Transborder Lives , livre ebook

399

pages

English

Ebooks

2007

Écrit par
Stephen Lynn Stephen

Publié par
Duke University Press

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399

pages

English

Ebooks

2007

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Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

13 juin 2007

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780822389965

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

4 Mo

Lynn Stephen's innovative ethnography follows indigenous Mexicans from two towns in the state of Oaxaca-the Mixtec community of San Agustin Atenango and the Zapotec community of Teotitlan del Valle-who periodically leave their homes in Mexico for extended periods of work in California and Oregon. Demonstrating that the line separating Mexico and the United States is only one among the many borders that these migrants repeatedly cross (including national, regional, cultural, ethnic, and class borders and divisions), Stephen advocates an ethnographic framework focused on transborder, rather than transnational, lives. Yet she does not disregard the state: She assesses the impact migration has had on local systems of government in both Mexico and the United States as well as the abilities of states to police and affect transborder communities.Stephen weaves the personal histories and narratives of indigenous transborder migrants together with explorations of the larger structures that affect their lives. Taking into account U.S. immigration policies and the demands of both commercial agriculture and the service sectors, she chronicles how migrants experience and remember low-wage work in agriculture, landscaping, and childcare and how gender relations in Oaxaca and the United States are reconfigured by migration. She looks at the ways that racial and ethnic hierarchies inherited from the colonial era-hierarchies that debase Mexico's indigenous groups-are reproduced within heterogeneous Mexican populations in the United States. Stephen provides case studies of four grass-roots organizations in which Mixtec migrants are involved, and she considers specific uses of digital technology by transborder communities. Ultimately Stephen demonstrates that transborder migrants are reshaping notions of territory and politics by developing creative models of governance, education, and economic development as well as ways of maintaining their cultures and languages across geographic distances.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

13 juin 2007

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780822389965

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

4 Mo

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t r a n s b o r d e r l i v e s

t r a n s b o r d e r l i v e s Indigenous Oaxacans in Mexico, California, and Oregon

Lynn Stephen

d u k e u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s2007Durham and London

∫2007 Duke University Press

Printed in the United States of America

on acid-free paper$

Typeset in Adobe Minion with

Adobe Jenson display

by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-

Publication Data appear on the last

printed page of this book.

Illustrations and Tables Preface ix Acknowledgments xix

vii

c o n t e n ts

c h a p t e r1 Approaches to Transborder Lives 1 c h a p t e rCommunities in Political and Historical2 Transborder Context: Views from Oaxaca 35

c h a p t e r3 Mexicans 63in California and Oregon c h a p t e r4 Transborder Labor Lives: Harvesting, Housecleaning, Gardening, and Childcare 95 c h a p t e rand Invisibility in the Lives of Indigenous5 Surveillance Farmworkers in Oregon 143 c h a p t e rTransborder Lives: Gender Relations in Work6 Women’s and Families 178 c h a p t e r7 Navigating the Borders of Racial and Ethnic Hierarchies 209 c h a p t e rOrganizing in Transborder Lives 8 Grassroots 231 c h a p t e rEthnic Identity Construction in Life and on9 Transborder the Net: E-Mail and Web Page Construction and Use 274 c o n c l u s i o n s309 e p i l o g u eNotes on Collaborative Research321

Notes 327 Works Cited Index 359

335

i l lu st r at i o n s a n d ta b l e s

Maps 1. The state of Oaxaca 2 2. San Agustín Atenango and surrounding area 2 3. Teotitlán del Valle and surrounding area 10 4. California indigenous migration and immigration sites mentioned in text 77 5. Oregon indigenous migration and immigration sites mentioned in text 85 6. Teotitlán internal migration paths, 1920s to 1990s 104 7. Teotitlán del Valle migration paths during bracero program, 1944– 64 105 8. Teotitlán del Valle migration paths to the United States and U.S.-Mexico border 105 9. San Agustín Atenango internal migration paths 1930s to 1950s 109 10. San Agustín Atenango bracero program migration, 1942–64 112 11. San Agustín Atenango migration paths 1960s to 1990s 115 12. San Agustín Atenango migration paths to the United Sates, late 1970s to present 115

