{"id":797377,"date":"2026-08-01T12:37:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:37:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/797377\/"},"modified":"2026-08-01T12:37:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-01T12:37:14","slug":"why-generations-swear-by-hot-caldo-a-mexican-gatorade-in-summer-us-immigration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/797377\/","title":{"rendered":"Why generations swear by hot caldo \u2013 \u2018a Mexican Gatorade\u2019 \u2013 in summer | US immigration"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Patty Rodriguez hears the word caldo now, she thinks fondly of home. But as a child growing up in southern California<\/a>, she despised eating the piping-hot soup-like meal during the summers. Rodriguez would swirl around the chunks of fish with her spoon and imagine that she was performing a magic trick where the dish disappeared. She would roll her eyes as she asked her family why they served the dish more often when it was hot outside. \u201cThis is not a hotel,\u201d Rodriguez recalled her mother and aunts saying. \u201cYou don\u2019t choose what you want to eat. You\u2019re going to eat what we make.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an adult, Rodriguez realizes that caldo, which translates to broth in Spanish, was an inexpensive meal that could feed her Mexican American household for several days. It provided the nourishment and hydration needed during the hot summer months.<\/p>\n

A common dish served throughout Latin America, caldo boasts regional variations<\/a> in places including Mexico, Puerto Rico and El Salvador. The broth often features whole pieces of meat and chunks of vegetables such as carrots, potatoes and corn on the cob. While the hot meal is served year round, in some cultures it is paradoxically more popular during the summer months. For first- and second-generation Latin Americans, caldo is more than just a meal; it\u2019s a cultural touchstone that connects them to their heritage and helps them honor their families.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow it\u2019s love,\u201d Rodriguez said as she choked back tears. She\u2019s now the co-founder of Lil\u2019 Libros<\/a>, a children\u2019s bilingual media company. While working as a radio producer for 20 years, Rodriguez was often the only Latina in her workplace; she yearned to share her culture with her teammates and the audience. Her relationship with caldo evolved as she learned to accept her Mexican American culture. \u201cI was rejecting not just the food,\u201d said Rodriguez, \u201cbut I was rejecting my identity.\u201d<\/p>\n

In recent years, Rodriguez is elated whenever her mother calls to share that she\u2019s made caldo de pollo, which includes pieces of chicken. \u201cI get the kids in the car and I drive to my mom\u2019s house,\u201d Rodriguez said. \u201cI want my children to experience this with her.\u201d<\/p>\n

A caldo de alb\u00f3ndigas, or meatball broth, that Patty Guzman made for her two sons. Photograph: Courtesy of Patty Rodriguez<\/p>\n

Ramon Guzman, a 33-year-old creative director at the Crazy Gorilla and Vezcos Media, still has ambivalent feelings towards caldo. He makes comedy skits<\/a> on YouTube about Mexican American culture and has poked fun at the dish in several videos over the past decade. In a 2021 video<\/a>, Guzman imitated a Mexican mother who refused to let her son turn on the air conditioning and forced him to eat caldo as he profusely sweated through his shirt.<\/p>\n

The skit reflected his childhood growing up as a first-generation Mexican American in San Bernardino, California<\/a>. \u201cThe main emotions were confusion and suffering,\u201d Guzman said, recalling eating caldo as a child. \u201cI did not enjoy eating caldo in the summer. I\u2019m already sweating, and then eating the caldo makes me sweat even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guzman now realizes that the dish provided comfort to his mother, whose family made it for her as a child growing up in Mexico. The dish has followed Guzman into his adulthood; his girlfriend, who is also Mexican American, serves it to him more often during the summer, when she says that she craves it the most. Caldo\u2019s salt and nutrients make it tantamount to \u201ca Mexican Gatorade\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

Guzman sees the dish as a tool to teach pain tolerance that has been passed down through generations. He described eating the meal during the summer as \u201clayers and layers of a little pain\u201d that helps people learn to weather the vicissitudes of life. \u201cI will try to dabble in it and make my own version of it whenever I have kids,\u201d Guzman said. \u201cIt makes you a bit stronger and more resilient \u2026 I\u2019m sure I\u2019m going to be thinking of my mom when I feed it to my future kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Caldo is also popular in Puerto Rico. At the San Juan restaurant Cocina al Fondo, chef Natalia Vallejo said that caldo de gallina \u2013 a stew that features hen meat, plantains and herbs \u2013 is requested by diners more often during the summer. \u201cThis dish is deeply connected to my childhood,\u201d she said. \u201cThe recipe is inspired by a caldo my paternal grandfather used to make. He cooked it over a wood fire. It\u2019s a dish that evokes memories for Puerto Ricans and brings out many emotions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vallejo, who won the James Beard Best Chef: South<\/a> award in 2023, views caldo as a portal into her past. Her family would use caldo for other recipes. \u201cMy favorite memory is that we used the broth to make wood-fired chicken and rice, which was wrapped in banana leaves,\u201d Vallejo said. \u201cIt was delicious.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Aelen Trujillo\u2019s family, caldo served a practical purpose on the hottest days when they wanted to minimize active cooking time. As the dish simmered on the stove, her Mexican grandmother would step away from the warm kitchen so that she wouldn\u2019t overheat. Trujillo, a 24-year-old content creator and stay-at-home mom, now cooks caldo for her family during the summer because it reminds her of her grandmother.<\/p>\n

She ensures that her young children eat recipes from each of their Mexican and Central American heritages so that they remember their origins. \u201cMy grandparents once they came here they had to assimilate and they didn\u2019t have a lot of things. A lot of the culture or the tradition that they had growing up you never really celebrated,\u201d said Trujillo, who is a first-generation Mexican and Honduran American. \u201cFood was the only way that I was able to connect with my culture and feel more Mexican or to touch those roots.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Patty Rodriguez hears the word caldo now, she thinks fondly of home. But as a child growing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-797377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}