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Title Devoted abandonment : the children left behind by parental emigration in Ecuador
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Author Rae-Espinoza, Heather
Publication Date 2006
Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO
Devoted Abandonment:
The Children Left Behind by
Parental Emigration in Ecuador
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
in
Anthropology
by
Heather Rae-Espinoza
Committee in charge:
Professor Steven M. Parish, Chair Professor Michael Cole Professor Lawrence Palinkas Professor David Pedersen Professor Melford E. Spiro
2006 © Copyright
Heather Rae-Espinoza, 2006
All rights reserved. The dissertation of Heather Rae-Espinoza is approved and is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm:
CHAIR
University of California, San Diego
2006
iii Dedication
To all those who taught me that the experience of abandonment is socially constructed.
To the memory of Corona and Biela, my fellow travelers throughout this project, who ironically both died of separation anxiety at its completion. Their barks are echoed throughout this work.
iv Table of Contents
Signature Page iii
Dedication iv
Table of Contents v
List of Figures vi
Preface vii
Acknowledgements viii
Vita xii
Abstract xv
Part I: Setting, Reflexivity & Methods for Urban Anthropology 1 Chapter 1 — The Anthropology of a City 3 Chapter 2 — The Anthropologist in a City 27 Chapter 3 — Methodology for a City 39
Part II: Context & Diversity of Migration Experiences 79 Chapter 4 — A Culture of Migration: Ecuadorian History 80 Chapter 5 — A Garden of Orchids: Family & Neighborhood in Guayaquil 114 Chapter 6 — Uprooted Children: Experiences of Migration 165
Part III: Responses to Parental Emigration 214 Chapter 7 — Devoted Sacrifice: Parental Emigration & Cultural Learning 216 Chapter 8 — Family Feud: Parental Emigration & Culturally Constituted Defense Mechanisms 295 Chapter 9 — To Each His Own: Parental Emigration & Individual Defense Mechanisms 370
Conclusion 459
Epilogue 471
Appendix A: Informant Interview Schedules 477
Appendix B: Respondent Interview Schedules 487
References 498
v List of Figures
Figure 1: Map of Ecuador 8
Figure 2: Neighborhood Schematic 11
Figure 3: Summary of Instruments 73
Figure 4: Colon Statue 87
Figure 5: Map of Las Orquídeas Sub-section 117
Figure 6: Mendoza-Cardosa Kinship Chart 152
Figure 7: Individual Defense Pairs 383
Figure 8: Typology of Reactions to Parental Emigration 467
vi Preface
In order to protect the confidentiality of the subjects of this research, I changed the names of all informants and respondents along with the names of certain places. I have not changed identifying information because it would confound the role of context as it influences the children’s psychological adaptations and social adjustments to parental emigration. I preserved the names of fellow scholars and others who assist migrants in
Ecuador to thank them for their theoretical inspiration, generous encouragement, and practical assistance.
I have included the Spanish citations from their original published work and research participants’ statements in footnotes and parenthetical phrases in the text to preserve their words and to avoid any inaccuracies from my translations. When no exact
English translation was appropriate, I italicized Spanish words (other than proper nouns).
The one exception to this is the word “consentir.” Even though there was no exact
English translation for the word, I substituted the English word “consent” after outlining the distinctions between the two terms. I chose this method because of the grammatical complications for the reader with continued use of the Spanish term.
vii Acknowledgements
This research has not just meant the fulfillment of requirements for my doctorate, but the fulfillment of unforeseen ambitions. In the field, I found perspective, confidence, patience, and acceptance. I could never have accomplished this without the precious assistance I received from faculty, scholars, and friends, which are most certainly overlapping categories.
The opportunity would not have been possible without the generous grants that I received throughout the planning, researching, and writing phases. I thank the Bristol
Fellowship for funding exploratory research and the University of California, San Diego
President’s Pre-Doctoral Humanities Fellowship for funding the preparation and writing of this research. I am also indebted to the Fulbright Commission, National Science
Foundation, Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies, and the F. G. Bailey
Fellowship for supporting my fieldwork. These grants were possible because of the assistance of the administration and my faculty at the Department of Anthropology.
I am unsure how I became so fortunate to receive such an enthusiastic, involved, and supportive committee. I am indebted to Steve Parish, who was not only a dissertation chair, but also a diligent guide through coursework, grants, and professional preparation. Although I did not intend to work with children, his admirable research demonstrated to me the value that the study of children can have for understanding culture and psychodynamic processes. I thank him for his careful consideration of my work, thoughtful critiques, and introducing me to stimulating material. His patience while I experimented on tangents and rehashed data options is the only reason why this dissertation could reach the claims that it has.
viii I would also like to thank Mel Spiro for his challenging feedback and belief in my potential. He waded through stacks of drafts, even when I had a tendency to put a newly revised version in his mailbox before he could review the first version. He has allowed
“do-overs” when I missed the mark, and encouraged me when I arrived close to the target. His expertise in scrutinizing psychodynamic processes is reflected in the development of a number of arguments in this dissertation. In our meetings, he fairly questioned any claim I made, which has improved this dissertation as well as my analytic skills as a teacher and a researcher.
The rest of my committee has also been invaluable. I thank Michael Cole for his feedback on child research and David Pedersen for comments on the final version of my dissertation. I also thank Roy D’Andrade and Larry Palinkas for help in the formation of this research project. Roy allowed me to gain confidence in my research through the
Psychodynamic Seminar and Larry Palinkas helped me to connect with a foster care program in the United States at the Children’s Hospital for comparison purposes. These experiences were invaluable for the formation of this project.
I am beholden to Doug Raybeck who found me floundering in architectural engineering and life at Hamilton College. I appreciate his dedication as I have continued to rely on him long after graduating. The tab of six-packs must be rather high at this point. He has provided gracious guidance in coursework, introductions to scholars, and encouragement for presenting my research for years.
I found beneficial audience feedback in presenting my research in a number of forums both in the United States and in Ecuador. I thank the Society for Psychological
Anthropology, Society for Cross-Cultural Research, and the American Anthropological
ix Association for providing such forums, along with the Facultad Latinoamericana de
Ciencias Sociales, the Ecuadorian Fulbright Commission, and Servicio Jesuita de
Emigrantes. I owe a debt of gratitude to Pablo Cozzaglio for being my psychoanalysis to
Spanish translator for the presentations in Ecuador. In addition, my students at
California State University, Long Beach have helped me to clarify my research.
Colleagues in Guayaquil aided my fieldwork as well. The Asociación Solidaridad
Internacional de Emigrantes Ecuatorianos kindly opened their lives and work to me.
Chris Garces provided entree into the intelligentsia of the nation, which proved to be invaluable for the development of this research. Along with necessary research breaks, my co-Fulbright Scholars in Guayaquil offered encouragement to call possible participants, to knock on doors, and to talk to strangers. These scholars, along with my dogs Corona and Biela, were fellow travelers and sounding boards for adjusting to surprisingly odd and surprisingly normal experiences.
I would also like to thank my brother-in-law, Gerard Martorano, whose pride at my accomplishments has motivated me to accomplish more. When I lost my sister, she left me with a brother who has never wavered in his promise to watch out for me, including proof-reading a version of this dissertation. I also thank Mrs. Wilson, without whom I may not even have a high school diploma, let alone the subsequent ones. Her offer to drive me to her school so that I could avoid a tarnished academic past is the reason I learned that academic achievement was worth the effort. In my brief stint in foster care, I found a foster mother in a teacher. In addition, I would like to thank my
Ecuadorian in-laws, whose humor and concern for me in the field provided a foundation
x for my research. I never knew I could laugh so hard in a second language. These people confirm the validity of fictive kin as reality.
After interaction-filled and extensively planned fieldwork, writing-up research can be a confusing and isolating time. I thank the Department of Anthropology at the
University of California, San Diego for their high expectations, especially Bambi Chapin who would show me the light at the end of the tunnel. I also thank the Anthro-Pub goers for their tolerance of my egotistic ramblings about my research.
This research would never have been possible without the kind welcome I received from numerous Ecuadorian families, schools, organizations, and government officials that allowed me to conduct my research. I especially thank the family and school referred to as the “Mendozas” and “The Muppet Academy” for not tiring of seeing me on a daily basis. Those who fear working with children are missing the joy of innocence, honesty, and humor. While I was there to find data, I also found friendships, generosity, and sincerity that I never expected.
xi Vita
EDUCATION: University of California, San Diego 2006 Ph.D. Anthropology Dissertation: Devoted Abandonment: The Children Left Behind by Parental Emigration in Ecuador Fields: Psychological Anthropology, Adaptation, Children, Migration, Latin America, Modernity, & Change 2002 M.A. Anthropology Thesis: “The Use of Symbols to Resolve Intra-psychic Conflict.”
Hamilton College 1999 B.A., Honors Major: Cultural Psychology, Minors: Math & Spanish Thesis: “Family Structure & Motivation in Puerto Rican Children”
School for International Training 1998 Program in Culture and Development Independent Study: “Cultural Context & Learning in Güinadel”
HONORS & GRANTS: 2006 National Paper Prize, Society for Cross-Cultural Research
2004-5 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant
2003-4 Fulbright Commission—Institute of International Education
2003-4 Center for Iberian & Latin American Studies Dissertation Grant
2003-4 F. G. Bailey Fellowship
2000-5 President’s Pre-Doctoral Humanities Fellowship, U.C.S.D.
2001 Research Grant from the Civic Collaborative, U.C.S.D.
1999 Bristol Fellowship: Prioritization, Meaning, & Repression: The Big Wave
1998 Dean's Office Research Grant, Hamilton College
1997 Robert Bankert, Jr. Prize Scholarship, Hamilton College
1996 Francis Gilbert Prize, Hamilton College
1995 Regent's Scholarship, Hamilton College
1995 National Merit Scholar
xii PEDAGOGICAL EXPERIENCE: 2005-Present Lecturer, Human Development Department, C.S.U., Long Beach Courses: Approaches to Children, Cultural Foundations
2005 Lecturer, Anthropology Department, U.C.S.D. Course: Migration & Identity
2000-3 Teaching Assistant, Anthropology Department, U.C.S.D. Courses: Psychological Anthropology; Anthropology of Education; Language, Community, and Ideology; Indigenous Media Practices in Latin America; Language and Society; and World Prehistory
1998-9 Teaching Assistant, Spanish Department, Hamilton College
1998-9 Nationally Certified Tutor of ESL, Mohawk Valley Refugee Center
1998-9 Co-Teacher of Social Studies for Self-Esteem, Kids Kan XL
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES: 2006 AAA Programming Committee, Society for Psychological Anthropology
2006 Student Liaison, Society for Cross-Cultural Research
2006 Advisory Board, Working Group on the Global Child
2005-Present Editorial Board, After Culture: Emergent Anthropologies
2001-3 Visual History Supervisor, Immigration Museum of New Americans
PUBLICATIONS: Forthcoming “Parents without Children.” In Parents in Cross-Cultural Perspective. D.F. Lancy, ed. Global and Cross-Cultural Psychology. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Forthcoming “Interpretaciones Regeneradas de Emigrantes en Guayaquil.” Íconos. Forthcoming “Interpretaciones Regeneradas de Emigrantes en Guayaquil.” In Normativación Cívica en Guayaquil. X. Andrade, ed. Guayaquil: Alban Borja.
Requested “A Culture of Migration: The Ecuadorian Context.” Migraciones Internacionales. Submitted “Methodological Techniques for the Psychological Evaluation of the Children Left Behind by Emigration.” Cross-Cultural Research.
xiii PAPER PRESENTATIONS: 2006 American Anthropological Association, San José Organizer: Bridging Human Development & Migration Literatures “The Global Child in Context: A Typology of Responses to Emigration”
2006 Family Research Consortium, Spokane “A Typology of Responses to Parental Emigration in Ecuador”
2006 Society for Cross-Cultural Research, Savannah “Methodological Techniques for the Children Left Behind”
2006 North Central College, Naperville, Ill. “How Anthropology Can Address Contemporary Social Problems”
2005 Society for Psychological Anthropology, San Diego Panel Co-Organizer: Competing Conceptions of Children “Devoted Abandonment: Conflicting Contexts for Parental Emigration”
2004 American Anthropological Association, Atlanta Invited Panel: Engaging Psychoanalysis for Psychodynamic Anthropology “Devoted Abandonment: Debate over Reactions to Parental Emigration”
2004 La Semana del Emigrante, Solidaridad Internacional de Emigrantes Forum: Emigración e Inmigración desde una Óptica de Paz “Consejos Prácticos para Familias Re-estructuradas”
2004 Latin American Studies Association, Estudios Ecuatorianos “Los Niños Dejados Detrás: Reacciones a la Emigración ante Schengen”
2004 Fulbright Forum, Quito “Los Niños Dejados Detrás: Reacciones a la Emigración en Guayaquil”
2004 Fulbright Conference for Andean Countries, Lima “The Children Left Behind: Reactions to Parental Emigration”
2003 Society for Cross-Cultural Research, Charleston Panel: Parenting Across Cultures Chairs: M. & C. Ember, Human Relations Area Files “The Effect of Family Structure on Need Achievement”
2002 Life History Seminar, University of California, San Diego “I Can’t Complain: Life History of A Mexican Sojourner’s Wife”
1998 Levitt Scholar, Hamilton College “Fieldwork in the Fourth Grade: Discovering Yourself in Others”
xiv ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION
Devoted Abandonment:
The Children Left Behind by
Parental Emigration in Ecuador
by
Heather Rae-Espinoza
Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology
University of California, San Diego 2006
Professor Steven M. Parish, Chair
This research addresses the repercussions of parental emigration on children in
Ecuador, which can be used to construct appropriate therapeutic methods. I examine: 1) the mobilization of cultural values relevant to separation, 2) how reactions to distress emerge and develop, 3) how values influence reactions to distress, and 4) the efficacy these reaction for psychological adaptation and social adjustment.
The first part provides an overview of the context in which I acquired this data
(Chapter 1), the perceptions of the researcher (Chapter 2), and the methodology for acquiring this data (Chapter 3).
Part II provides a context for understanding the children’s different responses to parental emigration in Part III. Chapter 4 describes the historical context of these separations. Constructed from informant data and an ethnography of a family that stays,
Chapter 5 describes the daily life of the Ecuadorian family, which includes emigration. In
xv Chapter 6, I describe the variability of experiences that children of émigrés face in just one family.
With the children’s different responses to parental emigration, Part III critiques the strict application of attachment theory. Chapter 7 addresses children from an Andean village who accept their parent’s departure as evidence of devotion. Cultural learning normalizes a separation that an ethnocentric use of attachment theory would see as problematic. While theory often views socialization as unified, Chapter 8 shows that value internalization is more complicated. With exposure to conflicting valuations of
émigrés, these children created culturally constituted defense mechanisms from available values to re-code their parents’ departure as acceptable. Chapter 9 demonstrates that socialization is not directional. The children negotiate individual defenses to their situations.
In addition to commenting on attachment research, the conclusion comments on urban anthropology and cultures in change. I also suggest a combination of cognitive and psychoanalytic theory to create a typology of adaptations including cultural learning, culturally constituted defense mechanisms, and individual defense mechanisms. These three processes address the kind of distress, context of adaptation, and role of social approval. In the epilogue, I address the political and economic atmosphere and what this forebodes for familial reunification both in Ecuador and in the diaspora.
xvi Part I: Setting, Reflexivity, & Methods for Urban Anthropology
This first part of this dissertation provides an overview of the context in which I acquired this data, the perceptions of the researcher, and the methodology for acquiring this data. Chapter 1 describes the complexity of an urban field site with extensive perceived disparity and actual class variability. This serves to locate the fieldwork. I address reflexivity in Chapter 2 in order to clarify the manner that the fieldwork participants perceived the researcher. This information is not meant to describe the researcher, but to describe the way that the perception of the researcher may have influenced the data. After describing the location and perception of the researcher, I address the research methodology itself. My methods included instruments and projective measures for informants and respondents, along with data analysis and presentation. This information offers a framework to my research before I address the experience of emigration in Part II.
1 2
Part II provides the historical context of these situations in Chapter 4, describes typical family values in Chapter 5, and provides an example of the variability in emigration experience in Chapter 6. This background will provide a context for understanding the children’s variable responses to parental emigration in Part III.
Part III presents these responses to parental emigration based on cultural context, social approval, and home environment. In Chapter 7, the children accept parental emigration as positive through cultural learning in a small indigenous village. Chapter 8 and 9 present children in an urban location who negotiate a diverse cultural context of values on parental émigrés. Those in Chapter 8 adjust to parental emigration through manipulating culturally constituted defense mechanisms to find social approval. In comparison, the children in Chapter 9 adapted to parental emigration through individual responses to the situation of parental emigration that sometimes resolve their conflict.
I conclude the dissertation in chapter 10 by suggesting a re-focus of research on parental separation, along with methods for urban anthropology and research in cultures in change. Based on the responses discussed in Part III, I suggest a combination of cognitive and psychoanalytic tendencies to depict the dynamism in the typology of cultural learning, culturally constituted defense mechanisms, and individual defense mechanisms. In the epilogue, I address the macro concerns of the current political and economic situation of Ecuador and the micro concerns of what this atmosphere forebodes for familial reunification both with returnees in Ecuador and in the diaspora abroad. Chapter 1 — The Anthropology of a City
CONSTRUCTION OF THE FIELD
An introduction to the field-site for my research on émigrés and their families in
Ecuador cannot be encapsulated with a map, zooming in from a known location on the globe to the place where my informants lived, laughed, and loved. Perhaps I have not fulfilled the well-known rite of passage (Clifford 1997: 193) by conducting fieldwork in an exotic location, “fraught with fear of unknown perils” (Kuklick 1997: 53). I did not conduct the traditional fieldwork on an atoll where the peoples’ uniformity is highlighted in their comparison to the uniformity of my peoples. While the resistance to modern fieldwork has waned in the discipline, it is still necessary to specify the characteristics of my field-site as the anthropology of a city, not anthropology conducted in a city. I did not artificially segment a portion of the larger populace to create a “village” within the urban sprawl for myself to study. I did not want to cordon off a few blocks of Guayaquil into an organized, controlled and manageable unit because of the inability to represent
3 4 accurately the variegated, complex, and fluid experiences that foment the residents’ identities. I wanted to conduct research that encompasses the entire city. This concern is similar to Passaro’s hesitancy “to turn a single homeless shelter into an epistemologically controlled unit like a ‘Mediterranean’ village” when she worked with the homeless in New
York City (1997: 151). My fieldwork attempts to address Guayaquil as a whole because social perceptions influence norms, values, and ideas across gender, race, class, and geographic boundaries.
In our fieldwork as anthropologists, as well as in our writing, we have long been oriented to look for the repetitive, the persistent, the normative or “durable forms”
(Moore 1987, 1993). To fit this expectation, the subjects of ethnographies often are represented selectively or, worse, important characteristics are lopped off for this
Procrustean bed. “Even when the collectivity has not been defined in cultural or ethnic terms, we tend to try to identify some parameters for the community form” (Malkki 1997:
90). The frame of reference for my study includes all of Guayaquil, even though I have not conducted research with the entire city. This means that I have constructed the city through the eyes of my research participants, as they define the different areas of the city.
Delineating my field-site in its urban locale is not the only complication for the parameters of my research. The topic of transnational families creates difficulties for describing this field-site as well. In addition to the expansion of background implicit in any work with transnational families, the transitory nature of émigré populations and the lack of a closed geographic designation complicates field-site description. Malkki (1997:
89) experienced obstacles in the justification of researching refugee populations because they are seen as out of their “natural setting.” She writes, “Refugee status tends 5 automatically to be treated as an unnatural, exceptional, spiritually risky, and unhealthy state of being” (ibid.). As with other great apes studied in captivity, anthropological research on humans tends not to focus on temporary locations. The people are seen as not having an existence based on set rules, norms, and values since the grouping has not come about “naturally.” I conducted my research with a transitory, temporary, and disjointed population. No physical boundary determined who would and who would not be relevant to my study; rather, the integration of this population into larger economic and relational structures of global populations determined its boundaries. Like Brown’s
(1991) ethnography on Haitians in Brooklyn, my fieldwork with multiple locations is
“situated less by a discrete place, a field enter[ed] and inhabit[ed] for a time, than by an interpersonal relationship—a mixture of observation, dialogue, apprenticeship, and friendship” (Clifford 1997: 188). Similar to my inclusion of the research participant’s perspectives on the city as a whole when relevant to their constructions of values, I have included perspectives on those outside the city who are seen as part of their daily lives.
Even though research with transitory, temporary, and disjointed populations signifies a difference in the construction of the field, the people still behave and believe based on the set of cultural values they have internalized. Following anthropological research, this project exhibits how people acquire and manipulate the existing cultural values found in Ecuadorian society. As immigration research has shown, human movements entail predictable motivations, behaviors, and interpersonal relationships.
The difficulty of constructing this atypical field-site is worthwhile because of the value in observing cultural innovation and negotiation. Innovation and negotiation occurs 6 because the longstanding set of values for adapting to the environment are unsuitable for their new “natural setting” after the macro-social phenomenon of emigration.
Even though these individuals are not physically in contact, there are ties that bind. Myerhoff (1975) outlines the concept of “accidental communitas” based on the example of Woodstock. With this historical event, similar experiences bring the individuals together, creating a sense of public culture that places them into a particular period, even though they may not have been associated otherwise. This description of how random associations can be intrinsic to identity—rather than associations through well-established formats such as kinship ties and social institutions—fits well with the
émigré population. The lack of purposeful and directed associations between the émigrés in no way limits the conclusions that can be drawn from investigating the lives, experiences, and concepts that the émigrés and their families have in common. The group of émigrés’ separation from normal groupings defines the émigrés as a unit, rather than their union as a geographic unit itself.
I do not see the atypical field-site as a hindrance to my study but a fortuitous opportunity. My research will not only allow readers to understand an instance of the interaction between culture and psychology in the realm of child development, but will have broader applied implications as well. The research addresses the outcomes of international policy and macro-economic change on individuals’ constructions of cultural values. I hope to provide more than a case study of emigration and globalization. Part of the goal of this ethnography is to demonstrate how transitory, incoherent, and instable field-sites, which may be seen as poor choices for anthropological insight, can in fact elucidate further the dimensions to Benedict’s (1934: 24) arc of human possibilities. This 7 endeavor can speak to the dynamism involved in the acquisition, retention, and alteration of culture values, expanding beyond what we have learned from stable analyses of particular tribes, neighborhoods, or institutions.
