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.
Saps et al. (2026) studied this question.