On the Road with Pedro and His Amigo-Go-Gos: Rethinking Race at South of the Border, 1949 to the Present

This poster examines the history of the infamous Mexican-themed roadside attraction and rest stop, “South of the Border.” Located just south of the North Carolina border in Hamer, South Carolina, South of the Border was established in 1949 by Jewish entrepreneur Alan Schafer. With humble origins as a beer depot evading the ordinances of the nearby dry county of Robeson, North Carolina, South of the Border quickly grew to prominence during the tourist boom of the postwar South. The attraction’s mascot, Pedro, with his thick mustache, big belly, and sombrero, welcomed patrons from Maine to Florida and beyond. The establishment’s iconic billboards also played a crucial role in attracting visitors, littering the highways of the East Coast with playful puns and catchy slogans bordering on Mexican minstrelsy. To this day, South of the Border remains a whimsical escape into a caricatured Mexican tropical paradise full of “amigos” and “tequila,” making it a special place to study Latino Southern history.

To American historians, Pedro and South of the Border are symbolic of a particular Southern racial order where white patrons create “social solidarity” and construct whiteness, defining themselves against blackness and its cousin, Latinidad. This understanding, however, is insufficient. With a complex history involving loyal Native American and black patronage, and boycotts by the KKK in response to moves by the owner to desegregate, the historiography on South of the Border attests to a certain provincialism in American conversations on race. Through archival research methods and a social history framework, I move beyond previous assertions of the business’s white supremacist history and towards a more critical understanding of race and racism at South of the Border and the South at large.