Cheech & Chong - Born in East L.A.

Using Laughter to Fight Xenophobic Chaos

The greatest comedians - Pryor, Carlin, St. Lenny — they weren’t just up there killing time, busting funnies about traffic and microwave popcorn. They were philosophers. Modern-day Aristotles, holding a mirror up to society and saying, “This is who we are. Fucking deal with it.” They documented their times and predicted the future. Richard Pryor? Nostradamus with a mic. His bit Niggers vs. the Police released 50+ years ago was much more than funny — it was a sociological breakdown of the state of America. He predicted exactly how things would go down when the powers-that-be decided to make law enforcement less about protecting and serving and more about keeping people in their place.

That brings us to Cheech & Chong’s Born in East L.A. — a song that’s a metric ton more than a spoof of Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. It’s satire, sure, but it’s also a prophecy. This was a comedy bit, a goofy song from guys best known for lighting up fat, FAT doobies, but listen to the lyrics. Really listen. Cheech was dropping truth bombs about the Brown experience in America — and not just for natives and immigrants, but for anyone who doesn’t fit into the WASPy, picket-fence ideal of what it means to be American.

He said, alright all you mojados down here
I want you all to hit the floor
I got one thing to ask you and nothing more
So answer in English, if you can
Where were ya born, man

Cheech & Chong, Born in East L.A.

Cheech Marin called it. This was more than a goofy jab at bureaucratic stupidity — it was a foreshadowing of exactly how things would go down when xenophobia and nationalism got cranked up to eleven. Fast forward 40 years, and BOOM: we’ve got ICE detaining natural-born citizens. American citizens — born here, raised here — being deported because they didn’t have the right paperwork on them or their name didn’t roll off the tongue like John Wayne. Cheech saw it coming.

The Trump administration? These guys are all about drawing lines and building walls, both literally and metaphorically. And in that frenzy of making America great again, you better believe some perfectly legal Americans will get swept up. We’ve already seen it.

Hell, if you look vaguely Brown and can’t recite the Declaration of Independence on command, someone might toss you on a bus to Guadalajara. That’s exactly what Cheech was singing about.

The song's humor stems from how ridiculous it is for someone to be deported from their own country. But it’s only funny because it’s true, and because the truth hurts. Cheech’s character in the song says:

I want to go back to east L.A
I wish I was back in East L.A
I don't belong here in downtown T.J.
Cause I was born in East L.A, ole

-Cheech & Chong, Born in East L.A.

That’s all it takes — looking the part. And before you know it, you’re in a detention center getting grilled about where you’re from, even though the answer is “East L.A., you idiot!” It’s not about being undocumented either; it’s about being “other.” It’s about looking or sounding like you don’t belong — even when you belong more than the guy interrogating you.

Cheech wraps it all up in comedy because comedy is how you get people to pay attention. You make them laugh, and then you make them think. It’s the spoonful of sugar that helps the medicine go down. And the medicine in Born in East L.A. is this: America doesn’t always know its own citizens. It doesn’t always care to know. And when fear and ignorance take the wheel, people get hurt.

So yeah, Cheech Marin might’ve been singing about East L.A. in the 1980s, but his message rings loud and clear in the era of travel bans, border walls, and ICE raids. Comedians are prophets, man. They tell us where we’re headed. Pryor warned us about the cops. Cheech warned us about a system that can’t tell the difference between Pedro and Pete. And here we are, living it.