OC Weekly – “Attack of the Pochos”
” by Gustavo Arellano, Profile of my gallery inside the Santora Arts Building next to the Artists Village Promenade, 2003:
Tenaya HillsSandra Sarmiento heard the epithet whispered constantly after she returned to Santa Ana from Chapman University during the early 1990s: pocha.
“When I got home from college, everyone could tell my accent and mannerisms were changing from Mexican to more American. Soon, a chorus of ‘pocha‘ began greeting me everywhere I went,” the half-Mexican, half-Bolivian beauty remembers over a bowl of bún in Little Saigon. “I would be walking down the street and hear people yelling from their cars ‘¡Pocha!‘ One time, I was at El Toro Meat Market and when I asked for a price check, they announced ‘We need a price for this pocha!’ Over the store’s PA system!”
