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A Little Story About Piojos
By Christine Marin, Ph.D.
BARRIOZONA
“When it comes to lice control, Pronto gets straight A’s.”
A June 3, 1992 magazine advertisement for the product, Pronto, The Complete Lice Killing System.
“Can you imagine that, mija, an advertisement with a gringuita with her piojos?”, she asked. “Piojos?,” I said. And she
replied, “Yes, piojos!” And we laughed at the thought. But I knew that her laughter was for a different reason than mine.
She laughed because it proved to the world that gringos get piojos too. And now, they actually advertise it!!! I laughed
because she laughed at the idea of it all. You see, when she was a young school girl at the Central School on Church Hill
in Miami, Arizona, she was humiliated and embarrassed when she and all the other Mexican kids were singled out from
the Anglo kids and sent to the nurse’s office to be checked for pijos. “The teachers never checked the heads of the
gringitos,” she recalled. And the humiliation she suffered remained in her memory after all these many of her 72 years.
And now! She can throw her head back and laugh and laugh because the gringita in the magazine advertisement for
some kind of head lice shampoo product is telling the whole world that she has piojos! Ah, justice has been served,
mamá. ……ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,…
Copyright © 2006 by Christine Marin
Copyright © 2006 Hispanic Institute of Social Issues
Grassroots Journalism
www.barriozona.com
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