Diasporic culture and social media: Interpreting the cuy TikTok phenomenon

Abstract

South American migrants in New York are increasingly engaging with the social media platform TikTok to share and celebrate their everyday cultural geographic practices. In this paper, we attend to an emergent genre of videos revolving around cuy: a roasted guinea pig delicacy that has recently been brought to New York by Ecuadorian migrants. We take these videos seriously as instances of cultural expression amidst an increasingly hostile political climate, critically reflecting on how TikTok provides methodological provocations for cultural geographers working on migrant communities and diasporas. We draw out three salient themes to frame these contributions: perspective, which focuses on how TikTok illuminates an alternative vantage point from which to study diasporic cultures; sociality, which centres how these cuy videos are tied to wider practices of forging diasporic communality in New York; and connection, which examines how the circulation of these videos is facilitating new cross-continental links between Ecuadorians living in the Andes and Ecuadorian migrants living in New York. We conclude by reflecting on how TikTok has become a vibrant site for migrant communities who are transforming the platform into a medium where diasporic geographies can not only be shared but unabashedly celebrated.

Introduction

‘Let’s see, how much does a cuy cost, mi don?’ asks a young woman to a local street vendor. ‘A whole cuy?’ he replies. ‘80 dólares’. The woman’s phone camera pans down to a full and half-roasted guinea pig sitting in an aluminium foil container. ‘That’s cuisito, look. An Ecuadorian cuy’ the woman remarks. The vendor turns the meat over with tongs to the woman’s delight. ‘Oh mai gah!’ she says to the camera. Derived from the Kichwa word quwi, guinea pigs are indigenous to the Andes where they have long been used for sacrificial, medical, and culinary purposes. ¹ In 2019, 21 million guinea pigs were consumed in Ecuador alone. ² Increasingly, however, the Andean cultural delicacy is spreading north, particularly to cities like New York, where cuy culture has now become a vital aspect of everyday life for South American, specifically Ecuadorian, communities.

After stumbling across this video, one of the authors (a South American native) quickly became immersed within similar videos which, taken together, appeared to delineate an emerging genre. Posted by newly arrived Ecuadorean migrants in New York, the videos showed cuy being prepared, sold, and eaten on New York’s streets. In this paper, we take these cuy videos as a point of departure, reflecting on the ways in which digital platforms such as TikTok are being leveraged by marginalized migrant communities. Behind the seeming triviality of these videos is an attempt to render visible and, ultimately, celebrate diasporic cultures amid an increasingly hostile political climate.

There has been a proliferation of work across the humanities and social sciences critically examining the exploitative nature of modern social media platforms and technological algorithms. ³ At the same time, we can discern the contours of an alternative body of scholarship that is beginning to investigate how the digital realm is being used as a vector of transmission for expressing new cultural and political subjectivities. ⁴ We draw on and further develop this latter body of work, exploring how TikTok is being used by Ecuadorians in New York to assert their sense of place within the city at a time when the pressures of everyday life are being intensified by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and wider anti-immigrant rhetoric. We draw out three key themes of import to cultural geographies: perspective, sociality and connection. We contend that the cuy TikTok phenomenon poses certain provocations to cultural geographers, impelling practitioners within the field to take seriously how social media platforms have, perhaps inadvertently, become important sites for cultural articulation and transmission amongst migrant communities and diasporas.

Perspective

The recent proliferation of cuy videos on social media has taken many forms. Some videos show Ecuadorian families standing on the side of local football pitches, chatting as cuy and other meats slowly spiral on makeshift grills. Other videos depict South American content creators reviewing new restaurants like La Casa del Cuy, which sell the cultural delicacy. All these videos reveal how migrants are using social media to represent their everyday lives and cultural practices ‘up north’.

These videos can be situated within a broader geographical trend. As observed by the journalist Jordan Salama, TikTok has become increasingly important to Andean migrant identity in New York since 2022, especially in boroughs like Queens and The Bronx. ⁵ During the 2020 pandemic, broadband infrastructural networks were constructed in many rural Andean towns, increasing exposure to the outside world and bringing in representations of life in the United States. Once in New York, migrants can more easily maintain connections with their families back home as well as with other migrants in New York through sharing videos on platforms like TikTok and WhatsApp. Given the symbolism of cuy to recently arrived Ecuadorean migrant experience, we focus on how these cuy videos are one way in which migrants assert new perspectives.

