite. We’re not ready to dismiss the case just yet.

We still have the Catholic calendar to examine, along with Spanish colonial rule and the long, complicated process through which different traditions encountered, resisted, and reshaped one another. After that, we’ll tackle the question lurking behind this whole cultural courtroom circus: who gets to claim ownership of the ways human beings remember their dead?

For now, the prosecution will have to hold its horses. We’ve got more witnesses to hear, and the dead aren’t going anywhere.

Session Adjourned!

The court may be adjourned, but the learning doesn’t have to stop here.

After all, we’ve spent this investigation examining traditions, challenging claims, and separating historical evidence from cultural assumptions. Along the way, we’ve also encountered some useful Spanish vocabulary.

Here are a few expressions worth taking with you before you leave the courtroom.

Spanish Vocabulary: Death, History, and Cultural Heritage

Want to Discuss These Ideas in Spanish?

Understanding a word is one thing. Using it to explain your ideas, defend an argument, or discuss cultural differences in Spanish is another.

At Kasa de Franko, our Spanish classes focus on communication, cultural context, and thinking in Spanish—not simply translating words. Whether you’re building your vocabulary, improving your fluency, or preparing to participate in more sophisticated conversations, we help you put what you learn into practice.

Explore our online Spanish classes and discover how language comes to life.

Keep Exploring

If this investigation has left you with more questions about language, identity, and cultural history, continue exploring these related articles from Kasa de Franko or attend our cultural events:

• How Spanish Has Contributed to American Identity — explore the historical influence of Spanish on American identity.
• El Día de la Hispanidad: Embrace or Ignore? — examine the complicated history and meaning of Hispanic identity and commemoration.

And stay tuned for further investigation, where we’ll examine the Catholic calendar, Spanish colonial rule, and the tangled history behind modern Día de Muertos.

The post Do Mexicans Think They’re the Only Ones Who Die? appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

The More You Hit Me, the More I Love You?

As the Spanish saying goes, “Más me pegas, más te quiero.”

Can you love someone who punches you in the face? What if that person also tells you he loves you while building a wall to keep your people out?

Donald Trump insists he has loved Hispanics from the very beginning. Some applaud him, support him, and even vote for him. Others wonder how those declarations of affection square with his immigration policies and his rhetoric about who belongs and who doesn’t.

Is Anything Fair Game in Love & Politics?

Well, it seems that in politics, as in war, love comes with its own rules. Or at least its own set of excuses.

A contradiction? Shared interests? Political loyalty? Or does everyone simply hear what they want to hear?

Supporting a politician doesn’t necessarily mean agreeing with everything he does. But neither can we explain away every contradiction and then declare the matter settled.

And this is where things get interesting.

If You Enjoy the Itch, Don’t Mind the Scratch!

As we say in Spanish, “sarna con gusto no pica, y si pica no mortifica.” When you enjoy something, you don’t mind the discomfort that comes with it—or at least that’s the idea.

But in politics, who’s enjoying the itch, and who’s left scratching?

Why do some people continue supporting a politician even when his decisions may hurt them or people close to them? What weighs more heavily: ideology, self-interest, identity, or loyalty?

No es tanto el amor al chancho, sino a los chicharrones

That’s how the saying goes in Spanish. Why?

Because loving the pig is one thing; loving the pork rinds is quite another.

And in politics, as in certain complicated relationships, it’s worth asking who takes the punch, who gets the pork rinds, and who ends up convinced that the whole thing was done for their own good.

When Politics Isn’t Love, but Loyalty

I’ll stick with you through thick and thin—as long as the pot doesn’t run dry.

As we say in Spanish, “Contigo, pan y cebolla, hasta que nos dure la olla.”

Politics isn’t exactly a romantic relationship, but some candidates seem to demand the same kind of fidelity.

Loyalty or Willful Blindness?

When you support someone, you can acknowledge that they make mistakes, criticize them, and even change your mind.

Or you can start looking for excuses for everything they do, especially when admitting a contradiction would force you to reconsider a decision you’ve been bragging about for months—or years.

The Comfort of Never Being Wrong

You can also decide that, actually, your candidate did nothing wrong and that the real problem is the press, the opposition, the judges, or anyone else who had the bad manners to point it out.

That last option is awfully convenient. You don’t have to change your mind; you just have to find a new culprit. Ah, the classic scapegoat! Someone else takes the blame, and the real problem gets to walk away untouched.

Blame Everybody Else!

And why stop there? If the press is lying, the opposition is corrupt, and the judges are out to get your candidate, then there’s no need to question the candidate at all.

What a relief! The whole world is wrong, but at least you don’t have to be.

When Politics Becomes Personal

When identity enters the picture, things get even trickier. Criticizing a candidate can feel like betraying your party, your family, your community, or even the image you have of yourself. Suddenly, the argument isn’t just about policies anymore. It’s personal.

And once admitting a mistake feels like admitting you were the mistake, defending your candidate can become a way of defending yourself.

What’s in It for Them?

But loyalty, identity, and the need to justify our decisions don’t explain everything. We should also ask what supporters expect to get out of the deal.

And the Blottos had a motto: “Kiss up, cast your vote, and keep the gravy boat afloat!”

What Does Mr. Trump-ass Offer?

More sucker punches? That’s probably it—and nothing more! Oh, you poor, deluded fools!

But let’s make one thing clear: understanding why someone supports a politician doesn’t mean excusing everything that politician does. And belonging to a community doesn’t obligate you to defend every decision made in its name.

It would be tempting to dismiss Hispanics who support Trump as fools or villains. But that would tell us very little about what draws them to him—or what they think they’re getting in return.

Why Do Some Hispanics Support Trump?

The million-dollar question isn’t what Trump offers them so much as what worries them most—and what they’re willing to accept in exchange. Or what’s he obtaining from them? ¿El chancho o el chicharrón?

There’s no single answer.

For starters, immigration isn’t the only thing that matters when people vote.

It sounds obvious, but apparently it needs repeating every time someone talks about Hispanics as though they were a political party with millions of members, one opinion, and a weekly meeting to decide how to vote.

Socialism & the Pocketbook

For some, it starts with their wallets. They trust Trump’s promises to cut taxes, favor businesses, or control public spending. Because ideology is one thing, and making it to the end of the month is quite another.

Others put security, border control, or a tougher stance toward left-wing governments in Latin America first.

For people whose families have roots in Cuba, Venezuela, or Nicaragua, their countries’ experiences may weigh heavily when they reject proposals they associate with socialism. Some familia histories aren’t so easily forgotten—much less forgiven.

When the Democrats Don’t Deliver

Then there are those who distrust the Democratic Party, feel ignored by it, or believe its policies haven’t delivered what they promised. Others see Republicans as better representatives of their views on religion, family, abortion, or education.

And sometimes, voting isn’t so much about falling in love with one candidate as deciding that the other side has given you too many reasons to walk away.

Some Just Like Trump

And then there are those who simply prefer Trump. They like his style, believe he says what others don’t dare to say, or interpret his attacks as a sign of strength. They don’t need to agree with every statement or every policy to give him their vote.

All these motivations can coexist. They can also vary from one person to another, one family to another, and one election to the next.

Now comes the less comfortable part: having reasons to vote for someone doesn’t make the consequences of that vote disappear. Why?

Because when you get to mix…

Apples with Oranges, to Later Add Sweet Potatoes…

What you get is a nasty Political Stew.

We don’t have to imagine that every voter has a perfectly calculated strategy, either. Sometimes people vote out of self-interest. Sometimes out of conviction. Sometimes out of fear. Sometimes because they hate the other candidate even more.

And sometimes because they’ve spent so long hearing that their team is right that they can no longer tell the difference between a reason and a slogan.

Your Roots Don’t Choose Your Party

The point isn’t that Hispanics should vote for one party simply because they’re Hispanic. Heaven forbid! As if sharing roots meant you had to subscribe to the same ideas! What utter nonsense! It’s not as though your DNA comes with a political party membership card.

The real question is whether voters are examining the consequences of the policies they support—or whether they’ve decided that, as long as the punch doesn’t land directly on them, the problem can wait.

But….

Who Exactly Are “The Hispanics”?

Here we should pause for a moment over the word at the heart of Hispanic Heritage Month.

Hispanic is not a race. It’s a category associated with Spanish language and cultural heritage, although its use varies by country, institution, and individual.

In the United States, Hispanic and Latino are frequently used to refer to populations that share certain histories and experiences but don’t necessarily share the same identity, interests, or political views.

Not All Latinos Are Mexican

A Mexican American in California, a Puerto Rican woman in New York, a Cuban American in Florida, and a Peruvian family that has just arrived in the United States don’t automatically become one uniform community just because a poll puts them in the same box.

And yet Trump knows that this category carries electoral weight. During his September 30 speech, he talked about having used the term Hispanics and having won elections, so he would keep using it.

He also boasted about winning historic Hispanic support for a Republican candidate.

He Wasn’t Teaching Linguistics

He was talking about votes.

Why does he insist on Hispanic when Latino is also available? What’s the history behind these words, and what vision of America does each one evoke?

Well, as the saying goes, not everything is as alike as it looks. Hispanic and Latino aren’t entirely interchangeable categories. They aren’t absolute synonyms.

That conversation deserves a space of its own.

When LatinX Doesn´t Mean Republican

Much less Democrat!

For now, it’s enough to remember that a label can be useful for analyzing electoral trends, but it can’t explain by itself why millions of people make different choices.

Sharing a label doesn’t mean sharing a vote.

And just because a politician claims to speak for a community doesn’t mean that community has handed him a blank check.

Affection Is Measured by Actions

Let’s return to the White House.

Trump didn’t simply say he appreciated Hispanics. He described them as hardworking, intelligent, and energetic; insisted he had loved them from the beginning; and presented the wall as a way to keep bad people out. According to him, they wanted that protection more than anyone else.

The reasoning went something like this: You’re terrific—perhaps stupid, but I love you, my wall protects you, and just in case there was any doubt, many of you voted for me.

What more do you want? Pisco? Mariachis? A serenade?

Political Compliments Come Cheap

A few pretty words, some cameras, and a speech that circulates on social media the next day. The hard part comes afterward, when we have to see whether the actions live up to all those declarations of love.

Although, in this case, the height of the matter was quite literal.

At least, that’s what President Sucker Punch told the guests at his little Hispanic shindig when he invited them to visit the construction site of the new White House ballroom he’s building:

“Don’t Fall Off the Edge, …

 …because it’s a long way down. And only a Hispanic could survive that fall. So I’m not overly worried.”

There he goes again, invoking the stereotype of Hispanics as manual laborers—and, above all, as people capable of taking a beating, surviving it, and even applauding their executioner… then voting for him.

But the real question is: how much can you insult someone before they stop applauding you?

Call Me Names—I’ll Still Vote for You!

After all, Trump himself admitted it without batting an eye just days ago at a rally in Tennessee: “I could say the stupidest things, and you would applaud.”

And boy, was he right. The crowd applauded and laughed, and a woman standing behind him nodded along and repeated:

“That’s True!”

Because being invited to the party is one thing; being assured that you won’t be thrown out of the house is quite another. But is it true?

Yes, it’s true! It’s the raw, unvarnished reality we’ve been handed. That’s just the way it is!

From Speech to Reality

A declaration of love looks wonderful in the White House ballroom. But what happens when a family fears deportation? Or when someone who has lived in the country for years suddenly wonders whether, in the government’s eyes, they belong in the category of good people or bad people?

That’s when the speech starts being measured by a different yardstick.

Real Life Doesn’t Fit in a Box

And we shouldn’t lump everyone together, either. Not all immigrants have the same legal status; not all Hispanics are immigrants, and not all immigrants are Hispanic.