THE TOPOGRAPHY OF CLASS IN A DEVELOPING CITY
Guayaquileños’ lives were not segmented socially and conceptually, and therefore any representation of their lives as such would be inaccurate. This multi-sited fieldwork touched upon each of the diverse areas of the city. I lived, worked, and mingled in all the areas described below. I came to know the city well through public transportation attempts and being dragged along (sometimes willingly, sometimes reluctantly) in the parade of SUV’s to elite social functions. Each area had their own representation of themselves and of others’ selves, that variably mapped onto the representations others held, my perceptions, and actuality.
Lutz’s ethnography of Fayetteville, South Carolina (2001) in part inspired this description of Guayaquil, the largest city in Ecuador and a key shipping port on the country’s Pacific coast (See Figure 1). Like Fayetteville, Guayaquil is a place both
“familiar and strange.” Some parts are predictable, others surprising. All residents know some parts, most ignore other parts. With the current urban regeneration in Guayaquil, like Fayetteville, “the physical view of the city for any newcomer is almost always preceded by an imaginary one, and it is less pretty” (ibid.: 7). Because of its size, previous lack of tourist attractions, and nationally-infamous violent crime rates, the positive aspects of the city are often unknown. When beginning fieldwork, several residents of the capital city of Quito attempted to dissuade me from researching in Guayaquil because 8 of the inevitable danger they foresaw. Even though most foreigners I met in Quito had been robbed there at least once, people believed that the capital city was safer than
FIGURE 1: MAP OF ECUADOR 9
Guayaquil. Few tourists, especially those from the U.S., arrive in Guayaquil because they heed the ominous guidebook warnings about the city as a place with “a reputation for crime, clutter, and commerce” (Dietric 2005: 263). Yet, the validity of the cautionary view of Guayaquil varies depending on where a person finds him- or herself in the city.
Quito was predictable: I was automatically given travel agency business cards and spoken to in broken English. In Guayaquil, there was no set script of how to deal with foreigners, except perhaps for the occasional Mormon missionary. Foreigners alternately received confused surprise from locals as to what they could possibly want, or received treatment like everyone else because no other script for behaviors existed.
Living in Ecuador, I came to realize that the label “developing country” is not merely a conceptual term to highlight its contrast with “developed countries.” The country has experienced dramatic structural, social, and political changes in the short span of when I began my fieldwork in 1998 to when I concluded my most recent research in
2004. Sparsely populated with grimy buses and rickety taxis, eight-lane highways appear concrete slab by concrete slab with protruding steel tie-rods. The tie-rods allude to the future slabs that will eventually blanket the dirt road underneath. I watched workers painstakingly whitewash bridges that seemed to end uncompleted mid-air just days before. Almost immediately, the bridges acquired a reputation as a locus for car-jacking fully equipped sports utility vehicles. The shipping-port of Guayaquil is the site of fast- paced, lopsided development. The development and influx of new products and peoples with globalization has led to a redefinition of boundaries, meanings, and identities as different parts of the city differentially experience change. 10
To match the new coat of pavement and cobblestone, the xenophilic mayor renamed all the streets. He assigned numbers to the streets based on how far it was from its parallel north-south or east-west center axis of the new city. However, some residents have been hesitant to join the mayor in his fervor at accepting the disjuncture with the past. In the wealthier communities, the new numberings have been disregarded because of a disinclination to change the addresses on the engraved plaques, reminiscent of hacienda life, announcing the family names at their estate entrances. In the disenfranchised communities, the new numberings have been seen as cumbersome: referring to a road as “Little Passage 17B North-West” with no indication which subsequent road the mayor deemed significant enough for an 18, rather than the next letter, or even “Passage,” “Street,” “Little Street,” “Avenue,” or “Foot-Path” is an unwieldy means of providing directions. Navigating requires deciphering the connection between the historical name, the street number, and the name people used—often implicating more than three distinct monikers.
Even though the mayor’s attempts to unify and to organize his new city through street names has been ignored, the orientation of the city on these north-south and east- west axes is a useful method for describing the true variability in the ever-expanding geography of the two-million-resident metropolis (See representation in Figure 2). As you approach the city on these expanding, freshly paved roads, the indelible economic disparity of Latin America quickly becomes a tangible reality. The wide-ranging contrasts in the architectural styles of homes, in the modernity of vehicles driven, and in the shopping options available shows the vast heterogeneity of daily life throughout
Guayaquil. However, the class distinctions that outsiders may observe do not map onto 11
Las Orquídeas
La Alborada
La Kennedy
Los Ceibos Centro Samborondón
El Centenario
Los Suburbios
La Floresta
FIGURE 2: NEIGHBORHOOD SCHEMATIC the perceptions of the city’s residents. This description demonstrates the error in the frequent class dichotomization of the city’s residents, and perhaps even throughout Latin
America, of people into either affluent or deprived categories. Pedersen (2002) acknowledged this error in bifurcation of classes into the coffee oligarchy and poor peasants in El Salvador. Different actors define their position and the position of others into these categories through varying sets of values and relationships.
Entering the city from the east, one observes breathtaking wealth in expansive gated communities in Samborondón. The homes themselves seem not to belong in the city with their ostentatious Romanesque architecture. The ubiquitous in-ground pools at these mansions and formidable manufactured lakes in gated communities speak to the prestige of living by the water, rather than the realistic Ecuadorian apprehension to standing water because of the spread of mosquito-born diseases like malaria. These gated 12 communities’ inclusion of infectious diseases and the exclusion of some Guayaquileños illustrate an ironic idea of safety. Uniformed guards at electric gates with cameras, phones, and walkie-talkies protect the homes against intruders. Other communities throughout Guayaquil emulate the actual security measures in this community. However, there are often great differences between the original and the imitation because of the greater focus on their visibility as a class indicator rather than their function for safety.
As Caldiera (2000: 295) points out for São Paulo, “the more ostensibly secure and enclosed the property, the higher its status.” This “aesthetic of security” is a recurring theme in the conceptual relationship between Samborondón and other areas of Guayaquil.
The residents of these gated communities drive through the meandering roads with manicured lawns out of the electric, guarded, and surveillance-videoed gates to the main parkway. A common route is to drive a mile up the road past the median, u-turn, drive a mile back and veer into the shopping mall across the street from the house. No matter how close to the gated community, anything outside the gate is not contiguous.
Children learn this perception early on. The school bus drivers coax them to wait to dispose of garbage out the window until after leaving the gates. While most of Guayaquil is littered with Kentucky Fried Chickens and Burger Kings, the consumer options are different in Samborondón—it boasts one of the six McDonald’s1 in the city and other fine dining, such as sushi bars and nuvo cuisine. Smaller Italian and Greek restaurants are located in the food court of the shopping mall outlined by palm trees. This mall hosts a panoply of small locales such as impulse-purchase boutiques, unique gift stores, and
1 The fact that McDonald’s are rare and include U.S. toys with Happy Meals makes the restaurant an indicator of First World class status. The few franchise locations make some believe that the company has only chosen to launch itself in areas that are of higher class. I do not know the actual way the franchises choose locations. 13 specialized services like invitation embossers. The mall’s designation “Between Rivers” not only highlights the aquatic delineation of the community from the main part of
Guayaquil over the bridge to the west, and, the poorer communities over the bridge to the east, but also highlights the need for affluent shopping tastes before the community even had a name.
These insular gated “communities” are referred to as Samborondón2, even though
Samborondón was actually the name for a diametrically-contrasting small, impoverished farming community ten miles further east. This was not always the community’s name.
As the amalgam of individually named developments propagated, their community began to be referred to alternatively as “on the way to Samborondón” and “La Puntilla,” in tribute to the denomination of the first such establishment of reputable homes in the area.
When “La Puntilla” became an entity unto itself, not to be confused with the other, evermore stately communities deserving of their own renown, the area appropriated the name “Samborondón.” Confusion is rare because the unstintingly catered, wide-open bar, deejay-ed birthday bashes will always be located amidst the gated communities. The partygoers will not think that the soiree is at the ramshackle homes of the downtrodden.
In fact, the residents of the original Samborondón rarely enter the realm of cognizance of the gated communities. The residents of the gated communities do not see the nearby poor as neighbors, but as a quick, efficient source of servants for the growing mansions, especially in light of the dwindling number of geographically-close indigenous peoples perceived as respectable.3
2I could not find a semantic meaning for the name. 3 Crain (1996) described how the elite of Quito would search the nearby Andean countryside for Quimsa women for their perceived suitability as servants. Guayaquileños also have the idea that some indigenous 14
While the people of Samborondón are rarely cognizant of what the lives of others beyond their gates entail—outside of romanticized images of stoic individuals with arduous, simplistic aims contrasting with the demonized images of sociopathic individuals with malicious, devious intentions—, those beyond the gates are cognizant of what they believe happens in Samborondón. As such, I compare the other communities to
Samborondón because the residents of other communities compare themselves to it. The elite community is a symbol: convergence demonstrates one’s accomplishments and condescension demonstrates what has impeded one’s accomplishments.
Noble, nameless Samborondón sprang up like a weed as the rich got richer. It has left the previously grandiose community, Los Ceibos, at the west end of the east-west axis of the city dwarfed in awe of how wealthy one must be in order to be rich now.
Innumerable Samborondón families once lived in the long-established community of Los
Ceibos to the west and still maintain contact with those left behind. Some families were left behind in Los Ceibos because their fortunes were unfortunately too stunted to feed their upward economic mobility to Samborondón. The large homes on sinuous, hilly streets of Los Ceibos look slightly worn, but mostly crowded, in comparison to Samborondón. The lack of space for architectural growth in Los Ceibos to demonstrate monetary growth provoked the exodus to Samborondón. While Los Ceibos lacks the haute fare, there is still a
McDonald’s (which marks upward mobility throughout the city) and a mall designated for the named community. When appropriately positioned, some blocks seek economic legitimacy through turning their streets into private drives. They erect small shoulder-
people are suitable for housework and others are not. With the shortage of “traditional” indigenous peoples who would be properly humble, those in the new Samborandón often seek servants in the old Samborondón. 15 high gates manned with an officious looking security guard on a wobbly stool. The guard is unable to call the homes to verify the visitors (as in Samborondón). Most of the time a person with the appropriate class indicators can gain entry to visit a fictitious family, supposedly enclosed in the area. Security measures in Los Ceibos are to symbolize a value with their existence rather than to prevent a pernicious threat with their function.
The entrances on the east-west axis of the city contrast sharply with those on the north-south and illustrate the wide class disparity. Reaching Las Orquídeas at the northward entrance to Guayaquil and reaching Samborondón via taxi both required a substantial amount of arguing for an appropriate fare. Although just as isolated from most points of taxi-route origin in the night club-dotted northern mid-town, the tedium was not due to the inflation of geographical distance. I had to argue for a fair fare because of social reasons very distant from each other.
A taxi-driver expects extra pay for a fare to Samborondón because their client must have extra to spare if they know someone within those homes—the driver argues for a subsidy for the needy. Part of this argument is that the cabbie would never be able to find a return fare because everyone has personal vehicles at the very least, if not chauffeurs. On the other hand, a taxi-driver expects extra pay for a fare to Las Orquídeas because of the risk of car-jacking in the area when looking for fares—the driver argues for hazard-pay. Part of this argument is that the cabbie would never be able to find a return fare because the residents here take the twenty-five-cent-fare buses.
When I informed people from the wealthier communities that I was going to Las
Orquídeas, they joked that I was going halfway to Quito. This shows how certain people 16 see Las Orquídeas as so far off the social map that the closest place worthy of mention was the capital city five hours away in a BMW M3, or nine hours on the bus.
While many tourists and families visit the Historical Park in Samborondón, few visit the Botanical Gardens in Las Orquídeas. There is no McDonald’s, nor a shopping mall as in other parts of the city. There is not even a strip-mall or a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
Las Orquídeas has neither destinations nor distinctions. The pungent gully that separates
Las Orquídeas from the adjacent crime-infested Vergeles is not seen as a demarcating line between good and bad as the rivers in Samborondón. However, what the neighborhood does enigmatically share with Samborondón is its testament to the city’s rampant development, fear of crime, and disparate economic mobility.
The homes themselves speak aesthetically to all three of these concerns. In a decade’s lapse, once desolate lots and dirt roads are now wall-to-wall homes with iron- barred windows and relentlessly speed-bumped streets. While all the residents bought their plot of land and modest 500-square-foot, two-bedroom homes at the same time and at around the same price, the homes now differ markedly.4 With both insufficient space and economic means to create an entirely new community to demonstrate their growing wealth, upward economic mobility literally translated into upward construction in Las
Orquídeas. Some of the cinder block cookie-cutter homes have expanded forward to gated garages, paying tribute to beat-up pick-up trucks; backwards to tiled patios for secluded gatherings rather than traditional communal block parties; and upwards to three- and four-story picture-windowed high-rises, which gloat their prominent stature with no
4 I will more fully describe how the distinctions between the homes affect the relations between the residents in Part II. 17 need for bars on the upper stories. Traditional Ecuadorian architectural styles exacerbate these distinctions between homes. Since, theoretically, the neighbor’s home should adjoin the sides of one’s own home, people conventionally do not include windows on the two sides of the house and only paint the front of the house. Frequently the homes next to the looming Lego block-like towers can only express their security desires with a feeble fence of splintery slats adjoined precariously by rusty wires. These fences only highlight their homes’ window-less state next door to a tower’s unpainted sides indicating their inability to keep up with the neighbors. There are a number of homes in different stages of repair that range from the skeleton home originally purchased to homes with rusty tie-rods and stairs announcing yet-to-be-constructed floors, like a coming attraction.
On the opposite end of the city from Las Orquídeas, the southern port of La
Floresta parallels Las Orquídeas in many ways: there is no destination here for anyone but the homeowners of the modest community (meaning no shopping other than small local dispensaries and pharmacies). The homeowners have bars on their windows to secure their homes from crime in the bordering neighborhood of Guasmo. However, even though both have barred windows, the homes in La Floresta did not exhibit strong economic distinctions from each other as the homes of Las Orquídeas. The original, two- story condominium-style, rather than small block homes, prevented the expansion that allows the external expression of their intra-community economic differences. The only widespread home improvement was broken coke bottles concreted onto the tops of bordering walls that warn criminals to enter at their own peril. The homes have appropriated regimented equality from the nearby naval base. For instance, residents used joint parking lots rather than shrine-like garages to pay homage to their automobiles. 18
They expressed their economic differences internally in the homes, perhaps to avoid announcing their assets to the internationally infamous gangs in neighboring Guasmo that fill their ranks with U.S. deportees. The Guasmo gangs neighboring La Floresta are more menacing than those in Vergeles neighboring Las Orquídeas—perhaps another exhibition of an international status implying legitimacy, efficiency, and quality of product.
Moving northward from La Floresta, traveling towards the center of the city from the south, is an area its residents refer to as Los Suburbios, but this area is not referred to as such on any map. On maps, the mayor has arbitrarily subdivided this extremely impoverished urban area into unknown neighborhoods. I found this out trying to navigate there, which only compounded the unshakable assumption that the professionally dressed white woman, with an accent, was clearly far from her intended destination. Even those who I did know in Los Suburbios were reluctant to provide directions in the area—they believed that whoever I was visiting should insist upon meeting me at the bus stop so that I would never have to walk alone. Although I felt less threatened wandering there with my dog-eared notebook than with my shopping purchases in midtown, the residents did believe that Los Suburbios was satiated with looming predators waiting to pick me off because of my clear distinction from the herd.
The forlorn, frail octogenarian eagerly cajoling the anthropologist to visit felt she would be remiss if she did not assure me that I will “most likely not be attacked” walking the two blocks from the bus. Yet, security concerns did not match this perceived threat.
In comparison with the aspiration to enclose more and more public space as one’s private fortress in the previously described communities, the people of Los Suburbios were expanding their private lives into the public purview. Children rambunctiously 19 played in the street with other children indiscriminately, and at whim; home welding businesses take place in the un-demarcated front yards. Future home-improvement is unlikely to be the erection of fences, with the impending plans to complete roofs, install indoor plumbing, or repair the gaps between rotting floorboards.
Frequently perceived class distinctions were irrelevant to objective differences.
The residents of Los Suburbios do not distinguish themselves by class from the sugar-cane homes of the shanty-towns. Moving further into the center from Las Orquídeas in the north, the residents of La Alborada similarly do not distinguish themselves from the prodigious manors of the gated communities. Their McDonald’s franchise, small strip- malls, and stool-lined walk-up counters as dining options validate such assertions. They have no true basis to understand how they actually compare to the gated communities.
They have no reason to visit Samborondón. They do have readily available data on how they contrast with the residents of the city’s poorer communities. The poorer residents visit
La Alborada on a daily basis. People from Las Orquídeas arrive during the week to bargain shop at dollar-stores for provisions and those from La Floresta wander this far north on the weekend to darkened saloons for nightlife.
Even though there is a great difference in self-perception, La Alborada does not differ significantly from the two poorer communities of Las Orquídeas and La Floresta in home construction. Un-manned wrought iron posts strung with padlocked chains at the entrance to some cul de sacs are the only ostensible security measures against the inimical menace. The menace could park their car on the entrance streets at most two-hundred feet away and walk right into the sets of homes. 20
These entrance streets are a mere block or so from a highly commercial, public domain where street vendors sell cheap wares such as one dollar Video CD’s and okley sunglasses during the day, and various Ecuadorian delicacies such as cheese-covered corn on the cob and fried-egg-topped hamburgers at night. The residents’ conceptions of being a “family neighborhood” so close to one of the most public and trafficked areas of the city were quixotic. The unfailing habit of the conscientious residents of the teetering houses to rinse off the concrete in front of their homes to prevent floating dust demonstrated the view of the space around their homes as private, even though the street vendors and their customers saw the area as public.
Unlike in Los Suburbios, residents believed I felt safe and at home here. However, their perceptions of what I should fear and what I should not contrasted with my actual sentiments. For example, the slightly demented, disowned uncle who slept on the ground in front of the family home facing my apartment did not frighten me. He always pleasantly said hello as he wearily hacked away at the weeds penetrating the cobblestones of the cul de sac, which others watered daily, to earn his keep. Yet, I did move in part because I felt unsafe here. The armed security guards who warily monitored my activities were the only protection between my bedroom window and a bank drive-thru. They always vulgarly “pssst”-ed at me—the Ecuadorian cat-call—as they lackadaisically leaned against the concrete bank perimeters, drinking beer, to earn their keep.
I moved towards the center to La Kennedy because the renter’s market there led to wider acceptance of my two dogs. Every other window had a “For Rent” sign for the part of their homes they no longer occupied. The diminished staff after the economic crisis and diminished family after the emigration exodus left a number of rooms open. 21
Sometimes a floor was sectioned off, or the previous servants’ quarters were remodeled into expensive furnished apartments, and then maids who lived elsewhere serviced them.
Personal security had been outsourced as well. Security changed from individual employ to a neighborhood-wide service—at night, rather than a security guard per home, one roved the neighborhood blowing a whistle to announce his presence.5 For daytime security, the individual homes frequently had door intercom systems, as did the recently developed apartment buildings. Television stars and other sophisticated professionals lived in these door-manned apartment buildings, demonstrating a new category of living: a place to live in between the family of orientation and the family of procreation.
Two large, air-conditioned malls (one was the newest in the city packed with
European and U.S. clothing stores) confirmed La Kennedy as a destination and acceptable locale for residence. The nearby area of the Urdesa with several Miami-like clubs and sophisticated sidewalk cafés helps to distinguish La Kennedy as well. With a fancy seven- eleven like liquor store on almost every block, both La Kennedy and the Urdesa were locations for the arrival of outsiders who had the funds to patronize these establishments.
The Centenario neighborhood in the mid-town south is more residential then La
Kennedy. While a new mall being built in the South will soon challenge the status of the elite San Marino Mall in La Kennedy as the most elite, modern mall, such shopping is a novelty. The rest of the shopping resembles those of Las Orquídeas, with only small pharmacies and corner stores. The confusing combination of the small stores and expensive fare is resolved when one knows who the nearby McDonald’s serves.
5 I am unsure if better protection could be offered with a hidden guard who did not announce his distance from and approach to a home. I suppose it depends on the quantity of areas without a whistle-blower. 22
Politicians, including the city’s mayor and a number of international consuls, live in these large private homes. They do not seek renown as a public destination. The individual, armed security guards peering out at each of the large walled homes with menacing rottweilers are the only people on the outside. Unlike the gated communities, these homes do not interconnect, as if the residents are a unit against what lies in the exterior.
In fact, the towering walls are no shorter on the neighbor-side than on the street side.
The vast geographic distinctions between the large neighborhoods of the north, south, east, and west of different economic levels do not exist once you reach the center of the city from these points of origin. In the center, rich and poor, secure and precarious, live practically as neighbors. Maids in sodden-floored homes walk the block to work in small door-manned apartment buildings. Homes made from reused corrugated aluminum sheets for ignominious street vendors, line one part of the unfinished boardwalk, south of the Malecón Salado, which the mayor has promised to develop in the future. On the other side, some homes made of dried sugar-cane barely resist an exhausted collapse onto the dirt paths or worse, into the polluted river. High- rise apartments home the intelligentsia on another part of the boardwalk or Malecón 2000.
A gigantic garage shelters the ex-president/banana mogul’s extensive collection of rare vehicles6 on the opposite side of the six-lane street from the crystal-clear duck pond with fountains. It is unlikely that the re-generation will soon change its focus beyond the
Malecón Salado. In 2000, when Malecón 2000 was inaugurated, I fought amongst the crowds to observe the map of plans for the IMAX Movie Theater, museums,
6 Rare vehicles are an interesting commodity. It indicates the ability to achieve a purchasing price and a connection to a resource for limited commodities. Few luxury vehicles are imported and for some reason people “know” how many there are of certain vehicles such as Hummers and certain kinds of BMWs. 23
McDonald’s, and cafés to attract tourists to patronize wanted vendors in the city. The unveiled plans were only culminating in 2004. As a lavish and communal area, the Urdesa was next for re-generation. Rather than paving dirt streets in other neighborhoods, the paved wide streets of the Urdesa were ripped out to install cobblestone, which the mayor’s cousin so happily sells the city.