In one video, an Ecuadorian street vendor is interviewed by a TikToker who commends the vendor and his food for ‘revolutionizing’ Roosevelt Avenue. ⁶ The street vendor goes on to discuss how the recent popularity of cuy videos has helped to draw eyes to his business, compelling people from distant American states to travel to New York to try the delicacy (Figure 1). TikTok, he suggests, has been vital for propelling the Andean cultural delicacy into the public limelight.

Figure 1.

A street vendor in Queens talking through his menu, with cuy roasting in the background.

This video provides several insights into the relationship between New York and cuy culture. By contending the food vendor’s cuy has revolutionized Roosevelt Avenue, the interviewer frames the food trucks on New York’s streets as geographical interventions that have produced new vernacular landscapes rooted in cultural delicacies which have been brought to the city by migrants. ⁷ Clarifying how this transformation of New York’s streets has been accelerated by the circulation of images and videos online, the food vendor illuminates how TikTok has played a key role in the emerging popularity of this cultural delicacy in New York. Digital platforms like TikTok have become mediums or vectors through which migrants share and celebrate their own vernacular cultures of food. Against an anti-immigrant political atmosphere, videos of cuy in New York reveal how South Americans use online platforms to construct their own digital ecologies where alternative perspectives circulate.

Sociality

Migrants’ cultural representations of cuy online also play a social function in fostering intra-community alliances through cuy culture. Intersecting with the popular hashtag #sueñoamericano, Spanish-speaking migrants share the reality of their lives ‘up north’, often through dramatized videos which juxtapose the promise of the American dream – loving family dinners, fast cars, and money – with the reality of working class life: overwork, loneliness, and the constant hustle to afford essentials during a cost of living crisis. By contrast, cuy videos often provide a counterpoint to the dismal portrayal of migrant life. Through memes and funny videos, cuy TikTok videos provide satirical and often ironic takes on everyday life.

For instance, one video published in September of 2021 on a Brooklyn street shows a rotating yellow De Walt drill whose trigger has been plastic wrapped to spin consistently; a thick wooden pole spins on the right side of the screen screwed into the drill. ⁸ A cumbia beat plays over the video as the frame slowly pans right, revealing an impaled spinning cuy charring to a golden brown at the end of the stake. The video’s style is meant to evoke humour, but also to convey a message of inventiveness and creativity. Whereas roasting cuy, like chicken, requires a constant rotisserie – often done manually in DIY settings – the cuy-roasters have developed an innovative shortcut. The video also presumes an element of insider knowledge from the viewer, who is meant to recognize the process of roasting cuy on the street. Satirical videos like these show a lighthearted humour to cuy production and consumption, creating new socialities between viewers through online channels.

In another video, sociality is forged through restaurants engaging in innovative promotion. A 10-second TikTok DIY video promoting a food truck named La Esquina del Sabor in Elmhurst, Queens features someone in a guinea pig costume. ⁹ The video is overlaid by the track EoO by the Puerto Rican artist Bad Bunny. The guinea pig mascot dances in front of the food truck as a voice reads ‘Presenting the new face of Pinchos al Gusto. . .Misteeeeer Cuuuuuuyyyyyyy [author’s translation]’, said in a tone meant to resemble Spanish-language football commentary. The caption reads: ‘Glad to welcome our new face of the business Mr cuy. He will be in the spot every day starting next week so come on down and take a picture with him [author’s translation]’. This video shows how a culinary delicacy takes on a new human form; it creates a new culture around the delicacy which entertains and draws in prospective customers (Figure 2). Through new representations of cuy, migrants signal a playful insiderness, creating new forms of sociality and forging new connections between the human, the non-human, and the digital.

Figure 2.

The TikTok profile of Cuy Lion.

