Operativo clamor

While covering the Justicialista Party (PJ) election saga, we were faced with a classic in Argentine politics, the operativo clamor. Social media became awash with calls for Cristina Kirchner’s candidacy to lead the party in early October — days later, she announced that she was throwing her hat in the ring. That coordinated creation of a buzz around a politician is known as an operativo clamor (not to be confused with operación política). We went the “thin-the-veil” route in our articles for this one, saying the move is known as a “clamor operation” in Argentina. A “clamor raid” was taking it a bit too far.

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Como perro en cancha de bochas

We’ve talked about descriptive similes in both English and Spanish before, so their use isn’t surprising. And across Latin America there are a lot of “More lost than…” comparisons like Más perdido que Adán en el día de la madre (“More lost than Adam on Mother’s Day”). But this one from Juan made us chuckle (and honestly, these types of phrases are among my favorites). 

One afternoon, when he was covering my shift, Juan told the Slack channel: “As a noonie for the day, estoy como perro en cancha de bochas.” Like a dog in a pitch full of boules? The idea of a confused puppy running around after a bunch of heavy metal balls, which would be painful to pick up, was both endearing and slightly tragic. I hope my shift isn’t as bad as all that!

And yes, the nickname for us on the Herald’s afternoon shift is “noonies.”

Pipí cucú

A friend asked me over mates what pipí cucú means and where it comes from. The meaning is simple — perfect, ideal, fancy — but turns out that where it comes from was harder to answer. 

As usual, there are several theories with varying degrees of determinacy. The more prosaic is that it’s from a United States manufacturing acronym “PP.QQ” meaning “perfect quality.” In Spanish, it would be pronounced “pe-pe-cu-cu” so the adaptation makes sense, except I can’t find any evidence that “PP.QQ” was even a thing.

Then there’s the idea that it’s from cocoliche, a mix of Italian dialect and Spanish. I haven’t found extensive or frankly reliable attributed sources for that, either. Different articles and dictionaries say it’s from the 19th century or perhaps the 1960s: the only thing we can agree on is that the phrase’s origins are murky.

There is, however, one story that infallibly comes up, and although it’s certainly not where pipí cucú was born, it’s worth repeating. 

Fourteen years before murdering his wife and the emblematic criminal trial that followed, Argentine boxer Carlos Monzón went to Paris in 1974 to receive an award from the city’s mayor, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing. According to journalist Ernesto Cherquis Bialo, who traveled with Monzón, the boxer’s entourage drilled into him that all he had to do was take the plaque, shake hands, and say merci beaucoup — or, in Argentine pronunciation, mercí bocú. Except when he goes onstage next to the mayor of Paris, what comes out of the lauded boxer’s mouth is pipí cucú.

Mortifying and highly relatable. A French friend immediately pointed out to me that pipí cucú means “pee pee, ass ass,” which makes it even funnier. Whatever its origin, I’m glad it’s in our idiosyncratic lexicon and potentially joins the ranks of phonetic adaptations of foreign phrases like de queruza and piscuí. To use another: buen güiquén, readers!

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