Chona was my mother’s next-door neighbor on Highland Circle in my hometown of Crystal City in South Texas. My mother called her Chonita. 

Chonita was one of my mother’s most frequent visitors after our family moved from our old neighborhood on the other side of town after Urban Renewal decided it would be a good idea to run a street through my bedroom. Chonita was the source of family and neighborhood gossip. 

Anything that happened in Chonita’s family – hurt feelings, spats, outright fights – my mother would hear about it. When things got real bad, Chonita would precede her story with the phrase, “Ya ubo pedo en el baile, Martina!”

Loosely translated, the phrase means, “Things have gone to hell,” or, to put it more colorfully, “The shit has hit the fan.” 

More literally translated, it means, “Shit broke out at the dance (last night),“ although a pedo is a fart, not shit.

The dance reference is not a casual one, for dances meant a lot in the life of small South Texas towns such as Crystal City. Aside from church (and, later, sports events, the weekly dances at El Campestre or La Placita, were the only places where people could socialize in large numbers, where young people could meet and court each other under the watchful eyes of their parents, tíos and tías. 

And because young people could hold each other while dancing and show affection towards to each other, jealousies were bound to be aroused, which meant that sooner or later a fistfight would erupt. Maybe two. Maybe more. 

The fights would all eventually be subdued by friends and relatives (no need to call the cops for these family spats, and security guards? Whoever heard of security guards at dances back then?) and the dancing would continue until the conjunto began packing up its equipment.

The next day the talk of the town would be about the dance. Who danced with whom, who was seen sneaking out to the parking lot with whom, and what poor fool paid the $5 entrance fee only to stand on the sidelines all night because he was too damn timid to ask the pretty girls to dance. (You guessed it: that shy Palomo boy!) 

But the titillating talk was about the fights. So much so that eventually the most common response to the question, “Como estubo el baile?” was, “Muy bonito – nadie se pelió!” (It was beautiful, there were no fights!).

All this to tell you that my reaction to the last 365 days on this the last day of the year is, “Ubo pedo en el baile.” 

It was not a pretty dance. Far from it. The conjunto didn’t know the difference between a bolero and a cumbia and people kept stumbling over each other and falling as they tried to figure out the beat. Meanwhile, the orange-haired lead singer kept insisting the group’s music was nothing less than a big, beautiful sound – the best ever, anywhere. 

And whatever discontent there was would all be over soon, he insisted. It wasn’t, of course, and the dancers finally got together to select a new band, only to have the orange fool charge the vote was rigged and refuse to vacate the stage. 

And that’s where we find ourselves in the last few minutes of this dreadful dance – donde ubo un gran pedo.