Finally, these playful costume representations of cuy play an economic role in the global cuy supply chain. Since January 2025, a new content creator named el_cuy.lion_ny has swept the guinea pig content sphere with promotional videos dressed up in a cuy costume at various cultural events, frequently overlaid with cumbia, reggaeton, and chicha music. One video shows a group of men in white and blue shirts with glow-up rings around their head, dancing in a circle in what appears to be a wedding or party. ¹⁰ The caption reads ‘Perreo intenso. El cuy lion’, and features Cuy Lion dancing wildly to the legendary song ‘Gasolina’ by Daddy Yankee. Other videos feature scenes from parties with Cumbia, Reggaeton, or Chicha music with Cuy Lion dancing in the middle of a circle, often with captions or visual overlays advertising Cuy Lion’s services as a party entertainer. ¹¹ Entertainers like Cuy Lion represent how cuy’s representations circulate on social media and take on a life of their own, forming new community socialities. Through cuy culture, migrants turn a culture delicacy into a cultural symbol, serving as a base for solidarity among Ecuadorean migrants in an otherwise-hostile New York.

Connection

As cuy culture has circulated online, it has forged new connections between migrants, opening up new channels of goods between Ecuador and New York. In March 2024, the cuy industry entered a new phase: a shipment of frozen cuys left Gualaceo, in the province of Azuay organized by Mr. Cuy [no relation to La Esquina del Sabor], the first company to import the delicacy to the US. The company is run by an Ecuadorian expat in New York who (together with a partner) invested $170,000 to create a cuy processing plant (Figure 3). Working with over 500 breeders, the company aimed to export 1,000 guinea pigs to New York every week. ¹² Whereas sending packaged cuy was once something that families did individually, Mr. Cuy has institutionalized cuy distribution, forging new commercial connections between New York and Azuay, mediated through the distribution of inanimate non-human animals and their representations online. In a video interview, the company’s director laid out the company’s operations from packaging, to shipping, to distribution. ¹³ He explains that ‘What we want to do is give this family business a channel of commercialization so that cuy can reach a different market [author’s translation]’; in his case, he refers to the United States, now home to over 1 million Ecuadoreans.

Figure 3.

A billboard in Times Square promoting Mr. Cuy.

To celebrate its opening, Mr. Cuy took out a billboard space in Times Square with big text exclaiming ‘SOON: ECUADOR WILL BE CLOSER [author’s translation]’. ¹⁴ The billboard features a large smiling guinea pig in a blue square frame. While Mr. Cuy may have been the first large-scale industrial distributor, its arrival has been widely shared on TikTok. The frozen cuys, wrapped in transparent bags with the company’s iconic logo, have popped up all over New York and online. One video by WaPe market in Flushing, Queens, advertises frozen cuys for just $27, ¹⁵ while other videos rate the brand as far superior to its Peruvian competitors. ¹⁶ Here, we see how Ecuadorean migrants actively connect with the new commercial networks, not just through consumption, but also through sharing the content online. More broadly, the movement of cuys from the mountains of Azuay province to the billboards of Times Square to the screens of migrants’ phones reflect the formation of new connections between the cuy, the migrant, and the content consumer, mediated through companies like Mr. Cuy and platforms like TikTok.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that TikTok provides an entry point into migrant culinary cultures within contemporary cities. Taking the cuy phenomenon as a point of departure, we suggest how TikTok has been moulded into an expressive medium by migrants who are increasingly sharing videos that portray and celebrate their everyday lives and cultural routines on New York’s streets. Vitally, however, these videos are not bound to the spatiality of New York. The emerging cuy industry is fostering new cross-continental economic and cultural connections between New York and the Andes. In this light, we might interpret the cuy phenomenon as a counterpoint to strands of scholarship that de-spatializes and de-territorializes the digital realm. Clearly, these videos are situated and worldly, to use Edward Said’s term. ¹⁷ Far from free-floating, they are firmly in and of the world. TikTok therefore provides a productive area of research for cultural geographers engaging with diasporic geographies.

Several avenues might be considered for future research. Parallel to the cuy phenomenon, for instance, there has also been a proliferation of videos, also largely posted by South American migrants, sharing the locations and movements of ICE within North American cities. ¹⁸ Intended to raise awareness by informing fellow migrants of encroaching political risks, these videos further illuminate how TikTok has become a diffusive medium through which migrants are increasingly sharing information, producing their own cultural geographies in practice. Regarding New York, future geographic research might also consider how the political ascendance of Zohran Mamdani was inseparable from similar short-form street content that foregrounded affordability and the cost of living crisis. Here, the digital realm provides provocations for cultural, urban and political geographers interested not only in the geographies of migration and diasporas, but also the geographies of the contemporary conjuncture.