‘Mi’jo’: More than just a word to a Mexican American boy like me

I was probably 4 years old the first time anyone called me “mi’jo,” colloquial Spanish for “my son.” My Mexican American family lived in the front house on a two-unit lot on the east side of Los Angeles, and our landlady Rita lived in the back house. In the afternoons, I often trotted over to her place, eager for a change of scenery. Rita spent the whole day doing housework, yet her home looked like one of those places where the government had declared a state of emergency.

I liked to arrive at Rita’s around three, when she would pull out her Lady Pall Malls and plop herself on the couch. “Mi’jo, come here,” she’d call, then scoop me into her lap so we could watch a TV show where beautiful white ladies spent a lot of time crying. I loved it here in Rita’s house, which felt cozy and chaotic at the same time. Once the show ended, Rita would send me back home, saying “See you tomorrow, mi’jo.”

“Mi’jo” is a universal Latino term of endearment. Pronounced me-ho, it’s a contraction of the words, “mi hijo” (my son). Its female counterpart is “mi’ja” (my daughter).

If you’ve ever watched a movie or TV show centered on a Mexican American family, like “Selena,” “Ugly Betty,” or any George Lopez sitcom, you’ve heard characters call each other “mi’jo” and “mi’ja.” Onscreen, these terms are usually used to delineate a relationship for the audience: Mother/son. Father/daughter.

In real life, the word carries much more power than its literal meaning. When someone calls you “mi’jo,” it means that you are among family, that you belong, that you are loved. It’s a term that is both casual and intimate; it can be used by a family elder, or by a total stranger. It is an everyday word in our communities, yet also one that can still tug at the heartstrings.

Although I grew up in an assimilated household in 1970s Southern California, the word “mi’jo” was always around, implanted in my consciousness nearly as far back as I can remember. As a kid, if someone called out “mi’jo,” I knew to turn around and see if they meant me. Among the people who called me “mi’jo” were my first babysitter, a nice checkout lady at the local market, a few of my mom’s friends, and random old folks in my grandpa’s barrio in El Paso.

It’s hard to come up with an English equivalent of “mi’jo.” Words like “honey,” “kid” or “dear” don’t capture its essence, because some people would be offended being called by those terms. In contrast, no one takes offense at being called “mi’jo.”

Not long after my father passed away in 2019, I went to see his barber, Richard, for a haircut. “MI’JO!” Richard exclaimed when I walked in the door. Unlike my dad, I was never a regular in Richard’s shop; this was perhaps my second or third visit ever. But Richard’s conspicuous greeting seemed a kind of benediction.

Richard’s barbershop functioned like a community man cave, with police officers, gang members and teenagers drifting in and out. There was an old-timer snoozing on a sofa, two mounted TVs playing the same baseball game, and a boxing calendar tacked to the wall. It was comforting to be here, in one of my father’s old hangouts. Being recognized as “mi’jo” by Richard, I realized, was my entree into this sanctum of masculinity, a clubhouse for male bonding at a time when I needed it.

For years, “mi’jo” was something only people like us said. Then in 2017 came “Coco,” the Disney/Pixar animated film about a young Mexican boy searching for his great-great grandfather. In the movie, “mi’jo” was bandied about so frequently that the word edged into the mainstream. Today you can buy T-shirts emblazoned with “Mi’jo,” and there are books, plays, and songs with the word in the title. Latino millennials and Gen-Z’ers sometimes call each other “mi’jo” as a synonym for “dude.” But for me, in “mi’jo” I still hear the intertwining of family and affection, tradition and culture, heritage and home.

Two years ago, my relatives and I helped my mother move into her new house in Burbank. At the end of a hot day spent carrying and unpacking boxes, I stood in the front yard and my mom’s longtime friend Irene approached me.

I’d known Irene since I was in fifth grade, when she and my mother worked in a nearby school district together. Back then, they were two fierce Latina moms navigating their careers; now they were both grandmas and retired. Irene told me to make sure that I visited my mom more often now that she would be living by herself. I nodded.

“Well, mi’jo,” Irene said, “have a good trip back to New York.”

Irene got in her car to drive home, and for a few seconds I felt a kind of lightness. Right then, I had a flashback of her and my mom, bustling around the small yellow kitchen in our old house. They were both dark-haired, bright-eyed and bursting with youthful energy. In that moment, “mi’jo” was my Mexican American madeleine, a word that transported me back, if only briefly, to childhood. It was a fleeting, lovely vision — and the magic in “mi’jo” took me there.

This article was originally published on TODAY.com