July 27, 2025 • 27 mins
When Andrés tried translating Colombian slang to his American boyfriend, he stumbled into a deeper question: what do these words really mean?
In this episode, Andrés traces the roots of everyday slang in Colombian Spanish used not only by the queer community, but by the public at large.
What he finds reveals more about his queerness and culture than he thought.
In this story, he brings us the painful, often overlooked history behind a few words that he has been using both in his home country and here in the U.S.
Latino USA is the longest-running news and culture radio program in the U.S., centering Latino stories and hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Maria Hinojosa.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, dear listener, justa heads up that the piece you're
about to hear is about curse words, slang words, and slurs,
So you're going to hear a lot of those words,
and you've been warned.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Ever had one of those conversations where neither person feels
like they're getting it. Last summer, my boyfriend Jeffrey and
I were hanging out, chatting over in Negronies. We live
in New York City. He's Chinese American and grew up
in southern California. I am Colombian and have spent most
of my life in Babbadah. So sometimes when English is
not English and I throw in a Spanish phrase that
(00:39):
just feels right to me. Most of the time those
moments turn into a light language lesson with me explaining
to my boyfriend what I said or what I meant
to say. But sometimes things get lost in translation and
we end up in a full on debate like this.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
One night we were lying in bed together. It was
just a typical night in bed. We were just having
casual conversation and I made a joke to you that
was probably a little bit shady. Oh it was shady,
And then you are like oh my god, you puribo,
(01:16):
but in Spanish close enough.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
But what I said was something like, ah it stiputle
to show that I was annoyed.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
But the word I caught was peribo, and I was like, oh,
what's that word? And so I googled it and the
first thing that came up was bag.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
For the record, that's not what I meant. Why would
I call my boyfriend the F word. I mean, I'm
no bigot and I'm gay. Two See, beetle is a
coming insult in Columbia that, honestly, you hear everywhere, and
I don't think it's that intense. It would be like
calling someone out when I annoy you and you just
say you bitch. I tried to explain myself why he
(02:06):
didn't buy it. So would you say you were offended?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Maybe?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I don't know if I was offended. I was just like,
why would you say that? For the joke that I said,
I wanted to get to the bottom of the word,
but it went into a deep dive. You're like, no,
that's not what it means. I was like, but Google
says that it means this.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yes, fine, Google, But like I've been speaking Spanish, my
whole life, and I've been speaking Colombian Spanish and using
that word since I was a teenager, so why not
trust me over the internet? I was mad, And what
really got me was that throughout the conversation I felt
like Jeffrey, an American, was judging not just me, but
(02:52):
my language and my culture.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Saying America or par ebo. This being used in like
vernacular amongst the Colombian population seems weird to me if
it has this connotation, like why why would you even
consider it as a word.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
From futro media. It's Latino Usa. I'm Maria ino Josa.
Today we're going to go down a language rabbit hole
with Andres Pacheco Hron. He's going to look at what
gets lost and who gets hurt in translation, also the
history behind these words and how queer identity shows up
(03:40):
in language. So let me hand the mic back to Andres.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I feel conflicted whenever I hear people tell me that
we speak kind of rough, because in Colombia, profanities are
very much part of her slang. They've kind of morphed
into common terms. Still, I get that by doing a
literal translation. English speakers in the US here only the
homophobic part. Take the word marika, for example, which even
(04:11):
in other Spanish speaking countries like Mexico, is a derogatory
f word for Queerman and trans folks, but where I'm from,
people use it as much as college guys say pro or,
as much as folks from southern California use the word like, right, Jeffrey.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I feel like like you're being like and then you're like,
I was like.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Another one is gonorhea, which as it sounds, means gonorrhea
in English, literally the sdi, but in Columbia it could
mean an insult, an expression of surprise, even a compliment.
People get really creative with it, like this tik talker.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Ko gona no jesstrea.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
And it's not just a meme. I really do use
as many of these words as I can in a sentence.
Here's me telling a friend about a bad haircut in
a voice. Now, anyway, back to the word that caused
an argument between me and my boyfriend. According to some websites,
(05:15):
the word piobo is a homophobic anzult, even though I
don't use it as such, but hear me out. It's
not just me and my friends talking like this. Many
Colombians queer or not. Use these words a lot. They're
part of her music. Some of Colombia's biggest reggaeton artists
drop these expressions in their songs very casually. Here's Fate
(05:39):
singing one of his most famous songs, Elise. He says
pio five times in less than three minutes while describing
the guy who stole his girlfriend. Many case even more common.
Here's Kato g casually talking to her friend amia Ya,
(06:01):
and Gona is also part of her poetry, like when
she sings about a guy who broke her heart. Most
of the time, these words feel totally normal to us.
