Let’s zoom out a bit and have some charlas con Southern Compañia. We know that our lived experience in the south is multigenerational– sabemos que no es ayer que llegamos and many of our roots started decades ago. También sabemos that where you set up roots in the South also matters. Tune in as we explore the Latinx Southern experience from Arkansas, to Georgia, to North Carolina and beyond!

When we say that “we control the narrative,” we mean it! Our history is no longer just being told about us by outsiders. We now have wonderful scholars exploring a history and experience that is also their own as southerners or children of immigrants. En estas charlas, each of our scholars Dr. Perla Guerrero, Dr. Yami Rodriguez, and Dr. Yuri Ramirez guide our storytellers on exploring how our southern communities formed within a particularly racialized southern landscape, how we find leisure and joy within the pressure of being mostly just tolerated as labor, and how our transnational immigrant identities also intersect with indigenous heritage, identity, and culture. 

In this episode, Dr. Yami Rodriguez asks us to take a break, breathe, and just have some fun. La diversión, leisure, irse de parranda and all the ways we find joy are just as essential to the southern immigrant experience as is our history of struggle and hard work. For many early immigrant communities, arriving to the South brought some level of isolation, but over time, our folks started building community through music, bailes, going to las pulgas, playing soccer or other sports, and of course food. 

Scholars: Perla Guerrero, Yami Rodriguez, Yuri Ramirez

Storytellers: Allison Delgado, Nancy Garcia Villa, Jonathan Perraza-Campos, Karina Moreno Bueno, Tania Dominguez, 

Producers: Julie Weise, Erik Valera,  Elaine Utin, Ricky Hurtado, Axel Herrera, Dorian Gomez

Consulting Scholars: Perla Guerrero, Yami Rodriguez, Yuri Ramirez

LatinxEd Staff: Maria Pulido, Bryan Mejia

Editor: Axel Herrera 

Graphics: Keyla Ferretiz

Articles and Materials Referenced:

• “Las Trocas de Buford” by Los Reyes del Corrido
• Mundo Hispanico Archives on Bailes In Atlanta Georgia

This project was made possible through the generous support of North Carolina Humanities, The Whiting Foundation, and LatinxEd.

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Email: nuestrosouth@latinxed.org

Website: https://nuestrosouth.org/  

Music for this video is obtain through the Artlist Personal License