Pachucos, Chicano Homeboys and Gypsy Calo: Transmission of a Speech Style (Essay‪)‬

The term calo is well-known within many Mexican American communities as a bilingual slang that is one of several speech styles in the community repertoire, closely associated with Pachuco groups of the U.S. Southwest that came to prominence in the 1940's. But the term calo predates its introduction to the U.S. by many decades. With roots in a Romany-based germania of the 16th century, from the speech of immigrant gypsies evolved a new Spanish-based argot, the result of language shift from Romany to Spanish over centuries. By the 19th century, calo referred to a Spanish-based criminal argot called "calo jergal" by a contemporaneous Spanish researcher (Salillas 1896), a mixed code of gypsy Romany and Peninsular Spanish which was used by members of that group as an in-group, secret speech style. This type of secret code, retaining some of the gypsies' Sanskrit-origin words and characteristic wordplay, may still be found in use among some of the Spanish-speaking criminal populations in Spain and in the Americas. Moreover, gypsies are still an identifiable ethnic presence in Spain, and some features of gypsy calo are found in the vernacular Spanish slang of some cities like Madrid (Oliver 1987) and Malaga (Cipas 1973). That elements of gypsy calo are still found in the dialects of Spain is not surprising; what is, however, is its relationship to the in-group argot of the Mexican American Pachucos of the early decades of the 20th century in the United States. From available historical evidence, the Pachucos appear to have spoken in the same creative, neologistic style as did the Spanish gypsies, where elements of Pachuco calo were subsequently incorporated into the slang of the Spanish-speaking communities of which they were a part, similar to what happened in some parts of Spain. Moreover, words of gypsy origin are still found in the speech of modern day Chicano youths, some of them the 'homeboy" lingo used by street gangs, despite the fact that many members of this younger generation do not speak Spanish. What explains the transmission of a long-ago gypsy speech style to new groups on a new continent? What elements of this style were appropriated by the community at large and why?