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As someone who's studied abroad in Central America and lived in the South most of my life, I feel pretty qualified to say an unequivocal no.
The South is nothing like Mexico.
1. Culture of honor? What? Being proud to be a Southerner is no different than being proud to be Irish, etc. No one's getting murdered down here out of a sense of honor. The sad truth is murder rates are much higher among blacks, and the South has a larger percentage of blacks than other areas. Race and crime in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. Hopitality- yes Southerners are more hospitiable, but it's generally more manners and chit-chat based. We're more likely to talk to you in the grocery store and do things like hold open a door, help an elderly person, etc. Mexicans in Mexico will chit-chat, but they don't normally do things like hold doors, etc., in my experience. And really, they are as chatty as most Southerners either, at least with strangers.
3. Religiousity: Mexicans are big on Catholic appearances- wearing crosses, carrying Rosary, the different prayer candles, etc. But they aren't as involved in church on a day to day basis. Religious Southerners are completely different. They don't do big outward appearances of religion, but they tend to talk about God more and be more involved with their churches. It's really two very different things.
4. Slow? That's really a misnomer about the South, unless you were comparing it to somewhere like NYC, which is faster/busier than most places in the US. Mexico is truly slow. Workers tend to operate on "Mexican time." Things often run an hour or more behind, and no one cares.
I love visiting Mexico. At one border crossing between Belize and Mexico, we paid a kid a few dollars to take us in a boat across some water. The customs office was only open for a few hours on T & TH, so we didn't show our passports to anyone. We drink 25 cents Corona's at a "bar" that was a few tables in front of someone's house, while pigs ran around our feet. It was this tiny little village and all of the businesses were the front rooms of people's houses. It was wonderful, but not even remotely similar to a small town in the South.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go take my afternoon siesta in a hammock.
It seems to be as though southern whites identify less with their European heritage compared with those living in the north. As mentioned, southwest culture as very little in common with that of the deep south.
Has anybody noticed that the Southern United States (I'm thinking of states like Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana) shares a lot in common, culturally, with Mexico, that the rest of the U.S. does not?
I'm thinking:
1) Culture of honor. This is still strong in many areas of the South; the higher murder rates in the South were tied to a "culture of honor" in which an insult had to be returned swiftly and violently. This is also, I think, true of Mexico to a degree much greater than that of most of the U.S.
2) Hospitality. The Southerners have the reputation of being the most hospitable in the U.S. Mexicans (in Mexico) also have a famous hospitality, which at least in my experience is real. Social interactions with Southerners remind me of social interactions with Mexicans (again, from Mexico), in their pleasantness.
3) Religiosity. Although the two regions have a different religious base (Protestantism over most of the Southern U.S. vs. Catholicism in Mexico, though Protestantism is gaining ground there), Mexicans outside the large cities are often very religious, and religious penetrates the culture in a much different and stronger way than it does in the northern U.S. Mexicans say "Dios te bendiga" (God bless you) all the time. I've only heard Southerners say this outside of official religious contexts in the way that Mexicans do all the time.
4) Slowness. Things are famously more slow in the South. Well, they are in Mexico, too.
What do you think?
You do know that the South West of the present day US, was at one time part of Mexico,....right??
Hence the similarities with mexican culture/food/costumes.
Also,..You do know as well, that part states like Alabama (southern part/gulf coast), Louisiana and Florida (the name itself) were Spanish territories....right???
What do they teach in US History in schools nowdays?????..jeeezzz!!
lol. These threads show why southerners talk about "Yankees". Lose the ignorant stereotypes good grief.
I guess I'm being fake when I start a conversation with someone or hold a door open or say sir and ma'am to those older than me. Who knew? Guess I faked myself out.
As for similarities....well Pinto Beans are a staple in the Mountain South and Mexico......that's about as far as I'd take the similarities.
I can't speak for other southerners, but when I open doors, smile, and answer "yes/no ma'am/sir", I'm doing those things because I genuinely want to be polite.
I don't even know how to be fake. I'm allergic to it.
Sure, I've always felt the similarities were there too...cowboy boots, pickup trucks, country/ranchero music, focus on (large/extended) family, heavily religious, large communal meals, slower pace of life, etc.
