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. Perla Guerrero kicks off the conversation by exploring a bit our personal journeys to the US South and how the South as a region perceived early immigrant  newcomers. Perla traces over how, al inicio, some folks couldn’t even classify her correctly as Mexican because of the prior notions they had of what ‘Mexican’ folks were. Our storytellers also break down how their families first experienced some of these highly racialized settings and some of the generational differences between moving to the South in the early 90s versus more recently. Lastly, we cover the resilience of nuestra comunidad and the richness of Black resistance in the South that we can learn from and draw a sense of hope for a more inclusive and equitable future. 

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, Bryan Mejia

Consulting Scholars: Perla Guerrero, Yami Rodriguez, Yuri Ramirez

LatinxEd Staff: Maria Pulido

Editor: Axel Herrera 

Marketing & Graphics: Keyla Ferretiz

Articles and Materials Referenced:

• Being illegal-it's a job - Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Little Rock, AR) -March 24, 1997 - page 1A
• Guerrero, "Latinos in Arkansas and Illegal Aliens"

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