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DOI: 10.1177/0094582X13519971
2014 41: 5 Latin American Perspectives
Laura Velasco Ortiz and Dolores Pars Pombo
Identity Transformations
Indigenous Migration in Mexico and Central America: Interethnic Relations and

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LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 196, Vol. 41 No. 3, May 2014, 525
DOI: 10.1177/0094582X13519971
2014 Latin American Perspectives
Introduction
Indigenous Migration in Mexico and Central America
Interethnic Relations and Identity Transformations
by
Laura Velasco Ortiz and Dolores Pars Pombo
Translated by Margot Olavarria
This issue is dedicated to Michael Kearney for his contribution to the study
of indigenous migration in Latin America. His legacy is not just theoretical and
empirical knowledge but also a line of critical thinking about the global and
local forces that create the multiple exclusions of displaced and migrant indig-
enous people confronting national states and global capital and the enormous
capacity of those people to resist domination. The content of the issue is an
example of the vitality of his influence on two generations of researchers in
Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and the United States. The articles delineate a
complex field of reflection about the redefinition of ethnic identities, the new
forms of resistance of indigenous workers in the international economy, and
the reconstruction of indigenous consciousness in the ethnic configurations of
more than one nation-state.
Latin American indigenous migration is a multiethnic phenomenon that is
much older than mestizo migration and has a transnational character because
of strong community ties. It varies in intensity and form by region, ethnicity,
gender, and generation and in response to the receiving countries migration
policies. Throughout the twentieth century indigenous migration in Latin
America reconfigured the ethnic geography traced by modern states not only
within countries but also beyond the geopolitical lines that divide the Latin
American South from the U.S. and Canadian North. In the midst of international
capitalisms full development, environmental catastrophes, political violence,
and narcotrafficking, contemporary indigenous migration contains traces of the
ancient movement of colonization through pre- and postconquest ethnic terri-
tories with new paths of industrialization and economic globalization.
The multiethnic and multiracial component of Latin American migration is a
consequence of the vitality of the continents indigenous and Afro-American
peoples. Bolivia (61.3 percent) and Guatemala (39.45 percent) are the countries
with the greatest proportion of indigenous population, followed by Peru (15.9
percent), Panama (12.26 percent), Ecuador (7.02 percent), Honduras (6.54 per-
cent), and Mexico (6.21 percent). The Afro-American population is more numer-
ous than the indigenous population in Brazil (50.75 percent), Cuba (34.74 percent),
Colombia (10.6 percent), and Panama (9.19 percent). These percentages point to
Laura Velasco Ortiz and Dolores Pars Pombo are sociologists and professor-researchers at El
Colegio de la Frontera Norte. The collective thanks them for organizing this issue. Margot
Olavarria is a political scientist and translator in New York City.
519971LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X13519971Latin American PerspectivesVelasco and Pars / Introduction
research-article2014
5
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6 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
different interethnic and interracial contexts and reflect different criteria that
may combine identification and the use of an indigenous language or (as in the
case of Brazil) localization. In absolute terms, Mexico is the country with the most
speakers of indigenous languages in Latin America with 6,044,547, followed by
Bolivia, with 5,076,251, and Guatemala, with 4,433,218.
1
Mexico occupies first
place with 64 indigenous languages, after Bolivia with 33 and Guatemala with 24
(UNICEF and FUNOPROEIB Andes, 2009: 81). In a way, as Bartolom (2008)
points out, Latin America possesses a certain civilizational unity that distin-
guishes it from the United States and Canada.
As a multiethnic and multiracial phenomenon, migration affects not only the
countries of origin but also those of destination. It is a central component of the
ethnic diversity of the countries of the North. In 2010, the Latin American pop-
ulation in the United States was 16.3 percent (50,477,594), representing an
increase of 3.8 percent since 2000 (Humes Jones, and Ramrez 2011:2). Latin
American indigenous migration is reflected in the increase in size of the Indian
Hispanic American population in the United States, which in 2000 was 407,073
(Huizar and Cerda, 2004: 284) and by 2010 had increased to 685,150 (Humes,
Jones, and Ramrez, 2011: 13).
2
In Mexico the census does not register undocu-
mented indigenous foreigners, but it is calculated that in recent decades
140,000150,000 indigenous Guatemalans have entered the country, many of
whom moved on to the United States (Nolasco and Rubio, n.d.).
Adopting a transnational perspective, Michael Kearney and Carole
Nagengast (1989) pointed to indigenous reconstitution in terms of ethnicity
and class at the root of Mixtec migrations to rural California and coined the
concepts transnational communities and transnational ethnic conscious-
ness. The development of these concepts does not imply the neglect of the
state; Kearney (1995; 2004; 2005) sought to understand indigenous migration in
the framework of nation-states because of the effects of nationalist policies on
indigenous populations. At the same time, however, he connected the impor-
tance of the state apparatus and its geopolitical borders with the effect of the
global economy in depleting rural life and displacing indigenous peoples as an
international source of labor. From this point of view, internal and interna-
tional indigenous migration is part of the functioning of global capitalism.
The current scenario of indigenous migration is characterized by the dete-
rioration of the living conditions of the campesinos, workers, and low-income
residents of the Latin American continent. According to the Economic
Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL, 2012), using data
for 20072011, the indigenous population of Latin American countries has
higher percentages of poverty than the general population. In particular, pov-
erty is worse for indigenous people in Bolivia (59.87 percent compared with
42.4 percent), Guatemala (72.31 percent compared with 54.8 percent), and Peru
(55.42 percent compared with 27.8 percent). Mexico is the country in which the
income gap between indigenous and the nonindigenous is widest: in 2010, 75.7
percent of the indigenous population lived in poverty compared with 36.3 per-
cent of the total population (CONEVAL, 2010). This pattern of poverty con-
firms the structural subordination of indigenous people under the neoliberal
policies of the past 20 years, in particular the decline of subsidies for small
farmers and the policy of unprotected employment.