Labels help us talk about groups, but real life has an annoying habit of complicating our generalizations.

And sometimes, if we’re lucky, that’s when we realize that democracy also comes with responsibilities.

Your Vote, Your Responsibility

But you have to own your choice when the heat is on, too. Better safe than sorry—and perhaps it’s time to start thinking about what could happen next.

You don’t have to support a more open immigration policy to insist that the rules be clear, that procedures be fair, and that people’s rights be respected. You can want a controlled border without giving anyone carte blanche to do whatever the hell they please.

When Love Translates into Power

And yes, you can vote Republican, Democrat, or for neither party. Your ballot is yours. The important thing is to know what you’re backing when you cast it.

If there’s only a fine line between love and hate, what happens when that love translates into power?

What Do You Do With Power?

Calling someone hardworking, intelligent, religious, or patriotic sounds wonderful. Shaking their hand, inviting them to the White House, and dedicating an entire speech to them sounds wonderful, too. Lovely stuff.

But compliments aren’t public policy. And applause doesn’t prove that a policy is working.

Beyond the Compliments

Ultimately, we have to look at what a politician does with the power you’ve helped him obtain. Not just what he says from a podium, or how good he makes you feel when he assures you he loves you.

And this isn’t just about Trump. No politician should be allowed to substitute compliments for facts and expect that to be enough.

First the Sucker Punch, Then the Sweet Talk

A politician can praise a community while simultaneously promoting measures that affect some of its members. His supporters can endorse certain policies, reject others, or convince themselves that the negative consequences will fall on somebody else. And those of us watching from the outside can try to understand their decisions without reducing millions of people to a caricature.

When Sweet Talk Meets Reality

Understanding why someone accepts a punch doesn’t turn that punch into a caress.

“I’ve loved you from the beginning” is an easy thing to say. The question is what that love means when it’s time to govern.

Because in politics, it’s not enough to listen to someone tell you they love you.

Love Isn’t Governing!

It’s also worth looking at who’s actually taking the punch—and whether they’ve come to believe they deserve it.

Because by this point, that old saying sounds less like wisdom than a warning:

“He who loves you will make you cry.”

The post The Oxymoronic Hispanic-Trump Paradox appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

“I’ve Loved You Right from the Beginning”

On September 30, 2026, President Donald Trump welcomed a group of people to the White House to celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month.

Yes. That Donald Trump.

A.k.a. Donald, the Mogul. The Commander-in-Chief. The man, the myth, the orange, the Non, Plus, Ultra, Uber… well, you get the picture.

Although, some people just call him Tiny Hands. But shhh… Nobody knows about it. 

And no, this isn’t a fake KDF post, a meme cooked up by someone with way too much time on their hands, or a headline from The Onion.

No Way, Jose!

Yes Way, Mamey!

There’s video. There’s a speech and everything. And he actually went out of his way to praise Hispanics—we assume he meant the ones in the room and the millions who weren’t.

Although with Trump, you never know. One minute he’s singing your praises, the next he’s explaining why people like you are the problem.

Not Even Homer Would Do It!

And no! We are NOT talking about the Greek poet.

Trump’s logic sometimes makes Homer Simpson look like a professor of political science.

The man’s political positions seem to change depending on which way the political wind is blowing. And sometimes, it’s just Gone with the Wind.

But let’s get to the good stuff.

Because, honestly, I wouldn’t have been all that surprised if he’d suddenly declared:

“I’m Hispanic Too!”

¡Habla, causa! (What’s up, dude?) I’m Peruvian! And my name is Donaldo.

Okay, he didn’t actually say that. But give him some time, please!

Trump started talking about Hispanics, and after a few minutes of the usual Trump show, he delivered the sort of declaration that could make you wonder whether you’d accidentally wandered into a romantic comedy—or a hostage negotiation.

“You’re hard-working people. You’re smart as hell. You’re energetic, sometimes too energetic.”

So far, so good.

And then came the kind of line that, depending on who’s saying it, can sound either like a declaration of love or a threat delivered with a smile:

“Bésame el poto”? (Kiss my Ass)

Wait. Wrong show.

That was John Wayne Gacy’s department, the infamous killer who performed as a clown. 

Not exactly the comparison you want coming to mind during a presidential celebration of Hispanic heritage.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We still have our orange Clown-in-Chief to deal with.

And then came…

The Line Nobody Was Surprised to Hear

Well, maybe nobody was surprised. But the line was still something else.

Trump declared:

“But you’re incredible people, and I’ve loved you right from the beginning.”

Okay… 😂

From the beginning of what? The beginning of time? The beginning of his political career? Or the moment someone explained that Hispanics vote, too?

Because Donald Wasn’t Done!

He also reminded the audience of another little detail in his relationship with the Hispanic community:

“You also know when I build a wall, I’m building a wall to keep bad people out, and you want those bad people kept out more than anybody.”

Ah, yes. The wall.

Now I get it! He’s doing it out of love. It’s practically a Valentine’s Day card, except the card is made of concrete and comes with border enforcement.

How romantic!

But not even…

La Llorona Wouldn’t Have Gone That Far

Talk about drama!

“Mis hijos, ¿dónde están mis hijos?” (“My kids, where are my kids?”)

Seriously, though. The wall? At a Hispanic Heritage Month celebration?

O sea… What about that wall? Where exactly does it fit into this love story?

Yeah, yeah, yeah… Come on, bro! We’ve heard that story before.

Can I Raise My Tiny Hand?

You almost expect someone in the room to raise a hand and ask, very politely, while making sure not to look him in the eyes long enough to turn to stone:

“Excuse me, Mr. President. Just checking: we’re celebrating Hispanics today, right?”

Of course, you’d want to ask before he turned you into a campaign ad.

The Scene Practically Writes Itself

Imagine inviting someone to dinner, telling them how much you love them, and then spending the rest of the evening explaining why you’re reinforcing the front door to keep people like them out.

“Don’t take it personally, sweetheart. It’s for your protection.”

And there it is. The political equivalent of I hurt you because I love you.

But hey, who said politics had to make sense?

Immigration: His Favorite Political Hobbyhorse

For years, Trump has made the fight against immigration one of the central pillars of his political message. And yet, he can stand before a Hispanic audience and assure everyone that he’s loved them from the beginning.

You’ve got to hand it to him: the man doesn’t seem to suffer from an excess of embarrassment.

Or perhaps embarrassment simply isn’t invited to these events.

Love & Hate Can Fit in the Same Room

Because apparently, he sees no problem with putting two very different messages in the same room: I love you and I’m building a wall to keep people like you out.

And some Hispanics support him. They vote for him. They defend his policies. They believe his priorities align with their own.

So What’s Going On?

Marvin Gaye says!

Do some people actually enjoy taking a political punch? Is this a case of love making people blind? Or do we need a little psychoanalysis to figure out what’s happening inside the mind of a Trump supporter?

Before we start handing out diagnoses, though, let’s ask a more useful question.

What’s Going on Inside a Trump Lover’s Head?

Why does anyone support a politician? 

What makes someone trust a public figure and keep defending that person even when everyone around them seems to be asking, “Are we watching the same movie?”

Is it ideology? Personal experience? Loyalty? Self-interest? Or something that goes beyond a candidate’s actual policies?

Politics Doesn’t Happen in a Vacuum

Every Trump supporter has their reasons. Some care about the economy. Others care about immigration, religion, or issues they believe the Democrats have got wrong. Some like Trump himself. Others may not like the man at all, but they’ll vote for him anyway.

Politics isn’t always about loving your candidate. Sometimes it’s about disliking the alternative even more.

When Hispanics Turn a Blind Eye

And when we try to understand why someone supports a politician like Trump, the question isn’t just what they see in him.

It’s also what they’re willing to overlook—and, perhaps more importantly, what they’re willing to accept in his name.

Because there’s a difference between understanding someone’s reasons and pretending those reasons make every consequence disappear.

Politics of Ceviche with Mango

Politics isn’t a restaurant menu where you pick the tax cuts, public safety measures, and campaign promises you like, then send the immigration policies you don’t like back to the kitchen.

“Excuse me, I’d like the lower taxes and the tough-on-crime package. Hold the deportations, please. And absolutely no mango in my ceviche. I’ll have black-shellfish ceviche, extra spicy, and a nice cold beer.”

Sorry, We Don’t Roll That Way!

Sorry, folks. That’s not how it works.

Although, for the record, mango in ceviche is a culinary controversy we can discuss another day.

When you vote for a candidate, you’re helping put that person in a position to implement an entire political agenda—not just the three items you circled on the menu.

You don’t get to order the combo and then act surprised when the rest of it arrives at your table.

Not Guilty, but Still Responsible

Does that make every voter directly responsible for every decision a government makes?

Absolutely not.

Nor does it mean that every voter knows exactly what a candidate will do once in power. Politics is complicated, promises change, and governments make decisions that voters may never have anticipated.

The One Million-Dollar Question

But voting for someone because they promise to solve your problems means accepting that they’ll govern according to a broader agenda than your personal wish list.

And that brings us to the question that really matters:

What do some Hispanic voters consider more important than the consequences of Trump’s immigration policies?

Well, Every Mind Is Its Own World

And every mind in its own head! Speaking of heads, have you ever looked at Trump’s hair? Just look at Trump’s hair. It sometimes seems as if he’s got a cat sitting on his head. The thing doesn’t merely look like it might meow; it seems more likely to bark—or, on a bad day, howl.

But back to the subject.

For some voters, the answer is the economy. For others, it’s public safety, religion, opposition to the Democrats, or the conviction that immigration rules should be enforced more strictly.

We All Got Our Priorities!

Some may believe the policies won’t affect them directly. Others may understand that people around them could suffer but still believe that other priorities outweigh those consequences.

We can debate those priorities. We can ask whether the promises are being kept, whether the policies work, and who’s paying the price.

What we can’t do is pretend the contradiction disappears simply because we’ve found an explanation for it.

Vallejo Talking About Blows

As the Peruvian poet César Vallejo wrote in his famous poem The Black Heralds, there are blows in life that are so powerful…

“Hay golpes en la vida, tan fuertes… ¡Yo no sé!
Golpes como del odio de Dios…”.

And some political blows, apparently, come with a complimentary hug.

Golpe con Golpe, Yo Pego

Blow for Blow, I Hit Back…

That’s the spirit of a famous cumbia song.

But what happens when someone feels that a politician punches them with one hand and offers affection with the other?

How do they end up interpreting the punch as something aimed at other people? As a necessary price for keeping society safe? Or even as proof that the politician is protecting them?

“I Hurt You Because I Love You”

In Spanish, there’s a familiar expression for relationships in which affection becomes an excuse for aggression:

Porque te quiero, te pego.

“Because I love you, I hit you.”

The political version is especially convenient. After the punch, there’s always time to explain that it was for your own good.

And that’s where things get interesting.

The Punch Comes with Instructions

There’s one part of Trump’s speech that deserves more attention than his declarations of love.

After assuring his audience that he had loved them from the beginning, Trump explained that when he builds a wall, it’s to keep “bad people” out. 

He also claimed that Hispanics themselves want those people kept out more than anyone else.

I’m Protecting You, You Know?

Now, that’s a neat little rhetorical trick.

First, flatter your audience. Then point to a threat. Finally, explain that the very measure that could hurt people in their community is actually designed to protect them.

And just like that, the wall isn’t the problem anymore.

The problem is whoever you’ve been told is standing on the other side of it.

The Problem Is the Bad Guys

Or maybe it’s you, if you just can’t seem to understand what Daddy Donny is telling you.

But who exactly are these bad guys?

Convicted violent criminals? People who crossed the border without authorization? Families who have lived in the United States for years? Someone who works, pays their bills, and has children who consider America home?

Or does everyone end up in the same bag the moment someone says immigration with enough dramatic flair?