But my boyfriend made a really good point, going along
with things just because they've been normal doesn't make it right.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So there was this period of time when I was
younger when someone would say something stupid. They'd be like,
that's so gay in a way of like equating gayness
as being a native thing. And then it kind of
like evolved, and I will say that there is this
(06:45):
whole campaign, the Hillary Duff that says, do you like
this top so gay? Really?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, it's totally gay. You know you really shouldn't say that.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
So what I'll say that something's gay when.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
You mean it's bad.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
It's insulting when you say that's so gay? Do you
realize what you say?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Knock it off? Is Hillary Duff?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Should I knock it off? Her colembon is just not
as woke as Americans are. We doing something so wrong
that we need help from the north to be more polite?
Is my boyfriend?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Right?
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Am?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I the Hitlary Duff of Columbia?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So I wanted answers, and lucky for me, I'm not
the only queer Columbia in New York. So I asked around.
Is Peter Basler?
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah, it's a slur. Slur for sure.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
You didn't know.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I didn't know, and I don't think any of my
class that's crazy. That's my friend Louse. She's trans and
has been living in the US since twenty sixteen. She
grew up in Ecualora, but her family is Colombian. She
said that growing up in Ecualora, that word that I
use so nonchalantly was used against her. It was used
(08:02):
to hurt her.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
There was a one Colombian guy that was really homophobic
and came in seventh grade and he used to call
me brudo.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Luis grew up surrounded by Equadorian's lang, in which these
words are insults, and since moving to the US, her
perspective on Colombian's lang was more like Hillary Doves than
Carol Gee's.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
I think at one point I was like, columbs are
some weird Why why gone Ria? And I probably made jokes.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
About it with the word marika for example, the one
that translates to the F word.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
There was a time when, like three years into this country,
I definitely was correcting people when they would say Marica
if they were a queer or even like in like
stupid internet discussions, I would be like, you can't say that.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
It wasn't undel Lous went back to Ecuador and Colombia
to visit family, this time as an adult that she
really started to pick up on the nuances of Colombian's lang.
Now she feels like some whereds just don't translate, or
at least they don't land the same way in English.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
I did think that there was that one's one, but
I don't think there is. I think money comeans, dude.
It is wrapped up in homophobia and its reclamation by
the quick community in Land America, but like its usage
has become so widespread that it means dude, depending on
who speaks it in what contexts.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
As I sat across the table from losing my apartment,
sipping beer and talking about familiar words in a less
familiar language, I felt this weird mix of relief and confusion.
It's not that I didn't know these words could still
be insults, but at least in our generation, they rarely
feel like slurs or like something we need to censor.
(09:49):
And I went to bed that night something still bugged me. Loose, who,
by all accounts, should be less familiar with Colombian's langue
than I am. New things I didn't. So I did
some very official research on TikTok, and what I found
was that I wasn't alone. Most Colombians really don't connect
(10:09):
pirovo the word I called my boyfriend that night, with
anything specific, and definitely not with the homophobics lare So
is it possible that we are all missing something here?
I had to call an.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Expert, since you readanizolodos who yeah, pain.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Who told me these words come from a painful place,
and even if it's hard to accept where they come from,
that part is undeniable.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Coming up after the break, the surprising history of these
slang words and how language and queerness can be more
connected than you think. Stay with us not byas hey,
(11:04):
we're back. Andres Pacheco Hiroon is going to now bring
us the surprising history of some of these slang slash
slurs that he's been talking about, and also an extra
finding that shows how language is closely tied to pain.
I'm going to pass the mic back now to Andres, who,
(11:24):
as you remember, just finished speaking with his friend Louis
about all of this over some beers.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
After my conversation with Lous, I needed more answers. I
look through papers, books, various TVs of faculty in Colombian
universities and found very little. It seemed like almost no
one in academia was writing about these three words so
widely used in Colombian slang, marikagon and pio. But I
(11:52):
got lucky and found someone on social media.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Is so Mari Andrea so Communica A.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Marianre Jalva is a journalist with a background in social
work and a significant following on Instagram. On her account
el pace, loustrelo, which loosely translates to the enlightened gang.