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Velasco and Pars / INTRODUCTION 7
The structural context of indigenous migration includes the destruction
and appropriation of natural resources in indigenous territory. The territorial
base of reproduction of indigenous peoples is affected not only by the priva-
tization of forests, mineral deposits, and aquifers but also by displacement,
as depopulation overloads members of communities with the care and usu-
fruct of those natural resources and the reproduction of the system of com-
munity governance.
In the context of international migration, the notion of ethnic territory
acquires a new meaning. The massive displacement and distant resettlement of
the continents indigenous peoples in the past two decades calls for the articu-
lation of various territorialities from a transnational or trans-state perspective
(Torres and Carrasco, 2008b). A notion of territoriality that includes the geo-
graphical space defined by social interactions, relations, and shared practices
(Sack, 1983: 55) allows us to understand the connection between places in
which new nuclei of indigenous population exist and their places of origin and
the de-territorialization and re-territorialization of many cultural practices and
symbols. Paradoxically, for indigenous peoples, this spatially and politically
trans-state condition at its different levels continues to have a fundamental
impact on living conditions through its social and agricultural policies and its
politics.
INDIGENOUS MIGRATION IN LATIN AMERICA:
ETHNIC ANCESTRY AND TRANSNATIONALISM
The study of international indigenous migration as a multiethnic process
(Fox and Rivera, 2004b) poses a challenge to understanding ethnic diversity at
the national, regional, and local levels not only of the countries of origin but
also of the receiving countries. In addition, it is difficult to approach the ethnic
diversity of Latin American migration with only a single ethnic-national model
in mind. The historicity of indigenous migration is expressed in two clear ten-
dencies. The first is the connection of ancient displacements of ethnic territories
with internal labor migration to the cities and the agro-exporting regions and
with international migration between Latin American countries (for example,
between Bolivia and Argentina or between Nicaragua and Costa Rica) and
between them and more distant ones such as the United States and Spain.
Secondly, international migration of indigenous people has a transnational pat-
tern largely because of the intensity of the links that stem from collective ethics
and community life, with diverse mechanisms of material and symbolic
exchange between the populations of origin and the displaced.
Contemporary international indigenous migration is inscribed in a very
long history of regional displacement of ethnic territories whose borders do not
correspond to those of the present-day state (for example, the Quechuas in
Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina, the Mapuches in Argentina and Chile
[Torres and Carrasco, 2008a: 11], the Mayas in Mexico and Guatemala [Camus,
2008], and the Odham on the northern border of Mexico [Castillo, 2012]) and
internal administrative borders that function at the regional level (as in the case
of the Mixtec cultural region, which is divided by the administrative borders of
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8 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
the states of Oaxaca, Puebla, and Guerrero in Mexico). Speaking of the com-
plexity of indigenous mobility, Torres and Carrasco (2008a) rethink the distinc-
tion elaborated by the Economic Commission of Latin America and the
Caribbean between international migration, transnational migration, and
ancestral territorial movement. The definition of the last of these is particularly
striking: While it crosses international jurisdictional borders, it occurs in
ancestral territorial areas within ethnic boundaries in which customary law
was and is exercised (CEPAL, 2006: 200, cited in Torres and Carrasco, 2008a:
10). The distinction between international and transnational is based on
the kinds of links maintained with the communities of origin. As the authors
note, this typology recognizes the antiquity of indigenous migration in Latin
America. However, contemporary indigenous migration combines spatial log-
ics related to urban economies, agro-industrial enclaves, and global production
chains beyond state borders that can be best understood in terms of a notion of
indigenous territoriality that includes new indigenous settlements in different
places (the product of migration to cities or to other rural regions in the same
country or abroad) in addition to those in the places of origin. This territoriality
involves multiple referents for the construction of ethnic and racial difference
beyond the limits of a single national state, and this makes it possible to speak
of a transnational or trans-state territoriality.
According to Torres and Carrasco (2008a), since the 1990s Latin Americas
indigenous people have been experiencing a wave of transnational migration.
The Kitchwa Otavalo of Ecuador migrated to Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru
in the 1940s, and in the 1990s they headed toward Mexico, the United States,
and Spain (Caguana, 2008; Ordez, 2008; Ruiz, 2008). That same decade, the
Kitchwa Saraguros of Ecuador traveled to Almeria, Spain (Cruz, 2008), and the
Quechua of Peru to the United States (Paerregaard, 2008). Maya migration
from Guatemala to Mexico (Camus, 2008) and to the United States (Popkin,
1999) is marked by the civil war and Pentecostal ecclesiastical networks.
According to Popkin (1999: 271), Maya Kanjobal international migration can be
divided into three phases: the pioneers of the 1970s, the refugees of the civil war
in the 1980s, and the young migrants of the 1990s taking advantage of the social
networks constructed in the previous decades that were grounded in contacts
with Pentecostal missionaries and the conversion of members of indigenous
communities. In the case of Mexico, according to research reported in Nolasco
and Rubio (2011), the current international displacement of indigenous peoples
has to be understood in the context of the old regional displacements of the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the rural-urban migration of the
1950s, and the movement to agro-industrial regions in the 1960s. The history
varies locally and regionally and is apparently older than the movements of
nonindigenous populations (Castilleja, 2011).
