Thanks to America’s clueless obsession with the Latin culture and such, a new trend/hashtag is making its debut today on this venerable blog. Joining the always popular #ItsColombiaNotColumbia, I give you: #ItsEmpanadasNotEmpañadas
And may I add…
… Chingao!
Photos via: @LParavano and @FavioUcedo
MI BLOG ES TU BLOG 
I’ve tried to get the breathless H and the tilde-less N in habanero across to my gringo friends for many years. But now that we’re talking about Colombia, and tildes, could you please tell me if I am correct or not? Cartagena, in my not-so-humble opinion, is the single most beautiful city in all of Latin America that is not in Mexico. I haven’t been to Quito, and I’m told it’s lovely. But Cartagena is certainly the most beautiful city on The Spanish Main (and I have been to Havana and Veracruz). Gringos correct me regularly when I say it without the tilde. They say Carta-HAIN-ya. I swear the Colombians do not pronounce it that way. It’s like gnocchi — I get smug asshole waiters in Italian restaurants in Boston and New York correcting me, but my ears work in Rome, and my first cousins were second-generation Italians, don’t you bloody well correct me! Hard N in Cartagena, correct?
It’s definitely a hard n. It was known as Cartagena de Indias in colonial times and is still referred to as that in a romantic sense.