She digs into the origins of some of Columbia's most
common expressions and words.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
In isad absoluteta ours is as it is to rastrios
de lri hinde las palaud.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Traising these words is complicated, she tells me, and there
is not a one size fits all theory here. But
she explained that many of the words we use now
have a complicated history that goes beyond homophobia, especially in
Mariandrea's hometown of Menagin.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Good evening last month, a car bomb in the Colombian
city of Medaine killed fourteen people.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Then it all ties back to Menagine's past, which is
influenced by drug trafficking.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
A deal may be underway tonight for the conditions of
surrender for a fugitive cocaine lord, Pablo Escobar.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
In the nineteen nineties, Magagine was one of the most
dangerous cities in the world. The infamous Margin cartel ran
its operations there, and with limited opportunities in the country,
many young people in the city joined the cartel.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Gangs ezami is Mana, Mika, Becamus de lin quincialot.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Mariandrea says that for those young people becoming part of
the cartel meant talking like heitman and drug dealers.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Le Ling was onna coosa de las fronterees, and so.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
The cartel's vernacular, including the three words we've been talking about,
spread eventually even beyond Columbia, proving the power of language
to transcend borders. The more I heard Mariandrea speak, the
more embarrassed I felt about my ignorance. I had been
(13:54):
so casual with my words without being aware of the
history behind them. Not only can some of my words
be considered slurs here in the US when folks do
a literal translation, but what's worse is that the slurs
come from a time in Colombian history that many of
us feel deeply ashamed of. There are people around the
world who know very little about my country, who probably
(14:18):
only equate Columbia with violent Drucker tells cocaine, you know
the Netflix show. It's exhausting to hear cocaine jokes every
time I leave the country. So realizing that some of
the language I grew up with is actually rooted in
narco culture that was hard to swallow. If it sounds
like I'm working this out in real time, it's because
(14:40):
I kind of was during my conversation with Mari Andrea,
so I asked her why did these words specifically spread
so much, like why gon aria, why an sti in.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
Fail?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
It all comes down outo phonetics. Maandre says, I mean,
even if you don't speak Spanish, you probably can't tell
it sounds intense.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Rea.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
The hard world oars and the many syllables in the
world made it a good candidate for a great sounding insult,
and also it's really fun to say. But around the
nineteen eighties the word started to become a wild card,
used to express just about anything, with both positive and
negative meanings. Now, as for Marika the averid homophobics lere in.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
Spanishalara mariica bne del diminu tillo. The laa Maria.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Marika is a variation of the name Maria or Mary,
and because it ends with an a, it sounds feminine
In Spanish.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Kenos in sultamos comoo in toon says jega comona for
my insultar a la al almost exualis so in.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
At America, patriarchy date its thing, and the word turned
into a slur for gay men and trans women. But
since the nineteen eighties, the term has transformed significantly. Queer
Spanish speakers across the world have appropriated this and many
other slurs as a way to resist homophobia e c.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
So you know Maria, like you want to.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Call me that? Nah, I'm gonna call me that. But
at the same time, the word also spread so widely
that it became Columbia's favorite filler word, Gayer's trade. People
use it casually. You see it all over pop culture
and TV shows. Online.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
Marika said, okay, just because I Marika.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I Kimovich, after the word had already been reclaimed by
the queer community and by everyone else reading. I've been
called Marika plenty of times. Sure, sometimes it was meant
as an insult, but way more often it was affectionate,
used by my friends, by people who love me. In Colombia,
even straight people call each other Marica. Queer or not.
(17:15):
It's just normal, no big deal. What's different in the
US is that while some queer folks may use the
effort with each other in a playful way, it's definitely
not okay for other people to do the same. The
fs learn in English is still used to attack queer
men and trans folks, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Hey, we're back. Here's andres with the rest of our story.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Both con and Marika have taken on positive meanings over time.
Linguists call this as a man change. It's when a
word shifts so much that it starts being used to
mean something completely different, you know, kind of like how
gay and English went from meaning happy to meaning queer.
But it gets trickier with piro, the word I used
to call out my boyfriend that night, and the one
(18:16):
that started this whole thing. This one is never a compliment.
It remained an insult broadly used across Columbia, and it
actually came from farther.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
South, La Piro being the lunfardo Argentino from Argentina, who's
some intel tang wilkitrial.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Argentine tango was popular emerging in the late twentieth century,
and Mari Andrea says many words from the lower classes
of Argentina made their way into Columbia through tango music.
Piro was one of them.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Yeah, Gina, Argentina, Piro is mosque, sustantio is verable, Piro
are significant comcopular in Argentina.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
More than a noun. The word was a verb to
have sex, but in Colombia it became a name to
call gay men and trans women.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
This sampieza an umbra pile a los chicos almost exualis
elas chicastrance.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Particularly those who were sex workers.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Particular mate are saying la prostitucion.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And even though many Colombians use it as a regular insult,
today Marie Andrea confirmed that the random websites my boyfriend
checked were right. It can very much be a slur.
I can already hear my boyfriend making the sound he
always makes when he knows he's right. Okay, So would
(19:52):
I use that word if I were I'm an a
lingual English speaking American. What Mariandre told me is enough
to make a case to stop using pile it mcleman's gay,
and it's used as an insult, So knock it off,
I asked Mari Andrea, the language expert, if Colombians should
knock it off and stop using pidole. If it's the
one word that hasn't taken on a positive meaning, it's
(20:16):
cultural told perhaps the right thing to do in the
US is not the right thing in Colombia when it
comes to certain terms. Plus and I think this is important.