They just call it collateral damage. But…

Collateral Damage Got Kids Too!

And this isn’t just hypothetical.

In March 2026, ProPublica reported that, during the first seven months of Trump’s second term, ICE had arrested and detained parents of at least 11,000 U.S.-citizen children.

Think about that for a moment. The children are American citizens. But their citizenship doesn’t guarantee that their parents won’t be detained or deported.

And when a parent disappears into immigration detention, the consequences don’t stop with the person ICE arrests.

No Exchanges Accepted!

These are not interchangeable situations. But political campaigns have a remarkable talent for stuffing different people and circumstances into one big bag, slapping a scary label on it, and shaking it in front of the cameras.

Nuance doesn’t fit on a campaign bumper sticker.

Fear, on the other hand, travels beautifully.

When MALO Doesn’t Mean Good

The word bad does a lot of heavy lifting.

It doesn’t have to distinguish between a violent criminal and someone whose immigration status is irregular. It doesn’t have to explain which policy would address which problem. It doesn’t even have to establish that everyone being targeted poses the same kind of threat.

All it takes is for the audience to accept that there’s a danger and that the person speaking is the one who can keep it under control.

It’s Not About YOU

And if you consider yourself hard-working, law-abiding, religious, conservative, or simply someone who wants to live in peace, you can tell yourself that the speech isn’t about you.

It’s about the others.

You’re different. You’re one of the good ones. You deserve to be here.

Phew! Dodged that Bullet

That’s one of the most effective tricks of identity politics: convincing people that even though they belong to a group being singled out, they’re somehow the exception.

You’re not one of them.

You’re one of the people the politician claims to be protecting.

And that distinction can feel awfully reassuring—right up until somebody else decides it no longer applies.

Until Someone Decides You’re Not

Because when they come for you, it may already be too late. And there may be no one left to speak on your behalf.

Martin Niemöller’s famous warning about the consequences of remaining silent as the Nazis persecuted one group after another still resonates today. The historical circumstances are not identical, and we shouldn’t pretend they are.

Funny How That Works, Huh?

But the underlying question remains uncomfortable: what happens when people assume that a threat will never reach them because, for now, it’s directed at someone else?

Of course, not everyone who supports tough immigration policies is fooling themselves.

Some people knowingly support those policies, even when they understand that other members of their community may be hurt. Others believe border control is necessary and that enforcing immigration law doesn’t have to mean abuse, indiscriminate punishment, or sweeping generalizations.

Those Are Different Positions

We can debate them without pretending they’re all the same.

But one uncomfortable question remains: What happens when a policy presented as protection for some ends up hurting others who share their language, history, family ties, or place of origin?

And why do some people accept that contradiction?

Is it possible to become so convinced that a politician is protecting you that you stop recognizing the ways that politician might also put you at risk?

Political Stockholm Syndrome?

Now we’re getting into uncomfortable territory.

Enter Stockholm syndrome.

The term became popular to describe situations in which a person held captive or threatened develops feelings of sympathy or identification with the person holding them captive. Its psychological interpretation is disputed, and it isn’t a diagnosis we can hand out in an opinion column like raffle tickets.

Not Necessarily an Assessment

So, let’s not pretend we’re conducting a clinical assessment of millions of voters.

What interests us here is the image: someone gets hit but ends up defending the person delivering the blow because they believe that same person can also protect them.

The person causing the harm becomes, in their eyes, the person who will save them from something worse.

And that brings us to the question we’ve been circling all along.

Is That Why Hispanics Support Trump?

It’s a deliberately provocative question. It doesn’t mean we can diagnose millions of people or claim that every Trump voter is incapable of thinking for themselves.

If that were our conclusion, we could save ourselves the trouble of writing this article and just spend the afternoon throwing insults around online. Apparently, that’s a full-time occupation for some people.

The More Interesting Question Is This:

Why might someone see a policy as a threat to other people while assuming it could never reach them, too?

Someone may believe their citizenship, financial situation, last name, religion, or family history puts them beyond harm’s reach. They may think deportations affect people who break the law, not people like them.

It’d Never Get Me!

They may dismiss warnings about negative consequences as exaggerations by political opponents. Or they may accept that there will be collateral damage because they believe the overall result is worth it.

You have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, right?

And sometimes, there’s a much simpler reason.

They don’t like the alternative.

So, Who’s Getting Punched?

Let’s face it. You don’t have to love Trump to vote for him. You don’t even have to like the guy. Sometimes, all it takes is thinking the other option would be worse.

Fair enough. Politics isn’t exactly a fairy tale, and elections don’t always offer us a prince charming. Sometimes, you just pick the lesser evil and hope it doesn’t eat the furniture.

Nobody Gets a Free Pass!

But here’s the catch: just because you don’t like the other guy doesn’t mean your guy gets a free pass. And just because a politician tells you he’s protecting you doesn’t mean you should stop asking questions.

You can want secure borders. You can demand that immigration laws be enforced. You can vote Republican, Democrat, or for the guy promising to drain the swamp while bringing his own alligator.

It’s Time to Look Beyond Our Noses

But sooner or later, you have to look beyond your own front door.

Because the people getting hit aren’t always strangers. They may speak your language, share your history, worship in your church, or sit across the table at your family gatherings.

Hell, they might even have voted for the same guy you did.

Love Hurts. Politics Does, Too!

Or even better, as Manu Chao would say it: Politik Kills

So, Donald, let’s go back to that little declaration of love.

You’ve loved Hispanics right from the beginning? How sweet!

And the wall? That’s love, too? A little concrete here, a little border enforcement there, and voilà! A Hispanic Heritage Month celebration nobody will forget.

Who needs roses when you’ve got a wall?

And the Punchline Is…

But jokes aside, here’s the problem: when someone tells you they’re protecting you, it’s worth asking who they’re protecting you from—and who gets hurt in the process.

Because a political punch doesn’t magically become a hug just because the person throwing it says, “I did it for your own good.”

And if some of the people taking that punch happen to be your neighbors, your relatives, or people who look a lot like you, maybe it’s time to take another look at the guy throwing it.

Because calling it love doesn’t make it any less of a sucker punch.

The post I Hurt You Because I Love You! It’s for Your Own Good! appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

Fear Tuesday the 13^th? Learn Spanish Instead!

It’s Tuesday the 13^th. Your mirror’s cracked, a black cat just stared you down, and your Spanish is still rusty? Yeah — we’ve got a problem. But don’t panic. And definitely don’t fear what’s free. At Kasa de Franko, you can learn Spanish with Tuesday the 13th traditions and superstitions, turning bad luck into a fun excuse to practice.

In Spanish-speaking cultures, it’s Tuesday the 13^th that gets all the side-eye — not Friday. So why not flip superstition on its head, explore cultural quirks, and turn myths into real conversation?

Don’t Hide Under the Covers!

Instead of hiding under the covers, why not face your fears head-on — in Spanish?

Ever wondered why Friday the 13^th gets such a bad rap? That fear didn’t come out of nowhere. But here’s the twist: in Spanish-speaking cultures, the real drama doesn’t happen on Friday.

It happens on Tuesday the 13^th.

Yes, you read that right. Same number. Different day. Different cultural logic.

🎁 Get a free Spanish class this Tuesday the 13^th and turn superstition into conversation. Come learn with us… if you really dare 👻

The 13^th Is Perfect for Learning Spanish

Maybe a black cat crossed your path.
Maybe you forgot to knock on wood.
Or maybe… it’s centuries of myths, historical betrayals, and human imagination gone wild.

In the English-speaking world, all that fear tends to land on Friday the 13^th. But in Spanish-speaking cultures, superstition points the finger elsewhere — at Tuesday the 13^th.

So instead of fearing it, why not flip the script? Make it your lucky day and start learning Spanish.

Learn Spanish Traditions & Superstitions!

Flip your luck by diving into Spanish traditions and superstitions.

In Spanish-speaking cultures, superstition doesn’t peak on Friday the 13^th — it shows up on Tuesday the 13^th. At Kasa De Franko, we use that cultural twist as a good excuse to learn something new.

Explore myths, traditions, and everyday beliefs while leveling up your Spanish. And yes, sounding bilingual and culturally sharp never hurts — especially when employers are paying attention.

Why are Spanish-speakers so Weird?

Here’s the twist: in the Spanish-speaking world, superstition doesn’t land on Friday — it lands on Tuesday the 13^th. Martes 13 is the day that raises eyebrows in Spain and Latin America.

Different culture, different fears, different logic.

So let’s unpack where that comes from, look at a few quirky traditions, and turn superstition into a reason to smile — and learn. Bonus: you’ll pick up some Spanish along the way without even trying.

The World’s Most Unwanted Guest: 13!

Why is 13 considered unlucky? It’s like the party crasher of numbers, ruining perfectly good vibes. Many cultures view 12 as a symbol of completeness: 12 months, 12 zodiac signs, 12 apostles, etc. Then comes 13, breaking the harmony like a misplaced mariachi at a rock concert.

Ancient Babylon skipped the 13^th law on its tablets (we’ll assume it wasn’t just a typo). Even today, buildings and hotels worldwide conveniently “skip” the 13^th floor. Let’s be real, though—nobody’s fooled by the magic of labeling the 13^th floor as “14.”

Triskaidekaphobia: WTF?

WTF, indeed. But in this case, it stands for Watch The Fear—because we’re talking about a real, name-brand phobia with enough syllables to scare anyone.

Triskaidekaphobia (say that five times fast) is the official term for the fear of the number 13. Sounds fancy, right?

But at its core, it’s basically the numerical equivalent of dreading your ex’s name lighting up your phone at 3 a.m.—you don’t know what’s coming, but you know it’s going to ruin your day.

13 Across the World

From skipped hotel floors to “No seat 13” on some airlines, this superstition runs deep—especially in Western cultures.

And yet, in many Spanish-speaking countries, the number 13 is just a number… unless, of course, it falls on a Tuesday.

But don’t worry—we’ll get to that cursed little twist soon.

How Friday Got This Bad Rap!

Friday wasn’t exactly a fan favorite in Christian traditions. It’s the day of Jesus’ Crucifixion, so historically it carried a more somber vibe than celebration.

Pair that with the number 13, and English-speaking cultures had the ultimate combo for bad luck.

But in Spanish-speaking countries, the number 13 isn’t the villain… unless it lands on a Tuesday. That’s when superstition really steps in.

13: The Number of Betrayal

Why 13? It’s all about betrayal, thanks to Judas. That extra seat at the Last Supper? Yep—13. And that’s where Judas made his infamous move. Talk about a recipe for superstition.

In English-speaking cultures, that story fuels Friday the 13^th fears. But in Spanish-speaking countries, 13 is just a number… until it lands on a Tuesday.

Friday + 13 = The Perfect Storm!

Let’s do the math! Friday has a history of bad vibes, and throw in the number 13, and English-speaking cultures treat it like a day cursed by fate.

But in Spanish-speaking countries, the real “perfect storm” hits on Tuesday the 13^th—the day superstition really flexes its muscles.

The Medieval Origins of the Curse!

The superstition around 13 has deep roots. One often-cited origin: October 13, 1307. On this fateful Friday, King Philip IV of France ordered the mass arrest of the Knights Templar, accusing them of heresy. Many were tortured, executed, or burned at the stake.

English-speaking cultures remember that as the day Friday the 13^th got its creepy reputation. But in Spanish-speaking countries, the number 13 only really becomes ominous when it lands on a Tuesday—and that’s when superstition truly flexes its muscles.

Medieval Telenovela: ¨Bills You Don’t Wanna Pay”

King Philip and Pope Clement V owed serious cash to the Templars. Killing them off? The medieval version of just “forgetting” to pay your credit card—except instead of fees, it was torture and execution. Makes a late fee seem kinda manageable, right?