Illustrations All photos are by the author unless otherwise speciﬁed in the captions. 1. New, unoccupied home in San Agustín Atenango 4 2. Older homes on outskirts of San Agustín Atenango 4 3. Pedro Martínez Morales (age ninety-seven), Ermelinda Reyes Ramírez (age ninety-two) 7 4. Elena Martínez Ruis, Petrona Martínez Reyes, and Laura Ruiz Martínez 7 5. Teotitlán marketplace 11 6. Julián Mendoza, Emiliana Pérez, Pancho Mendoza Pérez, and Armando Mendoza 12 7. Minuteman online poster 30

8. Daniel Cruz Pérez on the outskirts of San Agustín Atenango 36 9. Mexican braceros weeding a sugar beet ﬁeld. 82 10. José Valdez, who worked in the Hillsboro pea harvest. June 20, 1943 82 11. Emiliano Gómez in Teotitlán del Valle 98 12. José Luis García López relaxing in San Agustín Atenango 110 13. Catalina García with her mother 135 14. Soledad Cruz Hernández and her granddaughter in 1999 198 15. Pancho Mendoza Pérez in 2004 217 16. First page of U.S. 2000 Census Form 228 17. Women of the Mujeres Luchadoras Progresistas (mlp) assembling wreaths in 1999 232 18. Participants at thepcun2352001 annual convention 19. Ramón Ramírez,pcun245president since 1995 20.pcunmembers at an immigrant rights rally in Salem, Oregon, in 2003 251 21. Eric Chávez, his father, Federico, and siblings in Teotitlán del Valle textile market 276 ´ 22. Xiabetz, or ‘‘brother rock,’’ in Teotitlán del Valle 288 23. Sixteenth-century church in Teotitlán del Valle 288 24. Archaeological site behind church in Teotitlán 289

Tables 1. Greatest Mexican-Origin Population Changes in Absolute Numbers in California Counties, 1980–90 75 2. Leading Mexico-Based Migration Networks in Woodburn, Oregon 87 3. Cities in Oregon with Signiﬁcant Latino Populations, 2000 89 4. Hispanic or Latino Population and Race in Woodburn, Oregon, 2000 90 5. Language Proﬁle of Woodburn, Oregon, Heads of Household, Overall Population, and Minors, 2003 92 6. Mexican Immigrant Heads of Household’s Length of Time in United States, Woodburn, Oregon, 2003 93

viii

Illustrations and Tables

p r e fac e

In July 1997, I drove with Alejandro de Avila from Oaxaca City to the Mixtec Baja town of San Miguel Cuevas. The drive is long, and the road is ﬁlled with curves. Alejandro’s jeep plowed up and down the hills slowly but safely. Cuevas, as it is known, is perched on a blu√. Parked below the main part of town were more than a dozen pickup trucks. Almost all had license plates from the United States, and more than half a dozen were from the state of Oregon. I was going to visit Santiago Ventura, who now resides in Woodburn, Oregon, and works as an advocate for indigenous Mexican migrants with the Oregon Law Center; he has started a pan-ethnic Oaxacan indigenous migrant organization, Organización de Co-munidades Indígenas Migrantes Oaxaqueños (ocimo) (discussed in chapter 8). At the time we were visiting Santiago in Cuevas, he was home to carry out acargohis community as Secretario del Consejo de in Vigilancia del Comisariado de Bienes Comunales (Secretary of the Board ∞ of the Communal Lands Commission) (see chapter 2), and was working out a new set of laws to regulate communal land in his community. The cargo spanned a period of three years, which for many men in positions like this was a very long time. Part of the work Santiago and others did was to reduce the time that cargos had to be served as a part of the Communal Lands Commission in his community from three years to two years. Almost all of the men who were on the Communal Lands Commission had returned home from Mexico City or various parts of the United States to serve out their cargo. Part of what they accomplished was to help adjust the local system of governance to meet the reality of San Miguel Cuevas as a transborder community where many resided outside of Oaxaca for signiﬁcant periods of time. Another accomplish-ment of the Communal Lands Commission during the term Santiago served was to resolve a pending lawsuit involving a local land conﬂict that no one else had been able to achieve agreement on. Prior to this, Santiago had been at the center of a historic court case that has had a

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