Hey everyone! I’m more or less posting this for my mother who is wanting to relocate our family from Canada to the US. We are Mexican and in Canada it is very hard to find any Hispanic culture let alone people . While it is far from a sole deciding factor , which cities/states in the US have a rather heavy Hispanic population/influence?
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I mean, Texas/Calif/Ariz/NM
Pick a major city in the Southwest, California, and Texas. Chicago, New York, and Miami are also great options.
Are you looking for Mexican or Hispanic? There’s tons of Puerto Ricans in New York, but is that what you’re looking for?
Anywhere in the southwest or southern/central California has a huge Mexican influence…it WAS Mexico not that long ago. Cities like Chicago, Detroit, Denver have large communities with entire neighborhoods that are almost entirely Mexican. Mexicans are *everywhere* in the US, even my small northern Michigan community has an authentic restaurant, the owner is from Oaxaca and so are many of the workers.
I grew up in a suburb bordering Chicago that was half Mexican. There’s a lot of suburbs and areas of the city where you honestly could get away with never learning English even. The southwest is obviously very Mexican too being that they border México.
Really anything south along the border will have a lot of hispanic influence. Florida has plenty of Cubans and Brazilians even.
But honestly, the Mexican diaspora has spread so thoroughly, you will find the option of heavy hispanic culture in any medium or larger city. If you’re looking to keep things a bit cooler temperature after living in Canada, instead of the sweltering southwest, check out Rhode Island.
San Antonio is calling you.
San Antonio, Texas.
I’d say a large portion, if not most of the US has a Hispanic influence
2.5 million Latinos in NYC or nearly a third of the city
Basically anything in the southwest and Texas. The Rio Grand valley in Texas is majority Hispanic
In El Paso, you can park downtown and walk to Mexico for shopping, restaurants, dentists, you name it. It’s all right there or some places will send a car to pick you up if you have an appointment
San Antonio
San Antonio! My parents are also first-gen Mexicans and they settled on staying in San Antonio due to the culture and also the proximity to the border. It has it’s own Tex-Mex culture that is embodied all throughout the city, but it is also easy to come across some authentic Mexican food, markets, people. It’s an affordable city, and overall I think it is one of the best cities to live in Texas, but I may be biased.
Literally any halfway decent sized city
San Antonio.
Miami is like 70% (or something like that) Hispanic city. That’s not including the surrounding metro area either which has other Hispanics too. Miami is more of a Carribean latino vibe. Lots of Haitians and Jamaicans but the Hispanic population has some variety. Majority cuban but lots of PR, DR, South American and Central American folks. Though I’ve never actually met a Mexican person in Miami like… ever. Well to my knowledge I haven’t.
Somewhere in Texas would be your best bet if you want to be around other Mexican folks. But Miami if you just kinda want to be in the mix if everything lol Idk what type of lifestyle you’re use to so it’s hard to say but Miami isn’t a small town vibe in any sense. Major Metro where speaking Spanish and being the same ethnic group or origin can get you super far. But it’s also a place where if you have weird biases against other carribean countries you’ll probably hate it too. I’m saying that because there’s lots of people that have problems with each other simply because they are Haitian or Jamaican or this and that. So that’s full transparency, if you do, then don’t go there cause you’ll hate it lol I’ve seen it happen a bunch where being in Miami makes people realize maybe they don’t like x group of people lol or they uncover a bias they didn’t know they had until they were in a place where you had to be around different folks all the time
Also clearly bias because I’m from Miami
Salinas, California. About 80% of the population is Hispanic (160,000 people live here as of 2020) with the majority being Mexican, followed by Salvadoreños and Guatemalans. We have an annual El Grito festival in the East side of town and celebrations for Cinco de Mayo and Dia de Los Muertos. One could practically live here without needing to speak English, also a lot of the older people still dress in vaquero style.
Others have mentioned a bunch, but anywhere in North New Jersey as well.
As many have mentioned, the cities and towns along the US/Mexico border have a huge influence from Mexico. I will add that the individual Mexican states across from these areas also have a (smaller but significant) influence on each area. For example, the Mexican food here in San Diego is influenced by the food/ingredients that you see in Baja California.
There are also many areas along the border that you have a US city/town heavily intertwined with a Mexican city/town. For major cities, you see this with San Diego/Tijuana and El Paso/Ciudad Juarez. For smaller towns, you see this in places like Nogales, AZ/Nogales, MX and Calexico/Mexicali.
San Antonio 🙂
San Antonio is probably top of the heap.
The US has considerably more Hispanic culture all over it compared to Canada. So as long as you’re not picking a tiny little town in the Heartland, chances are near 100% you’ll find Hispanic culture in larger cities. I’m in Colorado and there’s a solid Hispanic culture here in most cities.
There are SO many heavily hispanic towns — I would look for what you want in a city.
Even Massachusetts has towns that have the same rate of Latinos as El Paso. I’d say choose what you want in a state and then look around for Hispanic population.
Coming from Canada, even Massachusetts will feel way more Latino. Even in the rural areas, there’s lots of Puerto Ricans. Worcester is a decent little city with about 1/4 Hispanic population . It’s not particularly Mexican but there are “Spanish” grocery stores and restaurants all over.
But remember your dollar may not go as far –rents in the US are high and health care is VERY expensive.
If you want a smaller and cheaper area to live, there’s a surprising amount of Hispanic influence in the capital region of NY (Albany, Troy etc.). It’s not as large as other regions, but it’s not insignificant (official statistics are 10%) and the culture is very open in politics, restaurants, churches etc. In HS I even had to translate for a friend who was from Oaxaca and didn’t speak any English. Most Hispanic people I’ve met here are from southern Mexico, Central America, Spain, and Argentina. Though I’ve also met some people from Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico. The winters are a lot milder than most of the northeast too.
Note: also we’re expected to have larger Hispanic populations soon, since southern states and NYC have been bussing their migrants to us because we agreed to settle them.
El Paso, San Antonio, and Albuquerque.
My hometown of San Antonio has the largest hispanic population of any major city by percentage (Miami metro area is more but I think that includes their suburbs and stuff). I’m not hispanic but it’s one of the things I miss here in Louisiana.
Miami, San Antonio, San Diego, Los Angeles, Phoenix , Las Vegas, Dallas, Albuquerque, El Paso, Bay Area, Fresno, Tucson and on and on. There are, honestly, probably 20 other cities you could list
[This page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_and_Latino_Americans) has a great map showing where general Hispanic populations are in the US.
Most of the southwest has pretty dense Hispanic populations. Texas and California both have huge populations of specifically Mexican folks.
Come for a visit to San Antonio Texas.
You will love it!