And while history remembers this on a Friday, in Spanish-speaking cultures, superstition really flexes when that unlucky 13 lands on a Tuesday—so keep an eye on your calendar.

Bad Luck Forever

Legends say this betrayal—the mass arrest of the Knights Templar on Friday, October 13, 1307—cursed the date forever, branding it with a dark, unlucky energy that still lingers today. It was the medieval equivalent of:

“Never trust that shady friend who owes you money… and also wants your land, titles, and probably your horse.”

From Betrayal to Superstition Supernova

From that point on, Friday the 13^th became more than just a date—it turned into a superstition supernova. One act of royal backstabbing sparked centuries of paranoia, fear, and bad omens, echoing through folklore like a ghost with unfinished business.

And so, here we are: still side-eyeing our calendars, centuries later, all because of some royal betrayal, a few power-hungry men, and a whole lot of unresolved medieval drama.

A Question of History

Now, was this whole Friday-the-13^th-is-cursed-because-of-the-Templars thing actually true? Or just a spooky story that snowballed over centuries?

Historians still argue. Some say the connection between the Templars and Friday the 13^th is mostly a modern invention—dreamed up by writers and pop culture to give us chills.
Others think there’s enough smoke to suggest fire… or at least a lot of roasted knights.

Cursed or Just Dramatic Storytelling?

Either way, one thing’s for sure: King Philip IV wasn’t winning “Most Popular Royal” that year. And Pope Clement V? Let’s just say he probably wouldn’t have made the guest list for any royal afterparties—or Templar reunions, for that matter.

So whether it’s historical fact or just really dramatic storytelling, the legend stuck. And the number 13’s bad rep was officially cemented… or cursed.

Karma Strikes Back!

Legend has it King Philip IV of France and Pope Clement V were cursed by Jacques de Molay.
He burned at the stake. Flames licked his robes. Smoke swirled around him.
While he roasted like pollo a la brasa (Peruvian style, of course), de Molay called upon divine justice.
He demanded it hit before the year was out.

And hit it did.
Both men met their spectacular ends within months.
Crowns tumbled. Papal robes faded. History watched in awe.

The curse? Legendary.
Bad karma served with a side of medieval drama.
And, of course, a telenovela-level plot twist.

Tuesday 13^th: Latin America’s Villain

While the English-speaking world shudders at Friday the 13^th, Latin America and Spain reserve their fear for martes 13 (Tuesday the 13^th). Why Tuesday? Blame Mars, the Roman god of war, chaos, and destruction. That’s right — every martes 13 comes with a little extra cosmic attitude.

Across Spanish-speaking countries, people avoid traveling, signing contracts, or making big life decisions on this day. Some won’t even cut their hair or leave the house after dark.

What About a Black Cat on Tuesday the 13^th

And if a black cat crosses your path on Tuesday the 13^th? Forget it — you might as well stay under the covers and binge your favorite telenovela.

So next time someone says “Friday the 13^th is unlucky,” you can smirk and reply, “Hold my mate… we do Tuesdays a little differently.”

“En martes, ni te cases ni te embarques”

In many Spanish-speaking countries, Tuesday is considered a day of conflict, so adding the number 13 makes it a double whammy of bad vibes. As the saying goes:

“En martes, ni te cases ni te embarques”
(On Tuesday, don’t get married or embark on a journey).

Basically, it’s the universe saying, “Stay home, mind your own business, and maybe binge a telenovela instead.”

Superstitions in the Spanish-Speaking World

If you think Friday or Tuesday the 13^th is strange, wait until you hear about some of the superstitions in Spanish-speaking countries. These traditions range from practical to outright absurd:

Laugh at Fear, Learn Spanish

While viernes 13 is gaining some Hollywood-fueled fame, many Latinos use it as a day to laugh at superstitions instead of fearing them. It’s a perfect day to reírse del miedo (laugh at fear) y aprender español, pendexos.

The Global Fear: It’s Not Just 13!

Turns out, 13 isn’t the only number causing drama. Around the world, different digits inspire dread:

• China: The number 4 is considered unlucky because it sounds like the word for death. Buildings skip the 4^th floor, elevators skip the 4^th button, and some phone numbers cost extra if they don’t contain a “4.”
• Italy: It’s 17 that raises eyebrows. When written in Roman numerals (XVII), it can be rearranged to spell “VIXI,” which means “I lived” — a poetic way of saying, “I’m dead now.”

Compared to these, 13 doesn’t seem so bad, right?

Spanish Language Meets Luck

Learn Spanish with Tuesday the 13^th Traditions and Superstitions: Now that we’ve sufficiently scared you with numbers, how about flipping the script? Use it as a chance to learn Spanish. Here’s how:

1. Expand Your Vocabulary: Words like “mala suerte” (bad luck), “gato negro” (black cat), and “espejo roto” (broken mirror) will come in handy for spooky storytelling.
2. Practice Idioms: Master Spanish expressions like “tener mala pata” (to have bad luck)
3. Cultural Immersion: Understanding local superstitions gives you a sneak peek into Spanish-speaking cultures and their quirks.
4. “Pájaro de mal agüero” (bad omen), “salto de la cuerda” (jump the rope – linked to childhood superstitions), “encantado” (bewitched), “agüero” (omen), “alivio” (relief, often used in superstitions), and “despedir la mala suerte” (to get rid of bad luck).

Friday or Tuesday for the Spanish-Speaking World!

In Latin America and Spain, the reactions to martes 13 and viernes 13 vary widely:

• In Mexico, you might hear about La Llorona,  (The Weeping Woman), adding an extra layer of terror to an unlucky day.
• In Peru, families might casually drop sayings like “Si pasa, pasa” (If it happens, it happens) as a way to shrug off bad luck—even if El Sexi Chupacabras wants to suck your blood.
• In Spain, some people avoid making big decisions on martes 13, but others treat it as just another day. Because who has time for superstition when there’s paella to eat?

Final Thoughts: Turning Bad Luck into Good Fun

Friday, Tuesday, or even Wednesday the 13^th—every culture has its quirks. The important thing is to laugh at the absurdity, learn from the traditions, and maybe even pick up some Spanish along the way.

So why not flip superstition on its head? Instead of hiding under the covers, dive into the quirks of Spanish-speaking cultures. Laugh at the absurdity, marvel at the traditions, and walk away with a few new Spanish phrases in your pocket.

Because hey—if you’re going to tempt fate, you might as well do it bilingually.

Turn Friday 13^th Into Your Lucky Day!

Why let Tuesday the 13^th bring you down when you can turn it into a fun and productive day? Kasa de Franko’s offering Spanish lessons for just $9.50/hr.

It’s the perfect chance to start learning something new and exciting. Whether you’re looking to change your luck or just want to pick up a new skill, now’s the time to start!

For more info, check out our Learning Spanish is Hot: $9.5/hr. article and discover some fun and sexy phrases along the way in our blog section Things Spanish People Say in Bed!

Learn Spanish from Anywhere!

From the San Francisco Bay Area to anywhere in the U.S., our online classes bring expert instruction to you. Check out our locations and get started today with Spanish lessons for less than ten bucks an hour!

Stay Connected & Keep Learning!

Get the latest updates, fun facts, and exclusive offers by following Kasa de Franko on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Pinterest, and YouTube. It’s never been easier to immerse yourself in Spanish—let’s keep learning!

Join the Kasa de Franko Fiesta!

At Kasa de Franko, we offer engaging, affordable, and flexible Spanish lessons for all levels—whether online or in-person. Join us today for free classes and let’s Learn Spanish with Tuesday the 13^th Traditions and Superstitions!

The Funniest Part of All

Let’s face it, the fear of Tuesday the 13^th is basically just a cultural hangover—or even worse, un pajazo mental (a pipe dream). People get scared for no reason, and, in reality, the universe couldn’t care less if it’s Friday or Tuesday.

But hey, since you made it this far — and just in case you got curious — here’s a spooky little list of Spanish vocab that might come in handy.

💬 Spook Up Your Spanish with This Tuesday Words

Wanna sound spooky and smart in Spanish? Whether you’re dodging black cats or whispering curses under your breath, here’s a list of Tuesday the 13^th–inspired words that’ll charm any language lover. From potions to bad omens, add some dark magic to your vocab list — sin miedo.

🕷️ Tuesday the 13^th Spanish Vocab (Bonus Chart)

Why a Friday-13^th -Free-Spanish Lesson?

Maybe that’s why we need a Tuesday the 13^th Free Spanish Lesson, to help shake off the bad vibes and learn something new.

Learning a new language isn’t just productive—it’s also one of the best ways to turn your brain away from fear and toward fun. Instead of obsessing over broken mirrors and black cats, you’ll be learning how to say “superstition” in Spanish (it’s superstición, by the way) and discovering why martes 13 is the real villain in Latin America.

So if the universe is feeling a little off today, maybe it’s trying to tell you something:
Take the risk. Learn something new. In Spanish. For free.

Join us on Tuesday, the13^th?

So why not join us for our FREE Spanish Lesson on Tuesday the 13^th, and let’s laugh together at how ridiculous and delightful the world of superstitions can be?

We’ll explore the dark magic of learning Spanish phrases tied to bad luck, like “no tientes a tu suerte” (don’t push you luck) and “cruzar los dedos” (crossing fingers), which we can all agree is practically a universal superstition.

Ready to get started?

Are you read to Learn Spanish with Tuesday the 13^th Traditions and Superstitions? Click below, and let’s turn your Spanish journey into an unforgettable adventure! And always remember…..

The post How to Survive Tuesday the 13th? Learn Spanish Now! appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

Straight from the Zombie Planet!

We got a resurrection: Christopher Columbus is back! Yes, resurrected.

On October 9, 2026, Donald Trump made this announcement at the White House, celebrating Columbus Day.

After more than 500 years, Columbus is back from the dead. And we all know who deserves the credit.

Donald Trump, naturally.

Why Only Change the Past?

When I can make myself part of it!

Apparently, restoring Columbus’s reputation wasn’t enough. Trump had to make himself part of the story, too. Because if there’s one thing the president seems to understand, it’s that no historical event is complete until he gets a starring role.

Welcome to the latest episode of American history, where the past gets a makeover, the facts get a little plastic surgery, and the president takes a bow.

What Are We Celebrating to Begin With?

And just in time for October 12, the day when much of the Spanish-speaking world—and plenty of people elsewhere—find themselves arguing about what, exactly, we’re supposed to be celebrating.

But why stop at resurrecting the dead? Trump has also floated the idea of renaming an ocean: the Trump Ocean. Because apparently, the Atlantic has been sitting there for centuries without a proper brand identity.

Different Times, Same Ego

Columbus crossed an ocean to reach lands Europeans didn’t know about—well, not really! Trump wants to rename this ocean everyone already knows.

Different centuries. Same irresistible urge to put your name on something.

Which brings us to the real question: Who gets to name history, who gets to tell it, and who gets to declare themselves the hero?

And to understand why October 12 remains so controversial, we need to start with a simple question: WTF are we celebrating?

Let’s hear it straight from the president.

A True American Hero!

In his 2025 Columbus Day proclamation, Donald Trump called Christopher Columbus “a true American hero.” In his own words:

“Today our Nation honors the legendary Christopher Columbus — the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth.”

That’s the official version. No Onion headline, no parody, no Franko making things up. Those are the president’s own words.

The Admiral Returns!

And then came the statues.

After a reconstruction of a Columbus statue that had been toppled in Baltimore in 2020 was installed on the White House grounds in 2026, Trump took credit for the resurrection.

At the White House celebration on October 9, 2026, he said:

“I feel that I, with some of the people in this room, we resurrected Christopher Columbus.”

