My EMT friend responded to a call recently to tend to Paco (not his real name), a Mexican immigrant who’d been stabbed in the armpit during a fight. In order to treat the injury, he cut away Paco’s shirt, to reveal… worn-as-hell swastikas tattooed all over Paco’s upper body that were probably obtained during a stint in prison (or at least looked like they had been). My very Jewish friend was more bemused than angry.
I’ve decided that *Paco the Mexican Nazi *sounds like the title of the sickest children’s book ever.
ManWoman has been trying to rehabilitate the swastika for decades. I first read about him in RE/Search Modern Primitives. His webpage is linked from the first link.
I suppose a Mexican Buddhist or Jainist or Hindu is a bit less surprising than a Mexican Nazi. Still that’s not something you see every day. It’s really a simple shape, if you think about it, so it’s found in a lot of cultures. But let’s be honest: outside of Nazi stuff, you don’t see it very often in Western culture. And if he got them in prison, they probably weren’t done by Buddhists.