Mari Andrea says that we may be using these slang
words as a way to heal our collective trauma.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
Is tangol pao.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
It's the way we express rage, she says, kicks. After all,
the country has been through a lot, the longest civil
war in the Western Hemisphere, and the cocaine cartels have
left their mark. So what if the way we are
collectively coping with pain is through our vocabulary emotional pain
(21:00):
but also physical pain. I mean, there's a reason why
we all ship or fuck when we hit ourselves. If
we don't, it kind of feels like we're not releasing
that pain. Mariandre told me that some studies suggest that
swearing can actually increase our tolerance to physical pain.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
Ways lambaso no past.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Major language is how we cope with the world around us.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
OS's suna for my tramitars.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I'll be honest. After trying to find clarity in these
conversations with Jeffrey, with Luz and Andrea, I ended up
feeling even more confused, like I have more doubts now
about what's okay to say and what isn't. Choosing my
words feels like watching the FIFA World Cup. It's Columbia
versus the US. I've got my yellow jersey on, screaming
(22:04):
goal at the top of my lungs every time Columbia scores.
But somehow I'm standing on the US side of the field,
surrounded by red, white and blue, and I kind of
want to cheer when they score two. But once felt
so right, now feels different, not exactly wrong, not exactly
right either. Lose. My trans friend who made me realize
(22:30):
I was ignorant about the history of these words, probably gets.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
That you can't translate bag. You could, sure, but it's
not going to mean the exact same things. And I
think for those reasons, it makes little sense to assign
these like global north or English speaking like sensibilities towards
that don't mean exact same thing.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Words don't always behave, they shift, they echo, They carry
weight in one place and then lose it in another.
Language is a way to navigate who we are immigrants,
bi linguals, people always a little here in the little there,
and when you add Queerness into the equation, things can
get a little more confusing. And I really didn't see
(23:14):
that until I talked with my friend Louse.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
I came into my queerness in English, and so for
so many years it was much more natural for me
to talk about my queerness in English than it wasn't Spanish.
I'm dating somebody new that's Mexican and we only talk
in Spanish, and they have a similar trajectory where they
moved to the US and they came into their queerness here,
(23:37):
and we talk in Spanish like ninety nine percent of
the time except when we're having sex. Because we came
into our sexual maturity and our queerness in English. It
feels more comfortable, It feels more natural to have sex
in English, and we're so like distraught about it, We're like,
why the fuck can't we have sex in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Perhaps this is about much more than just semantics and translations.
Perhaps being in a relationship with an American man in
the US also means I'm experiencing a different kind of
queer sensibility through English. I've gotten to know more about
my queer community since moving to the US, And what
has made this even better is that Jeffrey has gotten
(24:21):
to know mine.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I want to learn about your culture. I'm trying to
contextualize it with my experience here and it's very interesting
and sometimes uncomfortable, but it creates like interesting conversations, and
it's like a lot of it is learning about each other,
(24:43):
which also includes our language, and it's fun. It makes
it exciting to talk with you.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I wonder if the more I speak English, the more
I'm learning about how other queer people relate to hurtful words.
Maybe language is also changing how I understand my own queerness,
what feels right to say and what doesn't, and I'm
not figuring it out on my own.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I feel like this Nigraney is hitting me a lot
faster than every other drink that I had today.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Queerness and language are things we're constantly shaping, remixing, reclaiming.
So maybe this isn't about who wins the debate. It's
maybe about having it. It's about trying to understand the
world around us through those messy and queer translations.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
This episode was produced by Andres Pacheco Hiron and it
was edited by our managing editor Fernanda Ichavari. It was
mixed by JJ Krubin and Gabriel Levyez, fact checking by
Dasha Sandoval. Special thanks to Say Quevedo, Emily Moltaire and
Jeffrey che The rest of the Latino USA team includes
(26:07):
Roxanna Guire, Julia Caruso, Jessica Ellis, Victoria Estrada, Renaldo Leanos Junior,
Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Luis Luna Door, mar Marquez,
Jurieta Martinelli, Marta Martinez, Monica Morles Garcia and Nancy Trujillo.
Benni Lee Ramirez, Maria Garcia and I are co executive
(26:28):
producers and I'm your host Maria ino Josa. Latino USA
is part of Iheart's Mike Ududa podcast network. Executive producers
at iHeart are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana. Join us
again on our next episode. In the meantime, I'll see
you on all of our social media. And remember, dear listener,
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(26:49):
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Speaker 5 (27:08):
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Speaker 1 (27:27):
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Speaker 5 (27:31):
And funding for Latino USAS. Coverage of a Culture of
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the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Hey, dear listener, justa heads up that the piece you're
about to hear is about curse words, slang words, and slurs,
So you're going to hear a lot of those words,
and you've been warned.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Ever had one of those conversations where neither person feels
like they're getting it. Last summer, my boyfriend Jeffrey and
I were hanging out, chatting over in Negronies. We live
in New York City. He's Chinese American and grew up
in southern California. I am Colombian and have spent most
of my life in Babbadah. So sometimes when English is
not English and I throw in a Spanish phrase that
(00:39):
just feels right to me. Most of the time those
moments turn into a light language lesson with me explaining
to my boyfriend what I said or what I meant
to say. But sometimes things get lost in translation and
we end up in a full on debate like this.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
One night we were lying in bed together. It was
just a typical night in bed. We were just having
casual conversation and I made a joke to you that
was probably a little bit shady. Oh it was shady,
And then you are like oh my god, you puribo,
(01:16):
but in Spanish close enough.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
But what I said was something like, ah it stiputle
to show that I was annoyed.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
But the word I caught was peribo, and I was like, oh,
what's that word? And so I googled it and the
first thing that came up was bag.
