Indígenas mexicanos migrantes en los Estados Unidos
“La obra da un panorama generoso de la experiencia de guerrerenses, michoacanos, poblanos, yucatecos, veracruzanos, hidalguenses, chiapanecos y hasta chilangos, así como los mestizos de Zacatecas, Guanajuato y Jalisco (esa marea de trasterrados). Desde la negación legal, lingüística y política, e “invisibles” mientras trapean condominios, pintan paredes, pizcan algodón o cortan tomate, estos grupos sociales forman y transforman comunidades: construyen una sociedad civil… Y todos aprenden, se organizan, avanzan. Se gobiernan por sí mismos, y desde ahí se insertan al mundo. Los autores salieron a rastrear indios dispersos y encontraron huellas frescas y muy profundas. De una manera no prevista en el célebre apotegma del Laberinto de la soledad (Octavio Paz, 1950), los indígenas mexicanos son hoy profunda-mente indígenas “y contemporáneos de todos los hombres” (y mujeres) del mundo. Están aquí. Están allá. Están en todas partes. Y son millones.”
Ojarasca, La Jornada, septiembre de 2004.
Reframing Mexican Migration as a Multi-Ethnic Process
Jonathan Fox
University of California at Santa Cruz, CA
The Mexican migrant population in the US increasingly reflects the ethnic diversity of Mexican society. To recognize Mexican migration as a multi-ethnic process raises broader conceptual puzzles about race, ethnicity, and national identity. This essay draws from recent empirical research and participant-observation to explore implications of the indigenous Mexican migrant experience for understanding collective identity formation, including the social construction of community membership, regional and pan-ethnic identities, territory, and transnational communities.
US-Mexico Binational Indigenous Migration
rdominguez@sbcglobal.net
www.fiob.org
Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations (FIOB)
Mission
To contribute to the development and self-determination of indigenous migrant and non-migrant communities, as well as to fight for the defense of human rights with justice and gender equity on a Binational level.
Vision
To be a strong, constructive, and self-sufficient binational indigenous organization.
Binational Migration of Indigenous Communities
The early 1980’s saw a huge migration of Oaxacan indigenous communities to the United States (US), where entire families would cross the border to enter a foreign land that was far different from their own, but that at last offered a better economic situation. Once they arrived, they saw that you can survive for a week on a day’s work, while in Mexico you would have to work an entire week to be able to survive one day. Also, you have access to a bed, refrigerator, stove, car and even the famous television, luxuries we can not afford in our communities.
Building Civil Society Among Indigenous Migrants
Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado
Ed.’s note: This essay was excerpted with permission from the book Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, edited by Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (Centers for U.S.-Mexican Studies and Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD, 2004). For the longer, footnoted version of this essay, see the introductory chapter to the book, which is available at: http://www.rienner.com
The past and future of the Mexican nation can be seen in the waves of the tens of thousands of indigenous people who each year set out on their voyages to the north, as well as the many others who have already settled in countless communities within the United States. To understand indigenous Mexican migrants in the United States today requires a binational lens, taking into account basic changes in the way Mexico is increasingly recognized as a nation of migrants, a society whose fate in intimately linked with the economy and culture of the United States. But the specific indigenous migrant experience also requires recognizing that Mexico is a multiethnic society where basic questions of indigenous rights have made it onto the national agenda but remain fundamentally unresolved.
“Now We Are Awake”: Women’s Political Participation in the Oaxacan Indigenous Binational Front
Centolia Maldonado and Patricia Artía Rodríguez
This chapter docuements transformations that have taken place in one area of the Mixteca region of Oaxaca. Over the last decade, the absence of men due to migration has allowed for the emergence of new practices of political participation among the women who remain in the communities. This essay reflects upon the authors’ organizational experiences working with and supporting the indigenous women of the Oaxacan Indigenous Binational Front (FIOB).
La cultura en las organizaciones de carácter binacional y comunitario
Por Rufino Domínguez Santos
Coordinador General
Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional
rdominguez@sbcglobal.net
Hablar de cultura es describir todo lo que hacen las personas cuando actuan y reflexionan acerca de su vivir individual y comunitario a través de su historia, es el encuentro de dos grupos humanos de manera buena o conflictiva que requieren para darse cuenta de los otros, la reafirmación de si mismos es la identidad. En el caso de los pueblos y comunidades indígenas del continente américano, a pesar del esfuerzo de terminar con nuestra cultura basada en el conocimiento del ciclo anual, las relaciones colectivas que organizan el trabajo a través de el tequio, las relaciones de respeto a la Madre Tierra, el universo y las creencias que dan sentido a este conjunto de actividades: los modos de vida, las producciones, los valores intrafamiliares, los idiomas, las opiniones, la propia cosmovisión del mundo etc., Esto se define que se trata de una forma integral de vida creada hace miles de años por la comunidad indígena de acuerdo a una forma particular en que resuelva las relaciones con la naturaleza y los individuos cosas inseparables en la cultura indígena.