Spring 2025 Showcase Santiago
Dough & Diaspora
Alexandra Santiago
Over the past two decades, Mississippi’s Latino population has grown by more than 80%, reshaping not only the state’s workforce, but also its cultural and culinary fabric. In this shifting landscape, Latine-owned bakeries have emerged as spaces of care, survival, and cultural expression.
This series captures the intimate rhythms of these bakeries: the hum of mixers, the dusting of flour, the practiced movement of fingers shaping pan dulce into conchas, borregos, nubes. These images dwell in the warmth of kitchens, the soft focus of early light, and the labor that often goes unseen—but is felt in every bite.
These bakeries are more than businesses—they are living altars to heritage. Each photograph is a still moment in motion, a visual offering that bears witness to tradition, resilience, and everyday artistry.
Rooted in my experience as a Mexican-American chef and former bakery owner, Dough & Diaspora is as much about looking as it is about remembering. It is a meditation on how food becomes archive—how a sweet roll can carry generations of story, language, and love.
This work honors the bakers shaping the South, one loaf at a time.
Originally from San Antonio, Texas, Alexandra Santiago has called Oxford home since 2009. Her research explores Latine foodways migrations into the Southeast and the shared folklores of SE Indigenous Tribes and Latine communities. Through her work, she seeks to explore the stories of food and the people who make it, deepening our understanding of culinary traditions in the South. A long and winding journey led her to the Southern Studies MA program that included over a decade of working in most of the big name kitchens of Oxford. These days she’s much happier unearthing and preserving stories about the global South and continuing her research at the intersection of migration, memory, and food.