Speaker 2 (01:42):
For the record, that's not what I meant. Why would
I call my boyfriend the F word. I mean, I'm
no bigot and I'm gay. Two See, beetle is a
coming insult in Columbia that, honestly, you hear everywhere, and
I don't think it's that intense. It would be like
calling someone out when I annoy you and you just
say you bitch. I tried to explain myself why he
(02:06):
didn't buy it. So would you say you were offended?
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Maybe?
Speaker 3 (02:11):
I don't know if I was offended. I was just like,
why would you say that? For the joke that I said,
I wanted to get to the bottom of the word,
but it went into a deep dive. You're like, no,
that's not what it means. I was like, but Google
says that it means this.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Yes, fine, Google, But like I've been speaking Spanish, my
whole life, and I've been speaking Colombian Spanish and using
that word since I was a teenager, so why not
trust me over the internet? I was mad, And what
really got me was that throughout the conversation I felt
like Jeffrey, an American, was judging not just me, but
(02:52):
my language and my culture.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Saying America or par ebo. This being used in like
vernacular amongst the Colombian population seems weird to me if
it has this connotation, like why why would you even
consider it as a word.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
From futro media. It's Latino Usa. I'm Maria ino Josa.
Today we're going to go down a language rabbit hole
with Andres Pacheco Hron. He's going to look at what
gets lost and who gets hurt in translation, also the
history behind these words and how queer identity shows up
(03:40):
in language. So let me hand the mic back to Andres.
Speaker 2 (03:50):
I feel conflicted whenever I hear people tell me that
we speak kind of rough, because in Colombia, profanities are
very much part of her slang. They've kind of morphed
into common terms. Still, I get that by doing a
literal translation. English speakers in the US here only the
homophobic part. Take the word marika, for example, which even
(04:11):
in other Spanish speaking countries like Mexico, is a derogatory
f word for Queerman and trans folks, but where I'm from,
people use it as much as college guys say pro or,
as much as folks from southern California use the word like, right, Jeffrey.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
I feel like like you're being like and then you're like,
I was like.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Another one is gonorhea, which as it sounds, means gonorrhea
in English, literally the sdi, but in Columbia it could
mean an insult, an expression of surprise, even a compliment.
People get really creative with it, like this tik talker.
Speaker 4 (04:47):
Ko gona no jesstrea.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
And it's not just a meme. I really do use
as many of these words as I can in a sentence.
Here's me telling a friend about a bad haircut in
a voice. Now, anyway, back to the word that caused
an argument between me and my boyfriend. According to some websites,
(05:15):
the word piobo is a homophobic anzult, even though I
don't use it as such, but hear me out. It's
not just me and my friends talking like this. Many
Colombians queer or not. Use these words a lot. They're
part of her music. Some of Colombia's biggest reggaeton artists
drop these expressions in their songs very casually. Here's Fate
(05:39):
singing one of his most famous songs, Elise. He says
pio five times in less than three minutes while describing
the guy who stole his girlfriend. Many case even more common.
Here's Kato g casually talking to her friend amia Ya,
(06:01):
and Gona is also part of her poetry, like when
she sings about a guy who broke her heart. Most
of the time, these words feel totally normal to us.
But my boyfriend made a really good point, going along
with things just because they've been normal doesn't make it right.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So there was this period of time when I was
younger when someone would say something stupid. They'd be like,
that's so gay in a way of like equating gayness
as being a native thing. And then it kind of
like evolved, and I will say that there is this
(06:45):
whole campaign, the Hillary Duff that says, do you like
this top so gay? Really?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, it's totally gay. You know you really shouldn't say that.
Speaker 5 (06:57):
So what I'll say that something's gay when.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
You mean it's bad.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
It's insulting when you say that's so gay? Do you
realize what you say?
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Knock it off? Is Hillary Duff?
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Right?
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Should I knock it off? Her colembon is just not
as woke as Americans are. We doing something so wrong
that we need help from the north to be more polite?
Is my boyfriend?
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Right?
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Am?
Speaker 3 (07:24):
I the Hitlary Duff of Columbia?
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So I wanted answers, and lucky for me, I'm not
the only queer Columbia in New York. So I asked around.
Is Peter Basler?
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Yeah, it's a slur. Slur for sure.
