After the Fiesta, Saca Garra

Hi there. You have A Way with Words.

Hey, guys. My name is Ray. I’m calling from Dallas by way of El Paso.

Wonderful. What’s up, Ray?

So growing up on the border, I thought my Spanish was pretty good. I moved to Dallas. I became a bilingual elementary school teacher. And my students and my colleagues quickly informed me that I was speaking jibber jabber. It wasn’t proper Spanish. And I would politely correct them and say, no, I think what you meant to say is, I’ve missed Tex-Mex really well, Mr. B.

But growing up, my family had this term. So if we had like a big gathering and then everybody leaves, or it could just be my friends and like we have a big party, everybody leaves, your tight-knit group, we would say Sacaga. And it’s basically like debrief. Any good gossip or anything noteworthy happening, we would kind of share it. Nobody else seems to have heard this before, except for my tight-knit group of friends and family, apparently.

When I research it, I see it, garas, like a claw or a talon. But it means more like to show your strength or bring out the claws or show what you’re worth. I always just thought like with a claw or a talon, like you cut to the meat or cut to the heart of it. Is this one of my jibber jabber that my family invented on the border? Or does anybody else use this? Or are there any other terms?

Yeah, I love what you’re saying here. There’s a couple of different layers to this. Let’s address the jibber jabber. And your Tex-Mex Spanish, you just speak a dialect. I mean, I don’t know if you grew up speaking Spanish, but there are distinct regional dialects on both sides of the border. So it’s entirely possible that you just speak a variety of first or second generation Spanish that other people haven’t encountered.

They call me Pocho.

Oh, okay. Yeah. If they call you Pocho, then it’s probably second or third generation Spanish.

Right.

Yeah, but that’s okay. I always say that no matter how much of a language you speak, second, third, fifth, hundredth language, as long as it’s more than zero, great. Just as long as you’re learning it and trying to speak more than zero, that’s good for you. So just keep it up and you’ll get there, right?

I would tell my students, you can correct my Spanish, but we learn together, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. Every word you learn is something you didn’t know yesterday. Every phrase, every idiom. So that’s all on the plus side. So together, the three of us are going to learn this new expression that you’re teaching me and Martha. Sacaga is amazing because I find it in some Spanish glossaries collected in Texas, which is where you are. And so it is a Texas regionalism, a Spanish expression spoken in the northern part of Mexico and in Texas. And it means a variety of things, but it can mean to chat or to gossip. And it does mean to take out one’s claws. An English slang translation might be to be catty, to be like a cat.

Now in mainstream Spanish, I do find in a couple of my reference works, it means, could mean to hurt someone physically or mentally. But what’s really interesting is that in Mexican Spanish, now let’s break down this word for the English speakers who don’t have any Spanish. Sacar is a form of sacar, which means to take out. And gara, G-A-R-R-A, is claw. So in Mexican Spanish, there’s a little bit of a pun. Because the Spanish word gara, G-A-R-R-A, is both claw, C-L-A-W, and old clothes.

So the best translation for those on the U.S.-Mexican border might be to air dirty laundry. But you’re airing somebody else’s dirty laundry. You’re talking, right? You’re talking about their sad state of affairs. So when everybody leaves the party, you’re talking about, oh, did you hear what she did?

Right?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Exactly.

So a synonym is estirar gara, which means to extend the claw. And also there’s hacer garras, which means to tear to pieces. But so probably more common throughout the rest of Mexico is sacar caras, which means to pull out your claws. But it means to get advantages, to like to take advantage of a situation. So it’s not common throughout Mexican Spanish and certainly not in the rest of the dialects of Spanish. But I do find it in glossaries specific to Texas and the north of Mexico.

Yeah, I’m wondering if this is a term that has gone through some amelioration because it seems like such a nasty, almost violent term. But I’m just wondering about the kind of chisme, the kind of gossip that followed a gathering. Was it malicious or was it like just the scoop on what’s happening?

It was anything noteworthy.

Yeah, I know sometimes it was, but just anything noteworthy, like, oh, did you see how your nephew grew or they got accepted to that college? Did you hear that? Just anything really. But yeah, no, no, of course, yes. Those were the best ones, the salacious ones. Did you see what they were wearing?

Well, Martha, that’s a great question. Ray, perhaps you could talk about this. In some of my glossaries, they make a very strong distinction that people who are considering themselves Chicanos might define it as to gossip. But people who speak Spanglish might define it as to platicar, to chat. So it’s a little different because chatting is kind of neutral, but the gossip is a little negative.

No, I’ll be honest. I like the gossip. It’s more gossip. Anyway, so here we are. We’ve all learned a term together, got a little bit of background. You brought it to us. Thank you, Ray. This is wonderful.

No, that was great. I appreciate it. Keep up the great work, guys.

Now he’s going to go gossip about this conversation, I think. Martha and Grant, they said this. They’re the worst.

Thanks a lot.

Well, we can too.

Our pleasure. Come back to us sometime. We’d love to learn what you learn from your kids sometime, okay?

Absolutely. We know a lot of teachers listen to us, and we’d love to hear what you’re learning from your students. Give us a call or send us an email. The number is 877-929-9673. The email address is words@waywordradio.org.