As someone who's studied abroad in Central America and lived in the South most of my life, I feel pretty qualified to say an unequivocal no.
The South is nothing like Mexico.
1. Culture of honor? What? Being proud to be a Southerner is no different than being proud to be Irish, etc. No one's getting murdered down here out of a sense of honor. The sad truth is murder rates are much higher among blacks, and the South has a larger percentage of blacks than other areas. Race and crime in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Murder rates are actually higher among whites in the South than other states. For more data (and there is actually research on this, not just idle speculation), check out this:
and browse through some of the papers. (Sorry I couldn't provide direct links, Google went back to stupidly not allowing you to copy links directly from search results).
Quote:
2. Hopitality- yes Southerners are more hospitiable, but it's generally more manners and chit-chat based. We're more likely to talk to you in the grocery store and do things like hold open a door, help an elderly person, etc. Mexicans in Mexico will chit-chat, but they don't normally do things like hold doors, etc., in my experience. And really, they are as chatty as most Southerners either, at least with strangers.
Hospitality is filtered through culture, so what may be viewed as hospitable in one culture (holding doors, for example) may not be a requirement of hospitality in another culture. This was actually what got me started thinking on this. Mexicans (and some other Latin American cultures) and the Southerners I've met seem to have a similar sense of affability and friendliness about them.
Quote:
3. Religiousity: Mexicans are big on Catholic appearances- wearing crosses, carrying Rosary, the different prayer candles, etc. But they aren't as involved in church on a day to day basis. Religious Southerners are completely different. They don't do big outward appearances of religion, but they tend to talk about God more and be more involved with their churches. It's really two very different things.
I'm not talking about the most devout element of the population, which will exist anywhere; I'm talking about the general culture. My experience primarily is rooted in the southeastern part of Mexico, which in addition to being traditionally Catholic, also has a huge number of Protestants, mostly Evangelicals, as well. All my Mexican friends say "God bless you" regularly and when I ask them how they are, say "Good, thanks to God", which is rare in Minnesota, but apparently talk like that is quite common in the South. They have an abbreviation for it, "DTB" (Dios te bendiga"), which they use online, and at least one person that I chat with uses the abbreviation "GBY", her attempt at translating the phrase to English - which is correct, but I've never seen that until I started talking to her.
I've never been asked this by a Southerner, but I know a lot of people have remarked that Southerners, soon upon meeting them, ask where they go to church. And you have to admit, popular religiosity, which characterizes Mexico, is more widespread in the South than it is anywhere else. Up here in Minnesota, we are often religiously devout, but we mostly keep it to ourselves; in the South, it seems like (as you said) people are more willing to talk about it.
Quote:
4. Slow? That's really a misnomer about the South, unless you were comparing it to somewhere like NYC, which is faster/busier than most places in the US. Mexico is truly slow. Workers tend to operate on "Mexican time." Things often run an hour or more behind, and no one cares.
I love visiting Mexico. At one border crossing between Belize and Mexico, we paid a kid a few dollars to take us in a boat across some water. The customs office was only open for a few hours on T & TH, so we didn't show our passports to anyone. We drink 25 cents Corona's at a "bar" that was a few tables in front of someone's house, while pigs ran around our feet. It was this tiny little village and all of the businesses were the front rooms of people's houses. It was wonderful, but not even remotely similar to a small town in the South.
Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go take my afternoon siesta in a hammock.
It's true that this is based off a stereotype, but I've heard too many people say this to think there is nothing to it.
To be honest, the only place in the South I've been to is Tampa, Florida, which is not even the real South (it certainly does not feel like it, and according to my Tampa friends, the South starts further north in Florida - which I thought anyway). However, I created this thread wondering if people with more experience in the South (and in Mexico) see these similarities and what they think of them.
I can't speak for other southerners, but when I open doors, smile, and answer "yes/no ma'am/sir", I'm doing those things because I genuinely want to be polite.
I don't even know how to be fake. I'm allergic to it.
Yeah; not sure how being nice is being fake. I'm doing it out of kindness; not because I want something or have a hidden agenda against someone.
There is no similarities between the South and Mexico. You have to be uneducated to think so.
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