Speaker 5 (07:41):
You didn't know.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
I didn't know, and I don't think any of my
class that's crazy. That's my friend Louse. She's trans and
has been living in the US since twenty sixteen. She
grew up in Ecualora, but her family is Colombian. She
said that growing up in Ecualora, that word that I
use so nonchalantly was used against her. It was used
(08:02):
to hurt her.
Speaker 4 (08:03):
There was a one Colombian guy that was really homophobic
and came in seventh grade and he used to call
me brudo.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
Luis grew up surrounded by Equadorian's lang, in which these
words are insults, and since moving to the US, her
perspective on Colombian's lang was more like Hillary Doves than
Carol Gee's.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
I think at one point I was like, columbs are
some weird Why why gone Ria? And I probably made jokes.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
About it with the word marika for example, the one
that translates to the F word.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
There was a time when, like three years into this country,
I definitely was correcting people when they would say Marica
if they were a queer or even like in like
stupid internet discussions, I would be like, you can't say that.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
It wasn't undel Lous went back to Ecuador and Colombia
to visit family, this time as an adult that she
really started to pick up on the nuances of Colombian's lang.
Now she feels like some whereds just don't translate, or
at least they don't land the same way in English.
Speaker 4 (09:06):
I did think that there was that one's one, but
I don't think there is. I think money comeans, dude.
It is wrapped up in homophobia and its reclamation by
the quick community in Land America, but like its usage
has become so widespread that it means dude, depending on
who speaks it in what contexts.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
As I sat across the table from losing my apartment,
sipping beer and talking about familiar words in a less
familiar language, I felt this weird mix of relief and confusion.
It's not that I didn't know these words could still
be insults, but at least in our generation, they rarely
feel like slurs or like something we need to censor.
(09:49):
And I went to bed that night something still bugged me. Loose, who,
by all accounts, should be less familiar with Colombian's langue
than I am. New things I didn't. So I did
some very official research on TikTok, and what I found
was that I wasn't alone. Most Colombians really don't connect
(10:09):
pirovo the word I called my boyfriend that night, with
anything specific, and definitely not with the homophobics lare So
is it possible that we are all missing something here?
I had to call an.
Speaker 5 (10:22):
Expert, since you readanizolodos who yeah, pain.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Who told me these words come from a painful place,
and even if it's hard to accept where they come from,
that part is undeniable.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
Coming up after the break, the surprising history of these
slang words and how language and queerness can be more
connected than you think. Stay with us not byas hey,
(11:04):
we're back. Andres Pacheco Hiroon is going to now bring
us the surprising history of some of these slang slash
slurs that he's been talking about, and also an extra
finding that shows how language is closely tied to pain.
I'm going to pass the mic back now to Andres, who,
(11:24):
as you remember, just finished speaking with his friend Louis
about all of this over some beers.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
After my conversation with Lous, I needed more answers. I
look through papers, books, various TVs of faculty in Colombian
universities and found very little. It seemed like almost no
one in academia was writing about these three words so
widely used in Colombian slang, marikagon and pio. But I
(11:52):
got lucky and found someone on social media.
Speaker 5 (11:55):
Is so Mari Andrea so Communica A.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Marianre Jalva is a journalist with a background in social
work and a significant following on Instagram. On her account
el pace, loustrelo, which loosely translates to the enlightened gang.
She digs into the origins of some of Columbia's most
common expressions and words.
Speaker 5 (12:16):
In isad absoluteta ours is as it is to rastrios
de lri hinde las palaud.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
Traising these words is complicated, she tells me, and there
is not a one size fits all theory here. But
she explained that many of the words we use now
have a complicated history that goes beyond homophobia, especially in
Mariandrea's hometown of Menagin.
Speaker 1 (12:39):
Good evening last month, a car bomb in the Colombian
city of Medaine killed fourteen people.
Speaker 2 (12:46):
Then it all ties back to Menagine's past, which is
influenced by drug trafficking.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
A deal may be underway tonight for the conditions of
surrender for a fugitive cocaine lord, Pablo Escobar.
Speaker 2 (13:00):
In the nineteen nineties, Magagine was one of the most
dangerous cities in the world. The infamous Margin cartel ran
its operations there, and with limited opportunities in the country,
many young people in the city joined the cartel.
Speaker 5 (13:13):
Gangs ezami is Mana, Mika, Becamus de lin quincialot.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Mariandrea says that for those young people becoming part of
the cartel meant talking like heitman and drug dealers.
Speaker 5 (13:28):
Le Ling was onna coosa de las fronterees, and so.