This neglectful, lopsided development is even more clearly demonstrated in Cerro
Santa Ana at the head of the boardwalk of Malecón 2000. This hill was originally used to defend the port-city against pirates. The homes along the 416 numbered-steps that reach the fort at the apex have been “regenerated.” Photos displaying their previous state of ignominious disrepair displayed on each converted home—frequently with the living room converted into a postcard store, artisan shop, or sidewalk café—demonstrate the mayor’s changes. Steel prison-like doors further regiment the tourist trek along the numbered steps of the vibrantly painted houses. These doors are not intended to keep the unsafe public from entering the secure private space as in the gated communities.
They keep the protected public from exiting to the hazardous private space of Santa Ana.
Security guards stationed at the slightly ajar doors warn people that the doors lead to the un-re-generated part of Santa Ana. The double prefix focuses on the work accomplished on this side of the door, rather than the neglect that the dilapidated, cholera-stricken favela has faced on the other side of the door. The ability to so easily step outside the boundary of the selectively remade area of Santa Ana is representative of the city overall.
The “neighborhood” that is actually a theme-park is a more blatant example of the class performance that the rest of the city acts out. 24
Based on interviews, it seems that residents isomorphically graft the actual variability between the city entrances of Samborondón, Los Ceibos, Las Orquídeas, and La
Floresta, midtown Los Suburbios, La Alborada, La Kennedy, and El Centenario, and center district Malecón 2000, Malecón del Salado, and the two Cerro Santa Anas onto the class distinctions of rich or poor. For the most part, the residents of Samborondón are rich and know they are; those of La Floresta are poor and know they are. Those of Los Ceibos are rich but think they are richer whereas those of Los Suburbios are poor but think they are poorer. Those of Las Orquídeas are middle but think they are lower class whereas those of
La Alborada are middle but they think they are upper class. The people of La Kennedy and
El Centenario are examples of two very different ways of expressing the same upper status and the Malecón 2000 and Malecón Salado are two similar views of the river at very different economic statuses. The juxtaposition of such difference that interweaves the city is cordoned off in El Cerro Santa Ana. The class disparity is not less drastically segmented conceptually than it is physically in this location.
This physical integration and conceptual segregation of class is relevant for understanding my research. As Passaro pointed out for New York City, she does not
“leave the field” when she is no longer in the impoverished areas that seem to be favored for urban anthropological investigation. “That such extremes of privilege and devastation coexist in such close quarters in New York City is not a coincidence, and elites were as much a part of my analysis as homeless people were” (Passaro 1997: 154). To understand the role of class, a central impetus to emigration in Guayaquil, it is necessary to have a full picture of the actual class variability over the continuum of extremes that not only are geographically contiguous to each other, but conceptually pertinent as well. 25
However, Guayaquileños do not cognize all the variability. A frequent saying is
“You either have a maid or you are a maid,” even though in pre-dollarization Ecuador, maids would often have someone to hand-wash their clothes, who may themselves have nannies. Unlike the U.S. where the majority of people see themselves as middle-class to distinguish themselves from the indolent poor and prodigal rich, the Ecuadorian class dichotomy speaks to the justification of the difficulty of an upward climb and the ease of a downward tumble. Individuals say they are rich to distinguish themselves from the indolent poor and say they are poor to distinguish themselves from the gluttonous rich.
There is no in-between option.
Children learn the stark dichotomy of rich and poor based on external appearances. I witnessed a 4-year-old girl inquisitively ask her mother, “Mom, do we have a car?” When the baffled mother replied no, the daughter calmly stated with wisdom well beyond her years, “Oh, then we’re poor.” Her parents own two houses and land at the beach, yet the father recently lost his job and they live in a “poor” neighborhood. I also witnessed a 20-year-old woman argue with her mother about their tardiness for work. When the mother insisted that the young woman get herself a drink if the maid were busy so they could leave on time, the daughter whiningly replied with toddler-like independence “But we’re rich.” The maid was indeed busy because three generations lived in the three-bedroom apartment with a tiny, symbolic pool for the whole building, yet they currently have a chauffer for the two cars and live in a “gated” community. As middle class, this family attempts to distinguish themselves from the poor. Oddly, this family’s attempts to distinguish themselves from the poor in fact distinguished them from the actual upper class. Most of the elite treated their servants as 26 extensions of the family, providing education and speaking to them with kindness.
Rather than rolling up the car windows aghast that a security guard had spoken to them in a familiar register as if they were shamefully at their level, the elite rolled down the window to offer change and prided themselves on knowing the stories of some of the local homeless. The precarious position of the middle class led to performances to reinforce what they saw as the important distinctions in their lives on a daily basis. Those who had no anxiety about their position saw benevolence as an intrinsic part of their identity to justify their position as well.
How people perceived me in these distinct class settings for participant observation is informative for understanding the people I worked with. For instance, in
Los Suburbios, I was received like an honored guest yet treated like everyone else. I was served dishes made from intestines, pungent of their previous contents and generously passed tin cups of beer with remnants of vittles on the lip from the prior user. The residents of La Alborada thought I should feel as if I blended in, yet treated me very differently. They expected me to eat a copious and greasy lunch at McDonald’s when the
Value Meals were on sale and asked me to chip in for expensive bottles of horrendously flavored Absolut Vodka. The frequency at which I felt surprisingly at home and out of place (often when the opposite was expected of me, similar to Passaro’s (1997) affiliation with the homeless rather than university elite) made me realize the importance of understanding my role. This is not so that the reader may understand how I felt
“amongst the natives” but to provide an idea of how the “natives” created the social perception of my role, with an attempt to understand how this role affected my research data throughout the city. Chapter 2 — The Anthropologist in a City
REFLEXIVITY OF SOCIAL SELF
One night driving swiftly through the previously described streets, weaving through the patchwork of class disparity, it struck me how others treated me as not just foreign, but a gendered and classed individual, drastically altered my perceptions. At the moment of epiphany, I was with a back-seat passenger in a small hatchback with two other occupants. Another anthropologist was fervently assisting the driver in his attempts to evade a pick-up truck with two men who were following us. I was nonchalantly sending text-messages from my cell phone to find out at which clubs we could skip the velvet ropes. We were both academics of the same age with comparable class backgrounds raised in the United States. The other anthropologist is half-
Ecuadorian, although not normally seen as such because of his blond hair, light skin, and blue eyes; I am a gringa (or with an ethnicity of the United States), although not normally seen as such because of my brown hair, tan, and dark eyes. While our ethnicities and
27 28 others’ interpretations of them contrasted diametrically, what affected the disparate concern of the car chase was not related primarily to ethnicity; in fact, ethnicity had little to do with our radically different reactions. He was male and I was female.
When my colleague approached the bar to settle the tab, he did not hesitate to inform the military men who asked him that he was not my boyfriend and that we were heading to a drag show. In one fell swoop, he had counter-acted my two hours of avoiding eye contact, declining drink offers, and refusing seats pulled out on my behalf.
He was surprised when they were interested in the location of the club. I was not. He saw our current predicament as surreal. For me, I had learned to adjust finely my daily behaviors because of how real the current predicament was. The contrast between our field experiences, the two anthropologists in Guayaquil, led me to decide the importance to framing my research with a description of how people perceived my social self.
Following such personal experiences of how my position affected the way that I reacted to the data that I observed, recorded, and analyzed, I was unsure how to present this concern to my reader. I was mainly familiar with the oft-criticized reflexive ethnography that seems to have more to do with the anthropologist’s self-revelations than the revealing aspects of human development in the research conducted. Rosaldo
(1989: 7) criticized the self-reflexive ethnographies as well for “the tendency of the self- absorbed Self to lose sight altogether of the culturally different Other.”
When reading Tsuda’s introduction to his ethnography on Japanese Brazilians returning to Japan, I found an example of how to be analytically concerned with the positioning of the self and the importance to do so without being self-centered. Tsuda
(2003: 8) writes, “Indeed, an ethnography that completely ignores the anthropologist’s 29 own experiences in the field in favor of a sanitized and depersonalized account can be considered problematic on methodological grounds despite the resulting aura of scientific objectivity.”
This attention to the construction of the anthropologist’s identity does not impede the collection of objective information on the culture. The information on how people perceived me does not discredit my psychological data, but provides the contextual setting. Weston (1997: 172) argues that the two are commensurate:
“Reflexivity reminds the reader to view the circumstances of the anthropologist in relation to the circumstances of the people studied. It also highlights the ways in which the ethnographer’s hand, however light, shapes the presentation of data from the field.”
In fact, the careful concern over the way people perceived me is a common tendency in psychoanalysis to understand the subjects of study.
In this regard, the psychoanalysts’ stress on self-reflexivity… is very different from that of many postmodernists who also stress its importance… For while the former two deploy their counter-transferential experience in the service of understanding the object (patients and non-Western peoples, respectively), the latter… deploy it instead in the service of their own “self- growth.” (Spiro 1996a: 762)
I think the best way to address my potential transference is to follow Goffman’s (1959:
320) description of the self as “an image pieced together from the expressive implications of the full flow of events in an undertaking.” This means that I took into consideration the different perspectives that my research participants might have of me in the various kinds of contact we had. I do not wish to focus on my own impression management of the identities that my interactions constructed. My impression management was often a 30 form of damage control since there were negative connotations of women from the
United States.
I want to focus on how I was perceived, which often had quite little to do with who I actually am. Others projected expectations upon me, and often the social self projected onto me contradicted my personal self. I had trouble seeing “the help” as a separate category from a person in some cases. Kondo mentions the resulting sense of fragmented identity from such disjunctive expectations with one’s past.
Identity can imply unity or fusion, but for me what occurred was a fragmentation of the self. This fragmentation was encouraged by my own participation in Japanese life and by the actions of my friends and acquaintances. At its most extreme point, I became “the Other” in my own mind, where the identity I had known in another context simply collapsed. (1990: 16)
I think this loss of self can be seen as the less pejorative way of stating “going native.”
Although the fact that Kondo was phenotypically Japanese complicated her experience because expectations were further pushed upon her, in Ecuador I experienced similar instances even though I am not Ecuadorian because of my appearance and marriage to an
Ecuadorian. Some coached me in my development as an ideal Ecuadorian wife.
I had expectations from the opposite direction as well. Some expected me to be an ideal American. A Western female as accompaniment was a marker of status. I sometimes felt like a designer purse: a highly gendered, fashionable accessory to use as a receptacle for personal information that is an inanimate demonstration of where money is kept and how it is used. Some individuals would guarantee hosts that I would accompany them to elite events in order to assure their own invitation. Some told me their personal 31 business in complete confidence because I was an outsider who did not influence the social scene as an individual, but as a caricature replete with stereotypical expectations.
Identity was a blending of different positions at different times. Other times I did not notice that I was losing my self: I almost boarded a plane for shopping in Miami after researching with the elite or would forget to use a fork when one was available, cutting my meat with a soup spoon, after researching in an indigenous village.
Tsuda furthers the discussion of native anthropologists by demonstrating, as
Weston states, that it is not an either/or category. He sometimes positioned himself as foreigner, sometimes as native, depending upon the audience with whom he wanted to blend. This was not a lie—but a selective representation of the various aspects of his self.
Narayan (1993: 24) states that native and non-native anthropologists “belong to several communities simultaneously.” The self cannot be reduced to “the sum of an additive relationship that “mixes” two intact terms” (Weston 1997: 168). As many others who discuss the role of the anthropologist in the field, Tsuda focuses on “the ethnic aspects of identity” (ibid.: 11) because these were the aspects most relevant to his fieldwork experience. I feel that it is important to expand the discussion of the social self from ethnicity to entail the other aspects that create the amalgamation of an identity for the individual and the perceivers.
I will focus on my composite positioning as a white, educated female in the field.
Amory (1997: 103) discussed the importance of focusing on the multiple dimensions of identity: “I have come to understand how racial, gender, sexual, and class identities influence one’s understandings and experiences.” I focus on the way that others perceived me based on race/nationality, gender/marital status, class/nationality, and 32 professional position. Because of the social self that these categories signified in
Ecuador, I often found myself longing for the fieldwork I had been warned to be prepared for: how to get people to talk to me. Instead, I had to learn to avert my gaze, settle myself in secure locations, and weigh out risk versus information when deciding to talk to people.
As I mentioned above, I do not wish to focus solely on my objective ethnicity, since I do not believe that it was a significant factor. When people did not know me, my lack of blonde hair and blue eyes distanced me from the stereotype of someone from the
United States. As previously mentioned, there are few foreigners, especially from the
United States, in Guayaquil (although this is changing with the city’s regeneration) so the stereotype was not frequently questioned. I was thought to be Brazilian or Italian first, and being from the United States only came up as a guess once a number of choices were rejected. One night while distributing promotional flyers for a friends’ event to the general public, I was able to convince people that I was from a number of different countries, including Ecuador. (I seemed to be the only one to notice my lack of the ubiquitous vaccination scar on my left upper arm.) While perhaps people are unlikely to question someone’s claims of origin, people readily questioned any suggestion that I was from a country they did not see as wealthy. For this reason, ethnicity is not an apt term to describe how I was perceived, because I could be Latina, if not Bolivian7 or Peruvian.
7 Miss Bolivia attempted to dispel the notion that all Bolivians are indigenous people when she stated at the Miss Universe pageant in Quito that “Not all Bolivians are indigenous. Some are white and beautiful like me.” While Bolivians cried out for her dethronement, the comment did not disturb some Ecuadorians. It was seen as a method of spreading information regarding her country, as her position entailed, and a truth, since she was white and beautiful (somehow even though she was Bolivian). 33
While the general perceptions of where I was from varied, once informants knew that I was from the United States, a particular set of perceptions followed. Since I was from the United States, but lived in Ecuador, there was an assumption that I could understand someone’s desire to emigrate and would be able to help. From the start, people asked me to help with emigration papers, and not just the translation of forms.
The contradiction that I would of course have no idea how to get a tourist visa to my own country, since as the country of my citizenship I would never need one, did not prevent people from asking questions on the processing. As I conducted research at the consulates to try to find out how to get visas and how people acquire visa information, people saw me as a possible font for that information. Visa solicitors not only asked questions at the U.S. consulate, but at other consulates as well. For this reason, my attempts to lie low and blend in for observation did not always work at the consulates.
The Italian consulate invited me into the air-conditioned waiting room, mainly used for international trading consultations rather than visa solicitations. The Spanish
Consulate tried to assist me right away, unlike most people in line, because of my white status, and then threw me out once they realized I was there finding out the inside track, like appointment ticket scalping networks. Oddly, the U.S. Consulate perceived me as a terrorist threat. Even though I assured them that my notebook was not capable of destroying the large concrete barriers around the building, according to a guard, someone he pointed to in an upper window needed to know my name, address, and phone number. Because I refuse to give such information to unknown armed men in Ecuador,
I chose not to flout my low-level U.S. Embassy ranking as a Fulbright Scholar. My dismissal at the embassy as untrustworthy served to cement my trustworthiness to others 34 around the consulate. The U.S. Consulate considered them untrustworthy as well, and they did not trust the consulate. By logical syllogism, if the consulate did not consider me on its side, I must be on the side against the consulate. Just as when Geertz fled from a police raid at a Balinese cockfight (1973: 426), I found “a sudden and unusually complete acceptance into a society extremely difficult for outsiders to penetrate.” I not only heard about failed emigration attempts, but current illegal attempts. In addition to this antithetical relationship to the consulate, people more frequently told me about failed and illegal attempts since I was not Ecuadorian. Such attempts are frequently shameful because it indicates a lack of economic, social, and education status for legal processing of visas and for meeting familial needs in Ecuador. The expense of failed and illegal attempts can exacerbate such situations further.
Since “native” and “non-native” do not work to encompass the perception of my social self, I would like to introduce the term “hyphenative.” I was the wife of an
Ecuadorian. As Kondo (1990: 12) pointed out with her work in Japan, her informants would try to make her over into the role so that her ethnicity matches her behavior. This position is significant to my research, because many informants and respondents saw it as imperative that they teach me the common sense information to be a good wife and mother, since I had chosen this role when I married an Ecuadorian. I had received lots of unprovoked eye-opening wedding-day advice on cheating husbands and on what my household responsibilities would be. When asking for information about family life, my status as hyphenative helped to explain my ignorance and justify the need to know the intricate details. 35
My role as a professional further justified this perception. Unlike a number of
Melanesian tribes who have an elaborate understanding of the role of an anthropologist
(Schram, personal communication), what anthropology entailed was often unknown to my informants. The “Museo de Antropología” on Malecón 2000 (aside from not being opened until 2004) did not help much since it only housed archeological artifacts. Since I conducted research with children’s adaptation and used an office next to the psychologist at the elementary school, many considered me a psychologist. While I did not mind watching people’s children or listening to people’s problems, I was sometimes placed in uncomfortable roles due to my professional status. Regardless of my attempts to re-align my perceived role, people still called me to console suicidal friends, to protect women from abusive men, or to provide a psychiatric diagnosis for children I had never met.
While I was avoided the inflated expectations of my professional abilities and felt the need to provide disclaimers, I was more often uncomfortable because of my gender.
Often, the way men will have to gain access to a community and get people to talk to them is taken as the anthropological norm. As Clifford (1997: 200) pointed out, gender is featured occasionally in the “marked” female case as a factor for fieldwork. I am unsure if my experience is particular to the female gender, Ecuador, or even just me, but I often felt excluded and included, positively and negatively, in ways uncharacteristic to much fieldwork. While anthropologists sometimes mention that they have little data on getting the opposite gender to talk about sex, I have overwhelming data on this topic because of the desire of male informants to skew all conversations to sex. I found the discussion of what kinds of behavior and comments should be seen as lewd or complimentary informative, but, as with my professional status, I had to provide disclaimers for my 36 gender as well. Men sometimes saw our casual conversations as something that could be transitioned into a first date and some women became fearful over their significant others’ interest in me. Other times, I became a “wing-chick” to attract the right type of people or an item to mark one’s higher status.
The fact that my gender sometimes led to inclusion and exclusion in access to often personal, yet selectively crafted information should be considered for all the categories that I have presented as aspects of the composition of my social self. I was aware of these interpretations of my status, and considered them in my interviews. Most of these perceptions were relevant to my interviews with informants, rather than respondents, since the children and their families established a set relationship with me based on the individual they knew, as I contrasted or matched the stereotypes, rather than based on the stereotypes.
Children at the school came to see me as a friend, rather than a teacher. Some tested boundaries: children would lie on top of tables to see if I would reprimand the behavior and tell me the gossip to see if I would relate as a friend rather than an adult. I maintained my role as a non-judgmental ear with the children. I was a little concerned at first about not having rules. Once, a teacher asked me to watch her classroom. Within two minutes, the girls were shouting for attention in a hula-hoop competition and the boys were smacking each other with the boards from their benches. When I tried to shush them, they all began seeing who could yell, “Be quiet” louder and show they liked me more. However, since I worked with the respondent children a few at a time, they did not need to become out of control to gain attention and cement our relationship. As such, once boundaries were tested and not enforced, there was no need to have them. 37
In addition to seeing me as a friend at school, the children whose families I visited became used to me being a part of their daily activities and a model for their own behavior. Six-year-old Briana had become used to me bringing her little gifts. At first, she was not willing to part with the Power Puff Girls sneakers that I had to bring back to the store to get a different size, but soon she even commented on the fact that her dollar store plastic heels were not the right color and that I should exchange them. The neighbors commented on my influence on her, such as the black or brown sunglasses
(depending on her outfit) she wore on her head, even when she was inside the house.
This was similar to the indigenous girls I worked with in the mountains. Some would take their hair out of the traditional braids when they thought no one was looking and flip it around as if in a shampoo commercial in an imitation of me.
I had ethical concerns regarding my position as a role model for children. I did not want to further the sense of relative deprivation. I was also concerned that young females would see that I could study and travel, live on my own, and choose not to have children until later in life. I feared they might feel frustrated that they did not have these options. However, some perceived my professional status differently. Rather than being treated as omniscient, the high school girls that knew about my personal life thought I had studied too long: when would I ever have children? Perhaps I was naïve and did not know about boys. It seemed odd to them that I had worked so hard to study children but did not have any of my own. It would be much easier and more fun just to give birth. Some commented that I should have no trouble finding someone. Adult women had similar views. Why didn’t I have children? They had a spouse for me. I must not have someone because I do not know how to be a wife and have no children: The 38 women saw me as in need of instruction. I think it was a benefit to be considered inept at family life—it lead to extensive explanation of what is normally unsaid. For my lack of perceived accomplishments in personal life, I became a model more for fashion and fun than for life goals. To my research participants, I represented the superficial cool modernity of the West, but not the salient appropriate goals to be a woman. This assuaged my ethical concerns on influencing the community.
The categories that composed stereotypes for informants were methods of evaluating me in my respondent relationships. While I was not treated as a stereotype of ethnicity, gender, and class, my quality as an individual was evaluated on these characteristics. These categories that informants and respondents used to stereotype or evaluate me should be kept in mind when I discuss the data. During interviews, I sought triangulation on cultural values between informants who perceived me in different manners. I wanted to be sure that the variability in responses were due to the informants’ differences in cultural values rather than variability in the perception they had of me. I compared responses and observed behavior within the individual to seek ulterior motives.
I frequently asked for examples or questioned people’s reasoning. This helped me not only to further understand people’s cultural models, but it also helped me to understand when people were creating opinions ad hoc in accord with the persona they would like to present to the female, Western professional. Before turning to what I found out, I first turn to the methodology for acquiring the data in the next chapter. Chapter 3 — Methodology for a City
This research project will address the repercussions of parental emigration on children in Ecuador. The results will contribute to existing theory on the effects of childhood separation, which will help to provide the appropriate therapeutic methods for addressing the distress children may face in this situation. This research will examine:
1. The cultural understandings relevant to separation as these are mobilized in the context of emigration. 2. How reactions to distress emerge and develop in this social and cultural context. 3. How cultural understandings may be used to adapt psychologically and to adjust socially to distress from separation. 4. The efficacy of personal and cultural defense mechanisms.
RESEARCH PLAN
This research represents a compilation of data from three years of fieldwork.
After two years of exploratory research in 1998 and 1999 to 2000 in Ecuador, I began the yearlong focused psychological research on how children react to parental emigration in
September of 2003. Since my research goals require both cultural and psychological data,
39 40 my design includes informants for general information and respondents for personalized information (Levy 1973). I complemented these interviews with naturalistic observation.
I believe that such extensive informant research is imperative to complement respondent interviews in a city. While the respondents may not know the informants or may be from different locations in the city, successful urban anthropology requires extensive work constructing the respondents’ variegated contexts. The existence of competing cultural ideologies is relevant for understanding how children psychologically adapt and socially adjust to parental emigration.