Read That Again

He starts with I, adds some of the people in this room, and ends with we. Apparently, even a resurrection needs a committee.

Columbus has been dead since 1506. Yet here we are in 2026, discussing how the admiral made his comeback, complete with a statue on the White House grounds.

As mentioned, Trump’s rehabilitation campaign had already begun a year earlier. On October 9, 2025, he proclaimed:

“Christopher Columbus was a true American hero, and every citizen is eternally indebted to his relentless determination.”

Columbus: The Original American Hero?

Donald Trump calls Christopher Columbus “the original American hero.”

There’s just one small problem.

Columbus was born in Genoa, sailed for the Spanish Crown, and died in 1506. The United States declared independence in 1776.

That’s right. Columbus had been dead for 270 years before the country that now claims him even existed.

First Illegal Immigrant of a Nonexistent America

Apparently, you don’t need to be born in a country, live in a country, or even know the country exists to become its original hero. You just need someone to put you in the family photo.

And Trump is happy to help.

Columbus gets the starring role. Spain gets a supporting role when convenient. And the United States? Well… It gets to claim him centuries before it even exists. Welcome to ‘Merica, you’all!

What About the Real Americans?

And the Indigenous peoples who were already living in the Americas? Well, somebody has to stand behind the camera, I suppose.

History is a funny thing. Some people spend their lives trying to get into the history books. Others get written into a country’s origin story after they’re dead.

And then there’s Columbus, who has somehow been recruited into a nation that didn’t exist when he was alive.

Not bad for a guy who never even set foot in what is now the United States.

Discovering America—Well, Not Really!

Here’s another little problem with the official hero story: Columbus didn’t set out to discover a continent called America.

He believed he had reached Asia, or the Indies, as Europeans called the region he was trying to reach. He was wrong about where he had landed, but that didn’t stop the voyages from changing history.

America Came Later!

Obviously, we’re talking about the continent. Not a country that didn’t exist yet!

The name America appeared on a world map in 1507, when German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller used it, drawing on the name of Amerigo Vespucci. Columbus had died the year before.

So Columbus never sailed toward a place called America, never knew the continent by that name, and never got to see his own name attached to the holiday debates that would follow centuries later.

Life can be cruel.

Who Discovered Whom, Exactly?

But the bigger question is this: discovered by whom?

The Americas weren’t sitting around waiting for Europeans to show up and announce their existence. Indigenous peoples had lived across these lands for thousands of years, building societies and civilizations long before Columbus arrived.

Imagine someone walking into your house and announcing that they’ve discovered a new property. You might reasonably ask whether they’d checked the front door—or simply mistaken your living room for unclaimed real estate.

When Discovery Became Conquest

From the European perspective, Columbus’s voyages initiated sustained contact between Europe and the Americas. That was historically significant. It also opened the door to conquest, colonization, forced labor, and catastrophic losses for Indigenous populations.

Those things can all be true at once. We don’t have to pretend the voyages were insignificant. We also don’t have to call them a discovery as if nobody was home.

America: One Continent, One Country, or Both?

Here’s where the map gets interesting.

In the traditional geographical model commonly taught throughout the Spanish-speaking world, América is one continent, divided into regions that include North America, Central America, and South America.

In the United States, the common model treats North America and South America as two separate continents, collectively called the Americas.

Same planet. Different maps.

American Doesn’t Necessarily Mean the U.S.

And then English throws another little complication into the mix.

In English, American usually means someone from the United States. In Spanish, americano can refer to someone from the Americas more broadly, although it is also commonly used to mean someone from the United States. If you want to be more specific, estadounidense refers to a person from the United States.

So when an American says “America,” a Spanish speaker may hear something different. One word, two geographical traditions, and a country that has somehow managed to turn the name of an entire part of the world into its own everyday nickname.

So, What Does It Mean to Be American?

We’ve already explored this question in other articles: What does it mean to be American? And why do we say American when we mean someone from the United States?

Sounds like a vocabulary question, right? Not quite. Sometimes, the words we use tell us more about how we see the world than we realize.

The U.S. Is Not America!

The United States is a country in the Americas. It is not the whole of America—at least not in the geographical sense used throughout much of the Spanish-speaking world.

But language doesn’t always follow the map. In everyday English, America often means the United States, and American usually means a US citizen or resident. Fair enough. That’s how the language works. But it doesn’t mean everyone else has to see the map the same way.

Columbus Makes the Family Photo

And then there’s Trump, calling Columbus the original American hero.

A Genoese navigator who sailed for Spain and died centuries before the United States existed. Yet somehow, he’s made it into the family photo.

Apparently, even American history has become a family business. And the president is in charge of deciding who gets the surname.

But Columbus didn’t belong to America’s family album alone. And October 12 has never meant the same thing to everyone.

What the Heck is El Día de la Hispanidad?

Apparently, Columbus has been adopted into the American family, and the president has decided he deserves a place in the family photo. Never mind that Columbus sailed for Spain. Or that he died long before the United States existed.

But October 12 has been on the calendar for a long time, and the United States isn’t the only country trying to figure out what to do with it.

Across the Spanish-speaking world, the date goes by different names and carries different meanings. In Spain, it’s a national celebration. Elsewhere in the Americas, the mood can be considerably less festive.

Same date. Same historical voyage. Very different family reunions.

Let’s start with Spain.

¿Fiesta Nacional de España?

Now, don’t panic. Put down the flamethrower and hear me out. If you’re a fan of Spanish culture, this day might be your jam.

In Spain, October 12 is the Fiesta Nacional de España, and trust me, it’s a pretty big deal: military parades, flags, the King making an appearance, and a whole lot of Spanish pride on display.

But cross the Atlantic, and the mood can change rather dramatically. What Spain celebrates as a national holiday can mean something very different in the countries on the other side of the ocean.

Same date, different perspectives. And Mexico is a good place to start.

How is it in Mexico?

In Mexico, for instance, this day is known as Día de la Raza (Day of the Race), and, spoiler alert, it’s not exactly celebrated with confetti and mariachi bands.

It’s more about recognizing the blood, sweat, and tears that came from the collision of Spanish colonizers and Indigenous peoples. So yeah, it’s complicated. Some see Columbus and his arrival as the gateway to what we now know as Latin America. Others—like, many others—see it as the beginning of centuries of suffering and subjugation for Indigenous populations.

Wait… What Exactly Are We Celebrating?

¿ Snacks are good, so let’s keep going, right?

¿El Día de la Hispanidad? Huh? So… what exactly are we celebrating here? Let’s get real for a sec. It’s a tricky one. It’s like throwing a party for someone, only to realize halfway through that they’re kind of a jerk. But hey, the s

And that’s the thing about October 12: depending on whom you ask, it’s either a celebration of cultural heritage or a reminder of everything that went wrong when two worlds collided. Same party, very different reasons for showing up.

Columbus Didn’t Know Sh*t!

You see, Columbus didn’t even know where the hell he was. He thought he’d reached Asia, not stumbled across a whole new continent. And while he might have gotten lost, his landing in the Caribbean was a big deal for European colonization—just not in the way we often like to paint it.

Now, imagine barging into someone’s living room, declaring you’ve discovered a “new” place to call home, and acting like the people already sitting on the couch are just part of the furniture.

Excuse me, but it was already occupied. Ask los Incas in Peru.

And that’s the thing: Columbus didn’t need to know where he was for his voyages to change the world. History doesn’t always care whether you know what the hell you’re doing.

What about Peru?

While Spain goes all out with parades and military processions, Peru doesn’t exactly throw a party for Columbus. No grand fiesta for ol’ Chris, no fireworks in his honor. Apparently, he hasn’t quite made the same guest list.

And why would he? Peru has its own history with Spanish colonization, and it’s hard to separate the cultural ties to Spain from the conquest and everything that came with it. You can recognize the influence without throwing a birthday party for the guy who helped set the whole thing in motion.

So, no nationwide Columbus-mania here. But that doesn’t mean October 12 has no place in the conversation. It just raises a different question: what do you choose to commemorate—the cultural connections that followed, or the people and societies that were already here?

The Myth of Discovering “America” Is Still Alive

So, while the myth of Columbus discovering “America” is still alive in the U.S., other places are trying to tell a different story.

Some have replaced Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day, shifting the spotlight toward the people and cultures that were already here long before ol’ Chris showed up. It’s not about changing the past. We can’t. But we can change how we tell the story, whose voices we listen to, and who gets remembered.

Now, it’s our turn not to get lost.

Love Hispanic Culture!

Back to Basics: Love Spanish Culture? Get Fluent!

Listen, we’ve spent enough time arguing about ol’ Chris. How about learning something useful instead? Like Spanish. Not just the language, but everything that comes with it: the culture, the food, the music, the salsa, the whole shebang.

If you’re celebrating Día de la Hispanidad, why not get to know the language, too?

Get Ready for Real Spanish!

At Kasa de Franko, we’ll get you ready for everything from chatting with locals in a Spanish plaza to impressing that Spanish-speaking crush. Real Spanish, no BS. Fun, practical, and designed to get you talking.

And yes, we’ve got specials. Because apparently, even Columbus can help you get a discount.

Check Out Our Specials!

At Kasa de Franko, for Columbus Day, we’re rolling out sweet deals to kickstart your journey into the language of Latin passion. You’ll be wowing your friends in no time—whether you’re chatting up locals, navigating Spanish nightlife, or simply ordering churros like a pro.

Ready to dive in? Check out Kasa de Franko’s courses, and let’s get you talking Spanish from day one!

Start your journey now and level up your Spanish fluency!

What is Kasa de Franko?

Kasa de Franko (or KDF, as we like to call it) is your ultimate language playground, nestled in the heart of Silicon Valley. We’re all about making language learning a fun, creative, and engaging experience—whether you’re flying solo, teaming up with friends, or still rocking that school backpack. There’s always an adventure waiting for you here, no matter what stage of your language journey you’re on.

Looking for Some Romance?

Interested in sweet-talking in Spanish? Dive into our cheeky blog section with posts like “Things Spanish People Say in Bed” or the playful “El Sexi Chupacabras.” Whether it’s a classic “Te quiero” or a more playful phrase, you’ll uncover a whole lot of romance just waiting to be expressed en español. Get ready for a lighthearted and love-filled language experience.

Need a Laugh?

Sure, phrases like “¡Feliz Año Nuevo!”, “¡Me Gusta la Chucha de tu Madre!”, or “Can I molestate you?” might tickle your funny bone, but remember—while language learning can have some laugh-out-loud moments, it’s also about appreciating cultural nuance and respect. So why not laugh, learn, and celebrate the colorful expressions that make Spanish such a dynamic language?

Love Legends and Folktales?

Feel like getting lost in some legendary stories? Take a deep dive into the rich tapestry of Hispanic folklore, with iconic tales like La Llorona, La Ciguapa, El Sexi Chupacabras, and a whole bunch of other mythical characters. There’s no better way to experience a culture than through its stories, and you can begin exploring them with us today. Ready to dive deeper? Why not start with a free Spanish lesson—just click that red button below!

Join Us for a Free Lesson!

Kasa de Franko, a well-known language school serving San Jose and the greater San Francisco Bay Area, is offering free online Spanish classes to celebrate Spanish Heritage Month. It’s the perfect chance to kick-start your Spanish adventure—what are you waiting for? The journey’s about to begin, and we’ll be with you every step of the way. Once you enroll in Kasa de Franko, always remember….

The post Columbus Day: Love It or Hate It? Or Resurrect It! appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

The Myth of a Hero

Let’s rip off the bandaid: Christopher Columbus wasn’t the saint your fifth-grade textbook sold you.
Our dear Cristóbal Colón — yes, that’s his actual name — wasn’t discovering new worlds; he was crashing into other people’s homes and calling it destiny.

