These Latinos are running for a cause: each other

On a bright 40-degree Saturday morning, Alex Alvarez was jogging along the Atlanta Beltline playing “Somos Más Americanos” from a speaker in his left hand.

Y si a los siglos nos vamos / Somos más americanos / Somos más americanos que el hijo de anglosajón goes the chorus of the song by Los Tigres del Norte, a Mexican norteño band based in California, famed for its folk-style corridos, or, ballads. And if we go back through the centuries / We are more American / We are more American than the son of an Anglo-Saxon.

Holding onto the speaker throughout a three- or four-mile run doesn’t bother him, Alex said as he passed Ponce City Market. “It feels like holding a baton.” And it feels like the music is making a statement. “It’s kind of the sense of, like, Hey, we’re here.” The best part, he said, is when “we’re just going about our business, running on the Beltline, and we see other Latinos looking back, like, Oh shoot. That’s brown-folk music.” 

Alex was jogging as part of an event hosted by Los Corridos, a Latin-inspired run club (that’s name intentionally nods to musical ballads), that he and his siblings founded about two years ago. Born out of a desire to see more representation for Latinos in the running scene, he said, it started out as simply a regular jog with like-minded Latinos. This year, though, it’s evolved. “So many of us who have people affected by what’s going on, with ICE raids, it just felt like there’s this sense of responsibility that we can do something to kind of pull together,” he explained. “So many of our folks may be doing things like landscaping,” and, he said given the increase in immigration enforcement, “maybe [are] not feeling super comfortable being out working right now.”

On the day 285 South joined Los Corridos on a run, around two dozen people were running  alongside Alex. The event that day, dubbed Correr Para Communidad, was also a drive to collect winter jackets and other cold weather gear. Los Corridos has held food or clothing drives for organizations like the Latin American Association and El Refugio, a nonprofit that supports families with loved ones incarcerated at Stewart Detention Center in western Georgia. “[We’re] having different types of runs or events that are based around showing solidarity with the community,” Alex said.

More than halfway into the 3.2-mile run, Alex doubled back to make sure none of the runners had been left behind. When everyone finally reunited where they started—at a street corner in front of Communidad Taqueria on Highland Avenue—he congratulated them with a fist bump.

Sitting down for a bowl of sopa de polla roja afterwards was 21-year-old Sara Rodrizuez, one of the runners, and founder of her own run club, Millas por Dias. “In this generation, there’s so much technology now, you know, the apps and Instagram and Facebook. I think people are getting to a point where it’s kind of like, I can’t do this anymore,” she said. “We’re human, and we were made to see people face-to-face,” she said. “I feel like sometimes our parents, you know, they provide us everything that they can, but it gets to a point where you need to look for that internally and be like: What am I missing? And I think it’s community, and that’s what people are turning to.”

As runners lined up for drinks from the Colombian pop-up Enid Coffee and music by DJ Zocalo—a friend of Alex’s who plays Latin tunes in the taqueria—it became clear that that sense of community was exactly what was being built.

“We’ve been able to be a space where they can kind of plug in and build out their own kind of sense of community,” said Alex. “That’s kind of been the best part about this.”