The studies of Mexican indigenous migration collected by Nolasco and
Rubio (2011) analyze migration in terms of circuits of transnational exchange,
both material and symbolic, highlighting the diversity of exchanges between
residents of places of origin and places of destination. Their collection is an
important contribution to the literature on Mexican indigenous migration,
which is dominated by studies of migrants from Oaxaca (see Escrcega and
Varese, 2004; Fox and Rivera, 2004b; Pars, 2006; Velasco, 2008). In addition, the
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Velasco and Pars / INTRODUCTION 9
studies share a novel approach in which the unit of analysis is not indigenous
peoples but territories or multiethnic regions. They include Barabas and
Bartoloms (2011) research on the migration of Chatinos, Chinatecos, Chochos,
and Cuicatecos from Oaxaca, that of Castilleja (2011) on the Nahuas, Masahua-
Otoms, and Purpechas of Michoacn, that of Villela (2011) on the Mixtecs,
Nahuas, and Tlapanecos of Guerrero, that of Otis (2011) on the Coras and
Huicholes of the western Sierra Maestra, and that of Bez (2011) on the Otoms
and Nahuas of Hidalgo. Whereas the regionalization of Mexican migration to
the United States takes the administrative organization of the federal states as
a reference, indigenous peoples overflow intrastate borders, and understand-
ing their migration patterns requires a different regionalization, one that pre-
cedes the modern Mexican national state. These researchers delineate three
moments of indigenous Mexican displacement in the twentieth century: in the
1940s and 1950s, intraregional movement for seasonal work; in the 1960s and
1970s, with the change in the economic model to import substitution, migration
directed to cities and agro-export zones; and, finally, in the 1980s and 1990s,
with the rise of neoliberalism, migration to the northern Mexican border and to
the United States.
The macro-structural changes in Mexico affected not only the indigenous
peoples with the greatest demographic density and sedentaries but also
nomadic or seminomadic peoples such as the Coras and Huicholes (Otis, 2011),
the Cuacaps, Kumiais, and Paipais (Garduo, 2003), and the Odhams (Castillo,
2012). Otis (2011) documents two types of mobility among Coras and Huicholes
of the western Sierra Madre: the old pattern of seasonal mobility within their
territories and ceremonial residence and a more recent one extending outside
their territories for the sale of handicrafts in cities and for employment. In the
face of depletion of natural resources (for example, water), the decline of agri-
culture, and the changing expectations of youth, Huichol and Cora migration
to the cities in the 1980s and to Colorado in the 1990s soared (see also the case
of the Odhams of Sonora [Castillo, 2012]).
In summary, indigenous migration is older than mestizo migration, and
experiences of migration vary with the economy and the territorial ecology.
The spatial logic of mobility responds to a cultural regionalization that goes
beyond regionalizations produced by nation-states political administration
and forces us to rethink the relation between local community and indigenous
peoples and evaluate the concept of circuits of transnational interchange vis--
vis that of transnational community for indigenous migration.
THE TRANSNATIONAL CHARACTER
OF INDIGENOUS MIGRATION
At the end of the 1980s, Michael Kearney and Carole Nagengast (1989),
observing Mixtec migration to California, coined the term transnational indig-
enous community. Although the transnational approach (Glick Schiller,
Basch, and Blanc-Szanton, 1991) became the target of serious criticism
(Waldinger and Fitzgerald, 2004) and self-criticism (Glick Schiller and Levitt,
2006), two decades later it retains its vitality in studies of indigenous migration
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10 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
(Cruz, 2008; Paerregaard, 2008; Ruiz, 2008). In contrast to ancestral population
movements, labor migration and migration for family reunification disrupted
the relationship between indigenous community, identity, and territory and
created new forms of community in dispersed populations. Community life,
together with language and myth, was the vehicle for ethnic reproduction
under conditions of migration (Snchez, 2007: 364).
The notion of a transnational indigenous community managed to articulate
the duality of origin and destination and of modernity and tradition in a new
field of multiterritorial integration and differentiation (Besserer, 2004). At the
same time, as Nagengast and Kearney (1990) showed in their study of the
Mixtec political consciouness resulting from international migration, it dis-
rupted the idea of a shift from rural indigenous subject to urban indigenous
subject and then transnational indigenous subject different in terms of identity
and politics. In the 1990s and the first decade of the twenty-first century, there
was an increase in studies of Oaxacan indigenous migration. Several writers
(Escrcega and Varese, 2004; Fox and Rivera, 2004b; Velasco, 2008) focused on
the ethnicization produced by migration, particularly at the level of collective
action and transnational ties. The Mixtec-Zapotec case served as a referent for
identifying the mechanisms and agents of community reconstitution in the
country of arrival, obscuring other indigenous migration flows.
While the constitution of the transnational indigenous community had
empirical expressions in ritual family and community life (Mummert, 1999),
the hometown associations and ethnic and panethnic organizations were the
basis of the development of a transnational indigenous community and of the
emergence of a transnational ethnic consciousness (Kearney, 2000; Kearney
and Nagengast, 1989). However, they also made political ethnicity highly vis-
ible, resulting in a profile of a transnational indigenous community focused on
political agents. As Weber (2008) shows, the Nahuas and Purpechas migrated
to the United States before the Mixtecs and Zapotecs as the Bracero Program
incorporated Nahuas from central and southern Mexico and Purpechas from
Michoacn. Why were they not as visible as the Mixtecs and Zapotecs, and why
did they not achieve panethnic and transnational organizational forms?
One crucial element of current indigenous transnationalism is the massive
expansion of the media in the 1990s. Without faster and cheaper communica-
tion such as the telephone, the cell phone, and the Internet, it would be difficult
to understand the intensity of interaction over distances and the maintenance
of community ties. In addition, the existence of settled nuclei of immigrants in
the places of destination facilitated the migration of other family or community
members and the extension of migrant networks.
According to Kearney (1994: 64), one of the most important effects of inter-
national migration is the reproduction of autonomy as indigenous peoples.
