As I lay in bed with a stomach virus in Cuernavaca, Mexico, some years ago, I began to consider what type of book I would most enjoy writing. Whatever it would be, I knew that it would have to be something that would incorporate academic research with field work and, at the same time, bring in my experience as an individual raised between two cultures, Spain and the United States. Having spent most of my time in this country in Georgia, I considered which aspects of Southern culture in the United States were undergoing transformation, and I realized that, due in large part to the statistically significant influx of Latino/Hispanic* immigrants to states such as Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, Mississippi, South Carolina, and North Carolina, for example, communities in these states are changing in ways that address the future ability of this nation to welcome immigrant populations to more nontraditional areas of foreign migration.

My intentions were varied. First, I wanted to examine the possible parallels between the distinct and somewhat overwhelming varieties of Latino and U.S. Southern cultures. Second, I wanted to explore the motivations behind the recent increased immigration of Latinos to states in the U.S. South. And finally, I wanted to consider the manner in which these populations are assimilating to their host communities, and how — and if — these communities were welcoming Latinos and the resulting changes to the fabric of their host communities.

Although I was born in Madrid, Spain, and am therefore not considered a Latino due to my more Iberian Hispanic origin, I most definitely share and enjoy an affinity to the tremendous diversity of Latino cultures in the United States and to their respective versions of “Latinoness.” I have also traveled extensively throughout both Mexico and Central America, have taught a course on Latin American women’s literature in Mexico, attended conferences in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama, climbed volcanoes in Guatemala and Nicaragua, enjoyed the biodiversity of Costa Rica’s rainforest, lived for months at a time with families in Managua and saw firsthand the poverty of that nation, and have simply taken pleasure in and learned from the commonalities and differences between the cultures and citizens of these nations.

In the U.S. South, I have also spent an important amount of time traveling the highways and back roads of booming cities such as Atlanta and Montgomery, the hills around Asheville, N.C., and Bainbridge, Ga., and the coastlines in and around Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans.

When I began research for this work in the summer of 2000, I wanted first to spend time in those parts of the U.S. South with which I am not familiar (Memphis, Tenn., Jackson, Miss., and Mobile, Ala., for example), interviewing individuals who were familiar with the Latino communities and attempting to unscientifically gauge the relationship between immigrant Latino populations and non-Latinos. In my travels, I spoke with social workers in Fairhope, Ala., a priest in Memphis, Tenn., a founding member of the Latino community in Jackson, Miss., members of a Latino neighborhood organization in Nashville, and a Nicaraguan immigrant in New Orleans, among many others. As they all told their stories from their own particular perspectives, they frequently concluded by recounting their experiences with either words of caution about oversimplifying the parallels between superficially similar Latino populations or congratulating me on what would surely be a new and necessary perspective on Hispanic immigrants in the United States.

My conversations were by no means intended to be exclusive nor scientific; I simply wanted to listen to as many voices as possible and witness firsthand the changing Latino statistics of towns and cities throughout the U.S. South. But they did establish an important, albeit somewhat anecdotal, groundwork for the later “academic” research that would serve as the organizational backbone for the work.

As is evidenced by the table of contents, my work is organized according to topics that center on the possible parallels between the varieties of Latino and U.S. Southern culture. Beginning with a summary of the historical foundations of these commonalities, and continuing with chapters that examine the potential similarities between 19th Century escaped slaves crossing the Ohio river and today’s Latino immigrants entering through the border formed by the Rio Grande, the mutual economic exchanges between Latinos and non-Latinos in the U.S. South, the political parallels between Latin American caudillos and dictators and U.S. Southern “good ole boy” politicians, literary commonalities, and possible linguistic and racial tensions between recent Latino immigrants to the U.S. South and their host communities (among other topics), my work, Latinos and the U.S. South, is an attempt to understand the transformations that are affecting nontraditional areas of transnational immigration in the United States. My perspective is by no means exclusive, quite the contrary: I acknowledge the incredible diversity of both the U.S. South and the Latino population and, therefore, insist on a perspective that is both inclusive in intention and heterogeneous in nature. The research and the experiences that have gone into the writing of this book are only semantic markers for the multiple avenues of interest and dialogue that lay ahead for communities throughout this country. I am certain that my future travels, research, and writing will lead me down paths that will continue to enter territory that is appreciably yet recognizably distinct and that will contribute toward an even deeper understanding of the innumerable hazards and opportunities that will continue to challenge both the host communities and the individuals who are choosing to leave their homeland in order to live and work within the borders of the United States.

*Note: Although I use the words “Latino” and “Hispanic” somewhat interchangeably, in my work I recognize and explore the political and semantic differences between these two terms and summarize the contextual arguments of each.