Resumen

ITURRIAGA DE LA FUENTE, José. The Word Gachupín: Ironic, Descriptive, or Derogatory?. Anu. let. lingüíst. filol. [online]. 2023, vol.11, n.1, pp.161-190.  Epub 12-Mayo-2023. ISSN 2448-8224.  https://doi.org/10.19130/iifl.adel.2023.11.1.011x0023s06.

Considered by one prominent philologist to be a Mexicanism, the word gachupín today is a pejorative term for people from Spain. The word emerged in sixteenth-century Spain (as cachopín) with an ironic or mocking sense, but fell into disuse in the seventeenth century. The word also arrived in New Spain in the sixteenth century, but soon acquired a different meaning in Mexico: an allusion to geographic origin, a kind of demonym without offensive intent. This meaning was preserved throughout the viceroyalty and much of the nineteenth century. Mexicans generally associate the offensive sense with the year 1810, when pro-independence popular fury demanded “Death to the gachupines!” But the aggression in that slogan is in the word death, not gachupines, which remained merely descriptive during the War of Independence. The contribution of this article is to demonstrate that gachupín did not become pejorative until the second half of the nineteenth century, gradually, and then especially with the Revolution. There were several semantic readjustments of the word: it is necessary to identify the timing of these changes, and in particular to clarify the confusion regarding the last one, when the term gachupín became derogatory.

Palabras llave : gachupin; cachopin; discrimination; inmigration.

        · resumen en Español     · texto en Español     · Español ( pdf )