Sols and Fortuny (2010: 130), comparing the processes of transnational organi-
zation linked to international migration of indigenous Hahs from Hidalgo
to Immokalee, Florida, and of Mayas from Yucatn to Los Angeles, report that
transnational indigenous organizations seek not only to better living condi-
tions in their place of origin but to gain autonomy vis--vis local governments.
However, transnational processes and conditions are differentiated within
and among indigenous peoples. Waldinger and Fitzgerald (2004) point out that
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Velasco and Pars / INTRODUCTION 11
the transnational studies of the 1990s generally present a more local than trans-
national image and a homogenized general image of individuals, families, and
communities as transnational. This critique applies to the studies of indigenous
migration that are dominated by the experience of Mixtec and Zapotec migrants
and focus on their political and cultural activism. In the following, recovering
the self-critical approach of Glick Schiller and Levitt (2006), we outline some of
the differentiation documented in the literature on this issue.
Fox and Rivera (2004b) address the issue of binational or transnational civic
participation, showing the development of a generation of transnational indig-
enous intellectuals emerging from the experience of national and international
migration. Their book introduces the concept of civil society and revives
Besserers (1999) concept of transnational citizenship. The latter concept
functions as an umbrella for considerations of both immigrants participation
in the United States and the reconstitution of indigenous governments in their
places of origin (see Kearney and Besserer, 2004). It also examines the chal-
lenges of community citizenship, the continuity of indigenous forms of govern-
ment, and the integration of migrants at a distance. It is evident from this
collection that civic and political transnationalism are different conditions
among the various indigenous peoples studied. The organization repeatedly
studied in this book and others is the Frente Indgena de Organizaciones
Binacionales (Indigenous Front of Binational OrganizationsFIOB), which
was initially made up of Mixtecs and Zapotecs and gradually came to include
Triquis and Purpechas.
3
A model of transnational activism, this organization
has been a referent for observing collective action among other communities or
indigenous peoples. In light of this model, the differentiation in political trans-
nationalism among indigenous communities and indigenous migrant peoples
is evident. For example, the Purpechas and the Hahs continue to present
a community identity linked to local places of origin, with few ethnic or pan-
ethnic organizations; the Triquis have a pattern of displacement linked to com-
munity violence in their places of origin (Pars, 2008) and the Coras (Otis, 2011)
a pattern of displacement to Colorado, where they experience invisibilization;
and the transnationalism of the Nahuas of Veracruz (Rodrguez, 2011), work-
ing in the stables of Wisconsin, stresses religious and local over ethnic loyalties.
DIFFERENCES IN TRANSNATIONALISM
As with migration in general, indigenous women participate differently in
migrant networks with regard to family and community control in spatial
mobility (Pars, 2006), domestic tasks and forms of participation in indigenous
associations, organizations, and government (Stephen, 2007; Velasco, 2005),
and new community responsibilities in the places of origin (Maldonado and
Arta, 2004; Velsquez, 2004). The participation of women in associations and
in decision-making positions is still incipient, with the restriction on womens
leadership emanating from maternal ideology, their responsibility for the care
of children, and the communitys view of womens duty (Romero Hernndez
et al., 2013). Gender structures the options for spatial mobility and reproduc-
tion at a distance. Women experience greater isolation because of domestic
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12 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
responsibilities and even less access to communication and transportation
technology. In their places of origin, women have heavier workloads in order
to make up for the absence of men. Besides domestic chores and child care, they
are frequently obliged to work in the fields and to replace their husbands,
fathers, or sons in community responsibilities (DAubeterre, 2007). In their
places of destination, they frequently do paid work and play a key role in inter-
mediation with institutions such as clinics, schools, and churches.
The studies carried out in the middle of the past decade in Mexico, Ecuador,
Peru, and Bolivia (Escrcega and Varese, 2004; Fox and Rivera, 2004b; Torres
and Carrasco, 2008b; Velasco, 2005) rarely consider youth as a social category
of interest. This category is interesting for its inclusion of young people born in
the places of destination, young people born in the places of origin and raised
there with absent parents, and young people as labor migrants in contexts of
high risk and labor precariousness, with differential access to community net-
works (Aquino, 2010). In these three respects the transnational horizon for
youth is different from that of the pioneers of indigenous migration of the 1980s
and 1990s. In the places of origin, many young people are being brought up by
their grandparents in their parents absence. They grow up in contexts of fam-
ily separation, as Sawyer et al. (2009) and Cario (2012) point out, and also in
cultural contexts for transitioning into adulthood that are marked by migration
(Pars, 2010: 141). In the receiving countries, where young people grow up
without grandparents and ties to the place of origin are increasingly more sym-
bolic than practical, integration or adaptation to new ways of life and citizen-
ship is the source of concern. For example, an emerging preoccupation among
Mixtec youth is schooling as a means of integration (Sawyer et al., 2009); they
see the United States as a source not only of more job opportunities but also of
more opportunities to go to high school and college. However, in this process
of integration ethnic origin and ascription reemerge as elements of conscious-
ness more defined by the terms of citizenship. This is not a new phenomenon;
the second generation of urban indigenous people offers empirical antecedents
that can serve as a reference. However, the issue of citizenship in a dual national
framework and the requirement of legalizing ones status present offer impor-
tant challenges to integration and motives for collective action in the receiving
countries such as are now occurring with the Dreamers movement or the
Indigenous Oaxacan Youth in California (see ECO, 2013).
