'stache #54 - the pork taco moustache

Lots of folks back East, they say, is leavin' home every day,
Beatin' the hot old dusty way to the California line.
'Cross the desert sands they roll, gettin' out of that old dust bowl,
They think they're goin' to a sugar bowl, but here's what they find:
Pork, wrapped in tortilla with chopped cabbage.
Under the nose, Mexicans carry their biota baggage.
-Woody Guthrie, Do Re Mi, 1937


The Pork Taco Moustache, now very popular, has a cruel, ne'er-before-told history.

While the 1848 Treaty of Hidalgo Guadalupe gave Mexican-Americans the right to wear a moustache publicly and freely, it gave them no means to practice this right. Though Anglo Americans deftly rested pork products of all kinds on their lips –- bacon, pork loin, pork rinds, ham, ham hock, pulled pork -– without discrimination, the Mexican-American could hardly place a bit of herb below the nose without facing ridicule. But in the Latino social clubs south of Loredo, the pig of Texas BBQ fame crossed the so-called Tortilla Curtain, and the pork taco moustache was born in secret. In the late 19th century the Confederacion de Bigotes Independientes, Grandes e Ordinarios de Tejanos Extrajaneros (C-BIGOTE) was formed in Texas to lobby for equal moustaching rights, but, obviously, none were awarded, and the pork taco moustache remained sub-rosa. This ironic twist in moustache history does not go unnoted, since many moustaches were used originally as the clandestine mask itself.

But back to the story. Many moustached Mexicans fled to California looking for a Chicano safety far from the Tejano hate. Here, the pork taco was 'stached freely and openly, even in the presence of gringos from the 1930s on. In Pastures of Heaven, John Steinbeck's fictional character Tom Breman visits the makeshift restaurant of Maria and Rosa whose father, Old Guiermo -– a wearer of thickly packed pork taco moustaches –- has recently passed. After the popularity of Travels with Charley, Americans started to pay attention to the strange and often angry ramblings of Steinbeck, and soon Anglo-Americans realized that Chicanos had 'stached in peace in California for decades. This was a huge shock to the 1960s East-coaster who had had never paid any mind to the silly West coast before.

The pork taco moustache can be worn in warm months and should never been worn in secret again.