Ask a Mexican! | Ask a Mexican! | Tucson Weekly

by mailbag@tucsonweekly.com (Gustavo Arellano)

Dear Mexican: An uninsured wetback just hit my car and totaled his. He had no insurance and no license, but he did have a nice cell phone. I asked him if he was OK in my limited Spanish, but he did not ask about me or my children. He was handcuffed and taken away to be booked for one hour so authorities could get his real name. This incident will cost me hundreds of dollars, even with my insurance. My insurance company tells me 60 percent of accidents in California involve uninsured Mexican drivers. Why don't they just take buses like I did when I couldn't afford a car?

Stranded With No Rental Insurance

Dear Gabacho: Yeah, you really care if the man who rammed into you was OK when you smirk at his cell phone and call him a wetback. (And real pronto , readers: Please eliminate that word from your Rolodex of Racism. Like "beaner," it's so 1950s. Use "wab" or the cooler-sounding Spanish translation, mojado .) Cry me a pinche río.

Also, your insurance agents have no sabe what they're talking about sobre the figures you provided. The Insurance Research Council's Uninsured Motorists, 2008 Edition estimated that only 18 percent of Californians drive uninsured; a 1998 study, California's Uninsured , by the Policy Research Bureau of the California Department of Insurance, did determine that 35 percent of Latinos had no insurance, but didn't bother to figure out whether they caused the majority of accidents. Both studies showed that the rate of insured drivers in California and the United States had actually increased over the years, so that figure your agent gave you was just to soothe your frayed gabacho ego—it simply has no basis in fact or statistical projections.

Finally, regarding your actual question: Uninsured Mexicans drive cars for the same reason uninsured non-Mexicans do—the buses are too overcrowded with Mexicans.

I live outside of Tucson, a big city only about 50 miles north of the...

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