Studies of migration from Mexico and Peru show how differences in the
legal status of indigenous migrants translate into differences in their transna-
tionalism. Although family and community networks function as a protective
niche for undocumented immigrants, their mobility and communication are
very restricted, and this limitation intersects with other forms of subordination
such as gender and generation to produce invisibilization and suffering
(Paerregaard, 2008; Stephen, 2008). This is observable in the experiences of kid-
napping to which they are subjected en route to the United States (Stephen,
2008) and in deportation and family separation, especially for mothers and
their children and for young people who have grown up in the United States
and must return to their parents places of origin as foreigners.
Variation in transnationalism is also dependent on local and regional history
in particular on when migration became massive and on the employment
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Velasco and Pars / INTRODUCTION 13
niches in which migrants became established. Ethnic reconstitution and his-
torical continuity depend on ethnic contexts in the regions and countries of
both origin and destination. Thus the ethnic transnationalism that Kearney
refers to becomes an increasingly differentiated phenomenon among the
diverse indigenous peoples that experience international migration intersected
by racism, social exclusion, and extreme exploitation as a labor force linked to
global consumption markets.
This multiplicity of sources of differentiation leads us to rethink the use of
the notion of transnational community and its application to collective action,
ritual life, and systems of community government and citizenship. A concept
such as transnational circuits of material and symbolic exchange, as sug-
gested by Barabas and Bartolom (2011), may be more useful for understand-
ing other areas of family and community life.
THE POLICY SCENARIO
The immigration policies of the receiving countries are increasingly chal-
lenging for poor and indigenous immigrants. Labor migration of indigenous
Mexicans to the United States originated with the Bracero Program. Between
1942 and 1967, the Mexican state served as a superenganchadores hook-up
(Lpez and Runsten, 2004), an intermediary in the contracting of cheap labor
to fill the labor shortage in U.S. agriculture and industry. From 1954 to 1965,
farmers in northeastern Mexico protested about the mass exodus of labor to the
United States and pressured the federal government to establish agreements so
that day laborers contracted by the Bracero Program in the countrys center and
south had to work for specified periods in Mexicos agricultural fields (Snchez,
2004: 252). The Bracero Program thus not only opened migration routes to the
United States but also produced migration in stages, including temporary or
seasonal work in the agro-industrial regions of northeastern Mexico. Indigenous
migration along that corridor is an antecedent of migration to California and
then to Oregon and Washington. Many indigenous people, mainly from Oaxaca
but also from Michoacn, Guerrero, Puebla, and Chiapas, headed for Sinaloa
and Sonora to work in horticulture or in the cotton fields. Closer to the border,
the pioneerslargely young menwould cross seasonally to seek better wages
in California. The nexus between agriculture and indigenous migration was
very visible in the 1980s (Zabin, 1992). Durand (1994) asserts that California
agriculture was ethnicized by contracting indigenous Mexicans in place of
mestizo labor and even labor from other countries and paying them lower
wages. In those years, young men and whole families headed to the agricul-
tural areas of California and, to a lesser extent, Arizona, Texas, and other states.
Others went to metropolitan areas to work in restaurants, gardening, office
cleaning, and other services. Women were mainly employed as domestic work-
ers or in restaurants and trade. Indigenous people migrated through previ-
ously established links with contractors or employers and through networks of
compatriots and neighbors. California continued to be the principal destina-
tion, although the migratory networks extended throughout the West Coast,
the Southern states, and the East Coast. In California, for example, Purpecha
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14 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
labor from Michoacn and Mixtec and Triqui labor from Oaxaca rapidly
increased. In contrast, Zapotecs (also from Oaxaca), Nahuas and Hahus
from central Mexico, and Mayas from Chiapas, Mexico, and Guatemala mainly
migrated to big cities such as Los Angeles and San Francisco. In the early 1990s,
Runsten and Kearney (1994) estimated that there were 45,00055,000 Mixtecs
working as agricultural day laborers and that they constituted 6.1 percent of
the labor force in that sector. A decade later, Fox and Rivera (2004a) reported
that indigenous migrants made up 10.9 percent of the agricultural labor force
of California and that there were more Mixtecs in California than Native
Americans of any other group.
In 1986, the U.S. Congress passed the Immigration Reform and Control Act
(IRCA), which opened the way for accelerated regularization of the migration
status of more than 2 million Mexicans and Central Americans. Many Mixtecs,
Purpechas, Zapotecs, and Mayas, in particular, were able to legalize their sta-
tus, and this allowed them to find more stable and better-paid work, generally
in cities. While the purpose of the IRCA was to halt undocumented migration
and increase border control, the effect was the opposite: family reunification
and the consolidation of migration networks led thousands of immigrants to
settle in the United States and other new migrants to undertake the undocu-
mented journey to the North (Durand, Massey, and Parado, 1999). According
to the results of a survey coordinated by Runsten and Kearney (1994), the
immediate effect of the IRCA on indigenous migration was to facilitate cross-
border mobility rather than settlement. The indigenous rodinos
4
brought their
families and settled them on the Mexican side of the border. This is how nuclei
of indigenous migrantsMixtecs and Zapotecs from Oaxaca, Purpechas from
Michoacn, and Mixtecs from Guerreroemerged in the city of Tijuana, where
they established their residences and traveled for short periods to work in the
California fields (Clark, 2008; Velasco, 1996).
In the mid-1990s, the U.S. government designed a new border and migration
control strategy called Prevention through Deterrence. This model was
imposed on the TijuanaSan Diego region in 1994 with Operation Guardian. It
multiplied the border patrol infrastructure in that region, which had been the
traditional corridor for border crossing for the vast majority of undocumented
indigenous migrants. This provoked a change in the pattern of migration: flows
were diverted toward more distant and desolate regions, particularly the bor-
der between Sonora and Arizona. At the same time, because of the increase in
the cost and danger of crossing, undocumented migrants tended to stay in the
United States year-round (Massey, 2007).
