Y’all, I love Waffle House. And I’m Mexican.
It’s somewhat of an unspoken tradition in my family to mark a special occasion — or, I admit, even a regular day — with a trip to Waffle House. It’s cheap (even my frugal Mexican mother agrees), open 24/7, and the waffles are passable for 6 bucks. We have 447 locations in Georgia alone, but every Waffle House feels like a small mom-and-pop restaurant, with waiters greeting you with that classic Southern hospitality.
Waffle House is a defining Southern institution through and through. It’s like sweet tea, fried chicken, and the lake smell lingering on your clothes after a day of bass fishing on Hartwell. It’s one of the things that are just a part of life in the South, and there’s a small part of me that feels the tug of home when I see one outside my car window.
But there’s another part of me, my Mexican side, that craves something else entirely, like my grandmother’s traditional Mexican food. When she visits, she will wake up early and make molletes, an open-faced bread topped with refried beans and cheese. I will hear her yell from downstairs, “Vente a comer, nena!” Even half-awake, I can smell the warm French bread, the pico de gallo, and the frijoles, and it smells like home.
I am half-Latina and half-Southern, and maybe neither — or all at the same time. These two identities can feel like antonyms, especially with the Trump administration’s hostility towards Latino immigrants. And they can argue with each other, leaving me a little confused and feeling stuck in the middle.
I set out to find out whether I am the only Latina Southerner who feels this way. It turns out, I am not — by a long shot.
Latino Southerners
If Latinos feel out of place in the South, it’s because, well, we sort of are.
There weren’t very many of us for most of its history. We are relatively recent arrivals, and the South’s history and culture reflect a deeply ingrained racial binary and the struggle to end the institution of slavery and its vestiges. Until recently, there was no strong, historical “Latino Southerner” identity.
But that is rapidly changing. The South is becoming more Latino, quickly.
By 2022, approximately 10.5 million Hispanics were living in the Southeast, according to a United Latinas report. In Georgia alone, there are over 1 million Latinos, according to the same report, though Whites and Blacks remain much larger groups in the Southeast. They represent 58% and 19% of the population, respectively.
This growth, often called the Great Latino Migration, began in the 1980s. Latinos, solicited by poultry, construction, and carpet companies looking for cheap labor, began to flood into the South, according to the Center for the Nuevo South.
I spoke with Perla Guerrero, author of Nuevo South and a Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland, specializing in how growing Latino and Asian communities are redefining Southern-ness.
In the 1980s, new pockets of Latinos first emerged in the South in large numbers in response to labor opportunities, and then began to grow and negotiate new identities within local communities.
“Immigrants fulfill economic needs through their labor, but also provoke anxiety because they are redefining the Black-White binary,” Dr. Guerrero said.
This growth would come to be most commonly known as the “Nuevo South,” also referred to as the Great Latino Migration.
For example, Dalton, Georgia, has a large Mexican and Mexican-American community that grew around its large carpet industry. There is a strong, albeit isolated, “local Latinx” identity emerging there, Dr. Guerrero shared. By contrast, in California, “Chicano identity” looks and feels very different. These differing identities, while both “Latino,” are broadly speaking deeply shaped by local economic and political encounters in these communities.
And a major dividing line among Latinos in the South, she told me, is generational.
First-generation immigrants, like my mother and her family from Mexico, “migrate when they are older and work as laborers. They have a very specific experience in the South,” defined by where they work, perhaps in the carpet, poultry, or construction industries, Dr. Guerrero shared. Only the second and third generation — the kids born or raised in the South, like me — struggle most with being both “Latinos and Southerners,” she said.
“Children born in Southern areas who grow up listening and hearing negativity and exclusion must grapple with the question … those who more identify with America, but are told they are not Southerners,” she said.
Southern, Latino, Both, or Neither?
Her last sentence stuck with me.
In Georgia, I have felt the tension between my Southern qualities and my feelings over some implicit or explicit rejection as a Latino here. I asked Latino classmates whether they felt this tension, too.
Ana Castillo, a senior at Alpharetta High School and originally from Venezuela, understands this firsthand. She is a member of the varsity sideline cheer squad, and cheerleading for a competitive high school team is about as Southern as it gets. But she is also a proud Latina and a community leader, serving as an officer in United Latinas and other organizations.