Speaker 2 (13:33):
The cartel's vernacular, including the three words we've been talking about,
spread eventually even beyond Columbia, proving the power of language
to transcend borders. The more I heard Mariandrea speak, the
more embarrassed I felt about my ignorance. I had been
(13:54):
so casual with my words without being aware of the
history behind them. Not only can some of my words
be considered slurs here in the US when folks do
a literal translation, but what's worse is that the slurs
come from a time in Colombian history that many of
us feel deeply ashamed of. There are people around the
world who know very little about my country, who probably
(14:18):
only equate Columbia with violent Drucker tells cocaine, you know
the Netflix show. It's exhausting to hear cocaine jokes every
time I leave the country. So realizing that some of
the language I grew up with is actually rooted in
narco culture that was hard to swallow. If it sounds
like I'm working this out in real time, it's because
(14:40):
I kind of was during my conversation with Mari Andrea,
so I asked her why did these words specifically spread
so much, like why gon aria, why an sti in.
Speaker 5 (14:58):
Fail?
Speaker 2 (14:59):
It all comes down outo phonetics. Maandre says, I mean,
even if you don't speak Spanish, you probably can't tell
it sounds intense.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
Rea.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
The hard world oars and the many syllables in the
world made it a good candidate for a great sounding insult,
and also it's really fun to say. But around the
nineteen eighties the word started to become a wild card,
used to express just about anything, with both positive and
negative meanings. Now, as for Marika the averid homophobics lere in.
Speaker 5 (15:29):
Spanishalara mariica bne del diminu tillo. The laa Maria.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Marika is a variation of the name Maria or Mary,
and because it ends with an a, it sounds feminine
In Spanish.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
Kenos in sultamos comoo in toon says jega comona for
my insultar a la al almost exualis so in.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
At America, patriarchy date its thing, and the word turned
into a slur for gay men and trans women. But
since the nineteen eighties, the term has transformed significantly. Queer
Spanish speakers across the world have appropriated this and many
other slurs as a way to resist homophobia e c.
Speaker 5 (16:19):
So you know Maria, like you want to.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Call me that? Nah, I'm gonna call me that. But
at the same time, the word also spread so widely
that it became Columbia's favorite filler word, Gayer's trade. People
use it casually. You see it all over pop culture
and TV shows. Online.
Speaker 5 (16:43):
Marika said, okay, just because I Marika.
Speaker 2 (16:53):
I Kimovich, after the word had already been reclaimed by
the queer community and by everyone else reading. I've been
called Marika plenty of times. Sure, sometimes it was meant
as an insult, but way more often it was affectionate,
used by my friends, by people who love me. In Colombia,
even straight people call each other Marica. Queer or not.
(17:15):
It's just normal, no big deal. What's different in the
US is that while some queer folks may use the
effort with each other in a playful way, it's definitely
not okay for other people to do the same. The
fs learn in English is still used to attack queer
men and trans folks, we'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Hey, we're back. Here's andres with the rest of our story.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Both con and Marika have taken on positive meanings over time.
Linguists call this as a man change. It's when a
word shifts so much that it starts being used to
mean something completely different, you know, kind of like how
gay and English went from meaning happy to meaning queer.
But it gets trickier with piro, the word I used
to call out my boyfriend that night, and the one
(18:16):
that started this whole thing. This one is never a compliment.
It remained an insult broadly used across Columbia, and it
actually came from farther.
Speaker 5 (18:26):
South, La Piro being the lunfardo Argentino from Argentina, who's
some intel tang wilkitrial.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Argentine tango was popular emerging in the late twentieth century,
and Mari Andrea says many words from the lower classes
of Argentina made their way into Columbia through tango music.
Piro was one of them.
Speaker 5 (18:53):
Yeah, Gina, Argentina, Piro is mosque, sustantio is verable, Piro
are significant comcopular in Argentina.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
More than a noun. The word was a verb to
have sex, but in Colombia it became a name to
call gay men and trans women.
Speaker 5 (19:15):
This sampieza an umbra pile a los chicos almost exualis
elas chicastrance.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Particularly those who were sex workers.
Speaker 5 (19:27):
Particular mate are saying la prostitucion.
Speaker 2 (19:31):
And even though many Colombians use it as a regular insult,
today Marie Andrea confirmed that the random websites my boyfriend
checked were right. It can very much be a slur.
I can already hear my boyfriend making the sound he
always makes when he knows he's right. Okay, So would
(19:52):
I use that word if I were I'm an a
lingual English speaking American. What Mariandre told me is enough
to make a case to stop using pile it mcleman's gay,
and it's used as an insult, So knock it off,
I asked Mari Andrea, the language expert, if Colombians should
knock it off and stop using pidole. If it's the
one word that hasn't taken on a positive meaning, it's
(20:16):
cultural told perhaps the right thing to do in the
US is not the right thing in Colombia when it
comes to certain terms. Plus and I think this is important.
Mari Andrea says that we may be using these slang
words as a way to heal our collective trauma.
Speaker 5 (20:37):
Is tangol pao.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
It's the way we express rage, she says, kicks. After all,
the country has been through a lot, the longest civil
war in the Western Hemisphere, and the cocaine cartels have
left their mark. So what if the way we are
collectively coping with pain is through our vocabulary emotional pain
(21:00):
but also physical pain. I mean, there's a reason why
we all ship or fuck when we hit ourselves. If
we don't, it kind of feels like we're not releasing
that pain. Mariandre told me that some studies suggest that
swearing can actually increase our tolerance to physical pain.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
Ways lambaso no past.