Within the United States, migrants confronted increasingly restrictive and
punitive policies. In 1996 the U.S. Congress approved the Illegal Immigration
Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA), which established harsher
sanctions against undocumented migrants, including periods of detention of
over a year for those who recrossed the border after being deported. In addi-
tion, it authorized an increase in the number of border patrol agents and the
construction of a fence along the border with Mexico. It also increased the num-
ber of reasons for the deportation of migrants and made them retroactive. This
gave the immigration authorities broad powers to detain and expel migrants
without due process. Finally, it considerably broadened the collaboration
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Velasco and Pars / INTRODUCTION 15
between immigration authorities and local police forces (Hagan, Eschbach, and
Rodrguez, 2008: 65; Kanstroom, 2012: 12).
Some indigenous people from southern Mexico and Guatemala, among
them the Triquis of Oaxaca, began to emigrate to the United States at this time,
when the risks of crossing the border were considerably greater than before.
Crossing the border in the desert of Sonora and Arizona cost the lives of thou-
sands because of the extreme temperatures (see EMIF-North, 2010). The cost of
undocumented crossing and the probability of being apprehended at the bor-
der also increased considerably. To be able to undertake the journey, migrants
incurred debts in their communities, which came to represent an enormous
burden on the families. The rates of interest charged by lenders or by the coy-
otes themselves came to 10 percent monthly or 120 percent annually. The
migrant who was unable to cross, was deported, or was unable to find work
that paid enough to repay his debt was at risk of losing all his assets (Rus, 2012;
Stoll, 2010).
According to the Pew Hispanic Center, between 1987 and 2007 the undocu-
mented population steadily increased, reaching a peak of almost 12 million.
Mexicans and Central Americans represented some two-thirds of that popula-
tion (Passel and Cohn, 2009). Between 1998 and 2007 the percentage of indig-
enous people in deportation proceedings was 5.27.5 percent (Velasco, in this
issue), similar to the percentage of indigenous Mexicans attempting to cross the
border illegally.
5
The undocumented immigrant population declined annually between 2008
and 2011, to almost 11 million, as the economic crisis and restrictive immigra-
tion policies forced many to return home (Passel and Cohn, 2012). This decline
does not mean that undocumented migratory flows stopped. Despite the enor-
mous infrastructure of border control established in the southern United States,
many indigenous migrants continue to undertake the northward journey. They
are forced to take on greater debt than before to pay the coyotes and must sub-
mit to conditions of enormous geographic and labor mobility to be able to sur-
vive with temporary work and pay their debts. Many very young mensome
just entering adolescencework seasonally in the fields of the West Coast. As
Zabin (1992) documents, they give agricultural capital the enormous advan-
tage of cheap labor and extremely mobile and flexible labor compared with
mestizos from Mexico or workers of other nationalities. They travel with the
harvests and eventually find work in the service industry. Because of the inse-
curity of the border regions and strict border control, indigenous migrants
stays in the United States have been considerably prolonged, even during peri-
ods of labor market contraction or economic crisis. Indigenous migrants have
great mobility between different states and different jobs, making them true
labor nomads (Aquino, 2010: 41). Further, their ethnic ascription makes them
more vulnerable to discrimination and racism, for example, in the county
courts, where they must depend on translation into their mother tongues.
Kearney (1998: 125) points out that the main objective of the restrictive immi-
gration policies was not to stop undocumented workers but to increase their
alienation by geographically separating the production and the reproduction
of the labor force. Fear causes them to put up with harsh working conditions,
strict discipline, and much lower salaries. However, since 2008 we have seen
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16 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
that exclusion and expulsion of migrants has also increased. Thus the deporta-
tions, border control, and the U.S. economic crisis have forced the return of
millions of migrants to their countries of origin, some of them after they have
lived in the country for many years.
In the indigenous communities of Mexico and Central America, young
men who have been returned or deported are increasingly numerous. These
Northerners (Alarcn, 1992) are culturally very different from the
migrants who are settled in the United States with documents and return
every year during holiday periods or to assume traditional offices. While
they have enough economic resources to invest in celebrations, construct
large houses, and display many symbols of prestige, the forced returnees
find themselves impoverished and lacking in opportunities to return north
in the short term.
THE CONTENTS OF THIS ISSUE
The transnationalization of indigenous migration is marked by the develop-
ment of the mass media and is expressed on various levels of the life of indig-
enous peoples. Some aspects of this transnationalism are traced in the following
pages.
STATE, ETHNIC CONSCIOUSNESS, AND TRANSNATIONAL COLLECTIVE ACTION
Oaxacan Mixtec migration was studied by Michael Kearney and Carole
Nagengast for decades, and on it they founded the novel concept of transna-
tional ethnic consciousness and a new relationship between Mexican indige-
nous peoples and the Mexican state. This issue therefore begins with a text by
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado in honor of Michael Kearney, highlighting his contribu-
tions to the concept of indigenous transnational communities and to the strug-
gle for the rights of indigenous migrants in the United States. Extending
Kearneys intellectual work and drawing upon his own investigative and polit-
ical experience at the heart of the FIOB, Rivera-Salgado shows the reconfigura-
tion of ethnic identities and the emergence of panethnic identities in indigenous
migrant organizations and their relationship to the movement for human and
labor rights of migrants in the United States. He also examines the develop-
ment of citizen practices that allow multiple relations with communities of
origin and complex forms of political and cultural participation in more than
one nation-state.
In response to Rivera-Salgados text and also recalling Michael Kearneys
experience as an anthropologist and a binational citizen, Lynn Stephen ana-
lyzes this concept of citizenship, understood as a set of rights and responsibili-
ties derived from participation in indigenous trans-border communities.