To conduct this research, I rented an apartment in Guayaquil, which was not difficult with the mass exodus of the lower middle class to Spain. I lived in a central location in order to have access to public transportation to consulates and job fairs, and eventually to the homes and communities of respondents. I did not live with a particular family because attempted émigrés are sometimes sensitive about their failed emigration attempts and would have been less willing to confide in me if I lived with a particular family. Living alone did not interfere with my observations because the beginning stage of the research was in public places to inform myself about the emigration process.
Methods with Informants
When I arrived, I began conducting surveys with informants to elicit public cultural meanings associated with the roles and meanings of emigration. Not only did I rely on contacts from previous fieldwork, but I also conducted this research in various public spaces such as public parks and malls. The city center experienced an extensive urban regeneration, as was described in my first chapter. I had selected several locations along the two-mile river boardwalk, or malecón, including tables in front of a coffee shop, 41 park benches near a child’s play area, and concrete steps near a bronze pig fountain. I would also conduct interviews in a nearby park that elderly gentlemen frequented, with dawdling iguanas rather than scrambling squirrels. Spontaneous interviews also occurred in the food courts of shopping malls, with taxi drivers on extended routes, in long lines in grocery stores, and anywhere else where I knew I would be confined with a particular person for a long period of time and I was in the mood to speak with someone.
I also conducted interviews in locations where aspiring émigrés congregated throughout Guayaquil. I conducted interviews outside in the lines, and, when permitted, inside consulates, government offices, and the airport where émigrés and their family members solicit the appropriate documents to leave the country or send off their family members. I sought participants in the lines for visa interviews at the most popular international consulates. Moreover, I checked newspapers and listened to informants regarding job fairs and lotteries that offer visas abroad as well. For instance, over five hundred people waited in line when a Spanish company was recruiting for work visas, for
“any job that presents itself” (Acosta 2002). Fifty thousand visa lottery forms were distributed at the post offices in the Province of Guayas alone in two weeks (News Brief
2002). At locations such as these, I had a large gathering of potential informants. Over the course of the year, I interviewed approximately one hundred seventy people from half an hour to three hours at a time regarding the numerous topics for informant interviews.
Generally, I would arrive at the day’s chosen interview site, find a comfortable place to sit and read either a newspaper or a book for a little while to observe my surroundings. If time was available and it would not be too distracting to others, I would attempt to take notes on some key aspects of the interview site and the people there. 42
While I took notes, I would choose informants by observing who seemed to be relaxing, rather than waiting for someone, and who did not leer at me. Frequently, people approached me. After interviews, I would walk to a different part of the park or area surrounding the interview site to repeat the same survey in order to prevent interference of the first informant with the interview of following informants.
I chose informants based on availability and approachability rather than gender or race. Although I attempted to balance for these characteristics, I considered possible interactions between an informant’s position in society and stated beliefs. I conducted the majority of general culture interviews with men from the ages of twenty to sixty, because they were more likely to be alone and unoccupied in the public spaces where I conducted my interviews. Women tended to be with significant others or children, or both. I tried to understand both the cultural context and the individual’s perspective. I let the informants’ answers dictate the conversation and order of topics addressed.
In the inside different notebooks, I pasted the interview schedule for general surveys on 1. How to Raise Children, 2. Ethnopsychology, 3. Roles and Appropriate
Behavior, 4. Social Networks, 5. Potential Émigrés, and 6. Returned Émigrés. I also conducted interviews with 7. Workers and Vendors8 and with 8. Organizations.9 (See
Appendix A for interview schedules.) The questions guided the open-ended interviews if there was silence and to insure that eventually every informant had the opportunity to address the same topics.
8 I interviewed workers and informal salesmen who earned their living through the economy created by the migration phenomenon. For instance, people who sell envelopes and pens at inflated prices in line at consulates, or bring people who need visa photos to a particular studio for a small commission. 9 I did not choose informants for the organization interviews in public spaces or around consulates. I sought out and set up interviews with organizations I found out about through the newspaper and ones other informants referred me to. 43
I followed each general survey with questions regarding the informant’s views on the process of emigration and the connection of these views with the theme of the general survey. I asked informants why people emigrate and if the reason people say that they go is the real reason. I also asked who goes, if the informant knows any émigrés, and if there are any differences between émigrés based on destination country or on who goes and who stays. Lastly, I asked if the informant has thought about emigrating, why, and what his or her plans are now. At the conclusion of most interviews, the informant frequently asked me about my research and my life. Sometimes these conversations would last up to hours, or even develop into a more long-term set of discussions.
For instance, after questioning who you could depend on for what needs to try to construct the typical support networks, I would ask the individual about how they think that emigration has affected the general society and culture, especially children and their families. Then, I would ask about how support networks have changed with the emigration flow, or if the support networks are different for families that emigration affects. Sometimes, before specifically asked about, the migration phenomenon would arise spontaneously in the informants’ responses. In these cases, I would encourage discussion with follow-up questions as I would with any other topic that the informant mentioned, and continue with the normal plan of the interview.
For each survey, I have briefly described the goals for administering the survey, the inspiration for the survey, how I created it, the methods used, including length and setting, and a description of the interview’s utility for achieving the stated goals. 44
1. How to Raise Children:
To understand what children might be missing with parental emigration and the basis for what others may believe they are missing, I conducted interviews regarding childrearing with informants. I also conducted these interviews on a less formal basis with respondents and acquired such information from participant observation. However, the interviews with informants helped me to understand the widespread cultural belief that émigrés’ children are doomed because they lack some fundamental aspect of their upbringing because of their parent’s emigration, regardless of the substitute care.
This interview is composed of questions I adapted from Mead’s (1928) discussion of the lives of Samoan girls and in Erikson’s (1963) discussion of Sioux childrearing. I augmented the characteristics of childrearing that that Mead and Erikson focused on explicitly, which were also primary to Freud, such as affection, discipline, and other kinds of care, with questions regarding the goals of rearing children (an implicit topic in both works). Since I incorporated the values into a short interview for informants, I tried to ask more directly about situations that had already struck me as particular to Ecuador
(such as help with formal school learning and placating children in public locations) and as important for the context of children of émigrés (such as age-appropriate responsibilities and discretionary income).
The administration of this interview was straightforward. I followed the questions for the most part and encouraged open-ended discussion, listened for apparent contradictions, and asked for clarification when appropriate.
Frequently, this interview received only short responses and vague, non-specific comments regarding the need to provide for children and the need to educate children. 45
Therefore, this data cannot be considered the result of a wide sampling of informants, even though I interviewed a many informants, but rather the result of intensive interviewing with a few informants who answered more extensively and thoughtfully.
Even those who were brief regarding what should be done to raise children were detailed regarding what would happen if someone did not follow their indications for childrearing. Although in my observation it seemed that few families could fulfill all the expectations elicited in this interview, the responses of what will happen if this childrearing recipe is not followed were as ominous and dreary as the U.S. local evening news trying to get you to tune in to find out the hidden dangers of escalators. The discussion was even more foreboding when emigration was tied in at the end of the interview. I kept in mind if the informant would be someone who would have been in the generation older than the average émigré or the same age as the average émigré. I watched for any differences in the predicted doom or any logical connections between stresses in childrearing and adult personality structure reflected in the relevant generation.
2. Ethnopsychology:
As with the childrearing interview, I created the interview with informants on ethnopsychology to provide a base for understanding the situation of émigrés’ children.
What children should be feeling, what they feel, and how they describe the experience of these feelings is important to understanding their adaptation to parental emigration.
Kleinman and Good’s 1985 edited volume Culture and Depression inspired this interview, with specific questions coming principally from two chapters.10 The set of
10 I adapted the discussion of the “disorder” of depression to the research of emotions and feelings in general because in the comparison of ethnopsychologies, what we consider an emotion could be a disorder, and vice-versa. The specific essays I took theoretical research structures from were designed for 46 general questions before discussing the specific feelings came from Shweder’s work on the comparative study of emotions.
It is argued that to ask whether people are alike or different in their emotional functioning is really to pose several more specific questions, that is, whether people are alike or different in the type of feelings they feel (the taxonomic question), the situations that elicit those feelings (the ecological question), the perceived implications of those feelings (the semantic question), the vehicles for expressing those feelings (the communication question), the appropriateness of certain feelings being felt or displayed (the social regulation question), and the techniques or strategies utilized to deal with feelings that cannot be directly expressed (the management question). (Shweder 1985: 182)
I asked these questions to compile a set of understandings for the experience of emotion overall. Some informants used particular emotions as examples, but I tried to address a general level of emotional experience in the first half of the interview.
The questions dealing with specific emotions were an expansion of the topics that
Marsella et al. (1985: 300) emphasized in their overview of depression. Questions attempted to address “the cultural conceptions” of the disorder, the “epidemiological aspects,” the “manifestations,” the “personality correlates,” and the “cultural hypotheses.” The majority of the interview questions on specific emotions dealt with the assessment of the disorder because the valuations and responses of others to an emotion were most important for understanding both how children learn to experience these emotions and how cultural discourse has labeled their experiences.
I compiled the list of emotions from a thematic vocabulary book (Nevarro &
Nevarro Ramil 1995) along with others that I heard in normal discussion. I had three people rate the list for their frequency of use, since some words may be more prominent
ethnopsychological research in general, even though they were principally applied to depression in this work. 47 in other regional dialects. I selected thirty words based on the frequency-of-use ratings and my belief of their relevancy to the situation of emigration and parental separation.
For the ethnopsychology interview, I began with the general questions regarding how others experience emotions. Then, we discussed one particular emotion from the list at a time, and I tried to touch upon the questions listed. After the general questions on emotions, people would answer some of the questions on the specific emotions without much prodding because the two sets were similar. As such, the order would change occasionally and some parts were less elaborated than others without direction.
Although I listed thirty emotions, I focused most interviews on the terms celoso (jealous), envidia (envious), orgullo (proud), recelo (suspicious), rencor (spiteful), and vergüenza
(shameful) because of the interesting discussions that connecting these terms to emigration spurred and on coraje (anger) and cariño (affectionate) because of their connection to balanced discipline in family roles. The family roles determine appropriate parental behavior, which I hypothesize will affect the formation of attachment bonds.
Because of the length of this interview, I only asked each informant about two to five emotions, and as mentioned above, principally the ones relevant to emigration. I attempted counter-balance the emotions to avoid informants tiring when responding to questions on the later emotions. However, it seemed just as frequent that people would become accustomed to the interview and respond better to emotions that I asked about later. The connection of the chosen emotions to emigration depended heavily upon whether or not the informant had émigrés as close family or not. I address this difference more fully regarding the context in which the émigrés’ children have to adjust to parental emigration in Guayaquil (Chapter 8). 48
3. Roles and Appropriate Behavior:
The goal of this interview was to understand how different people are connected and the cultural expectations of others in order to understand better what behaviors and expectations the émigré and their family members can or cannot fulfill. The questions were extremely basic on the valuations of forty different familial and social roles. I sought to understand role expectations to acquire the basic information necessary to create a good ethnographic description of familial behavior for positioning the individuals under discussion (cf. Levy (1973), Parish (1994), or Weismantel (1988)). I created the list of roles by combining family terms with the social roles that I heard as substantive enough to define a relationship. For instance, when someone said a name and I asked who, they might say, “my neighbor,” “my boss,” or “my screw.” I also included the titles of Miss, Mrs., Mr., Sir, and Madam that seem to imply social expectations.
For the role interview, I asked informants regarding the different behaviors that make someone esteemed or scorned in particular familial or social roles. I did not ask any informants about all roles because each role took between ten minutes to an hour. I tended to focus on the roles that emigration altered, such as mother, father, aunt, uncle, grandfather, grandmother, brother, sister, and cousin in order to construct a base of comparison for discussing the way that the children of émigrés expand and reconstruct the family roles based on the cultural values placed on the extended family.
Sometimes I asked about the roles that the informant seemed most interested to discuss with variation. For instance, sometimes a strong distinction between immediate family and extended family led to similar responses for a number of familial roles, such as aunt and uncle, and granddaughter and grandson. Since a number of younger male 49 informants preferred to incessantly hit on me rather than discuss their views on the family, we would discuss the expectations of gendered/sexualized roles such as lover, girlfriend, wife, and screw following Nencel’s (1996) work on men’s labeling of women in
Peru. I was frequently surprised with their description of the loud comments yelled on the streets that a “Señorita” should find flattering rather than insulting. It would be equivalent to viewing “Nice breasts” unequivocally as flattery whereas “Great tits” was lewd and something a respectable “Señor” would never yell.
4. Social Networks:
Because of the importance of the patronage structure in Latin America, the peasant literature for theorizing the social networks is important. Sometimes the failure of these networks leads to emigration, or emigration leads to a restructuring of these networks with the ties formed in remittances and substitute childcare. The goal of this interview was to describe the ties that bind individuals and the importance of each, following the work of Stack (1997), Lewis (1959), and Scheper-Hughes (1992). Their work dealt with both the role of emotional and economic support, and I focused on these two concerns—with the opening for the incorporation of other kinds of support. I also asked about the role of shame and jealousy in asking for support for surviving the economic crisis in the late 1990s. Some emigrated because they were too ashamed to ask for support. Others feel ashamed that they depend on émigrés for support. Interviews took between five minutes and half an hour.
The economic crisis was significant in the conceptions of changes in the social networks for many informants. Informants frequently introduced emigration into the interview before I asked directly because of its close connection to the economic crisis. 50
However, even though informants saw both changes in social networks and emigration as a result of the economic crisis, the two were normally not combined. Social networks had gotten smaller post-crisis for all, regardless of emigration, and people could only depend on immediate family now, regardless of emigration. Oddly, even though for most informants émigrés were conceived as able to fulfill their position in the social networks transnationally, including both economic and emotional support, most informants also thought that they could not fulfill any of their roles in parenting transnationally, including both economic and emotional support.
5. Potential Émigrés:
This interview provides a larger picture of the decisions and experiences involved in emigration to describe further the context of the children of émigrés. Because of my emphasis on those emigration leaves behind, I follow some recent work on migration that focuses on the individual’s decisions and others involved, similar to Parson’s (1949) action theory. I hoped to elicit a picture of all the actors and their parts in the process of emigration, as Ortner (1997) did in her description of Himalayan mountaineering.
The majority of the interviews with potential émigrés began at consulates, job fairs, government offices, internet cafés, long distance phone centers or other public spaces likely to have potential émigrés. I call these locations migration scenes because they are sets to act out migration. I found some potential émigrés as well through other informant interviews when we began to discuss the combination of the particular topic in the interview with emigration, or, on occasion, informants would mention their desire to emigrate earlier in the interview. Like the previous interviews, I asked the series of 51 questions and encouraged discussion.11 Interviews took between five minutes and days when individuals continued to update me as to their decisions.
The goal was to understand the entire process of emigration, but I had more trouble finding potential émigrés at the beginning of their emigration journey than I originally thought because of changes in the visa procedures with the restriction of the
Schengen Accords in the European Union. Frequently, the vast number of people in the scenes for migration were there trying to file paperwork to help legalize family members who had emigrated illegally or to process family reunification for children left in their care. As newspaper accounts indicated (El Universo 8/1/2003), there was a significant peak in emigration right before the new visa restrictions went into effect. As such, few people were still negotiating their position on the decision to emigrate at the time of our interviews. With the upsurge in emigration and media coverage, it was inevitable that family members would not have already discussed the possibility of emigration, even if in regards to the emigration of others. The current emigration is the chain of those left behind being pulled to reunite with their family émigrés. As such, the majority of research with “potential émigrés” are not those who have begun to make their decision, but those who are part of a longer history of emigration.
6. Returned Émigrés:
The goal of interviewing returned émigrés was similar to potential émigrés: to provide a larger picture of the decisions and experiences involved in emigration to describe further the context of the children of émigrés. The interview was similar to the
11 I was confused at first regarding what decisions couples made for the continuation of romantic relationships. I thought “union libre,” literally free union, meant an “open relationship” where both people can see other people, but it turns out that “union libre” means a common law marriage, where their long- term commitment and cohabitation comes to signify all that a marriage does legally and socially. 52 interview instrument I created for the Immigration Museum for New Americans as the director of development for the oral history project. I began with Matsumoto’s (1993) oral history interview questions with a Japanese American farming community in
California and a pamphlet (1992) from the Oral History Association. I revised and expanded these questions in accord to feedback from the Museum’s advisory panel of migration experts selected through the Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at the University of California, San Diego. After integrating the sources, the interview schedule covered the sending society, migration journey, context of reception, transnational activity, inter-ethnic relations, and identity construction.
I interviewed the returned émigrés in more secluded places than other informants because the questions were more personal. In most cases, I only used the primary topic questions and asked the follow-up questions listed to encourage discussion if necessary.
Although I did not know the returned émigrés and their families as well as my respondents, the interviews were similar to life histories rather than information gathering as with other informants. Interviews lasted from a half to four hours.
The interviews frequently provided information on other investigation topics and the process of emigration. This information helped to shape other interview formats and understand the actors relevant to the process of emigration for both observation and interviewing. Unfortunately, I felt frequently that these informants were looking for more prolonged contact with me than I had time for with my other research goals.
7. Workers & Vendors:
The goal of this interview was to provide another opportunity to compare the perspective of the émigré and their family with a portion of the general public’s opinion. 53
I thought that the workers and vendors in migration scenes who do not want to emigrate would provide such a perspective. The contradiction of people who work solely through the emigration of others who claim they cannot find work was interesting. Some individuals scalped appointment tickets at the Spanish Consulate and others sold envelopes at the Department of Migration. These jobs only existed because émigrés had decided that no jobs existed. I thought people who had thought through emigration without making the decision to emigrate would offer a unique perspective.
I asked a short series of questions on their work and on emigration to the people who were employed in emigration scenes. The unprecedented emigration after the economic crisis in the late 1990’s created a vast economy, ranging from expensive services such as certified documents to cheap wares, such as photocopied forms. As I expected, the first answers emphasized the economic situation and macro-social factors that social scientists highlight as the motivations to emigrate. In contrast, when asked about the difference between those who do emigrate and those who do not, even though both groups face these macroeconomic and social factors, these informants mentioned negative valuations of personal motivations to emigrate. However, unexpectedly, this contrast between macro factors and negative personal valuations was not unique to this group of workers, as will be discussed later in my description of the negative values of
émigrés that informs the children’s environment in Chapter 8.
8. Organizations:
To understand all the actors in social networks, I researched the role of organizations such as non-governmental organizations and political machines in post- patronage Latin America following research on the two topics (Gill 2000; Auyero 2000). 54
I wanted to understand fully whom émigrés and their families depended upon for assistance.
To recruit for this interview, I contacted the organizations that others mentioned in interviews. I also researched possible contacts through non-governmental organizations, religious services, and Ecuadorian and foreign government agencies. Some organizations dedicated themselves solely to assisting émigrés and their families, and others were only indirectly involved with the migration phenomenon because of their work with women or children. Interviews lasted from fifteen minutes with the Italian consul to several hours a week with a foundling émigré organization, but most interviews normally lasted a little over an hour.
These interviews turned out to be extremely beneficial for contact with other
émigrés and provided numerous opportunities to promote my research. However, I sometimes felt that I was unable to meet their expectations of comradeship because of the rest of my research schedule and the need to return to write my dissertation. When I did attend the numerous seminars and forums, I found them extremely beneficial. Some were designed to change the negative imagery of émigrés and their children; these seminars helped not only to observe further manifestations of the negative public discourse surrounding emigration, but also through the “group dynamics” to understand cultural constructions of the self, learning theory, and roles.
I also observed a contrast between the legitimacy, hegemony, and expansive funding of organizations in the Andean cities and those in Guayaquil. Previous emigration flows and research focused in the Andes, and the lack of these characteristics for the Guayaquil organizations helped to demonstrate the significance of this research in 55
Guayaquil, where the discourse and onset of emigration has been different than in the
Andean cities. Some research addresses the flow from Guayaquil by simply augmenting case studies from the city to their existing research, without paying attention to any differences that would alter or de-legitimate their research framework. Moreover, some selectively include statistics on Guayaquil when they confirm what has been decided as the existing trend, and remove data from the city when they contradict the national trend.
The difference between these two sets of figures sometimes receives a brief footnote, if at all. I discuss this selective treatment of emigration in Guayaquil in the epilogue.
Through these interactions with informants, I began to understand the significant discourses and meanings surrounding emigration. These discussions led to more research questions addressing the significant factors for determining the psychological effects of emigration on children. The goal was to compose a set of questions that would investigate the cultural meanings surrounding emigration for making comparisons between the life histories of the children in my sample.
Methods with Respondents
My methodology with respondents included person-centered interviews, naturalistic observation, and projective tests. Person-centered interviews “elicit behavior that moves beyond role-determined surface behavior scripts to suggest hidden or latent dimensions of the organization of persons and of the sociocultural matrix and their interactions” (Levy & Hollan 1998: 334). I interviewed the children, their parents, their substitute caregivers, and their teachers regarding emigration and its effects on children in 56 general and in their particular case (these two views can differ significantly). Because an individual’s stated beliefs on a topic may not coincide with the beliefs that inform their behaviors, I complemented my interviews with naturalistic observation of family interactions to strengthen the validity of the interview material. For instance, a father may inform me that he places great value on addressing the child’s questions regarding the length and difficulty of his journey, yet, even though well intentioned, he may not do so because of his own insecurities on the topic or simply because of time-constraints.
In addition to the ethnographic eye as a part of my methods, Anna Freud’s (1965) methods for observing “hidden depth” (11), “the derivatives of the unconscious in material observations” (14), defense mechanisms (15), and childhood behavior (18) guided my observations. I observed the children’s play to understand further the context of the child’s experiences (Rogoff 1982). Play can serve as “models of cultural relationships” (Sutton-Smith 1977: 225) that teach the ability to follow rules, which may require the inhibition of spontaneous behavior (Vygotsky 1978). Moreover, play can be used to deal with psychological distress (Erikson 1963). My observations of the indirect symbolic expressions in play furthered my understanding of the children’s views of parental emigration and I will incorporate it below in the discussions of case studies.
With these conventional anthropological techniques of participant-observation and person-centered interviews, I also administered projective tests to assess the child’s psychological state. I attempted to identify the child’s internal defense mechanisms by noting systematic distortions in their responses (Vaillant 1977). I used these assessment measures to understand the child’s adjustment progress. These tests not only further my 57 understanding of the effects of separation on children, but also inform hypotheses regarding the efficacy of various defense mechanisms in addressing psychological distress.
Over fifty children were involved in some portion of respondent interviews, but only twenty-three children (and their families and teachers) completed all the schedules in this methodology. While not a random sample, I selected families that I believed would be representative of the range of differences in migration experiences. I originally planned to recruit respondents through my informant base. While this occurred as well to some extent, I recruited the majority of my respondents through a local school. As I was canvassing the area schools in the “middle class” neighborhoods to distribute information regarding my research interests with the families of émigrés for participant recruitment, one school offered me permanent office space, permission to remove children from class when appropriate, and contact with families. The school, which I call
Muppet Academy, had a high percentage of children of émigrés. As a private school that cost over half an average month’s salary, the majority of the children at Muppet Academy were not suffering economically because of parental emigration. This research aims to analyze the effects of parental separation without the frequently confounding factor of a decrease in economic status.12 While the majority of my respondents were from this school, I also conducted a significant amount of long term interviews with respondents from other areas of the city and from varying economic levels.
The four story u-shaped Muppet Academy held not only a co-educational elementary school, but also a high school for girls. The year I did fieldwork at the school
12 However, for a number of these families, there was an increase in economic status with the parental emigration, or, in some cases, the family life would continue in the same deprived economic situation, while the remittances of the émigré would go only to the school tuition rather than the household as a whole. 58 was the year when the first class of girls would graduate from the high school. I did have some contact with the high school girls, mainly out of their curiosity in me or because of their connection as sisters and tutors of the younger students.
Classes for the approximately 300 high school and the 600 elementary students began in June and were held until late February, or March for make-up exams. The
“preschool” grades of pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first grade were held on the first floor and grades two through six were on the second floor. These divisions were not just important for classroom location, but also for class times and school activities, like electing class queens. The preschool began at eight a.m., but the rest of the elementary school students a half hour earlier even though classes never started before eight. A lawyer oversaw the school, and his daughter was the director of the elementary school and another female relative was the director of the high school. The family enjoyed a considerable profit on their business.
A counselor was on staff, but, except by special request, she mainly worked with the high school girls on career placement and taught a psychology class. Her four-year psychology degree merited the title of psychologist, and when I began conducting fieldwork at the elementary school, I became considered her colleague because of my undergraduate degree in psychology. I filled a void as counselor with what were considered “problem” children, children of émigrés. Confused on my role, teachers would want to send me children whose parents had not emigrated, but were problem children. Then, teachers sent me children whose parents separated, and later wanted me to work with their children. Three teachers and the family who were the caretakers of the school building were also substitute caregivers of children of émigrés. Once teachers and 59 staff were fully aware of my research goals, there was still some confusion as to my selection of children to work with. In contrast to a “normal” psychologist, I did not necessarily choose the children who were having the greatest difficulties, and unlike a census taker, I did not have an interest in working a little bit with all children. I began working with all children, but continued with children who were representative of the typical differences between émigré situations, who seemed noteworthy to shed light on understanding the effects of emigration, and who were interested in talking to me.
I selected the original pool through surveying each classroom from second to sixth grades, or from age six to ten, to identify the émigré population. I asked the children with whom they lived, and if they did not name both a mother and father, I asked if they knew where the missing parent was. A little over eighteen percent of the children had a mother or a father, or both, who had emigrated. The percent of émigrés’ children ranged from just over ten percent in the second grade to nearly twenty-five percent in the sixth grade.
Similar surveys had been conducted previously at the school since there was a high expectation of parent involvement and obvious indicators to parental identity.
Teachers were aware of children’s home situation for the most part. Children were given both their fathers’ and their mothers’ last name. Teachers frequently gave homework that required parental acknowledgement, like “describe your father” when they were learning adjectives. Since children learn to read Spanish through the combination of each consonant and vowel, they first learned to read and write “Mi madre me mima” which means “My mother spoils me.” 60
It is unlikely that this survey overestimated the number of émigrés’ children, although one child did lie because he wanted to be able to come and “play the games” I used for psychological assessment. However, just as I discovered this infiltrator, I believe others would have been discovered as well because of the eventual contact with teachers and families. In fact, it is definite that this number is underestimated. Later in the year, one little girl let me know that she did not tell the truth—her father had emigrated and her mother as well, but she said that her mother had died in a plane crash. I added her to the study. Another child was sick the day of the survey and was added to the study later.
In addition, a number of children who teachers identified as children of émigrés (as frequently was an easier way to proceed with the youngest children) told me that they did live with their mother and father; since the parents had left when they were so young, the children referred to their grandparents as mom and dad. More than likely, this occurred as well in the older sample when I asked children with whom they lived. I did not look further into all the children who said they did live with their mother and father because I already had too large of a sample to work with. If the sample selection varies systematically, I believe it would be that there are too few children who more readily adapted to parental emigration with fewer problems. Since this work indicates the ability of children to adapt contrary to expectations, perhaps my statements would only be stronger if those who could “pass” as children in intact homes were included.
Unfortunately, a number of other children also wanted to come to visit me.
Some children would tell me that their aunt had left, their mother had thought about it, or that they told their father to go so they could come and play with me. I tried to spend recess with a large number of children, in order to get a better understanding of the 61 school overall and to try to prevent disappointing the other children in the school who I did not take out of class “to play.” I would try to explain to the children, without creating any negative connotations that did not exist on parental emigration, that only the children whose parents had emigrated came to tell me about their life and help me with my work.
However, some children never did come to understand the selection process. It was somewhat confusing since I added some children later when I became aware of the situation or they enrolled mid-year. Some children who did not have émigré parents would jump up and ask to be the next child to leave class when I arrived.
In comparison to the informant interviews where I wrote all the responses to one interview into one notebook, I wrote all interview responses for one respondent in one notebook. The children participated in seven different psychological measures or interviews, disguised as games, and won tokens for their participation: 1. Kinetic Family
Drawing Activity, 2. Initial Interview, 3. The Storytelling Card Game, 4. Child
Attachment Interview, 5. Child Ethnopsychology Interview, 6. Child Role Interview, and
7. Final Interview. I also conducted a 8. Parent Interview, 9. Teacher Interview, and 10.
Teacher Poll. (See Appendix B for interview schedules.) They cashed in the tokens once after the first three measures and once at the end at a “bazaar” (similar to a nickel and dime store with cheap, random wares) where I brought in toys, sports equipment, and, upon request, make-up. Children were pleased and wanted to know how many tokens others had earned, what others selected, and how soon they could earn more tokens.
I sent a letter home to the parents once I had selected the children with whom I wanted to continue working. Response varied. Some parents came to the school for formal interviews; others invited me into their everyday lives. Many cried and one told 62 me she did not want me to worry about her grandson because he was fine. I also interviewed the teachers in the beginning in order to get to know the families and distributed a survey at the end. As before with informants, I describe how I created the interview, its goals, how I administered it, and the efficacy in reaching the stated goals.
1. Kinetic Family Drawing Activity:
In the first interview with the children, I asked the children to draw “a” family doing something (Buros & Kaufman 1970). I felt that coloring and drawing would be a good activity to begin to get to know the children. Drawings also provided the opportunity to ask about the families of the children. I chose kinetic drawings rather than static because, according to Adams:
These kinetic (action) drawings are more informative than drawings following traditional akinetic instructions. Young children usually express themselves more naturally and spontaneously through actions than through words, so action drawings provide an excellent method of exploring their world. Though difficult to score, drawing tests are nonthreatening, simple to administer, and useful when other techniques are limited by language barriers, cultural differences, and inability to communicate. (Adams et al. 1984: 291)
Classmates and siblings usually participated in this activity at the same time. As the children drew, we would discuss school, family, and anything else that the children would bring up. Then, the children would describe their drawing. As children described their drawings, I would find out their age, who had emigrated to where, and who lived in their house. We drew and talked for as long as our schedule allowed and we both wanted to.
Even though I had instructed the children to draw “a” family, they drew what they considered their own family. Often it was not the family they lived with, or even once lived with, but who they would like to live together as an ideal family. However, 63 some children would draw neither a mother nor a father, would draw people they live with who are not related, or would draw relatives whose names they do not know. These children sometimes base their idea of what makes a family on residence, on care, on cultural values, or not on anything in particular. These drawings were consistent with later interview data. Children who had more trouble adjusting to parental emigration did not have an idea of a family that was consonant with their own life experience.
2. Initial Interview:
After establishing rapport with the children, I wanted to get a better picture of their life histories. I asked questions regarding how their parent left and how they stay in contact because I believe that these are important factors for understanding the differences in the effects following parental emigration. I also asked some questions from Levy’s Check Sheet (1973: 509ff) regarding locating data, childhood household, nature of household relations, and data on significant caretakers. I would ask the list of questions in the form of a conversation. The list in the appendix is not exhaustive. Some aspects of the interview with some respondents expanded.
We played board games as we talked. I think that playing games while interviewing distracts children enough that they do not focus on self-presentation and crafting of answers as much. In addition, the game provided the opportunity for children to avoid questions when they wanted to. This is important ethically because children may not feel that they can blatantly avoid emotional topics when a person of perceived authority interviews them. This is also important methodologically because their selective silences and diversions let me know which topics to pay careful attention to with their life histories. 64
Another child from the same grade or family would play as well at the same time.
I do not think that this detracted from the interviews. Children discussed the same items in public and in private. Not only did I find that children were very open regarding some facts of their short life histories when other children were present, but also were inquisitive when interacting with the other children who were discussing their experience of parental emigration. This interview was not necessarily the second time that I talked to the child—at the school we would spend time during recess or between classes.
3. Storytelling Card Game
Murray (1943) developed the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). The projective measure asks the respondent to tell a story to some of 20 line drawings, “necessarily expressing his or her motives, interests, and anxieties,” which “inadvertently reveals level of intelligence; range of interests; unconscious tensions; attitudes toward death, violence, sex, and parents; and latent or repressed material” (Adams et al. 1984: 290). Since the standard TAT is frequently criticized for cultural bias, I used a version of the TAT called the storytelling card game (Gardner 1989). The game has line drawing scene cards and cut-outs of people of varying skin tones.
I recorded three to six stories from each child on a small digital voice recorder.
Rather than using the spinner included in the storytelling card game for card selection of backgrounds, I asked children to look through all the cards and select one to tell a story about with their own selection of the racially diverse people cut-outs. Most children took a considerable amount of time to select cards and especially cut-outs of people.
Surprisingly, attire seemed to have more to do with family selection of cut-outs than age or race. The older cut-outs, which were in simple dresses, were often selected to be 65 maids. Family members often were not even remotely of the same skin tone, and the cut- outs with Asian phenotypic features were not chosen any less than the other cut-outs.
Frequently children chose to use more than one card for their story. I let them choose to change the rules to the stories. Some children told more stories because they believed it would earn them more tokens for the bazaar.
It was of interest to observe the actions of the characters in the stories. Since this version of the TAT combines doll play with the TAT, I could observe how characters interacted—whether or not they were continuously present or in contact. For instance, one child told all his stories with a cut-out representing the mother, but she was never in physical contact with the son cut-out, even though the grandmother cut-out was.
4. Child Attachment Interview:
The child’s perception of his or her relationship with the émigré parent and the substitute parent was important for my research. The detailed discourse analysis of the
Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) is used to ascertain the dominant patterns of affect regulation and object relating (Gullestad 2003: 651). The interview asks adults to choose adjectives to describe their significant attachment figures. I adjusted the AAI to children.
While the AAI expects the interviewee to come up with their own adjectives, I provided the children a number of adjective choices. I determined the list of adjectives based on a focus group’s ratings of usage. I printed out each of the adjectives and cut them into small cards. I asked children to select five adjectives that describe the substitute caregiver and explain why each term applied. Then, I asked them to select five adjectives that describe their émigré parent. We would continue with any other family members that seemed relevant. Children took between ten minutes to half an hour per parental figure. 66
The results were surprisingly informative. Children would sometimes mull over certain adjective choices. When word choices were in discord with what I was aware of in their actual home life, the child’s inability to discuss actual instances of their own creation confirmed my ideas. In addition, it was interesting to compare the stories that the children would tell regarding his or her émigré parent with the ones at home. Some revealed information beyond the level of content analysis. Linguistic analysis revealed a trend that some children who had more difficulty accepting the departure of their émigré parents used present tense to describe behaviors that had clearly concluded in the past.
For instance, one child stated that her father is affectionate because he kisses her before bed, conjugating all the verbs in the present tense even though her father left three years ago. On the behavioral level, the selection of words was informative. Some children picked up some adjectives, put them back, or rearranged them. There was variation in behavior when relating stories as well.
5. Child Ethnopsychology Interview / Child Somatic Interview:
I was interested in the child’s experience of learning to express and feel emotions because in my observations, when the child of an émigré would feel sad or lonely, the substitute caregivers would respond with distractions or denial of their emotions.
Children would also observe their grandmothers grieving the mother’s emigration, yet only hear the expression of joy over the benefits of emigration. This confusion of emotional manifestation and expression will affect how children learn to assess their own emotions. For this reason, I adapted the informants’ interview on emotions to children.
I began with a set of general questions from Shweder’s work on the comparative study of emotions, without referring to a specific emotion. 67
After the general questions, I would ask the child to select a set of emotion words. As with the child attachment interview, I presented the rated terms to the children on small note cards. I asked children to select five emotion words and answer a list of questions. Similar to the description above for informant interviews on ethnopsychology, I created the list of questions expanded from the topics Marsella et al.
(1985: 300) emphasized in their overview of depression. For each emotion, I sought the cultural values of the emotion, physical correlates, how people behave when they experience the emotion, personality types that are likely to experience the emotion, and what will happen to someone who feels this emotion.
At first, I had divided this interview in two, but because of limited discussion, I combined them into one session. Children were frequently unable to express the different ways that their bodies felt with certain emotions or distinguish between emotions beyond just positive or negative. When the series of questions were too advanced developmentally for the particular respondent, children were asked to draw people who were feeling a particular emotion and explain why. Most descriptions for
émigrés’ children had to do with a school context, which was interesting since other children and informants tended to use examples from their family lives. Children’s avoidance at discussing emotion in relation to their family matched the substitute caregiver’s avoidance at discussing emotions or showing their emotions other than late at night or in private nooks of the house.
6. Child Role Interview:
I wanted to know what children conceived as the responsibilities of different familial roles. This helped to understand the difficulty with which certain children were 68 able to adjust to their substitute care. Did they believe that only a mother could provide certain kinds of care? At what age do children require what kinds of care? The role interview was similar to the role interview for informants, except for some minor changes to fit the “game” style of interviews and deletion of inappropriate terms for their age. I presented the roles on index cards, asked children to pick five roles and they answered all five of the questions listed for each role. Sometimes children connected the descriptions directly to their own family, but not all did. Some did for certain roles and not for others.
The children treated most of the questions on appropriate role behavior as common sense and unquestionable, even when their responses contrasted with those I received from other children or informants. Sometimes children had trouble because they felt like they may be accusing one of their family members of being a “bad” person when asked for an example of someone who does not fulfill the role appropriately.
Other times children confused roles such as husband with father, and did not separate the roles. This may be due to an inability to abstract the responsibilities for a role that they had no first hand experience with or because the children do not conceive of the two roles as separate. In other words, maybe it is not a confusion to describe the role of a husband in regards to his fatherly duties because being a husband means being a father.
To augment this data, children played a version of charades where they would act out certain roles “randomly assigned” with the use of an origami paper “fortune teller”13 and the other children would guess. Many children acted out two different roles the same
13 I have heard this referred to as the “cootie catcher” as well. One person selects colors on the outside of the apparatus, which the operator spells to reveal numbers on the inside. When the individual chooses a number, the operator flips that number up to reveal a role to perform in this case. Its normal use is for fortunes, delivering insults, or diagnosing what one must do to immunize themselves against the disease they could get for accidentally bumping into or touching something belonging to a child of the opposite gender. 69 way. This did not lead to confusion with the other children—the children would both guess aunt and mother when the performer would act out caregiving behaviors.
7. Final Interview:
In the final interview,14 I checked who the children lived with and added a few areas I was missing earlier from Mead’s (1928) checklist, such as social ties and a few siblings’ exact ages. I also adapted Vaillant’s (1977) Adult Adjustment Scale on career, social health, psychological health, and physical health to children—I considered school and chores (which generally did not exist) their career. Vaillant’s scale was informative for understanding how children adjusted socially to parental emigration in order to expand upon other interviews that focused on their psychological adaptation to parental emigration. Children of émigrés were expected to do poorly on Vaillant’s measures.
Teachers and the media reported that these children would do poorly at school, with peers, and health-wise, and moreover they were expected to suffer psychologically, with eating disorders and suicidal tendencies (Saad 2003).
I think that this negative stigma lead to the need to differentiate themselves from other families. For this reason, I asked the children to compare their lives with the lives of other children in general and with the lives of other children of émigrés. A common thread in all the family interviews was why their situation was different from others.
Even though they all highlighted a different characteristic that made them unique, children focused more on the kind of contact that parents maintained in their situation, whereas the adults focused on the motivations to emigrate to distinguish themselves.
14“Final Interview” is a misleading title because I did meet with some afterwards and do plan to conduct follow-up interviews in the future. I call it such because it was designed to update and find out all the remaining information for this fieldwork expedition. 70
I began a discussion on morality because of the connection of moral development with an expansion of the concern for others (Crain 1985), which may be limited or highlighted with emigration. The émigré may be an example of great personal sacrifice because of his or her concern for others, or the emigration of a parent may leave the child feeling that others are not concerned with his or her welfare. I tie this to Kegan’s theory on evolutionary truces (1982), which states that children develop through alternating stages of seeking inclusion with and seeking independence from others. These children may be unable to vacillate from one stage to the next when their parents leave because they may not be able to move away from inclusion on their own. Evaluating the levels of moral reasoning will help to determine whether the child has advanced to a stage where they include the consideration of others’ needs in their worldview or not.
Just as in the initial interview with children, we played board games and talked. I told them that I just wanted to see how things had changed over the last year. Unlike the first interview, children seemed more interested in talking to me and telling me about the other children than the board games. They were used to me asking random questions so that I could “learn” and did not seem surprised when board games entailed questions. I think that the results from this interview demonstrated that I had established rapport with my respondents. The children prefaced many answers with the importance of its secrecy, they did not mumble as in the initial interview, and it was easy to start conversations from the original questions without having to resort to a series of follow-up questions.
8. Parent Interview:
The parent interview was meant to gain background information in order to understand further the child’s environment and to establish contact for future participant 71 observation of the family. The questions regarding the emigration journey were similar to the informant interview adapted from the Immigration Museum for New Americans. It also included questions directly related to my research goals and some specific questions to the particular case. I adjusted the questions depending on who the substitute caregiver was and on the relationship between the parents before emigration.
While at first I was nervous to ask such personal questions, the interviews usually escalated to be much more personal than I had expected at that particular juncture. Many of the children’s aunts and grandmothers cried because they felt lonely or lamented the situations that led to the emigration of their family member. When asked, most admitted that they purposely do not express such emotions to the children. The parent interviews helped to ascertain the validity of children’s statements and self-presentations. The interviews also helped me to understand the environmental symbiosis between the caregiver and the child with any psychological adaptations.
I sent a letter to the homes of all the children of émigrés to explain the goals of my research and to seek participation from parents. Some children admitted to having lost the permission slip their parents had filled out, or having lost the letter before they could give it to their parents. I set up appointment times with the families who responded. Some parents came to the school for a formal interview, others invited me into their everyday lives. I continued to observe some families throughout my fieldwork period and contacted many on a regular basis or for special circumstances, such as the terrorist attacks in Spain during 2003. All families, even the ones who did not return the previous letter, received a concluding letter with some preliminary suggestions for helping 72 children of émigrés. I also presented this research on a radio show, at a conference, in a public forum, and in a newspaper interview.
Children seemed happy to have me come over to their house. However, some children were disappointed because I could not go to their house as much as they would have wished because of my other research commitments, the substitute caregivers’ work schedule, or the caregivers’ inclinations to have me observing their home life.
9. Teacher Interview:
Since teachers more closely observed the children interacting with others and following directions, I interviewed them regarding the areas that informants frequently mentioned as problematic for the children of émigrés. When possible, I also spoke with the teachers from previous years. The teachers tended to be very informed on the home life of the children along with their school performance; Ecuadorian education depends on a great deal of homework that requires adult supervision, tutoring, and guidance.
Sometimes the teachers had strong opinions regarding the effects of parental emigration on children in general or that particular child, and other times, everything about the child was “normal” or “average.” The discussions lasted between five minutes to an hour per child, depending on the teacher’s general interest in my research and how well the teacher knew the child.
10. Concluding Teacher Poll:
I chose to distribute a written poll for follow-up interviews because teachers had different amounts of free time. I created questions regarding low motivation, aggression, anxiety, academic disability, hostile isolation, extraversion, and total disability from the
School Behavior Checklist (Miller 1972). I distributed the two-sided sheets to the 73 teachers during my last week with a gift to express my gratitude. When I collected the completed polls, I discussed the responses with the teachers whenever they had the time and interest. All completed the survey and half of the teachers had further comments regarding the students. I think the combination of a written survey and summary discussion was the best method for this information and population.
Summary of Instruments
INSTRUMENT N SOURCES ANALYZED Informant Methods 1 How To Raise Children 15 Mead 1928; Erikson 1953 Chapter 6, 8, & 9 2 Ethnopsychology 16 Kleinman & Good 1985 Chapter 6, 8, & 9 3 Roles & Appropriate 24 Levy 1973; Parish 1994; Weismantel 1988 Chapter 6, 8, & 9 Behavior 4 Social Networks 15 Stack 1997, Lewis 1959; Scheper-Hughes Chapter 4 & 6 1992 5 Potential Émigrés 12 Chapter 4 6 Returned Émigrés 5 Immigration Museum for New Americans Epilogue 2001 7 Workers & Vendors 21 Chapter 8 8 Organizations 22 Auyero 2000; Gill 2000 Chapter 8 Respondent Methods 1 Kinetic Family Drawing 34 Buros & Kaufman 1970 Chapter 8 & 9 2 Initial Interview 34 Levy 1973 Chapter 7, 8, & 9 3 Storytelling Card Game 30 Murray 1943; Gardner 1989 Chapter 8 & 9 4 Child Attachment Interview 25 Gullestad 2003 Chapter 6, 8, & 9 5 Child Ethnopsychology / 23 Kleinman & Good 1985 Chapter 8 & 9 Somatic Interview 6 Child Role Interview 21 Levy 1973; Parish 1994; Weismantel 1988 Chapter 7, 8, & 9 7 Final Interview 20 Mead 1928; Vaillant 1977; Kegan 1982 Chapter 7, 8, & 9 8 Parent Interview 12 Immigration Museum for New Americans Chapter 7, 8, & 9 2001 9 Teacher Interview 42 Chapter 8 & 9 10 Concluding Teacher Poll 22 Miller 1972 Chapter 8 & 9 FIGURE 3: SUMMARY OF INSTRUMENTS
I have summarized my methodology in Figure 3. The number listed for each interview is the number of people spoken too. However, this number does not indicate a comparison of the amount of information obtained for different interviews. I spoke to 74 some people for hours regarding one topic, spoke to the same person about different topics, and some people decided to change the topic of the conversation to their own interests. Utility of information as well varied over the particular characteristics of the research participant interviewed. When the failure or exceptional success of an interview seemed more related to the instrument than the informants, I included it in my description of instrument construction above.
I indicated the principal sources as well. Sometimes I translated entire instruments or particular questions directly from the indicated sources, while I only modeled others after the general ideas in certain sources. The last column indicates the chapter where I will principally address the results from each of the instruments.
Data Recording & Storage
Whenever possible, I took notes during my conversations and observations. If I deemed that writing might be distracting or inappropriate, I took notes as soon as possible following the interview. I transcribed the data into a password protected database with codes for each research participant. With consent, I digitally recorded the interviews with the various organizations that help migrants and their families, the longer interactions with respondents, and the psychological assessment measures. I coded the recordings and backed them up with the fieldnotes. I transcribed useful interviews into a coded database that could be searched.
I also created a database of relevant articles from the newspaper with the widest circulation,15 El Universo. I compiled all the articles over two years on both internal and
15 Although the tabloid Extra has a wider circulation, I do not consider it “news.” The daily format includes a gruesome photo of the latest atrocious murder above the crease on the front page and a naked 75 international emigration and immigration. I categorized the articles based upon which migrant group it dealt with (Ecuadorian émigrés in Spain, Italy or other country,
Columbian, Peruvian or Chinese immigrants in Ecuador, or other) and the topic of the article (negative or positive experiences of migrants, political decisions, economic ramifications, or other). These articles represent not just the perspective of the newspaper staff, but compose a base of information that both Ecuadorians in country and abroad use to form opinions on migration and find assistance for their problems. I also included several letters to the editor and a sampling from a message board for
Ecuadorian émigrés abroad to communicate with their family and nationals. Throughout this thesis, I used the articles when appropriate as examples of émigré experiences and of the kind of discourse that surrounds emigration, especially in Chapter 8.
Data Analysis
I analyzed data collected from work with informants, person-centered interviews, observations, and psychological assessment measures with careful attention to the similarities and differences among the life histories to look for patterns. This analysis determined: 1. the significant characteristics of the discourse on emigration; 2. the role that children play in the decision-making process; 3. any conflicts between the advocated and observed methods of preparing children; 4. the connection between these factors and the defense mechanisms chosen; and in turn 5. the efficacy of those defense mechanisms.
Based on this, I create a typology of psychological adaptations and social adjustments to parental emigration. Children adapt to parental emigration through cultural learning,
centerfold layout of a woman, generally bent over, so I did not find it a useful source for understanding viewpoints on emigration even though the women frequently looked foreign. 76 culturally constituted defense mechanisms, and individual defense mechanisms based on the characteristics of their home environment and the role of social approval.
Children adapted to parental emigration through cultural learning when they experienced a context of unequivocally positive values of émigrés. Others adapted through culturally constituted defense mechanisms. With the comparison of children’s perspectives and the cultural investigation with the general public, my analysis indicates children’s adjustment to parental emigration through the creation of an alternative interpretation of their life situations which included: a restructuring of family roles, an emphasis on the cultural value of distributive care through extended family, focus on the kinds of care the émigré parent can still complete, and a redefinition of age-graded care.
Others adapted through individual defense mechanisms in symbiosis with unique characteristics of their environment. This analysis will help us to understand the way that the emigration affects children, whose psychological welfare affects society.
Data Presentation
This part of the dissertation describes the context in which I acquired this data, the perceptions of the researcher, and the methodology for acquiring this data.
Part II discusses the background information to understand this research.
Chapter 4 provides the historical context of these separations in Ecuador. I review the human movements in Ecuadorian history that have led migration to become considered a part of daily life. Chapter 5 is a description of a “normal” family, as constructed from informant data, to provide a glimpse into the daily life of an Ecuadorian family. I also extensively describe a nuclear family without émigrés, the Mendozas. As with the families that stay, the Mendoza family is connected closely with emigration. In chapter 6, I 77 describe the extended Mendoza family to provide examples of the variability of experiences that children of émigrés face. One child was left better off when her mother went to Italy; one child had a difficult time when his mother went to Italy and his father went to the United States; three siblings were left in a dangerous situation when their mother and father went to Spain; and one child barely noticed when his father went to
Italy hoping to get to England. The different life histories provide a context for understanding the children’s different responses to parental emigration in Part III.
Part III describes the different responses that occur when children face very different experiences. I grouped the children into the three chapters based on their ability to adjust. I ordered the responses theoretically to provide a critique to the strict application of attachment theory. Chapter 7 addresses children from fieldwork in an
Andean village. Like Weisner and Gallimore’s research with sibling caretakers (1977), these children accept care from people other than their parents as normal. Their ability to accept their parent’s departure as evidence of parental devotion and sacrifice shows how cultural learning can re-interpret a separation that the ethnocentric strict interpretation of attachment theory would see as problematic. In fact, some children even felt that the lack of emigration was an abandonment of parental duty.
Chapter 8 uses a composite of data from children throughout Guayaquil. While attachment theory seems to view children’s context as a unified process of socialization from parent and child, other research shows that value internalization is not so simplistic.
Spiro (1997) discusses the variation in the acquisition of cultural values and
Bronfenbrenner (1979) elaborates the different contexts of socialization. With exposure to conflicting valuations of parental émigrés from non-émigré families, the media, 78 government discourse, organizations designed to help émigrés, and the children’s families, these children did not experience a unified context for socialization. The children would create culturally constituted defense mechanisms, selecting cultural values from their available options, to re-code their parents’ departure as acceptable and non-problematic.
Chapter 9 provides comparison cases Chapter 8. Child development often views socialization as directional—parents are the agents, children the receptacles. To expand this view, Chapter 9 addresses children’s influence on the process of enculturation, as with Parish’s work on moral learning in Nepal (1994). The children negotiate individual responses to their situations, which may or may not resolve their conflict.
I tie together the data with some concluding remarks in chapter 10. In addition to the re-focus of research on parental separation, I suggest methods for urban anthropology and research in cultures in change. Based on the responses discussed in
Part III, I suggest a combination of cognitive and psychoanalytic tendencies. While cognitive theory focuses on augmenting data to internal schemas and psychoanalytic theory focuses on denying external reality, I combine both these processes in seeing the children’s methods of adaptation as including cultural learning, culturally constituted defense mechanisms, and individual defense mechanisms. These three processes involve a dilution or expansion of existing ideas, rather than denial or addition.
In the epilogue, I address the macro concerns of the current political and economic situation of Ecuador and the micro concerns of what this atmosphere forebodes for familial reunification both with returnees in Ecuador and in the diaspora. Part II: Context & Diversity of Migration Experiences
With the preceding description of the fieldwork location, perception of the researcher, and methods, I address the context and experience of parental migration in this part. Chapter 4 provides the historical context of emigration in Ecuador.
Throughout the nation’s history, a culture of migration has influenced decision making processes. Then, I turn to a description of the typical family in Chapter 5. The description of a neighborhood, family, and children’s needs offers a basis for understanding the experiences of émigré’s children. I compare the experiences of a number of émigrés’ children in Chapter 6 to show the variation between the separations and situations of substitute care that children face. This background will provide a context for understanding the children’s different responses to parental emigration in Part
III that leads to my concluding remarks and discussion on the current climate in Ecuador.
79 Chapter 4 — A Culture of Migration Ecuadorian History
In order to provide a context for discussing the varied migration experiences that children face, it is necessary to first turn to the historical events that have shaped the memories, values, and perspectives on current migration. According to Harwood et al.
(1995: 119), ignoring such history is a form of reductionism that “reifies meaning systems without regard to the historical circumstances that have shaped ever-changing relationships among different socioeconomic groups.” My research participants’ values and perspectives on migration formed in a particular cultural context with historical continuities and with modern alterations. Menjívar (2003: 103) suggests that “the social characteristics of the immigrants and historical specificities of their migration” serve to
“generate a multiplicity of experiences.” This chapter and the following two chapters in
Part II will address the multiplicity of experiences for Ecuadorian migrants.
80 81
ECUADORIAN GEOGRAPHY
On the northwest Pacific coast of South America between Columbia and Peru, the Colorado-sized nation of Ecuador straddles the equator. The Andes Mountain range divides the country lengthwise. Its domain includes the biologically unique Galapagos
Islands,16 part of the Amazon rain forest referred to as the “Oriente,” a portion of the
Andes Mountain17 range referred to as the “Sierra”, and lesser known climactic regions such as tropical dry forest and cloud forest. While about half of the nation’s territory is the subtropical and tropical rain forest of the Oriente, less than 10 percent of the nation’s
12 million people live there. Almost half of the nation’s population lives in the elevated plateaus nestled within the Andes Mountains, principally in the capital city of Quito. The rest live on the highly fertile coastal plains, concentrated in Ecuador’s primary port and largest city of Guayaquil with a population of over two and a half million people.
Despite the regionalism of political interests associated with these diverse topographic characteristics, the history of Ecuador as a nation has a recurring theme: economic difficulties leading to migration. An understanding of the migratory history of
Ecuador is necessary to understand the current composition of the nation, ranging from cultural characteristics to the waxing and waning of birth rates following male migration
(Grijalva Jiménez 1998: 54). Ecuadorian historian Alberto Acosta highlights this characteristic as well in his summary of the nation’s economic history, which is often required reading in high schools.
16 This is the site of much of Darwin’s evolutionary work. 17 The portion of the Ecuadorian Andes includes the highest mountain in the world if measured from the center of the Earth, as many Ecuadorians assured me is the more appropriate form of measurement because of the test that atmospheric differences create for mountain climbing, rather than the difference from sea level. 82
Whether for social or natural problems at home, for the lack of adequate responses to land disputes, or for the draw of the principle growth sites [of Quito and Guayaquil], a significant number of people have mobilized over the years inside the country, especially from the provinces of Loja and Manabí. In the last decades of the 20th century, this mobilization has notably augmented towards the exterior, particularly to the United States where a growing number of Ecuadorians live. (Acosta 2003: 127)18
I focus my review of Ecuadorian history on these historic migratory movements to provide an understanding of the current migration flow, which is the contextual focus of this dissertation. For this chapter, I will begin with a brief review of portions of
Ecuadorian history that are part of current consciousness. These flows have positive, negative or contradicting valuations and compose the culture of migration.
A flow of rural to urban migration, especially to Quito and Guayaquil, with peaks and lulls continued during the history described below. I will not treat this flow directly because it suffices to state that for centuries the political center of Quito and the bustling economic port of Guayaquil have functioned as a draw for not only the unemployed and disenfranchised, but the elite and all those in between as well (Townsend 2000).
CULTURE OF MIGRATION
“Culture of migration” has a few denotations in the migration literature.
Cornelius defines a culture of migration as, “A community in which positive attitudes and a high regard for the economic benefits of out-migration has developed and become firmly entrenched, creating a cultural propensity to move abroad for economic reasons”
(Cornelius 1991: 112 as cited in Tsuda 2003: 94). By Cornelius’s definition, a society with
18 Original Text: Sea por los problemas sociales o naturales en los lugares de origen, por la carencia de una respuesta adecuada al problema de tierras o por el atractivo de los principales polos de crecimiento [de Quito y Guayaquil], un importante número de personas se movilizó a través de estos años dentro del país, en especial desde las provincias de Loja y Manabí. En las últimas décadas del siglo XX, esta movilidad aumentó notablemente hacia el exterior, particularmente hacia los Estados Unidos donde habita un creciente número de ecuatorianos. 83 a culture of migration is one where departure from the community, or “human mobilization,” is seen as an option for difficult times. In such a culture, migration is not an extreme escape from the society, but rather an expected and normalized life choice.
While Cornelius focuses on the set of values that compose a culture of migration,
Giménez Romero focuses on the construction of such a value system. Giménez Romero
(2003: 172) states that the “cultura migratoria” is the: “Knowledge, attitudes, and practices related to the phenomenon of emigration and those existent in a community or region of origin configured between other things from the effect of the visits and returns of the émigrés.”19 According to Giménez Romero, because of a history of emigration, sending societies come to know, accept, and judge the decision to emigrate not as deviant behavior, but as part of the existing system, which alters with the integration of some aspects of the foreign values into their own.
For this reason, I begin with an overview of the different migrations throughout
Ecuadorian history that formed the basis of the current culture of migration. Originally, political structures determined migration flows. Migration was part of life for nomadic tribes twelve thousand years ago. Eventually, these tribes became agriculturists who traded their wares widely because of the geographic distinctions in the nation. When the
Incas moved northward from Peru at the end of the fifteenth century, these agriculturists melded or re-located to other parts of the country. Later, these non-Incan tribes helped the Spanish to conquer the Incas in 1534. The Spanish then began the system of encomiendas, or grants of land that required labor and goods from the indigenous. In
19 Original Text: Conocimientos, actitudes y prácticas relacionadas con el fenómeno de la emigración y existentes en una comunidad o región de origen, configurada entre otras cosas por el efecto de las visitas y retornos de los emigrados. 84 the 1700s, latifundias known as the hacienda system replaced encomiendas. They were more humane in policy than encomiendas, but equally inhumane in practice.
After independence in 1830, particular industries rather than regimes decided the migration flows. Cacao harvesting from 1880 to 1920, banana plantations from 1930 to
1960, and petroleum in the 1970s spurred immigrations with their rise. The fall of these industries spurred emigrations, along with the fall of the Panama Hat industry in the
1960s that significantly began international flows. The economic crisis of the late nineties spurred emigration as well, and I look in depth at the similarities and differences of this flow in comparison to other historical Ecuadorian human movements. Political instability (frequently seen as due to rampant corruption), absolute and relative economic deprivation, and the growth of social networks influenced each of these migration flows.
INDIGENOUS PEOPLES:MIGRANTS OF THE PAST &THE PAST IN THE PRESENT
I begin this treatment of the history of Ecuador with nomadic tribes because not only is it the first evidence of human activity in the area, but also because it helps to dissuade the assumption that mobility is necessarily abnormal. In fact, even once the indigenous peoples transitioned to agriculture, the potato and corn producers of the
Sierra traded frequently with the coast for seafood and the Oriente for medicinal herbs.
Even though confederations of agriculturalists are a part of current Ecuadorian society, the lifestyle is not highly respected. The indigenous nomadic tribes are romanticized as part of Ecuadorian history—a way of life the nation has grown from.
Agriculturalists are a way of the past as well, and therefore those who continue in this lifestyle are seen as vestiges of the past and lacking development. Artifacts from nomadic tribes are displayed proudly in urban museums, are re-created at rural burial sites, and are 85 sold to beach tourists out of duffel bags. Some city monuments idolize the historic strength of indigenous peoples such as the Otavaleños and Cayambes in resisting the
Incan invasion from the south. These past indigenous groups are part of the construction of the present. However, the current indigenous peasants are shameful present remnants of the past.
Biological heritage does not determine indigenous status, but rather location, political alliances, and class does.20 The “living ancestors” or present indigenous peoples are seen as filthy hindrances to Andean city-life. The Incan empire did not have a stronghold on the coast and did not reach the Oriente, so indigenous-ness is tied to Sierra locales. Once re-located to the coast, indigenous peoples shed their indigenous status, unless they continue in the impoverished lifestyle of subsistence agriculture.
There is a discord between international perception of the indigenous peoples and national perception. Their Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador (CONAIE) is internationally renowned for its formidable strength and great influence on political decisions through strikes. However, this strength and influence is seen as a nuisance nationally. Mestizos, especially coastal ones, see the indigenous peoples as crybaby whiners. The negative perceptions of indigenous peoples as part of the past prevent the bearers of these views from acknowledging the current and germane influence that the indigenous peoples have on political decisions. Their similarity to the indigenous peoples of the past has become an equation that denigrates their advancements.
20 Even with the discourse of mestizaje, as a nation, Ecuador is racially segmented in perception, even if not in fact. Indigenous peoples are in the Sierra. Mestizos are on the coast. The northern coastal province of Esmeraldas became the location for migration of ex-slaves. The province is considered the location of all African Ecuadorians to such an extent, that even if an African Ecuadorian was born and raised in another province, along with recent generations of his family, he or she will be referred to as Esmeraldeño/a. Some may ask a non-African Ecuadorian from Esmeraldas where his family is really from. 86
Like their ancestors, the current bearers of the indigenous legacy frequently migrate for work. Quiteño elite scour the rural countryside for appropriate maids amongst the indigenous women. Quimsa indigenous women staff expensive hotels
(Crain 1996). Many indigenous peasants commute to urban markets to sell their produce.
Indigenous Otavaleños are often perceived as artisans, but consider themselves traders
(Maldonado 2004). With the changing economy, they have begun to import wares from
Thailand and China to sell in Ecuador. Although the migration itself frequently results in the loss of indigenous status, many migrate to the coast for employment as well.
SPANISH CONQUEST: UNLABELLED IMMIGRATION
It may seem odd to refer to a conquest as migration. While migration and conquest differ greatly in power relations, conquest is still a human mobilization that can be motivated for economic gains or freedom from persecution. I do not seek to equate them literally, but rather include the Spanish Conquest as part of Ecuador’s culture of migration because it influences the choices of destinations and timetables just as other migrations in Ecuadorian history do.
Many other groups immigrated to Ecuador: currently there are substantial flows of Columbians to the northern Andes, Peruvians to the southern Andes, and Chinese to the southern coast. However, I only address the Spanish conquest because they are the only group seen to factor into the composition of the current Ecuadorian mestizo population and affect locations for emigration. The Columbians, Peruvians, and Chinese are seen, respectively, as criminals avoiding legal repercussions in their country, unskilled laborers who lower wages, and crafty traders of shoddy merchandise taking advantage of 87
Ecuadorian destitution.21 These groups are not considered part of the current
Ecuadorian population. Even Columbians and Peruvians who have resided in the country for generations are not considered Ecuadorian. Some Ecuadorians who have phenotypes similar to Asian features are called “chinos” or Chinese, even if they have no known ties to China. In contrast, the Spanish are part of the current population, and not just because of linguistic similarities—Columbians and Peruvians speak Spanish as well.
FIGURE 4: COLON STATUE “We the Europeans arrive without a visa.” Spanish migration policies share this view. To indicate the preference for Latin
American migrants, Spain refers to Ecuadorian immigrants as “return migrants.” This policy to indicate a group that is more likely to assimilate is common. Japan has different categories for returnees from Brazil and Peru. Even though the third generation Japanese migrants tend to work in factories (Tsuda 2003), the policy presents them as tourists reconnecting with their heritage rather than labor migrants. Spain presented Ecuadorian
21 The contradictory perceptions of immigrants in Ecuador and Ecuadorian émigrés abroad are not uncommon. For instance, in Mexico, there is a humanitarian movement against the United States’ requirement of visas, but no mention of Mexico’s deportation of many Central and South Americans, including Ecuadorians. 88 migrants as such until 2003 when they were the largest foreign group in the country. The calculation of them as such and the institution of the visa indicated their difference.
Some Ecuadorian activists interpret the Spanish conquest as migration to suit their political aims as well. In the photo above (Figure 4), the Christopher Columbus monument in Quito was recruited to protest the implementation of visas for Ecuadorians to enter Spain as a contradiction of the previous open doors the Spanish found in
Ecuador (El Universo 8/3/2003). The Ecuadorian discourse refers to the Spanish arrival with ambivalent sentiment: similar to the pilgrims in United States history, they compose the basis of their founding myths. However, the indigenous past is valued in Ecuador as part of the mix of current residents. The previous animosity is not brought into cognizance when the street “Cristóbal Colon” named after conquerors crosses “Huayna
Capac” named after an Incan who honorably chose death over submission. When the
Spanish arrived on the Ecuadorian coast in 1526, Francisco Pizarro and Diego Almagro found willing soldiers for their battle against the Incas in the tribes that the Incas had attempted to conquer themselves. The fact that these sides, although divided, are all memorialized in city geography with statues, street names, and company names demonstrates the melding of heroic tales of different groups together with the process of mestizaje. Even though enemies to each other, they are all seen as part of the current stock of Ecuadorians and therefore allies to the present.
The indigenous Ecuadorians who fought with the Spanish against the Incas hoped to trade in the mandatory contributions to the Incas for freedom from both groups. Instead, they received an even more oppressive regime of encomiendas.
Encomiendas were land grants from the crown to favored members of the Spanish fleet, 89 which included the right to tax those who resided on the land. This system required the indigenous peoples to donate their labor and goods as a charge for the service of receiving Christian conversion (Ayala Mora 2003: 32). In order to pay these tributes, men became concentrated in encomienda lands to work the mountainous areas (in perhaps the first national labor migration). This conversion process led to ideological control and the expansion of Quechua, the language of the Incas, as the language of Sierran indigenous peoples in Ecuador. The Church’s expansive efforts to make Quechua the language of the indigenous erased many of the previous distinctions between indigenous groups.
Fearful of losing control of the colonies and facing criticisms from the church over the mistreatment of the indigenous people in encomiendas, the crown reclaimed political and economic control of the colonies and established rules to protect the indigenous peoples. For a short period at the end of the sixteenth century, the crown appropriated the Incan “Mita” which obligated indigenous peoples to dedicate a set amount of time extracting minerals from the land, weaving textiles, and working the lands with a removal of the encomendero intermediaries. This drew people to the northern and central Sierra for mining (Ayala Mora 2003: 39).
When minerals began to run out and textiles started to lose the competition against European versions, the colonists decided to turn to agriculture and once again concentrated populations in other pockets of the Sierra. Similar to encomiendas, the crown granted individual Spanish men land to work. The land often had belonged to indigenous groups. Unlike the encomiendas, indigenous peoples were not part of the property legally.
However, in actuality, dispossessed from their lands and needing to pay tributes and religious commitments, the indigenous peoples were obligated to work even more hours 90 for the latifundias than in the previous regimes. Although technically a voluntary decision to work, pay advances to cover arrears left the workers permanently indebted. In order to work, the indigenous laborers needed to buy tools, food, and other materials from the latifundista at exorbitant prices. The more the individuals worked, the larger their debts became. This system of depending on individuals of higher status to provide for the workers began to establish the long-standing ties of patronage that continued through the various agricultural industries to follow and into present day.
CACAO PLANTATIONS: SIERRA TO COAST
In the first decades of the nineteenth century, independence movements from the north unified present-day Venezuela, Columbia, and Ecuador into the revolutionary force of Gran Colombia. Ecuador became its own independent and free state in 1830. The patronage structure continued throughout the early republic, and began to flourish in burgeoning cacao plantations. The cacao boom meant the emergence of new economic and political elite (Strifler 2002: 22) and the emergence of a new flow of migration. The continuing cacao production led to migration from the mountains to the rural coast.
Primarily from the agricultural haciendas in the highlands but from all over Ecuador
(Crawford de Roberts 1980: 203), workers came to the rural coast to work as sembradores, or planting cacao seeds. They seeded the land for companies and then sold it back to the company a handful of years later once the trees had matured, meanwhile working the land for subsistence crops. Soon, cacao trees covered most of the southern coast. Near the end of the cacao boom in the early 1900’s, Ecuador was the largest exporter in the world.
However, as Ecuadorian history has come to show, focusing on a single product for the entire economy does not bode well for the future. When World War I devastated 91 the world trade in cacao and the competitor’s trees matured in Brazil and Africa, cacao surpluses built up in Ecuador. The lower prices and the agricultural disease the “Witch’s
Broom” in the early 1920’s devastated the cacao industry. Political ramifications took their toll before a significant luxury market for chocolate developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. “The collapse of cacao devastated the bourgeoisie’s economic and political power… Crisis and instability became institutionalized” (Strifler 2002: 23).
With the loss of political and economic power, patrons could no longer “care” for their workers. Many of the out-of-work cacao laborers moved to the nearby city of Guayaquil to seek employment. Others stayed and continued to produce smaller amounts of chocolate. Peasants still dry the cacao beans on the shoulder of the roads in the southern coast, but production has never risen to the pre-crisis levels and is no longer a source of disproportionate wealth. With the fall of cacao, the next import of bananas took root.
BANANA PRODUCTION: RURAL TO ENCLAVE
When the Panama Disease began devastating banana production in Costa Rica and Panama, the multinational corporation of United Fruit began to search out disease- free production sites in Guatemala, Honduras, Colombia, Mexico, and eventually
Ecuador (Strifler 2002: 32). The corporation settled in Ecuador because they found a cheap and docile labor force, disease-free lands because of the lack of previous banana production, and an encouraging government hoping to replace the defunct cacao plantations. The banana industry started slow in the 1930’s, but by the mid-1950’s the country was producing more bananas than any other in the world was.
The development of the banana plantations led to the migration of workers because the wages were four times higher than for agricultural laborers in other parts of 92
Ecuador. The plantations also offered a number of tangible benefits such as free housing, subsidized food, and steady employment.
Although company representatives made occasional forays into the Guayas basin in order to recruit workers, most of the earliest migrants to Tenguel [Southern coastal banana plantation] were found in Guayaquil. Many had migrated to the city from rural areas of the coast after the collapse of cacao in the 1920s… Later, as Hacienda Tenguel developed and got a reputation for being a fairly attractive place to live and work, workers increasingly came from the southern highlands and arrived with their families. (Strifler 2002: 41f).
At first, men migrated alone to the plantations before the corporations built an expansive infrastructure of housing, schools, and health-care. Eventually, women followed because the plantation encouraged nuclear family life to tame unruly workers. For the first time, the poor women did not have to work outside the home. This form of male pioneers followed by women is a frequent form of migration throughout Ecuadorian history.
The Panama Disease did eventually make its way southward to Ecuador. As the disease devastated crops, the companies also saw the rise in calls for agrarian reform and unionization as a reason to retreat. The companies’ retreats in fact aided agrarian reform and unionization movements because men could no longer support their families.
Agrarian reform transitioned the peasants into a patronage system with the state, rather than with the previous enclave (Strifler 2002: 74).
Political attempts to respond to the requests for agrarian reform were short-lived in the precarious political climate. Elected in 1960, Velasco followed the first president to serve his whole term since 1948. He partially instituted the first agrarian reform, and was ousted in one year because of his perceived connections to communism. The political change to a military regime and anti-communist reactionary sentiment in the popular 93 press and amongst the elite ignored cries for agrarian reform. With this economic downturn, many migrated to Guayaquil in hopes of finding employment. Others stayed to work the land they had invaded or been granted in agrarian reform as contract farmers.
In the face of unionization, agrarian reform, and the arrival of the Panama
Disease, corporations switched to contract farming, where peasants produced the bananas and sold them to the corporation. Unlike in Central America, the overwhelming majority of the bananas in Ecuador have come from domestic producers rather than multinational enclaves (Strifler 2002: 4). Contract farming further impoverished the workers who took on the risk from the company, but still were indebted to the company for production decisions, supplies, and exporting their product. Even though the workers were given the land, they did not have “the resources necessary to work their newly acquired holdings and subsequently lost their land to an emerging class of landlords” (Strifler 2002: 4). Thus, benefits from working for the plantation (such as free housing and subsidized food) vanished and the wealth no longer trickled down. Self- employment was worse than indentured servitude.
Eventually, banana production switched to the Cavendish species, which was more resistant to disease. However, the Cavendish required a greater initial expenditure and a more extensive infrastructure because of a shorter harvesting time. This led to a greater disparity in the distribution of wealth, because only large haciendas could afford to cover the expenses of producing and shipping the Cavendish. The new species did not deplete the soil as extensively as the previous species, so the farmers did not need to plant in a semi-migratory fashion. This helped the larger haciendas who could now plant all of 94 their land, rather than selective portions in rotation. The Cavendish pushed the remaining small independent planters out.
Bananas continue to be a productive industry for Ecuador—just check the stickers at your grocery store—but not a method of advancement for the majority. Most banana income goes into the deep pockets of the Noboa family, who wield extensive political populist power even though they flaunt their wealth, including an expensive fleet of imported automobiles, including Bentleys and bulletproof SUVs. While seemingly the apex of wealth because of its concentration in one family’s pockets, the banana export income pales in comparison to that from petroleum, composing double the gross national product of bananas in the last decade of the twentieth century (Acosta 2003: 377).
PETROLEUM: WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE
With the fall of bananas, petroleum arose as the next big Ecuadorian export.
While the previous Incan, Spanish, cacao and banana periods led to migration throughout the coast and Sierra, with petroleum, the Oriente started to receive migrants. Not only workers migrated to the Amazon, but squatters came as well. Those dispossessed of land would slash-and-burn areas along the oil company’s access roads as a cheap site to set up residence. These migrants originated almost exclusively from the Sierra (Grijalva Jiménez
1998: 56). Once again, Ecuadorians re-located for a new employment opportunity.
While this migration flow may not seem numerically significant in comparison to the massive population redistributions that occurred with the industries of bananas and cacao, the effect of petroleum on the economy was significant. 95
Petroleum caused the current disparate distribution of wealth and relative deprivation that impels migration. The oil boom in the 1970’s did not result in economic benefit for the nation overall because of political interests.
It is regrettable if you consider what the great availability of funds in the seventies could have made possible with the real redistribution of the wealth to the middle, such as the establishment of solid foundations for a more autonomous development that would have permitted the ability to enter the world Market in a dynamic form and overall the adequate satisfaction of the basic needs of all Ecuadorians. In these conditions [in Ecuador], with so much and so diverse human and natural resources, in sum, with an economic potential capable of satisfying the vital needs of all, the problem is not simply economic, but moreover on the contrary continues to be a political challenge. (Acosta 2003: 123)22
In fact, the excess income led to excess spending and excess debt acceptance that could not be re-paid. The instability of oil prices creates a shaky base for an economy. The need to fulfill expectations from the United States and International Monetary Fund for carrying the Ecuadorian debt has only led to further debt. Purchasing armaments to demonstrate their support in the Cold War and then Plan Colombia have led to spending on defense rather than social needs. These debts have plagued Ecuador for the last few decades when they could no longer make the payments, even with periodic refinancing
(Galardo Zavala 2003). Forgiveness for defaulting on loans and for requiring refinancing forces the Ecuadorian government to side with neoliberal interests against public opinion.
The international pressure from debts and repercussions on society are not facts limited to the knowledge of government officials and economists. Elementary school
22 Original Text: Lo cual es lamentable si se considera la gran disponibilidad de divisas en los años setenta que hubieran hecho posible, con una real redistribución de la riqueza de por medio, el establecimiento de bases sólidas para un desarrollo más autónomo que hubiera permitido intervenir en forma dinámica en el Mercado mundial y sobre todo para la adecuada satisfacción de las necesidades básicas de todos los ecuatorianos. En estas condiciones, en esta país, con tantos y tan diversos recursos humanos y naturales, en suma con un potencial económico capaz de satisfacer las necesidades vitales de todos, el problema no es simplemente económico, sino que por el contrario continua siendo un reto político. 96 children learn the debt in terms of how many hundreds of years each child born has to work to repay the debt that went into the pockets of politicians, most of whom currently reside in Miami. Others were surprised that I did not know the names of those from the
United States in high-ranking positions at the World Bank. The general public is aware of the intricacies of the national economic situation in the global marketplace.
These politicians may be the first wave of international Ecuadorian migrants.
They spurred on the view of the exterior as an overall goal and contribute to this preference of the exterior for two reasons: as representations of the corrupt politicians who necessitate leaving Ecuador to succeed and as individuals who can choose to live anywhere with their assets and choose to leave Ecuador. This preference for the exterior does not just influence migration goals, but influences daily life as well. Acosta (2003) claims Ecuadorians prefer “Made Anywhere” to “Made in Ecuador.”
This preference of the exterior shapes their views on their own nation as well:
Ecuador is valued in its similarity to other places. However, frequently only travel for labor to change life at home is considered migration. For instance, those who travel for shopping, schooling, or trading are not considered migrants. Traveling abroad to work is migration—once you make sufficient income through this work, your goal is to return to
Ecuador and be able to travel for other reasons, which are not considered migration.
This classification of journeys does not depend on the amount of time spent away on any of these excursions. The intent of the excursion is important. I will not address the travelers that are not cognized as part of the flow of migration in this chapter; I only address those who influence the culture of migration. 97
PANAMA HATS: MIGRANT NETWORKS WEAVE INTERNATIONALLY
While the significant economic impact of the oil boom left an indelible mark on
Ecuadorian life and a new small flow of migration to the Oriente, the fall of the Panama
Hat industry has been unnoticeable economically on the nation-wide front but has re- shaped human movements. Following the conclusion of digging the Panama Canal, the
Panama Hat industry of Ecuador collapsed. (The hats are made in Ecuador, but called
Panama Hats because they were worn during the digging.) South Andean indigenous weavers began to migrate to New York City.23 This flow established social networks that continued the flow of emigration for decades. The tendency to see international emigration, rather than just internal migration, as an option for work expanded. These ideas led to further ambivalence in nationalistic sentiment: many view the country itself as a glorious corner of the world, full of beauty and resources, yet unavoidably inhabitable because of corrupt politicians and a lack of power on the global scale. I address this perception of the need to emigrate internationally to succeed nationally in Chapter 7. For now, I introduce these values because they have been a significant influence on the current flow of emigration that I now turn to more extensively.
THE OLD INSTIGATORS FOR THE NEW EMIGRATION
Ecuador experienced a surprising upswing in emigration following an economic crisis and political instability in the late 1990’s. The once merely economically insecure middle-class became borderline destitute with no structural opportunities to allow for re- advancement. Many coastal Ecuadorians, incapable of meeting their families’ accustomed
23 Some claim that if second generation Ecuadorians continue to consider themselves Ecuadorian, as many do, New York is the second largest Ecuadorian city, surpassing the population of Quito. 98 standards of living, emigrated. Emigration to the U.S. was common in the indigenous
Southern Andes, but at this time emigration was still relatively rare on the coast, especially among Mestizo females. This emigration flow is more widespread than previous ones because the current economic situation did not affect just one industry, leading to migration to other national industries. The relative deprivation that arose with exacerbated class disparity and downward mobility affected wider portions of society.
Military coups with interim presidents, expensive skirmishes with Peru24, and natural disasters have plagued recent Ecuadorian history. Droughts and earthquakes in the late eighties, flooding and destruction from El Niño in the late nineties combined with an international financial crisis and falls in the price of petroleum to create a precarious economic situation for the country. Compounded with the fragility of the internal market, outdated modes of production, and poor political administration (at best, corruption at worst) the economic downturn was further inflamed.
Indigence, malnutrition, unemployment, and poverty became rampant. The poverty level rose from 3.9 million in 1995 to 9.1 million in 2000 (Asamblea Nacional
2003: 5). This represented an approximate increase from a third of the population to three-fourths of the population. The 4,000 sucres to a dollar in 1998 inflated to 25,000 in
2000. After Jamil Mahuad was ousted in 2000, his vice-president the banana mogul
Noboa took his place. Noboa immediately pegged the sucre to the dollar and began the process of dollarization. Although this coup is frequently presented as a failed indigenous coup because of the institution of the vice-president and the presence of indigenous
24 Because of the population and economic differences between the two countries, even if Ecuador wins a battle, they lose the war because the expenses and human casualties are much more significant to Ecuador in accord their small size. 99 protests in the capital, it was representative of the nation overall (Rae-Espinoza 2001).
Mahuad was unpopular nationwide because of his submissiveness to U.S. policy, his resolution of the war with Peru resulting in land loss, and his inability to address ecological concerns, among other reasons. The coup was not only representative
(perhaps more so than some elections), but also was by no means a failure. In Ecuador, the vice-president is the runner-up to the presidency, not the president’s running mate.
The institution of the vice-president into the presidency was not a return to the previous regime, but the candidate who represented opposing views. While Noboa believed that dollarization would resolve the economic crisis, unemployment and poverty continued to rise. Dollarization served only to further tie the hands of the Ecuadorian government in the face of international markets (Gallardo Zavala 2003).
Many Ecuadorians no longer had confidence in national banks. During the crisis, the rich transferred their predated accounts to other currencies to prevent inflation and the poor had no access to their accounts, which were virtually useless after inflation.
Many account balances migrated to the pockets of bankers, who joined the politicians in
Miami with their loot. Émigrés decided that they would rather invest their limited savings on a risky journey than gamble their money on the Ecuadorian economy. However, with the legal and physical fortification of U.S. borders, the downwardly mobile middle class could not join the bankers and politicians in the U.S.
The émigré flow following the crisis of the late 1990’s diverted to the European
Union where, at this time, a visa was not required. Estimates claim 20 percent of the economically active population in Guayaquil emigrated. Although this percent is actually higher than the unemployment rate is, under and un-employment continues and many 100 cannot meet their families’ subsistence needs. Those who emigrated can meet their families’ needs because of the salary differential between Ecuador and the European
Union, even when educated workers take on low-wage employment. “Ecuadorian” is supposedly now synonymous with “nanny” in Italy. In Spain, Ecuadorians compose the largest foreign community, even surpassing Moroccans, and are preferred for farm labor.
A significant number of these émigrés are parents that remit portions of their income from unskilled jobs back to Ecuador to support their families, principally to their mothers and sisters. Cynical native economists state that people are the only Ecuadorian export that is making a profit.
The importance of the remittances from émigrés is indisputable. In the year 2000 these remittances reached a figure of 1,330 millions of dollars, 20% of the national consumption, a value superior to the combined exportations of banana, coffee, cacao, and shrimp that year… The reach of these remittances at least in the immediate future, will be a fundamental source of dollars if they follow the same tendency as the last few years. (Acosta 2003: 249)25
More than one point five billion dollars in remittances maintained three million
Ecuadorians out of a total population of 13 million in 2003 (ibid.). These remittances primarily care for the émigrés’ children that they left behind. In the following chapters, I further discuss the way that care is transferred and provided to the children of émigrés.
With the changes in origin, magnitude, destination, and economic impact of emigration, eventually, the legal restrictions on Ecuadorian emigration changed as well.
The European Union’s Schengen Accords instituted a visa requirement for Ecuadorians
25 Original Text: La trascendencia de las remesas de los emigres es indiscutible. En el año 2000 éstas alcanzaron una cifra de 1.330 millones de dólares, 20% del consume nacional; un valor superior a las exportaciones conjuntas de banano, café, cacao y camarón en dicho año… El aporte de estas remesas, al menos en el futuro inmediato, será una fuente fundamental de dólares, tal como se desprende de tendencia seguida en los últimos años. 101 in August of 2003. Northern European countries wished to “make the EU’s southern perimeter less porous” (Cornelius & Tsuda 2004: 34). Whereas previously Ecuadorians could enter the European Union for a temporary period without prior solicitation of a visa, new restrictions requiring job offers, travel insurance, large amounts of cash in checking accounts, and extended visa processing delays drastically limited the ability of to emigrate. In late July, legal Ecuadorian emigration peaked. For weeks, full airplanes departed Guayaquil to Spain and only empty ones returned. It is important to note the scale of this phenomenon because not only those involved directly in the emigration flow have strong opinions on emigration as a family strategy, but the topic has also permeated all sectors of society because of the vast number of individuals involved. Now, I turn to the migration process, including the individuals involved in decision-making and the resources necessary to navigate requirements in consulates and government offices.
MIGRATION PROCESS
Overall statements regarding push and pull factors do not fully explain human movements because, as with any emigration flow, some people go and some people stay.
What induces migration is the inequality between what individuals perceive as the opportunities in the country of origin and expect of opportunities in other countries.
Push factors, such as a low quality of life in the sending society, can initiate the emigration of those who possess the economic resources and information about the pull factors in the destined society. The perception of a lower quality of life may be because of economic, social, or cultural differences between the sending and receiving society
(Giménez Romero 2003). Not only the émigré, but also the émigré’s family, neighborhood, or larger portions of society may share this comparative perception. The 102 determination of time schedules, destinations, and activities is not an individual decision, but a family strategy embedded in a community and informed by sociocultural norms.
In such a desperate economic situation, the decision to emigrate may seem clear.
However, it is necessary to know why some people go and some people stay. As previously discussed in the introduction, there is a lack of a cognized middle class. In the upper middle class Alborada, my second landlord, storeowners, and neighbors told me that I would find no émigrés. It is the poor who go because they do not know how to work; people like themselves have too much to leave behind. They would not emigrate.
In the lower middle class of Las Orquídeas, my previous landlady, storeowners, and neighbors also told me that I would find no émigrés there. It is the rich who emigrate because they are too proud to work. People like themselves cannot afford to go. They would not emigrate. According to residents of the elite neighborhoods, I would not find
émigrés in either Samborondón or Los Ceibos. Those of the upper class do leave the country for months, even years, but are not considered émigrés. They go for schooling and to live in the modern world, where they belong. Those of the lowest class do not go. They are immersed already in a world where they are the unskilled. The lowest classes cannot afford travel expenses. Yet, the number of émigrés’ children and excessive rental spaces in the middle class neighborhoods demonstrate that it is in fact the middle class who go.
With the lack of returned migrants and the unspoken nature of emigration planning—lest one fail, many people do not realize that their neighbors did not move across town. Even if many do not realize this class characteristic of émigrés, my research and even some of
émigrés’ written testimonials of the migration experience confirms that the middle class do compose the ranks of the current migration flow. 103
Behind a number of Spanish Cosmos in the grocery store, I found a dog-eared paperback stuck on the back of the shelf that spoke to the decision to leave. After having to call the national headquarters of the grocery store to find a price for an item the cashier was convinced I must have brought in with me, I left with the semi- autobiographical novel “Me voy o me quedo… La Historia de un Inmigrante” [Do I go or do I stay… The History of an Immigrant]. Carlos Piechestein (2000) details the parallel lives of someone who decides to go and someone who decides to stay. I cite the conversations between the two main characters extensively in this section, because I think that it does well to represent the complexity of the decision to emigrate. Even though people’s lives differ drastically depending on the decision, their lives do not differ before the decision. The author himself is a migrant and spoke with friends who stayed while composing his novel. They weigh decisions involved such as what you leave behind when you go or keep when you stay.
—Do you have any idea of what it means to leave behind your parents, your brother, your friends, your neighborhood, the team you love, the bar on the corner, the court, the stadium, Salinas [a nearby beach resort]… ? —Yes, the anguish —interrupted Pepe—, the lack of work, miserable salaries, crime, corruption, the hustle, the lack of opportunities, seeing that others make it so easy and one has to break their back in order to be able to subsist —concluded Pepe. (Piechestein 2000: 22f)26
The two characters understood each other. Both saw the same problems and benefits to live in Ecuador and abroad, but over the course of the novel, came to different
26 Original Text: --¿Tienes idea de lo que significa dejar a tus viejos, a tu hermano, tus amigos, el barrio, el equipo de tus amores, el bar de la esquina, la canchita, el hipódromo, Salinas…? --Sí, la angustia –interrumpió Pepe--, la falta de trabajo, los sueldos de miseria, los robos, la corrupción, la coima, la falta de oportunidades, el ver que otros la hacen tan fácil y uno se tiene que romper el lomo para poder subsistir –concluyó Pepe casi en voz baja. 104 conclusions in the end and their lives turned out very different. Both feel regret, but would not changed their decision.
While Ecuadorians are frequently considered economic migrants because of the instigating factor of the economic crisis, political concerns are also a significant part of the decision making process. Political corruption and economics are closely tied.
—People go, they definitely go. Now nothing can stop them. They leave their country, their customs, their families, and friends. And soon we will know how many will be doing the same, risking it all. And why?... Because some that had the power and the clear possibilities at the time did not know or perhaps did not want Ecuador to progress. That there would have been social justice. A justice that would permit the youth of today to have had an opportunity to fight for their fatherland. To form a family without obstacles. To stay together, without the necessity of having to emigrate and as a result separate parents from children, that may never see each other again for years or worse… that they never meet again ever.27 (Piechestein 2000: 44)
Distinguishing between political and economic migrants too sharply creates a false dichotomy for Ecuadorian émigrés. Caring for one’s family and nationalistic sentiment leads people to want to stay, and caring for one’s family and national limitations lead people to want to go. The push factors and ties to the nation meld and overlap, such that the decision to emigrate is not an either/or choice, but a complex, unique process for not only every émigré, but for everyone who chooses not to emigrate as well. Émigrés and those left behind realize that it is not an easy decision.
