Chapter 10 The Coastal South

The Coastal South is immensely pulsating and diverse within its mixing zone of people from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and other parts of Latin America and from other parts of the world.  According to our textbook, the Coastal South region ranges from “the land and offshore islands along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico from Virginia southward and westward to south Texas. Thus, all of Florida and parts of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia are a part of this region” (Shelley 189).

The culture of the Coastal South has shaped throughout the years by the settlements of the Spanish, African Americans, Latin Americans, and Vietnamese immigrants. Take for example the African Americans’ influence on the Coastal South through food habits, music, architectural styles and speech patterns. In 1959, the Coastal South was used as a gateway for Fidel Castro as he led the escape of thousands of Cuban refugees from their homelands to Miami and other communities. Today this escape led to half of Cuban Americans to live in Miami and other immigrants from different parts of Latin America and Caribbean to live in South Florida.

Just like Guam being a part of the Northern Marianas Islands, it receives day to day visits from other people in the nearby islands. It also has hundreds of thousands of visitors from Japan and Korean each year because of the difference tourist attractions on Guam. However these visits always bring an influence to the island like the African Americans did with the Coastal South. The visits that Guam has experienced influenced how the locals react to the visitors and how they accommodate to their expectations of the island. It is through their visits that Guam became more hospitable while also gaining a positive outlook. This positive outlook that Guam has created was that through these constant visits from tourists, it helps Guam’s economy more than before.