The cat’s out of the bag, amigos: Columbus did some nasty stuff — the kind that would get you banned from every Airbnb on the planet.
And yet, somehow, he still gets parades, statues, and a long weekend in his honor.
¡Qué viva la hipocresía!

Chris: How to Be a Jerk Explorer

You’ve heard the name. You’ve seen the statues.
Every October, someone dusts off the myth of “the brave explorer who discovered America.”
But here’s the Columbus Day truth: this so-called hero was less an explorer and more of a jerk explorer — the kind of guy who’d plant a flag in your yard, steal your food, and call it a “civilization upgrade.”

Before you grab your best frying pan and go on a righteous mission to “educate” your elementary school teacher this Monday, October 13, relax — the school’s closed anyway.
It’s Columbus Day (or, depending on where you live, Indigenous People’s Day — a.k.a. the upgrade humanity needed five centuries too late).

The Classroom Legend

Every fall, as pumpkin spice fills the air and kids zip up their hoodies, American classrooms rehearse the same old myth:

“In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue…”

Cute rhyme, tragic backstory.

Teachers still tell tales of a noble explorer who “discovered” America — as if the people living there just hadn’t noticed the continent yet. Columbus didn’t find a new world; he found millions of existing ones and decided to rename them.

His mission? “To bring civilization and Christianity.”
Translation: to conquer, convert, and collect.
But sure — let’s put him on a pedestal and give everyone the day off.

The Salesman of the Seas

Enter Christopher Columbus — Cristóbal Colón to his friends (and creditors).
The “brave explorer” your fifth-grade class called a hero was, in reality, a world-class lobbyist. For eight long years, he bounced between the royal courts of Spain and Portugal, pitching his grand idea like a medieval startup founder: “Invest in me, and I’ll find you a shortcut to Asia — with extra gold and souls on the side!”

Finally, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella said,

“Alright, fine. Here’s the money. Bring us gold, glory, and—if it’s not too much trouble—a few slaves.”

And just like that, Columbus set sail — not as a visionary explorer, but as a salesman with a cross in one hand and a contract in the other.

Welcome to 1492

Let’s put his so-called “heroic” journey in context.
This was 1492, an era when people thought bathing was suspicious, believed the earth was smaller than their ego, and punished curiosity with fire.

Europe was a place where men wore tights, priests sold salvation, and women were literally locked into metal underwear — because, you know, trust issues.
Hygiene was optional. Patriarchy was mandatory.

And in the middle of that chaos, Columbus sailed off — not into the unknown, but into someone else’s world, armed with ambition and divine permission slips.

A true hero? Only if pillaging, enslaving, and rebranding other people’s homes as “discoveries” fits the job description.

Compared to Today, We Look…

… Moderately Civilized!

Before we get too smug about modern life, let’s remember: the 1400s weren’t exactly the golden age of empathy.
Forget safe spaces, diversity quotas, or gender equality — this was the tail end of the Medieval Era, where “progress” meant burning fewer witches that year.

Europe was basically a group project gone wrong: plague, superstition, and kingdoms fighting over who God loved more. People prayed, killed, and colonized — often in that order.

The Original Cancel Culture

Justice back then didn’t come with hashtags. It came with tools.
For women, there were Breast Rippers — yes, actual iron claws designed to “correct” adultery or gossip.
For men, there was the rack, stretching limbs until your sins (and bones) came apart.

It was an era where morality was preached from the pulpit but practiced in the shadows — priests whispering confessions by day, and maybe collecting indulgences of a different kind by night.

So when we call Columbus a “man of his time,” let’s be clear: that time was savage, superstitious, and soaked in hypocrisy. (Well, we have not changed that much, anyways).

Parrot’s History!

Most people don’t really learn about Christopher Columbus — they repeat him.
A script memorized since kindergarten: “He sailed, he found, he discovered.”

It’s the same song, different bird. 🦜
Generation after generation, parrots of history echo the tale without chewing on it.
They do as they’re told, collecting their paycheck and brunching in peace —
because questioning the myth might ruin the avocado toast.

The Divine PR Campaign

The real story, though?
Chrissy-Poo didn’t sail under divine light — he sailed under a marketing plan.
Centuries later, he still basks in the glow of sainthood, framed as “chosen by God” to civilize the so-called New World.

But every parade, every statue, every “day off” in his name is a torpedo straight through the heart of the people he enslaved and erased.
It’s not celebration; it’s amnesia with confetti.

Fantasy or Reality?

You know how every culture has its feel-good lies?
The guy with the red suit and white beard who breaks into homes to reward “good behavior.”
Or that bunny who somehow lays eggs and sneaks around like a chocolate ninja.

We smile, play along, and call it tradition.

The Legend of Chris Columbus

Christopher Columbus belongs in that same club of beloved make-believe characters — except his story comes with ships, swords, and slavery.
No candy, no chimney, no sleigh — just propaganda with a flag on top.

He’s been passed down for generations, polished by textbooks and parades until the truth got edited out.
Shared like a viral video before “going viral” was even a thing.

A “hero”? Not quite.
More like history’s best-marketed scumbag — proof that if you repeat a lie for 500 years, it eventually earns a holiday.

Thanks, Truth, See You Again Soon…

There’s been no shortage of scholars, indigenous voices, and truth-tellers waving the red flag on the Columbus bedtime story. You know the one: where Chris and his massive crew “discovered” a land already full of people, shared snacks with the locals, and built a cross together under the tropical sun.
Right. And I’m the Queen of Spain.

That myth — the one about him founding the continent and bringing “civilization” — is the biggest case of historical catfishing ever told. But hey, if you repeat a lie long enough, you eventually get a federal holiday and a few parades.

The Blood Under the Gravy

In reality, Columbus and his boys went full medieval mode: rape, torture, enslavement, pillaging, and a casual side of smallpox. If they ever sat down for a communal dinner, it wasn’t to pass the turkey — it was to plan who gets to own whom next.

And honestly, nobody likes blood and death on their mashed potatoes. That’s not the kind of brown gravy Americans signed up for. Even Jesus would’ve noped out of that dinner party faster than you can say “manifest destiny.”
(Trust me, I text him sometimes.)

Indigenous People’s Day: Bye (F-U Chris!)

So, Columbus Day is slowly sailing off the edge of the map — fitting, since Chris thought the Earth was smaller than his ego. Cities like Los Ángeles, Denver, Minneapolis y Seattle have officially jumped ship and renamed it Día de los Pueblos Indígenas.

To them, Christopher Columbus is un pendejo con mapa malo y moral peor. But hey, whether you’re shouting “¡Arriba los pueblos!” or just thrilled to stay in bed with your café con leche, you still get the day off. Disfrútalo, mijo.

Keeping the Lie Afloat

Still, plenty of schools, businesses, and whole estados keep polishing that old myth like abuela’s silverware — shiny on the outside, but oxidized with denial. They’ll teach the same heroic cuento, hang the same portraits, and pretend the bloodstains are just “decorative history.”

Because nothing screams “tradition” like ignoring genocide for a long weekend and calling it “patriotism.” Qué lindos, ¿no?

The Ships and the Scallywags

The Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María: three ships carrying a dirt-faced crew of hungover scallywags, crawling with disease, superstition, and way too much religious fervor. 🦜
As the furry-faced hombres dragged themselves ashore, they shouted, “¡Eureka! Land HO!” — probably the first time in history anyone celebrated sand, bugs, and uncertainty so loudly.

Time to Seek and Destroy

Then he appeared: the mighty explorer, pale, ragged, smelling like bathtub gin, and ready to conquer. He stepped onto the firm, fertile land — God’s country, or at least what he thought was God’s country.

And in true KDF fashion, he took a moment, sniffed the air, and thought: “Time to seek and destroy.”

The rest, mis amigos, is what we call history:
enslavement, pillage, and rewriting the map — all while Europe sipped its wine and clapped.

Compassion for Chris?

Okay, fine. Maybe you want to hate Columbus. Finger-wagging, angry memes, TikTok rants — go for it. And rightly so. He and his crew did some terrible things.

Or… you could just shrug, take a deep breath, and say: “This happened. It’s history. Hopefully we don’t repeat it.” People are messy, mis amigos. Always have been, always will be.

Poor Chris, or Just the Empire’s Spawn?

Was Columbus all evil? Probably not. Look at the world he was born into: the Great Spanish Empire, a land of conquest, plunder, and divine entitlement. Poor Chris was just trying to survive… and make a name for himself while he was at it.

Are we really without sin? No somos perfectos, mijo. History might be messy, but so are humans. And sometimes the “villain” is just the product of a very broken system — one with ships, swords, and really bad PR.

Choose Your Own Adventure!

What will you choose to honor this Columbus/Indigenous People’s Day? How about celebrating the third-most studied language on the planet?
400 million native speakers, 9 million who speak it as a second language… Spanish, baby! The language of LOVE, Romance, and MONEY. 💃💸

Level Up Your Spanish

At Kasa De Franko Spanish School (in-person or online), we’ll get your speaking skills up to speed fast.
What matters most? Being able to communicate effectively, think in Spanish, and enjoy all the little perks that come with knowing the language. Porque hablar español abre puertas, mis amigos.

Celebrate History, Your Way

Maybe we can toast the holiday with a little alcohol and loosen our tongues — so you can speak Spanish better than ever before.
Savor the day, make it yours, and let us know if you’re interested in Spanish lessons at Kasa De Franko. Based in the Bay Area (San Jose) and online worldwide, we offer fun, affordable, and practical lessons tailored to your needs.

Be happy and always remember… life’s too short not to laugh, learn, and speak español like a boss. 😎

The post The Explorer Who Really Discovered How to Be a Jerk appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

Aren’t We Speaking American Yet?

The Fake News That Started It All

Our story began with fake news.

A completely fictional story about Donald Trump declaring American the official language of the United States.

The story was fake. As fake as that turtle dressed as POTUS running away!

The linguistic questions it raised, however, were not.

Because before we can decide what an “American language” might mean, we have to deal with a much more uncomfortable question:

What the Hell Does “American” Mean?

And this is where things start getting complicated.

Because if someone says American language, most of us immediately think of English.

Makes sense. The United States speaks English. Well… mucho bien.

But not everybody speaks it the same way. Not even close.

Which, as it turns out, is kind of the whole point.

And apparently, we weren’t the first ones to wonder about this. Back in 2005, PBS asked a very similar question: Do You Speak American?

Do You Tho? For Real?

Let’s take a look at the program that started it all.

In 2005, PBS premiered Do You Speak American?, a three-part documentary series hosted by Robert MacNeil.

MacNeil traveled across the United States exploring how Americans speak and, more importantly, what it might actually mean to “speak American.”

And it turned out that American English was a lot more complicated than just having funny or different accents.

It wasn’t simply una colección de acentos pintorescos—como el hombre naranja.

Well… There Were Accents

But there was a lot more going on.

MacNeil spoke with people from different regions and communities and looked at how American English changes according to place, age, social group, identity, and community.

The series also got into linguistic prejudice, the whole idea of “standard” English, Spanish, language contact, and the fact that people don’t necessarily speak the same way all the time.

You might sound one way with your friends, another way at work, and yet another way when you go back home to visit your family.

And that brings us to the central question:

What Does It Mean to Speak American?

The answer turned out to be considerably more complicated than:

“You speak English.”

Because apparently, speaking the same language doesn’t necessarily mean sounding the same.

And to find out just how different American English can be, MacNeil did something fairly simple:

he went traveling.

A Trip Through American English

The documentary turns the question into something of a linguistic road trip across the United States. Each place reveals a different relationship between language, geography, history, and community.

PBS asks some pretty specific questions.

Why do lobster fishermen in Maine sound so different from cowboys in Texas?

What happens to English in different regions?

And how are language, identity, race, and social class connected?

