MacGyver Helps White People Understand the Concept Of Rasquache With Positive Connotation

MacGyvero (adj.) MacGyverismo (noun) is a portmanteau coined by Pete Ippel and Peter Roberge that aids English speakers in the United States to understand the Chicano concept of Rasquache, that is both functional in American-English and sounds like Spanish.

The intent of MacGyverismo is to create positive associations among Mexican-Americans (Chicanos), original problem solving, new methods, and creative thinking.

Ask an American-English native speaker to think of someone who did the most with the least in tough situations: MacGuyver, the pop culture reference of resourcefulness, comes up consistently…often with a half-smile of nostalgia.

The starting of a car with a cactus, a nickel, and a string may be a bit of hyperbole, and MacGyver has his fair share of parody…yet the general connotation is positive.

Why is that? Because the main actor is white? Because MacGyver isn’t poor or in a marginalized culture?

There is contradiction because when performed by a non-white American, innovative repairs are castigated by pejorative words such as ghetto, hack, and jury-rigged which often have a negative connotation.

MacGyverismo is functional in explaining a complex notion to someone who only has the capacity to describe objects with the aforementioned terms. MacGyverismo imbues an odd sense of respect to an oft-dismissed practice of solving problems with available materials…a key trait of artists in any culture.

Inspired by the exhibition at the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco, California entitled Chicano Visions

Published by Pete Ippel

Pete Ippel, the son of a dancer and a musician, was born in Oak Park, Illinois and has been surrounded by the arts since birth. He moved to Morris, Illinois in 1989 and started to participate in athletics rather than dance. After high school, Pete attended Cornell University where he received a BA in psychology and a BFA in photo / digital art making. He continued to follow his sporting dreams in the high jump, which culminated in a school record leap of 7 feet 1/2 inch in 2001. In May 2004 he attained an MFA degree in the New Genres department of the San Francisco Art Institute. Presently Pete is a practicing artist whose work is in numerous private collections and has been exhibited in New York, California, and internationally. Mr. Ippel resides in Working Artists Ventura, a sustainable artist community in southern California. In addition, he teaches art, is a web developer, an active blogger, and still high jumps from time to time. As a passionate problem solver and a pragmatic optimist, Pete’s art and his life are full of exciting challenges.

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *