MIGRATION FROM MORELOS TO MINNESOTA: BUILDING BROADER COMMUNITIES IN THE AMERICAS Adriana Martínez Rodríguez Samuel Rosado Zaidi Fundación Comunidad Morelos Minneapolis Foundation Building Broader Communities in the Americas November 2020 Migration from Morelos to Minnesota: Building Broader Communities in the Americas Final Research Report, 2019-2020 Research, analysis and text: Adriana Martínez Rodríguez and Samuel Rosado Zaidi, Colectivo Multidisciplinario por las Alternativas Locales (COMAL) Fundación Comunidad, A.C. Humboldt 46-B, Cuernavaca, Centro, Centro, CP 62000, Morelos. Teléfono 777 314 1841 www.comunidad.org.mx The Minneapolis Foundation 800 IDS Center, 80 S Eighth Street Minneapolis, MN 55402 www.minneapolisfoundation.org The Inter-American Foundation 1331 Pennsylvania Ave. NW Suite 1200 North Washington, DC 20004 www.iaf.gov/es/ This Report was possible thanks to the generous support of the Building Broader Communities in the Americas Initiative, The Minneapolis Foundation and Fundación Comunidad, A.C. Cover photography: Los tikuanes de Xoxo, by Emanuel Deonicio Palma. Expert consulting: Dr. Ana Alicia Peña López, Faculty of Economics, National Autonomous University of Mexico. Editorial design and edition: Octavio Rosas Landa R. Translation from Spanish: Beatriz Álvarez Klein, Jana Schroeder, Pepe Osorio Gumá and Evelyn Arón. The English language translation was approved by Fundación Comunidad Morelos and BBCA Initiative. We thank the 6th semester Social Work students from the Social Studies Faculty at Temixco, Morelos, for making this project their own. They were in charge of the interviews in the state of Morelos, so this Report is also a result of their professional commitment. We thank Emanuel Deonicio Palma, from Yankuik Kuikamatilistli, for his creative inspiration and for granting permis- sion for the use of some of his photographic work in this Report. We thank the Rini Templeton Memorial Fund for its policy of free use of the powerful illustrations of this extraordinari- ly committed artist and social fighter in Mexico, where she lived and produced some of her inspiring work. For security reasons, the names of the persons interviewed for this Report were changed. The opinions expressed in this Report are the full responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of BBCA, The Minneapolis Foundation or Fundación Comunidad, A.C. This work is subject to a Creative Commons Atribution-Non Commercial-Share Same 4.0 International Licence. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION . 9 1. Our objectives, methodology, study area and scope ..................................... 10 2. The binational project: collaboration between Fundación Comunidad Morelos and the Minneapolis Foundation. .12 3. Researching to build community: a preliminary reflection ...............................18 CHAPTER 1 . THE MEXICO-U .S . MIGRATION CORRIDOR: A LONG HISTORY OF INTERCONNECTIONS AND INTERDEPENDENCE . 25 1. Context analysis: Modern migration history (19th and 20th centuries) ..................... 26 2. Eight key moments ................................................................ 26 a) The Long 19th Century: Military conflicts between Mexico and the United States .......27 b) The Mexican Revolution, World War I and the Great Depression of 1929 ............... 28 c) World War II ..................................................................... 34 d) The Bracero Program and the preamble to the crisis: 1942-1970 ....................... 36 e) Crisis and Restructuring of the U.S. Immigration Policy: 1970-1986 ................... 38 f) The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA, for the United States) or Tratado de Libre Comercio de América del Norte (TLCAN, for Mexico) .............. 42 g) Implementation, Development and Impacts of NAFTA/TLCAN: First Decade of the 21st Century ................................................... 43 h) The 2008 Crisis: Hardening Migration Policies in the Obama and Trump Era .......... 45 3. A Final Thought on the Interconnection between Mexico and the United States ........... 48 CHAPTER 2 . MORELOS IN MINNESOTA . 51 1. Understanding the midwest on the map .............................................. 52 2. Migration pull factors: Minnesota and its relation to Mexico and the world ................57 3. Minnesota, land of ten thousand lakes, land of immigrants ............................. 60 4. Mexicans In Minnesota ............................................................. 65 5. The faces behind the data .............................................................73 CHAPTER 3 . THE VOICES AND THEIR REASONS: THE MIGRANTS FROM MORELOS . 83 1. The Morelos Contexts: A contradictory recipe for settlement and migration .............. 84 a) Brief historical context. 84 b) Social and economic context in brief: the city-countryside relationship ................ 85 c) Brief context of the violence in Morelos ............................................ 92 d) For every cause of attraction, there is also a cause of displacement/expulsion ......... 94 2. Morelos and its relationship with Mexico and the world ................................ 96 a) Morelos and its strategic position: between Mexico City and the world market ......... 96 b) Morelos, a state of origin for migrants: our study area ............................... 99 3. Migration in Morelos: three different faces of the same world .......................... 100 a) Morelos as a destination for migrants ............................................. 102 b) Morelos as a place of expulsion and displacement .................................. 103 c) Back to Morelos ..................................................................115 4. Conclusion: The Morelos-Minnesota network, building stronger communities ............123 CONCLUSION . 129 BIBLIOGRAPHY . 137 Photo: Emanuel Deonicio Palma INTRODUCTION This is why the toughest, the most forceful revolutionary principle is that we are all equal because we are different: there is a natural equal- ity, which is that we are all the unique core of our experience. Each one of us is incomplete if we lack the view of the others; because it is not a matter of tolerating others, but of others being indispensable so they can contribute their own version. Anonymous, “Asserting together who we are”. Alicia Andares et al. El libro de los saberes (The Book of Wisdom) Only among all of us can we know everything. Emeterio Torres, Wixarika marakame igration is a universal phenomenon as old versity, as both we and they have been shaped by our as the history of humankind itself. All hu- communities, our contexts, our traditions, our practic- Mman civilizations have been marked, at some es, our dreams, our disagreements, and our hopes. point, by the displacement of large portions of their For this reason, those of us involved in this work population from one place to another, for very different incorporate our identities, our wishes and our aspira- and complex reasons: drought, famine, persecutions, tions in order to place in your hands information that war, and poverty. The history of migration between may be useful for building together the communities Mexico and the United States is also part of this great that we desire, always in the hope that, within diver- history, whose characteristics and particularities some- sity (of all kinds: biological, cultural, gender related, times imply talking about the origin of both nations as and even political), we may get to know each other, one. It is like erasing The Line that divides them. Talking understand each other, and (re-)build the social fab- about this migration today not only has great political ric that shapes our territories and their inhabitants. and social relevance but also, above all, a (trans) com- munity and identity-related sense for the 21st century Like its deepest aspirations, this project for map- that demands that we be who we are in the same way ping the Morelos-Minnesota Migration —Building that others are who they are: all, male and female, in di- Broader Communities in the Americas— was born with many expectations on its shoulders, and its origin can be no other than the desire shared by a variety of 1. OUR OBJECTIVES, METHODOLOGY, initiatives and organizations that seek to coincide with other collective projects and which basically reclaim STUDY AREA AND SCOPE the role of the communities as leading actors in their n the same line, the objective of this project is to own process. This project was thus made possible, first- identify the changes in migration patterns from ly, thanks to the collaboration between various Com- IMorelos to Minnesota over the past four decades in munity Foundations and organizations of the American order to characterize this migratory flow, allowing or- continent gathered within the Building Broader Com- ganizations and communities to build bonds with the munities in the Americas initiative —BBCA—, which migrants, based on a better understanding of the mi- understood the importance of getting to know and gration phenomenon, while evidencing its causes and acknowledging one another: an interest that arises impacts in both the communities of origin and of desti- from the powerful bonds and networks built by Latin nation. Finally, this project also seeks to strengthen the American migrants in the United States and Canada, binational relations between Mexican and U.S. commu- which has led us to attempt to learn about the com- nities and organizations that are already working to- munities of origin of those who