Through his work with and within these communities, Kearney developed his
multisituational anthropological practice in total harmony and consonance
with his citizenship practices. Stephen herself identifies with this vision of
fieldwork as a continuous and horizontal dialogue with leaders and represen-
tatives of the trans-border communities.
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Velasco and Pars / INTRODUCTION 17
Following these two articles that expressly dialogue with Michael Kearneys
contributions, the issue presents two articles that go beyond the Mixtec case
and, because of that, present more diversity of paths to collective action and
ethnicization. Transnational Ethnic Processes: Indigenous Mexican Migration
to the United States, by Laura Velasco Ortiz, analyzes indigenous migration
in terms of transnational ethnic configurations and ethnicization. Velasco
reflects on the historical state framework to understand the continuity of ethnic
identities in the context of transnational migration and the formation of pan-
ethnic identities. Through the analysis of the cases of the Purpechas of
Michoacn, the Nahuas of Alto Balsas, and the Mixtecs of Oaxaca, she describes
the processes of classification and ethnicization or racialization that emanate
from state policies and from the collective action, whether ritual, artistic, or
political, of indigenous immigrants.
Purpechas in Tarecuato and Chicago: Shifts in Local Power Structures
through Transnational Negotiation, by Stephanie Schtze, analyzes the effects
of negotiation between Purpecha migrants and their community of origin on
local power at the municipal level in the state of Michoacn. She focuses on the
relations of a hometown association in Chicago with the mestizo authorities in
the place of origin, who seek political support among the migrants in the place
of destination. Negotiations of this kind, she points out, would be impossible
without migrants resources of remittances and political capital. Indigenous
politics from a distance is more efficient to the extent that they manage to nego-
tiate with municipal authorities in another context. Her article places the home-
town association in the context of ethnic relations with mestizos at the local or
municipal level. Thus the state emerges in very specific relations in which
indigenous and mestizo interests converge. The political resources of interna-
tional migration change the balance of power relations at the local level.
These optimistic views of the effects of international migration on ethnic
identities and ethnic consciousness find their counterweight in two articles that
look at obstacles to indigenous peoples historical continuity in the exercise of
justice and the system of indigenous governance. Justice and Its Margins:
Understanding the Effects of Indigenous Migration from Mexico to the United
States, by Yerko Castro Neira, examines the way in which indigenous peoples
relate to the justice systems of two contrasting states, Oaxaca and California. It
concludes that indigenous peoples end up experiencing these situations in
similar ways because transnationalism does not change their marginal position
vis--vis the exercise of justice and the state.
In Transnational Migration, Customary Governance, and the Future of
Community: A Case Study from Oaxaca, Mexico, James P. Robson and
Raymond Wiest present the results of their study on the demographic and
cultural impacts of transnational migration in the adaptation of indigenous
government structure to the circumstances of migration. They report incongru-
ence between individual and collective rationales for maintaining community
cooperation and point to a decline in participation in the two most important
institutions of community government, which rely on voluntary work. As a
result, these institutions have lost control over collective action.
These last two articles describe different paths of transnationalization that
do not always imply politicization of migration networks. One of them offers
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18 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
a critical view of the reconstitution of identities on the basis of transnational
collective action focused on the structural limitations or, rather, the costs of
community life for the reproduction of indigenous government institutions.
There is a shift toward the individual orientation that migrants sometimes have
to adopt to survive in the countries of destination.
The persistence of issues of community identity in studies of indigenous
migration goes hand in hand with a recurrent reflection on what it means to be
an indigenous person away from home and on the new bases on which a sense
of belonging or ethnic consciousness is constructed.
STRUCTURAL VIOLENCE AND INTERETHNIC RELATIONS IN LOCAL AND
TRANSNATIONAL CONTEXTS
The local and regional structuring of transnational migration processes is the
axis of analysis of two articles with different approaches: the regional economy
and community violence. In From Amate Paper Making to Global Work: San
Pablito Migration from Puebla to North Carolina, Mara Eugenia DAubeterre
Buznego and Mara Leticia Rivermar Prez present their study of migration
from an Otom village known for its intensive production of amate paper
(paper made from bark) as a node in the migration corridor that extends from
the junction of the state of Hidalgos southeast and the northwestern Sierra de
Puebla. San Pablitos migration first to southern Texas and later to North
Carolina is examined in this article as a response to two local processes (the
collapse of coffee cultivation and the contraction of the labor market in Mexico
City) and the transnationalization of labor markets through the movement of
Mexicans to the United States. The article is a contribution to the literature on
structural conditions that articulate local and transnational processes.
In Breaking the Spiral of Violence: Politics and Migration in the Lower
Triqui Region, Mara Dolores Pars Pombo reports that in the Triqui region of
Copala, Oaxaca, the political violence associated with factionalism and armed
confrontation between leaders, neighborhoods, and political organizations has
provoked the out- migration of more than half the population. She examines
the effect of state intervention on the spiral of violence and links the physical
violence with the structural violence represented by exploitation and domina-
tion. She goes on to show how the migrants experience of a new institutional
context and new political relationships at their destination in Mexicos
Northeast has allowed them to overcome political factionalism and direct vio-
lence there.
Trapped Behind the Lines: The Impact of Undocumented Migration, Debt,
and Recession on a Tsotsil Community of Chiapas, Mexico, 2001-2012 by
Diane L. Rus and Jan Rus, offers a novel and detailed analysis of the social
impact of international undocumented migration on a community in the
municipality of Chamula, Chiapas. The authors observe an increase in inequal-
ity, vulnerability of women and children, and indebtedness and devastating
effects on couple and family relationships.