Speaker 2 (21:28):
Major language is how we cope with the world around us.
Speaker 5 (21:32):
OS's suna for my tramitars.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
I'll be honest. After trying to find clarity in these
conversations with Jeffrey, with Luz and Andrea, I ended up
feeling even more confused, like I have more doubts now
about what's okay to say and what isn't. Choosing my
words feels like watching the FIFA World Cup. It's Columbia
versus the US. I've got my yellow jersey on, screaming
(22:04):
goal at the top of my lungs every time Columbia scores.
But somehow I'm standing on the US side of the field,
surrounded by red, white and blue, and I kind of
want to cheer when they score two. But once felt
so right, now feels different, not exactly wrong, not exactly
right either. Lose. My trans friend who made me realize
(22:30):
I was ignorant about the history of these words, probably gets.
Speaker 4 (22:34):
That you can't translate bag. You could, sure, but it's
not going to mean the exact same things. And I
think for those reasons, it makes little sense to assign
these like global north or English speaking like sensibilities towards
that don't mean exact same thing.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Words don't always behave, they shift, they echo, They carry
weight in one place and then lose it in another.
Language is a way to navigate who we are immigrants,
bi linguals, people always a little here in the little there,
and when you add Queerness into the equation, things can
get a little more confusing. And I really didn't see
(23:14):
that until I talked with my friend Louse.
Speaker 4 (23:16):
I came into my queerness in English, and so for
so many years it was much more natural for me
to talk about my queerness in English than it wasn't Spanish.
I'm dating somebody new that's Mexican and we only talk
in Spanish, and they have a similar trajectory where they
moved to the US and they came into their queerness here,
(23:37):
and we talk in Spanish like ninety nine percent of
the time except when we're having sex. Because we came
into our sexual maturity and our queerness in English. It
feels more comfortable, It feels more natural to have sex
in English, and we're so like distraught about it, We're like,
why the fuck can't we have sex in Spanish.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Perhaps this is about much more than just semantics and translations.
Perhaps being in a relationship with an American man in
the US also means I'm experiencing a different kind of
queer sensibility through English. I've gotten to know more about
my queer community since moving to the US, And what
has made this even better is that Jeffrey has gotten
(24:21):
to know mine.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
I want to learn about your culture. I'm trying to
contextualize it with my experience here and it's very interesting
and sometimes uncomfortable, but it creates like interesting conversations, and
it's like a lot of it is learning about each other,
(24:43):
which also includes our language, and it's fun. It makes
it exciting to talk with you.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
I wonder if the more I speak English, the more
I'm learning about how other queer people relate to hurtful words.
Maybe language is also changing how I understand my own queerness,
what feels right to say and what doesn't, and I'm
not figuring it out on my own.
Speaker 3 (25:07):
I feel like this Nigraney is hitting me a lot
faster than every other drink that I had today.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Queerness and language are things we're constantly shaping, remixing, reclaiming.
So maybe this isn't about who wins the debate. It's
maybe about having it. It's about trying to understand the
world around us through those messy and queer translations.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
This episode was produced by Andres Pacheco Hiron and it
was edited by our managing editor Fernanda Ichavari. It was
mixed by JJ Krubin and Gabriel Levyez, fact checking by
Dasha Sandoval. Special thanks to Say Quevedo, Emily Moltaire and
Jeffrey che The rest of the Latino USA team includes
(26:07):
Roxanna Guire, Julia Caruso, Jessica Ellis, Victoria Estrada, Renaldo Leanos Junior,
Stephanie Lebau, Andrea Lopez Cruzado, Luis Luna Door, mar Marquez,
Jurieta Martinelli, Marta Martinez, Monica Morles Garcia and Nancy Trujillo.
Benni Lee Ramirez, Maria Garcia and I are co executive
(26:28):
producers and I'm your host Maria ino Josa. Latino USA
is part of Iheart's Mike Ududa podcast network. Executive producers
at iHeart are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana. Join us
again on our next episode. In the meantime, I'll see
you on all of our social media. And remember, dear listener,
when you say you love Futuro Media, when you say
(26:49):
you love Latino USA, yours one way to show it,
and you get to listen to our programs and free
join Futuro Plus a lot of cheese, may and behind
the scenes, and you're going to support the recording that
you love. So join Futplus. And that's yes.
Speaker 5 (27:08):
Latino USA is made possible in part by California Endowment,
building a strong state by improving the health of all Californians.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for more than fifty years,
advancing ideas and supporting institutions to promote a.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
Better world at Hewlett dot org.
Speaker 5 (27:31):
And funding for Latino USAS. Coverage of a Culture of
Health is made possible, in part by a grant from
the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
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