The enregisterment and social meaning of fresas on the Texas border

The fresa characterological figure is widely recognizable in Mexico and has been considered to be performable through a variety of semiotic markers. By viewing fresas as a meta‐sign, their performance consists of three main behavioral practices: linguistic behavior, physical appearance, and inhabited space. The present study explores the presence of fresas in the Texas borderlands and investigates their social meaning and their relationship to certain geographical and social spaces. The present study supports how the construction of the fresa persona not only depends on the co‐occurrence of linguistic behaviors, physical appearance, and inhabited spaces but it also depends on how Laredoans move through, inhabit, and position themselves within different socially meaningful places. These findings demonstrate that geographical and social places should not be understood merely as one indexical cue among many but rather place organizes the various semiotic resources through which the fresa persona becomes recognizable and performable. Thus, in the context of the Texas–Mexico border, this study shows how the circulation of the fresa persona across these national contexts depends on their local reconfiguration through meaningful places rather than their straightforward reproduction.