These three articles call attention to the exploitation and subordination that
indigenous people experience in globalized and polarized economies. They
show that migration flows are embedded in broad and complex processes of
regional economic integration (Sassen, 1998: 55) marked by labor flexibilization
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Velasco and Pars / INTRODUCTION 19
and precariousness. Migration creates vulnerability in that it implies the loss or
erosion of productive peasant unitythe commodification of social relations
and the weakening of ties of mutual support.
GENERATIONAL CHANGES
More than two decades after the peak in research on international indige-
nous migration, studies on generational change and the emergence of young
indigenous people, sons of migrants, have begun to appear. In Identity
Strategies and Consciousness Shifts in Sanmiguelense Mixtec Youth in
Transnational and Transcultural Spaces, Georgia Melville uses the concepts
of dual consciousness, agency, and knowledge to explore the different strate-
gies adopted by youth from San Miguel Cuevas, Oaxaca, for functioning in a
transnational community there and in Fresno, California. Her discussion of the
emergence of the category Mixtec-Mexican-American, involving simultane-
ous ascription and de-identification, is an important contribution.
In Maya Cultural Resistance in Los Angeles: The Recovery of Identity and
Culture among Maya Youth, Giovanni Batz uses his own experience to ana-
lyze the strategies of young people for resisting discrimination and marginal-
ization in the United States, among them assimilation to Latino culture and a
return to their Maya roots. He shows that young peoples attitudes range from
indifference toward Maya culture to advocacy of difference in the face of the
absorbing force of Latino and Mexican identity in Los Angeles, with some iden-
tifying with both the Latino community and Guatemalan Mayas at the same
time. He points to the effects on identification of the absence of grandparents,
who generally play a fundamental role in the transmission of values and Mayan
traditions to younger generations.
Transforming Borders through English Use and Service-Oriented Cultural
Capital: A Case Study of Indigenous Honduran Immigrants, by Shannon
Reierson and Sylvia Celedn-Pattichis, addresses the rearticulation of identity
in terms of the trilingual condition of the Lenca indigenous population of
Honduras, an aspect that clearly distinguishes them from the nonindigenous
or mestizo population. They examine the role of English in the strengthening
of ties and broadening of social networks and as a factor in social mobility or
even a resource for emancipationas transformational liberatory capital.
The influence of Michael Kearney on these contributions is apparent in their
stress on three themes: the constitution of ethnic consciousness beyond the ter-
ritory of origin, local-transnational collective action, and panethnicity. At the
same time, the contributions highlight new themes: generational changes, new
forms of transnational ethnicization, the exercise of community justice in trans-
national frameworks, and the challenges of transnationalism to community
government structures. Dual ethnic consciousness, especially among youth,
changes in the ethical bases of indigenous government systems, and interethnic
repositioning are also highlighted here. Identities are being altered by new
frameworks of ethnic alliances, new forms of capital (such as transformational
liberatory capital), and, paradoxically, new exclusions. Increased state control
on the part of the United States, with an increase in deportations and family
separations, has effects on flows of forced and voluntary return.
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20 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES
This issue adopts an interdisciplinary perspective that addresses not only
structural and historical factors but also actors and subjective processes. The
use of decolonizing methodologies allows for reflection on the construction of
ethnic consciousness, with liberating implications in revealing the mechanisms
of domination, in particular in the study of identification among youth. The
articles place contemporary indigenous migration in historical perspective,
pointing to a sequence of stages: local, regional, national, and transnational.
This allows us to observe the connection between regional migration and inter-
national migration in the context of the global economy, in which local ethnic
displacements are articulated in the logic of transnational capital and the neo-
liberal state. Understanding indigenous migration calls for historical perspec-
tives with longer time-spans.
NOTES
1. In 2010 Mexico had 6,986,413 speakers of indigenous languages; comparable data for Bolivia
and Guatemala are unavailable. The sources for these data are as follows: Bolivia: Instituto
Nacional de Estadstica, Censo de poblacin y vivienda, 2001. Brazil: Instituto Brasileo de Geografa
y Estadstica, Censo demogrfico 2010. Chile: Instituto Nacional de Estadsticas, Estadsticas sociales
de los pueblos indgenas en Chile censo 2002. Colombia: Departamento Administrativo Nacional de
Estadstica, La visibilidad estadstica de los grupos tnicos colombianos, 2005. Cuba: De Mato (2012).
Ecuador: Instituto Nacional de Estadsticas y Censos, Censo de poblacin y vivienda 2010. Guatemala:
Instituto Nacional de Estadstica, Principales etnias censo 2002. Honduras: Instituto Nacional de
Estadstica, Pirmide poblacional, 2001. Mexico: Instituto Nacional de Estadstica y Geografa, Censo
de poblacin y vivienda, 2000 and 2010. Panama: Instituto Nacional de Estadstica y Censo, Censo
nacionales 2010. Peru: Instituto Nacional de Estadstica e Informtica, Censo nacional 2007, XI de
poblacin y VI de vivienda.
2. This figure refers to those who declare a single race. With the addition of those who report
a combination of two or three races, the total of those declaring themselves to be of Hispanic or
Latino origin is 1,190,904 (Humes, Jones, and Ramrez, 2011: 13, Table 7).
3. The FIOB was founded in 1991 as the Binational Mixtec-Zapotec Front. At its 1994 assembly
it changed its name to the Binational Oaxacan Indigenous Front to include the Chatinos and
Triquis who had joined the organization. Finally, at its 2005 assembly it adopted its current name
(retaining the acronym) at the request of Purpechas from Michoacn who wanted to be included.
4. The colloquial term for those who legalized their immigration status under the IRCA (named
for Peter Rodino, one of the laws sponsors).
5. According to EMIF-Norte (2010), between 2005 and 2010 the proportion of speakers of indig-
enous languages in undocumented migration flows from Mexico to the United States was 5.77.8
percent.
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