She, too, has felt the tension of belonging to both worlds.
“I know I stand out because I’m the only person who’s Hispanic on the [cheer] team,” she shared. While her teammates have been supportive and welcoming, other students have asked her on occasion, “Do you speak Mexican?” She has heard spectators at games call her “the Mexican cheerleader,” even though she is from Venezuela.
She hasn’t let ignorance get her down, though. She stroked her naturally curly hair as she spoke, which she refuses to straighten, even if that means that she stands out on the cheer sidelines as conspicuously Latina.
“I try to stay true to myself in every way possible,” Castillo said. “I still love my culture.”
Latino Southerners in the Shadow of Trump
During President Trump’s second term, it feels more complicated to be both a proud Latino and proudly Southern.
Many Latinos in Georgia feel vulnerable under President Trump’s increased immigration enforcement that appears specifically targeted towards our community. Regularly, we hear rumors and reports of raids in our area.
Just before Thanksgiving, a U.S. Congressman from the metro-Atlanta area, Buddy Carter, wrote to ICE requesting a surge in immigration raids here. And having legal status — being, by law, a U.S. citizen and a Georgian — doesn’t necessarily protect you from being detained. In September, the Supreme Court authorized ICE to detain Latinos for immigration checks based on factors that describe many citizens, including ethnicity, speaking Spanish, or working in construction or landscaping.
Jana, an Alpharetta High School student who has asked me to use a pseudonym for her and her family’s safety, shared her fears about the ongoing raids in the area.
Her mother is a permanent resident from Brazil, but not a citizen like Jana. When ICE recently detained a family friend, it scared her. “I was like, ‘Crap, what if that happens to my mom soon?’” she said.
Even my 13-year-old little brother feels it.
When the raids began, my family was driving through Midtown with the windows down and “Como Te Voy A Olvidar” by Los Angeles Azules blasting on the radio. My brother saw the flashing lights and pleaded with us to roll the windows up and switch to an English song. He didn’t want ICE to pull us over. He was worried about my mother, who was born in Mexico.
Exclusionary political and cultural actions erode one’s sense of belonging, as Dr. Guerrero told me. No matter how Southern we Latinos might feel, there is a strong message that Latinos have no authentic relationship with the South. And, ironically, that is a very Southern thing in itself. As Professor Tressie McMillam Cottom wrote in the New York Times, the Trump administration’s racialized tropes about “who is included in who is excluded” are “deeply, fundamentally Southern.”
Hope for the Nuevo South
This sounds dark, but I don’t mean it to; not entirely. In our community, I see glimpses of a new regional Latino identity emerging in the Southeast.
At Atlanta United soccer games, you will hear more Spanish than English in the stands. There is nothing more Southern than college football, and the University of Georgia has an official alumni watch party for games in Mexico City. At my school, you will hear Spanish spoken in the halls and on the soccer fields “24/7,” according to Alejandro Romero, Alpharetta High School’s Athletic Director and a Georgia native.
Born to Cuban and Puerto Rican parents and a Georgia College graduate, he shared that “We can stereotype the South and its unfortunate history, but I think the metro-Atlanta area is thriving with Hispanic and Latin culture.”
Growing up in Georgia and Florida, he was “one of a few” Latinos in school, but was always “loud and proud about it.” In high school, he heard some jokes and stereotypical insults, but they “only made [him] more headstrong and fired up to celebrate” his community. These days, he sees a positive trend “in acceptance and understanding of the word ‘Latino’” and its nuances. According to Romero, a shift is underway toward a more “thriving Latino culture” in Georgia.
You can see it springing up, little by little, across the Southeast.
Macon, Georgia, has its own award-winning Spanish-language newspaper. A Latina professor at Emory, Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez, is writing a new book on how Mexicans shaped Atlanta’s culture and history. And the Center for Nuevo South, based in North Carolina, is helping more Latino Southerners express themselves through art and multimedia. There are myriad other examples.
And maybe this is how a new identity is born. The pieces don’t fit neatly together at first. What I’m beginning to learn is that it’s okay to love my Waffle House hashbrowns covered and capped and to say y’all in every sentence, and at the same time to blast Los Angeles Azules fearlessly and to eat too many chicharrones con limón y chile.
Maybe that’s just what we do in the Nuevo South.
