"The Minions Are Mexican": Twitter Is Joking About Minions Being Latino, But The Theory Dates Back Years

Ever since the Minions popped up on the scene in 2010, their chokehold on meme culture has seemingly never died down, especially in the WhatsApp chats and Facebook feeds of every one of my tías.

And now that Minions: The Rise of Gru is killing it in theatres, those little yellow Tic Tacs are back to remind us that they in fact continue to run this world.

As a Mexican myself, I've been to my fair share of birthday parties in which a Minion piñata has stared menacingly back at me, but I've only just discovered what many fellow Latinos have been saying on Twitter ever since the Minions came to exist: The Minions are — for some reason — Latinos.

Now, while @claudiiaalvar3z's recent viral tweet is a self-proclaimed joke, they aren't the only one who's made the same joke.

Many Latinos have jumped on the "Minions are Mexican" trend:

And others are stating (and have been stating) that the Minions are broadly Latino:

Comedian and actor Jaboukie Young-White even did a Twitter poll jokingly asking if Minions are people of color.

To which the responses were, of course, filled with people saying they're Mexican/Latino.

And while I personally thought it was based solely on the fact that the Minions throw in a random Spanish word here and there, podcast producer Antonia Cereijido first dove even deeper into this theory back in 2016 for the radio program Latino USA.

In the segment, she posed the question "Are Minions Latino?" to the source itself: Pierre Coffin, who directed Despicable Me, co-directed its two sequels, and directed Minions. Oh, and the dude voices ALL the minions.

His first immediate response was direct and ended with a laugh: "I don't want to be rude or anything, but not at all."

And while the Minion language isn't its own made-up language like Naʼvi or Klingon, he did tell Latino USA that their language is just a mash-up of other languages, with Spanish being the biggest influence. He said, "What’s supercool about the Spanish language is that [the words] end with either a-o, and all these words for some reason are the Minion language.”

Pierre then pointed out: "Since, you know, Spanish is the language most-spoken* in the world, it makes sole sense that it pops out as much as it does."

And though his immediate response was "no," Antonia then concluded by illustrating some similarities she saw between immigrants and Minions, to which Pierre laughed and said, "Now that you're saying it, yea. I never...yea, it's all about Latinos."

And while that doesn't exactly solidify everyone's jokes as a hard-hitting fact, there's no denying that Minions are popular thanks in large part to Latinos. Around 35% of the Rise of Gru opening weekend audience was Latino, so the loyalty runs deep.

I don't exactly know how we got here, but given that I am starved for representation, I guess I'll take the jokes and run with them. Do with all this info what you will.

Listen to Pierre's entire conversation with Latino USA here.