So What Was He Looking For?

And this is where things get fun.

Because the way you pronounce something can reveal where you’re from.

A single word can tell a story about contact between languages.

And the way you speak can become a signal that tells other people:

You’re one of us.

Let’s take it one step at a time.

Maine: When One Word Gives You Away

One of the first places featured in the documentary is Maine.

And that’s where you start discovering that American English isn’t some giant linguistic block with a bunch of different accents sprinkled on top.

There are local varieties, regional pronunciations, and expressions that can sound completely normal to one person and strangely unfamiliar to another.

You’re How You Speak

PBS uses Maine lobster fishermen as one of its examples of just how much speech can vary within the United States.

And that’s what’s interesting.

Someone can hear a perfectly ordinary word and, without the speaker ever telling them where they were born, start making a pretty good guess about where they’re from.

It’s almost as if language came with a ZIP code.

New York: Is the Language Getting Worse?

Then we get to New York.

And here we encounter another very human phenomenon:

people who believe previous generations spoke correctly and that younger generations are destroying the language.

And that leads to one of the questions raised by the documentary:

Is American English getting worse?

Yes.

Some people are convinced it is.

The Same Old Complaint

In the documentary, that debate appears pretty directly.

John Simon, a Yugoslav-born theater critic and defender of what he considered standards of English, argued that the language had deteriorated and that younger generations were contributing to that decline.

Linguist Jesse Sheidlower, on the other hand, challenged precisely that idea: the assumption that linguistic change means the language is falling apart.

In other words, the old argument:

Before When?

That “before” is a wonderful linguistic place.

Nobody knows exactly where it is, but apparently everybody spoke perfect English there.

The problem is that languages never sit still.

They change because people change.

Pronunciations Shift

New words appear. Others disappear. Expressions move from one generation to another.

That doesn’t mean every change is automatically good or bad.

It means that change and decline are not synonyms.

And that distinction becomes pretty important when we’re talking about American English.

The South: One Label Isn’t Enough

Then the trip moves south.

Here we encounter different varieties of Southern English, including Appalachian English.

And suddenly the word “Southern” starts looking a little too small.

Because even within one enormous region, there are differences. There is no button labeled:

SPEAK SOUTHERN

that everybody simply presses.

History leaves fingerprints, too.

In some communities in southern Louisiana, for example, French language contact helped shape varieties of English that can’t simply be explained as “English with a Southern accent.”

And That’s the Thing

There is history behind the way people speak.

Migration.

Contact between communities.

Languages meeting, mixing, influencing one another, and leaving traces behind.

That’s why a linguistic variety can’t always be explained by looking only at the map as it exists today.

Sometimes you have to look backward.

Texas: Even Cowboys Speak History

And then Texas adds another layer.

Cowboy culture is full of words that came from Spanish.

And that’s without even getting into the broader influence of Spanish on American English.

We’ll save that one for later.

No need to get ourselves into a linguistic mess just yet.

The Cowboys and The Turtle

The interesting thing is that something so strongly associated with a supposedly quintessentially American image—the cowboy—can carry a little collection of linguistic fingerprints from Spanish.

And that’s before we even mention that the cowboy itself has roots in the Spanish vaquero tradition, which later developed in territories that were once Spanish and Mexican and are now part of the United States.

And don’t worry. This time, we’re not letting the turtle get away. Huh! You’re still wondering about the Turtle POTUS, right? No worries: You’ll find out!

Languages Don’t Need Passports

And that’s pretty funny when you think about the traditional image of the American cowboy:

horse, hat, boots, desert…

and a few Spanish words hiding in his pocket.

But it also reminds us of something important.

No Need to Respect Cultures

Languages don’t respect cultural borders nearly as carefully as we do.

Words travel.

Speakers travel.

Cultures meet.

And languages keep the evidence.

Oklahoma vs. Texas: One Cahh Can Start an Argument

And here we get one of those examples that makes linguistics stop feeling like a class and start feeling like a conversation between neighbors.

Imagine a woman from Massachusetts who had lived in Oklahoma talking to a woman from Texas.

Pam, the woman from Massachusetts, says:

I wanna buy a cahh.

The Texan stares at her.

And There We Have the Problem

It’s not that one of them doesn’t know English.

It’s not that one of them is speaking “badly.”

They don’t even need radically different vocabularies.

A difference in pronunciation can be enough to make a perfectly familiar word suddenly stop sounding familiar.

When Pronunciation Matters

And that’s exactly what makes linguistic varieties so interesting.

Sometimes you don’t need a new word.

You just need to pronounce an old word a little differently.

And suddenly someone asks:

“What did you say?”

Californication: What Makes America Sound American

And then we arrive in California.

Oh, California.

If there is one state that has helped America export the way it sounds to the rest of the world, this is probably it.

Hollywood. Television. Music. Silicon Valley. Surf culture. Teenagers saying things that eventually make their way into everybody else’s vocabulary.

California Sounds American, Doesn’t It?

California has spent decades helping the rest of America—and the rest of the planet—figure out what “American” is supposed to sound like.

And yet California itself doesn’t even speak with one voice.

Not even close.

But Which California?

California is enormous, and its linguistic map is anything but simple.

You can find different accents, different vocabulary, different communities, different histories, and different ideas about what sounds “normal” depending on where in California you are. Northern California doesn’t necessarily sound like Southern California.

From South or North? ¿Cuál es mejor?

And even within those broad regions, people can sound very different depending on their community, family, ethnicity, social circles, and the languages around them.

Which brings us to a very California question:

Where in California are you from?

Because apparently, even California needs to know which California you’re talking about.

Hella California

Take the word hella.

You don’t need a linguistics degree to notice that something is going on.

Sometimes all you need is one little word.

Hella.

That’s hella expensive.

That was hella good.

There’s hella traffic.

Congratulations.

You may have just walked into Northern California.

Welcome to Northern California

The word became strongly associated with Northern California, especially the Bay Area, even though it eventually escaped California and started showing up elsewhere.

And that’s what makes words like this so interesting.

From Cahh to Hella

A word can start in one place, travel somewhere else, and eventually lose the little linguistic passport stamp that told you where it came from.

So one tiny word can give you a clue about where somebody is from.

Just like cahh did.

Except this time, we’re still in California.

And Then California Gets Complicated

And hella is just one little example.

California is also home to Chicano English, African American English, Spanglish, and many other ways of speaking shaped by migration, history, ethnicity, community, and contact between languages.

One Language, Many Voices

So California can help define what American English sounds like to the rest of the country…

while Californians themselves keep proving that there isn’t just one way to sound Californian.

Apparently, even the state that helps America find its voice doesn’t have just one of its own.

No! We Don’t Talk the Same Way to Everyone

But here we encounter an even more important idea:

a person doesn’t necessarily speak exactly the same way all the time.

You can talk one way with your friends and another way in a job interview.

You can use certain words with your family and different ones with someone you just met.

No Necessarily Faking it!

You can change your pronunciation, vocabulary, or even your level of formality depending on the situation.

That doesn’t necessarily mean you’re “faking it.”

It means you have more than one linguistic resource available to you.

Human beings do this all the time.

This Land Is Your Land!

Now let’s look back at the whole trip.

Maine, New York, the South, Texas, and California are all part of the same country.

They all have English speakers.

There’s No Single Way to Speak American

But the way people speak can vary enormously from one place to another and from one community to another.

So it’s pretty difficult to maintain that there is one single way of speaking American English.

Because clearly, there isn’t.

And that’s where things start getting interesting.

So… What Does American English Actually Mean?

If someone says American English, most of us think we know exactly what they mean:

English as it is spoken in the United States.

Perfect, right?

Until you start listening to Americans.

Then Everybody Starts Sounding Different

And suddenly the definition gets a little more complicated.

A lobster fisherman from Maine, a teenager from Los Angeles, a cowboy from Texas, and someone from New York may all be speaking English.

But they don’t necessarily sound like they belong to the same linguistic neighborhood.

Geography Is Only Part of the Story

Differences can also relate to age, community, social class, ethnicity, identity, and the situation in which someone is speaking.

A person can even shift between varieties depending on whom they’re talking to.

So maybe American English isn’t one single thing.

So What Is It? Do We Know?

Interestingly enough, maybe what we know is what isn’t American English.

Canada’s English, for example, isn’t American, even though Canada speaks English and is in América—the continent, of course.

And don’t even start mentioning other countries in América.

What Is It Then?

Maybe it’s a collection of varieties that share a country, a history, and a broad linguistic tradition.

That sounds reasonable enough.

Until we remember the question that started all of this.

Because our original story wasn’t about American English.

It was about American.

And those two things aren’t necessarily the same.

When American Doesn’t Mean Exactly the Same Thing

Now we need to put English aside for a moment.

Because the problem gets even bigger when we look at the word American itself.

America didn’t begin as the name of the United States.

That sounds obvious once you say it.

But linguistically, it creates a little headache.

In American English, American is the standard demonym for a person from the United States.

And What Happens in Spanish?

In Spanish, however, americano can refer to the Americas as a whole or, depending on the context, to something associated with the United States.

But it is not normally the preferred way to identify a person specifically from the United States when precision matters.

For that, Spanish has another word:

estadounidense.

And now we have two languages using similar-looking words in ways that aren’t exactly the same.

¿Por qué norteamericano entonces?

And while we’re at it, Spanish has its own complications when it comes to demonyms.

For example, alongside estadounidense we also have norteamericano, which, although accepted by the RAE, is technically imprecise because North America includes more than just the United States.

The RAE has never been perfect.

And it never will be.

As we’ve said before, the RAE can recommend linguistic usage, but it can’t necessarily dictate what millions of speakers actually do with their language.

… It Doesn’t Stay in Spanish!

And Spanish isn’t alone.

French has états-unien.

Italian has statunitense.

Portuguese uses estadunidense in Brazil and estado-unidense in other Portuguese-speaking countries.

That doesn’t mean their equivalents of American have disappeared.

When We Need to Be Precise

They still exist and are still used. The other forms simply do something very useful:

they specify the United States.

It’s a perfectly logical linguistic solution. But the existence of a more specific alternative doesn’t mean the conventional word is going to disappear.

And that brings us to another little problem:

what happens when we try to invent a completely new demonym?

What If We Invent Another Demonym?

English has produced alternatives too.

There’s Usonian, a term especially associated with architect Frank Lloyd Wright.

You’ll also occasionally encounter forms such as United-Statesian and USian.

But none of them managed to replace American in everyday English.

And honestly, United-Statesian sounds like it was invented by a committee.

When a Committee Is Not Really Committed

Inventing a word is easy. Getting millions of people to actually use it is another story.

So… Who Gets to Be American?

Now we have to separate two things.

One thing is what a word can mean.

Another is how a community actually uses that word.

In American English, American became the conventional demonym for people from the United States. That convention has been around for generations.

América Is More Than America

At the same time, America can refer to a much broader geographic space than the United States, especially in languages and traditions that understand North and South America as parts of a larger whole.

So someone outside the United States can hear:

“I’m American.”

and think:

“Well… so am I.”

When Two People Say “American”

Imagine this conversation:

And there we have the difference between a word having a possible meaning and a word having a conventional use within a particular community.

We don’t need an international language commission approving every one of these conventions.

Languages simply develop their own habits.

When Habit Beats the Rulebook

And when millions of people have been using a word in a particular way for generations, changing it is considerably harder than inventing a theoretically more precise alternative.

But that doesn’t make the cultural or geographic question disappear.

It simply helps us understand that we’re dealing with two different problems.

Same Shit, Different Smell

One is:

What does the word mean?

The other is:

How does a community use it?

And that leads us to an even more interesting question:

Who was using their own words to name this continent before all these discussions ever began?

Maybe Turtle Island?

We’re Back to the Turtle and, yeah!

Turtle Island is one name used in several Indigenous traditions for these lands, and it has become a widely used Indigenous term for North America.

So suddenly, our ridiculous little turtle has taken us somewhere a lot older than Donald Trump.

But before we go there, let’s finally understand why Mr. Trump was dressed as a turtle in the first place if it wasn’t Halloween yet.

Or was it a turtle dressed as POTUS? Doesn’t matter anymore. The turtle has already done its job.

And that brings us to a little language lesson.

The Snoozy Turtle

All right! The Spanish teaching moment has arrived.

You’ve probably heard the common American saying:

If you snooze, you lose!

So how would you say that in Spanish?

Let’s See the Spanish Version

Well, apparently, the Spanish-speaking world has decided that you should not let a turtle escape:

No dejes que se te escape la tortuga. Literally, don’t let the turtle get away. And there you have it. Now all those turtle references we’ve been making should finally make sense.

Wait… What Does “Get Away” Mean?

There’s actually a little language lesson hiding inside that sentence.

Get away is a very common English phrasal verb meaning to escape.

So when we say:

The turtle got away.

we mean:

The turtle escaped.

This is one of those moments when translating individual words doesn’t quite get you there. Get means one thing, and away means another. Put them together, and get away takes on a meaning of its own.

And That’s the Point

This is one of the reasons learning a language isn’t simply about translating words. You also have to learn how speakers actually put those words together and what those combinations mean in real life.

And that brings us right back to the bigger question we’ve been asking throughout this article:

What does a word mean, and how does a community actually use it?

American, americano, and estadounidense give us one example.

Get away gives us another. And apparently, the turtle has been teaching us English this whole time.

And About That Turtle…

We started this article with a fake story about Donald Trump declaring American the official language of the United States.

Then our fictional turtle ran away.

Then we learned how to say get away.

Not Bad for a Turtle

And now that same turtle has taken us all the way back to Indigenous names and the question of what these lands were called before America.

No bad, huh? But we’re not going to answer all of those questions today. The turtle has already escaped once. Let’s not give it another opportunity.

Yes! And There Are Still Questions

After this whole journey, we can finally return to the question that started it all.

Does speaking American simply mean speaking English?

Not really.

There is such a thing as American English, but it isn’t one single way of speaking.

It contains regions, communities, histories, identities, accents, dialects, vocabulary, and different ways of using the same language.

American or American English?

And once we move from American English to simply American, things get even more interesting.

Because a word can mean one thing inside a particular community and something else when we look at it from a broader geographic or linguistic perspective.

Languages change.

They mix.

They travel.

They borrow. They develop habits.

When Habits Get Established

And sometimes those habits become so deeply established that we stop noticing how strange they might look from the outside.

So maybe the better question isn’t simply:

Do you speak American?

Maybe the question is:

What exactly do we mean by American?

And that is where things get really interesting.

But Some Questions Will Have to Wait

Because once you start pulling on this linguistic thread, you discover that there are quite a few more questions hiding underneath it.

What were these lands called before America?

Where did the name America actually come from?

What happened to the languages that were already here?

When does a dialect become a language? Who gets to decide?

Not Today, Turtle

We aren’t going to solve all of that here.

Not today.

The turtle has already escaped once.

Let’s not make things worse.

Those questions can wait for future classes, future meetups, future conversations…

To be continued…

The post So…What Are You Waiting for to Speak American? appeared first on Kasa De Franko.

So… How Much Is Your Aura Worth?

Imagine you’re walking through a plaza and you see a group of teenagers gathered around one of their friends.

One kid suddenly gets up, starts walking strangely, strikes a pose, or does something completely ridiculous with enough confidence to make you wonder whether you missed a meeting where everyone agreed this was normal.

His friends start yelling and laughing. Somebody pulls out a phone.

Then someone says:

“Your aura: +500!”

A few minutes later, another kid tries something and completely bombs it.

“−1,000 aura!”

Nobody won anything. Nobody lost anything. There’s no trophy, no referee, and no actual scoreboard.

And yet, everybody knows exactly what just happened.

So what on Earth are they doing?

They’re farming aura.

Okay… What the Hell Is Aura Farming?

At first glance, it looks like a bunch of kids making fools of themselves.

And, to be fair, sometimes that’s exactly what it is.

But there’s another layer to it. The idea is that certain things make you look cool, confident, funny, impressive, mysterious, or just somehow different from everybody else.

If people react the way you hoped they would, you’ve gained aura.

But wait…

How Do You Actually Gain Aura?

If you completely embarrass yourself, well…

There goes your aura.

It’s as if you’ve been walking around your entire life with an invisible meter above your head and nobody bothered to tell you about it until now.

Apparently, the internet finally gave that meter a name.

Aura.

What the Hell Is “Aura”?

We’re not talking about the mystical energy surrounding your body.

Well… not exactly.

On the internet, aura has become a way of describing someone’s presence or the impression they give off. Someone walks into a room and somehow gets everyone’s attention. Someone does something with so much confidence that everybody notices. Someone can even do almost nothing and still somehow look cool doing it.

What Would You Say About It?

You might say that person has aura.

It’s not exactly confidence, charisma, attractiveness, or being cool, although it can involve all of those things.

And that’s probably the point.

Aura is vague.

You Can’t Actually Measure It

There is no machine that goes:

AURA DETECTED.

There’s no government agency keeping track of your aura. No bank where you can deposit it. No app where you can check whether you’re up or down for the day.

At least, not yet.

But Somehow, We Keep Score

The internet took something vague and human and turned it into a game, complete with imaginary points.

And somehow, it works.

We’ve taken someone’s presence, their vibe, their ability to make an impression, and started talking about it as if we’d discovered a new natural resource. Apparently, we’re mining the invisible now.

So What Does “Farming” Mean?

If you’ve played video games, you probably already know the idea.

You don’t always get what you need simply by moving through the story. Sometimes you have to repeat the same activity because you want more experience, gold, weapons, materials, or whatever else your character needs.

You do the same thing again.

And again.

And again. You’re farming.

You’re Not Actually Growing Anything

The point isn’t that you’re growing something. You’re repeating an activity because you want to accumulate a particular reward.

You’re doing the same work over and over because you want more of something.

And eventually, that word escaped the games.

Then English Went to Spanish

People started talking about farming followers, farming views, farming likes, farming attention.

And then something particularly interesting happened in Spanish.

Spanish-speaking gamers didn’t simply translate the word.

They turned it into a Spanish verb:
farmear.

So you might hear:
“Estoy farmeando experiencia.”
I’m farming experience.

And Nobody Had to Explain It

And nobody has to stop the conversation to explain what farmear means.

The English gaming word crossed into Spanish and started behaving like a Spanish verb.

That’s not unusual.

That’s actually what languages do.

Nobody Asked Permission to Create “Farmear”

Nobody sits down and says, “Today we shall create a new word.”

People borrow something. They change it a little. They start using it with their friends.

If other people understand it, they use it too.

And if enough people keep using it, congratulations.

You have a word.

Then Farmear Escaped the Games

Then farmear started escaping the gaming world. You could farm followers, farm attention, farm reactions, farm views…

And now, apparently, you can farmear aura.

Which may be the strangest thing we’ve managed to farm so far.

So Why Can’t You Farm Aura?

Think about it.

If you’re farming gold in a video game, you end up with gold. If you’re farming experience, your character levels up. If you’re farming materials, you collect materials.

But if you’re farming aura, where does it go?

Do you put it in a jar?

Can you trade 500 aura for a sandwich?

Can you save it for later?

“Sorry, I can’t hang out tonight. I’m sitting on 8,000 aura and I’m not spending any of it.”

You’re Farming an Impression

That’s the joke.

Aura isn’t something you actually collect. It’s an impression. Yet we’re talking about it as if we’ve discovered a new natural resource.

And somehow, the metaphor works. Maybe because humans have always had a strange habit of turning invisible things into things we can talk about, compare, measure, and worry about.

Now apparently we’ve added social coolness to the list.

From the Meme to the Street

And this is where the whole thing gets more interesting.

What starts online doesn’t necessarily stay online, especially when you’re talking about young people who already live comfortably in the language and humor of internet culture. Someone strikes a ridiculous pose.

Someone walks into a situation with exaggerated confidence.

Suddenly, They’re Performing

Someone dances, performs, or does something completely unnecessary just to see what kind of reaction it gets.

Suddenly, they’re not just hanging out.

They’re performing.

They probably wouldn’t call it that.

But that’s what they’re doing.

When Hanging Out Becomes a Performance

They’re playing with what looks cool, what gets a reaction, and what makes everybody else say:

“Okay, that was actually pretty good.”

And now the people watching become part of the game.

Because you can think you’ve just delivered the coolest moment of your life, but unfortunately, nobody else may agree.

That’s when your imaginary aura account takes a hit.

The Audience Has a Vote

There isn’t an official scoring system.

That’s what makes it funny.

The people watching decide whether you pulled it off. If everyone laughs, screams, stares, or starts recording, you’ve probably gained some aura.

What If You Lose?

If everyone looks at you like you just made a terrible decision, you may want to accept the loss and move on.

The plaza has become a stage, and your friends have become the judges.

And unlike real judges, they’re probably going to laugh at you while they’re scoring you.

You Don’t Get to Give Yourself the Points

That’s another reason aura is such a strange idea.

You don’t get to decide your own score.

You can walk away thinking you absolutely nailed it while everybody else is still trying to figure out what the hell you were doing.

The same action can look confident to one person and ridiculous to another.

That’s because aura doesn’t really live inside you.

It lives somewhere between how you see yourself and how other people see you.

Then Someone Pulls Out a Phone

And now the audience can get much bigger.

Someone records ten seconds, posts it, and suddenly something that would have disappeared five minutes after it happened can be watched by hundreds or thousands of people.

Maybe more.

Now you’re not necessarily doing something only for the people standing around you.

You’re potentially doing it for everyone who might see the video later.

And that changes things.

The Camera Is No Longer Just a Camera

The phone doesn’t simply record the moment.

Sometimes it becomes part of the reason the moment happens in the first place.

Before smartphones, you could do something ridiculous in front of your friends and, assuming nobody remembered it too clearly, eventually the whole thing disappeared.

Now the possibility of being recorded can become part of the performance itself.

You know someone might be watching.

You know someone might be recording.

And maybe that’s exactly the point.

That’s a pretty big audience for one stupid pose.

When the Camera Changes What We Do

You might do something funny because you’re having fun.

Then somebody says:

“Wait, do it again. I’m recording.”

Same action. Different situation.

Now there’s an audience, even if nobody else is physically there. And sometimes that changes the way you do the thing.

Performing for People Who Aren’t Even There

Those people might be strangers.

They might live in another country.

They might not even have seen the video yet.

They don’t exist as an audience in the traditional sense.

And yet the possibility that they’ll see you can still affect what you do.

That’s kind of weird when you stop and think about it.

We’re not always performing for people who are there anymore.

Sometimes we’re performing for people who might be there later.

Why Do We Want People to Notice Us?

So why do we care?

Why do we want people to laugh at our jokes, notice what we’re wearing, admire something we’ve done, or think we’re interesting?

The answer is surprisingly simple.

Because we’re human.

This Part Isn’t New at All

Humans are social animals.

We live in groups, and other people’s opinions have always mattered to us. We want to belong. We want to be accepted and respected. And, generally speaking, we’d rather people like us than spend their time wondering what the hell is wrong with us.

None of that started with TikTok.

None of it started with Instagram either.

The internet simply gave us a new vocabulary for something we’ve been doing forever.

Instead of saying, “That person really made an impression,” we can now say:

“+1,000 aura.”

Much more scientific.

The post So, How Long Have You Been Farming? appeared first on Kasa De Franko.