27 Original Text: --Se van, se van definitivamente. Ya nada los podrá detener. Dejan su patria, sus costumbres, sus familias y amigos. Y vaya a saber cuantos estarán haciendo lo mismo, arriesgándolo todo. ¿Y por qué?... Porque algunos que tuvieron el poder y las posibilidades claras en su momento no supieron o tal vez no quisieron que en el Ecuador se progrese. Que hubiese justicia social. Una justicia que permitiera que los jóvenes de hoy tuvieran una oportunidad de luchar en su patria. De formar una familia sin sobresaltos. De permanecer juntos, sin necesidad de tener que emigrar y por ende separar a padres de hijos, que tal vez no se vuelvan a ver en muchos años o peor… que no se vuelvan a encontrar nunca. 105
Even after making the decision and before leaving the country, life is not easy.
Finding the means to pay for visas (Piechestein 2000: 30), flights, the appropriate documentation (ibid.: 39) people to help and to join the journey or care for those left behind (ibid.: 36) are all obstacles that must be traversed.
Piechestein acknowledges that the decision to go means risk, and rougher life than expected, but is more and more becoming the road taken. He writes that “He never imagined that their statement, “The last one turn out the light,” would become the sad reality when the majority of his friends left for Europe now that it was almost impossible to enter the United States” (Piechestein 2000: 95).28 So many Ecuadorians began to leave, or decided they would like to leave eventually, that passports were not available in 2000.
A six-month waiting list for passports began. When there were reports of a new box of passport booklets arriving to the government office, crowds would form around the building in Guayaquil. Some went to other provinces because of rumors of shorter waits and others grasped at tenuous paternalistic relationships of someone they knew to get a passport, even if they had yet to decide how or where they were going.
The rise of particular locations as the choice for emigration demonstrates the influence that social networks have on the decision to emigrate. In addition to the economic and political instability as causes of the “new migration wave,” the National
Assembly on migration also cited the role of social networks for encouraging migration to particular locations. Their report states, “The imageries that have been being constructed about migration are a product of the tales of the persons that emigrate, from the
28 Original Text: Tampoco imaginó que sus palabras: “el último que salga que apague la luz,” iban a convertirse en una triste realidad. La mayoría de sus amigos estaban emigrando para Europa, ya que entrar en los Estados Unidos era casi imposible. 106 communication that establishes with whom they stay in the country and through the modes of communication are also caused by this social phenomenon”29 (Asamblea
Nacional 2003: 5). These imageries help to determine a destination for many individuals.
Because of the difficulty entering the United States, the flows shifted to the European
Union. The ease of entry and language in Spain along with growing connections with other émigrés led to the immense Ecuadorian population there. There is a growing population of Ecuadorians in Hungary because the consulate is next door to the Spanish
Consulate and does not have a long wait. The few who risked going to avoid the wait
(perhaps with ideas of getting to Spain through Europe) and stayed brought others.
These imageries constructed abroad and learned at home include details of the work available. The rise of these social networks in a culture of migration has left some feeling impelled to migrate. With the successful reports of life abroad, many men feel pressured to emigrate in order to fulfill their role as the household provider. As with the previous flows of migration in Ecuador, the departure of a male for employment is not considered deviant. When the male moves away from family, temporarily or long-term, the family has not been broken. As with previous national migration for work in banana and cacao plantations, men go for work and the family follows.
This discourse on the benefits of migration affects women as well. The information that returns from abroad through these social networks creates “occupational niches” (Maher 2004: 180) that route migrants to a particular division of labor. Word has returned to Ecuador of the work for women as nannies and in elder care in Italy and
29 Original Text: Los imaginarios que se han ido construyendo alrededor de la migración producto del relato de las personas que emigran, de la comunicación que establecen con quienes se quedan en el país y a través de los medios de comunicación son también causa de este fenómeno social. 107
Spain. Ecuadorian women are seen as wonderful options to fill these positions because of their “calor,” or the cultural customs that are interpreted as warmth. Hochschild
(2003) noted that first world women entering the labor force often see Third World
Women as natural mothers. Latinas are seen to have natural skills with children (Maher
2004: 180). Ecuadorian mothers have gained considerable repute as fine nannies in Italy.
According to my interviews with the Italian Consul, Italians recruit through their neighbors’ current Ecuadorian nannies to find ones for themselves from Ecuador. The reports of work abroad have led to a feminization of migrations. Therefore, the current wave of female emigration from an atypical origin of the country, over a longer distance, and for longer time periods is not normalized. The National Assembly pointed out the differences that occur in families when a woman migrates, versus when a man does.
When a man emigrates and the woman stays in the country, she assumes additional roles and even new responsibilities beyond those of caring for her family. Conversely, when a woman is the one who emigrates, it challenges the traditional role of the man by questioning his function as provider and by putting him in front of the care of the home, but the majority of the men resolve these situations by delegating to other members of the family, most frequently women (grandmothers, aunts, sisters, and daughters), the responsibility of caring for the family.30 (Asamblea Nacional 2003: 19)
This delegation of responsibility is not simply the visitation of other members of the family to the family home to supplement care. In most cases, it involves the children changing residence to live fulltime with their aunts and grandmothers, or their entire extended family may come to live with them. Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001:
30 Original Text: Cuando un hombre emigra y la mujer se queda en el país, ella debe asumir roles adicionales e inclusive nuevas responsabilidades más allá del cuidado de su familia. Al contrario, cuando es la mujer quien emigra, reta el rol tradicional del hombre al cuestionar su función de proveedor y al ponerlo al frente del cuidado el hogar, pero la mayoría de lo hombres resuelven estas situaciones delegando en otros miembros de la familia, sobre todo mujeres (abuelas, tías, hermanas e hijas), la responsabilidad del cuidado de la familia. 108
6) noted the high proportion of children left in the care of grandparents. The female migrant normally arranges substitute care before her departure. When a female migrates, it may in fact divide the family. The paternal side may have very little involvement in the care of the children after the mother’s migration and the maternal grandmother and aunts become the substitute family. I detail differences in the transition of care in Chapter 6.
This division of the family is sometimes seen as inevitable, and can cause and reinforce shame about migration. The decision to emigrate evokes shame because it indicates an inability to care for one’s family in Ecuador. The groups who tend to emigrate currently were previously middle class and able to provide for their family. The inability to provide for one’s family leading to the wife’s emigration and the belief that a woman will be susceptible to negative influences abroad without her family compound shame and lead to family break-up. One Ecuadorian abroad in Spain wrote in his testimonial that, in the more liberal society, women are unable to resist the night clubs that make them promiscuous and likely to take part in orgies and to have illegitimate children (Oveido Campaña 2002: 42f). Oveido Campaña claims that 90 to 95% of
émigrés have changed partners while abroad (2000: 43). Whether or not this perception of promiscuity is justified, several émigrés did report to me the necessity to form another union because, with the standard of living in Spain, it is too difficult to have just one person to a bed. While usually the cause of the break-up centers on behaviors abroad, the preparation for emigration can negatively affect a family unit as well.
Preparation requires a significant amount of time and family resources such that those who are staying may feel that they have already lost the émigré. Before the institution of the visa, most of the paperwork was done easily (even if it was costly) 109 through travel agencies. The Ecuadorian government requires that all leaving on international flights apply for an exit visa. This requires a voting stub from the most recent election (voting is mandatory), a clean police record from the police department, a clearance from the department of justice (meaning that you are not awaiting trial), proof of serving a year in mandatory military service for males, and a flight ticket. All of these documents can be bought for the right price, or other people may be paid to wait in the endless lines and file the paperwork at the different locations. None of these documents are cheap, but the exit visa is much easier than the entry visa for First World countries.
The U.S. visa process has greatly simplified in recent years. Before, an aspiring
émigré had to wait in lines for three to four hours to get a number to wait in another line and find out what paperwork they needed. This would require other lines to file the application and supplemental documentation, all with verified translations, such as bank statements, land titles, car titles, employment records, travel plans, and/or invitations from abroad. This is just for a tourist visa. Family reunification visas can sometimes be even more complicated because they need certified documentation filed concurrently abroad and in the country of origin.31 Solicitors receive letters from the consulate in
English when there really is no system of addresses in Ecuador (as described in Part I).
No one answered information phone lines.32 Even when given an appointment with a particular time, people are expected to wait standing outside all day to attend an afternoon appointment. Children must remain unmarried after 18 in order to be eligible
31 Most did not find small frustrations in the process of accumulating papers surprising. Hours of service were illogical and variable. Photocopiers at the registry were often broken or useless with frequent electric outages. Record tomes were often destroyed, lost, or mislabeled. 32 I am unsure whether this is better or worse than the 900 numbers for U.S. visa information in Mexico, where one sits on hold for over $100 worth of time to receive no truly helpful information. 110 for a visa. Unmarried children are eligible for family reunification visas, but with the processing delays, can turn 21 before their papers are processed. Age at the start of visa submission does not matter; instead, age for eligibility is determined when the papers are considered. The consulate does not mail the notifications of appointments to the solicitants. They post monthly announcements outside the back wall of the consulate, where no help is offered, sometimes with up to twelve years lapsed between original application dates and appointment dates.
Now, rather than waiting in line to get a number to ask a question, there is nowhere to ask questions. Before even knowing the requirements for the visa, the consulate expects solicitors to pay the hundred dollar visa fee at the Bank of Guayaquil.
The visa fee is not returned if no visa is granted or no papers are filed. The hundred dollars is necessary to be allowed to ask questions.33
Similar paperwork is required for an Ecuadorian to get a Mexican visa, but there is no fee. While there are small fees to notarize documents, visas to Mexico are much more affordable than those to the United States are. Still, there is no rush of Ecuadorian
émigrés to Mexico. This is partially because of the extensive documentation required (if one can get a legal visa to Mexico, they can probably get one to the United States).
Another reason for the lack of flow to Mexico is part of the imaginaries of Mexico.
Ecuadorians are aware of the Mexicans attempting to migrate to the United States. Why exert so much effort to end up in the same situation? For the difficulties in visas northward, migration flows turned to the European Union.
33 Chile has begun a $100 retribution fee for United States tourists to get a visa in response to this policy. 111
Although it requires no translation of documents, the Spanish Consulate requires solicitors get all documents certified. Solicitors gather the documentation for the Spanish visa, including paperwork from abroad if seeking a family reunification visa. Some visas require job offers, depending on the émigrés level of education. As with most paperwork, false ones are available. Occasionally, what an individual believes is a real job offer may turn out to be a fake job offer. Some companies charge “interviewing and application processing fees” for jobs that do not exist.
The consulate requires an appointment to file the documents. Previously, a consular guard distributed appointment tickets in front of the consular office. The office was soon overwhelmed and changed to a new location. Rather than an office, the new location now has barred windows on the sidewalk where people can approach for two hours a day, three days a week. People spend the night outside hoping to approach the window. At the window, it is not possible to file the papers, but only ask questions. The consulate claims that people can call a phone number for appointments because they have already dispersed too many paper tickets outside the consulate. The aspiring
émigrés and those trying to provide paperwork to legalize family members abroad claim that the phone is never answered, but that there is a contact in La Floresta who gives out the appointment tickets for one hundred dollars. He is connected with the consulate, but it is unclear how he is employed there. He may be the person who is supposed to answer the phones. A similar arrangement exists for the final interviews at the embassy in Quito.
Several Ecuadorians at the consulate told me that, although they filed all their paperwork and paid all the fees, they did not receive the visa because they could not get an 112 appointment for the interview in Quito before the processing deadline passed.
Apparently, there is someone else to bribe in Quito to schedule an interview.
Interestingly, like the United States, the more popular destinations of the
European Union have become less attractive because the difficulty of the visa processing.
Convenience, rather than social networks, sometimes influences migration decisions. The flow to Hungary mentioned above indicates this. It is a quicker, easier, and cheaper option. Many of these migrants do then leave Hungary and attempt to travel via the
European Union to Spain or Italy, but some have begun to stay because of the ability to bring others and of the opportunities of providing services for the new influx of
Ecuadorians. The growing émigré population provides labor for the growing émigré population: Ecuadorians want empanadas, herbal medicines, and the cane liquor chicha that connect them to their ethnicity wherever they are.
Once the consulates approve the visa, individuals need to prepare for the journey, which may require bringing items to others abroad, taking out loans for travel insurance, and packing for flights. Even though children may observe the preparation for travel, the actual departure may still be surprising. Since the cheaper flights to Europe leave at midnight, some children recall a tearful, confused goodbye in the middle of the night.
The imageries of life abroad are not all romantic. Ecuadorians face a considerable amount of racism abroad.
It was not, is not, and will never be easy to emigrate for anyone, but much less for us, the Hispanics, and not only in the United States where entry can cost your life and you live in a pressure cooker, but even in our own motherland, Spain, where they call us Sudacas34 and they treat us like inferior beings, without remembering that not too long ago, they
34 A pejorative form of Sudamericana, or South American, meant to highlight their third world status. 113
emigrated to South America and received a very different treatment, a much more human treatment.35 (Piechestein 2000: 108)
Ecuadorians claim that the Spanish are especially cruel to them because the Spanish fear them. Since Ecuadorians can speak the same language, they are able to advance and take their place. Others claim the racism is just class-ism (Oveido Campaña 2002).
On the other hand, some elite blame the Ecuadorians that emigrate for the racism. Being that they consider the émigrés the country’s poor, they claim that of course the Spanish would react that way—Ecuadorians litter and spit. This implies that the
Spanish would not dislike the elite Ecuadorians. The most refined of the Ecuadorians are not those that have emigrated to represent the nation. To counter this view of
Ecuadorians as uncouth, Spanish non-profits create propaganda videos depicting the
Ecuadorians who celebrate their own customs in public spaces as unique and endearing characters. However, even though people in different societal positions see different motivations for the racism, all agreed that the Ecuadorians in Spain experienced racism.
The racism only compounds the romance of return for émigrés, a homecoming in which migrants spend time waiting and preparing for (Piechestein 2000: 157). It is too soon to tell how many Ecuadorians will return, or will spend the rest of their lives abroad, whether choosing to bring their families or not. I will discuss some factors that affect future returns or reunification abroad in the Epilogue. In Chapter 6, I will present specific case studies that provide an in-depth look at the actual variation possible in these migration stories and depict the similarities that they face in their journeys.
35 Original Text: No fue, no es, ni será sencillo emigrar, para nadie, pero mucho menos para nosotros, los hispanos; y no solamente en los Estados Unidos, donde ingresar puede costar la vida y vivir, un calvario, sino hasta en la propia Madre Patria, España, donde nos apodan Sudacas y nos tratan como seres inferiores, sin acordarse, que no hace mucho tiempo, ellos emigraron a Sudamérica y recibieron un trato muy diferente, mucho más humano. Chapter 5 — A Garden of Orchids Family & Neighborhood in Guayaquil
This section provides a glimpse into the daily lives of the respondents. It paints a picture of the setting and illustrates how children learn and how parents teach. I describe what children experience on a daily basis, which as most cases in Guayaquil, includes emigration. I follow Harkness and Super’s (1996) “developmental niche” to describe the child in context. The term is defined in their edited volume as including “the physical and social setting in which the child lives, with culturally regulated customs of childcare and childrearing, and the psychology of the caretakers” (Welles-Nyström 1996: 193).
In order to describe the child’s “physical and social setting,” I discuss the child’s neighborhood. In Duncan and Brooks-Gunn’s volume Neighborhood Poverty, they express the importance of addressing a child’s neighborhood to understand the influence of parental behaviors on children. “Theory and research on family structures and processes and on individual development increasingly recognized the importance of the contexts within which individuals are situated. Most existing research, however, focused on the
114 115 more proximal contents of families, peers, and social networks” (Gephart & Brooks-
Gunn 1997: xvi). Because of the importance of neighborhood factors for understanding family structures and development (which are relevant for understanding the effect of migration on children), I address the neighborhood of a particular family as well.
This chapter begins with a description of the neighborhood where the focal family, the Mendozas, lives, and then continues to describe their family background. The neighborhood and family background serve to provide a context for the descriptions of the four sections of extended family where one or both of the parents have emigrated. I address the unique, variable circumstances of emigration in each of the family sections in
Chapter 6. This context serves to introduce the variability of migration experiences that affect children’s responses to parental emigration that I address in Part III.
In addition, the developmental niche includes “the culturally regulated customs of child care and childrearing,” which I call the concept of the child, and “the psychology of the caretakers,” which Harkness and Super call “parental ethnotheories.” Parental ethnotheories are the cultural meaning systems of the parents (Harwood et al. 1995: 35).
I present a synthesis of the parental ethnotheories and of the concept of the child I found in Guayaquil in this chapter. In Chapter 8, I analyze the variability in parental ethnotheories depending on the individual’s relationship to migration.
THE NEIGHBORHOOD
As described in Chapter 1, Las Orquídeas is in the north of Guayaquil. It is named for the natural garden of orchids on a hill behind a trash dump past the bad side of town that few residents visit. Although some have begun to walk up the long hill for exercise, they still do not enter the park. While travel books list the garden, few Guayacos could 116 tell you any other information about the neighborhood. Las Orquídeas is not an area anyone frequents but its residents. There is nothing to visit here, besides the garden, and it is not close to anything. It’s a forty-five minute bus trip to the center of the city and thirty minutes from a conglomerate of malls and some shopping centers in La Alborada.
Las Orquídeas is a testament to the rampant development of the city. It is a recent development in an area so distant from the city center that just a decade ago, it was not considered part of Guayaquil. In the late nineties there was no paved road out to Las
Orquídeas—just dirt. Less than five years later, the dirt road has changed into an eight- lane highway. The highway bypasses the city in connecting the Andes to the coast.
There are no streetlights for intersections but just a gigantic circle for traffic. Crossing the street is risking your life, not because of the amount of traffic that passes, but because unwieldy trucks pass quickly on the wide highway. To get to other parts of the city, it is necessary to catch one of the buses that stop on the other side.
While not the most crime-ridden area, Las Orquídeas has a bad reputation because of high gang activity in neighboring Las Vergeles. No one would take a bus at night without a palpable fear of robbery. The bad reputation comes as well from the generalization of particular unprincipled pockets to the neighborhood as a whole. When taking a cab to the area at night, one must specify that the destination is only a block in from the principal street, or the cab would not go. It is asking to be carjacked to go further back where the blocks and speed bumps leave little space for escape.
Here, I would like to describe more closely how Las Orquídeas is not only evidence of the rampant development in the nation, but also of its economic instability. The people who live in this area of Las Orquídeas bought their plot of land and small 500- 117 square-foot two-bedroom concrete-mold houses around the same time, around the same price, but, as described in the introduction, the houses are no longer the same. Some have expanded to three or four story mansions with fancy garages to pay tribute to their cars; while others have only become increasingly rundown with skinny, rickety picket fences held together by rusted wires as the only sign of attempts to improve. The houses’ original design filled the entire width of their plot of land with 200 square feet behind and
400 or so in front of the house. With similarity in starting price and continuity in income in comparison to others, one would expect neighborhoods to remain homogeneous for the most part. The U.S. cliché, “Look who moved in to wreck the neighborhood” implies a contrast with an original “better” neighborhood. People moving out when the neighborhood depreciates implies a contrast with a current “worse” neighborhood. This has never happened in Las Orquídeas. The differences occurred in the last few years between people who have always been there, not between who was there originally and who came in (although there have recently been a couple of places for rent and for sale).
The Mendoza Family’s Block
Eight-Lane Highway
Stores
e Park n i
v F G H I J a R
E D C B A Empty Lot
FIGURE 5: MAP OF LAS ORQUÍDEAS SUB-SECTION 118
I do not wish to describe the entire neighborhood, but just the ten adjoining houses that are most directly involved with the Mendoza’s daily activity and construction of meaning in Villa B (See Figure 5). Often, the construction of meaning rather than actual social interaction is a more significant tie between these homes because there is not much public life in the streets. People relate mostly amongst those in the same kind of houses, rather than with others who have the same age children or similar occupations.
However, even if the residents of two villas never enjoin each other in conversation more than a brief salutation, or perhaps do not speak at all, what they represent to each other is relevant to the private conversations and personal identity constructions in each villa. In the description of each villa, I will elucidate a particular concern that stands out in each household, rather than provide an in-depth description of the residents’ lives. The inconsistent homes and families represent consistent characteristics of life in Las
Orquídeas. The description helps to contextualize the different, divergent values and behaviors that the children experience.
1. Villa A:
Two villas that are for sale bookend the Mendoza’s Villa B. The house to the left,
Villa A, is the only house with an unpainted cinderblock wall along the front of the property. Few homeowners paint the sides of the houses, since, even if you can see the sides, it is assumed that there will be a house of equal proportions to the side eventually, so why paint what should be covered anyway. The lack of paint on the sides is not an indication of the homeowners’ negligence in caring for the home, but of the neighbor’s delay in advancing in their own home. Villa A’s lack of paint on the front façade is an indication of negligence and lack of involvement in the community. 119
In Villa A, the family plans to sell their house because it has appreciated so much with the rampant national inflation. They need not be concerned that taking advantage of the equity in their home will place them as buyers in a sellers’ market. As with many of the decisions in this chapter and the ones that follow, people do not decide based solely on economic considerations, but also typical family values and a desire to save face when certain expectations in a relationship cannot be met in the current circumstances.
Now that their children are older, the residents of Villa A have considered living with other family members or in a smaller home since they do not need the space and privacy. Even though the wife is only in her late thirties and the husband in his mid- forties, it seems as if they are retiring. This makes more sense when one considers that their central job was raising children. Now that they have raised their children, they will return to a more relaxing life near their family outside of Guayaquil.
Negative interactions with a few of the neighbors have also spurred the decision to move—the woman in her late thirties and her two late teenage sons do not get along well with many of the neighbors. Her husband does his best to be pleasant. This has led the wife to feel that she is lacking in her husband’s allegiance in a neighborhood where she has no one to turn to. This would not happen if she lived with her family. The most volatile, public, and well-known instance of community strife occurred with the Mendoza family. Once, Mrs. Mendoza complained about the teenage sons playing reggaeton36 loudly on their improvised wood-bodied car when her daughter was napping. He publicly disciplined his sons, which led to a fight with his wife for taking another
36 Reggaeton is an amalgamation of rap and reggae with Caribbean influences that was originally popular amongst gangs, but has progressively become all the rage in the elite dance clubs. It spread to Miami and then the rest of the United States mainstream in early 2005. 120 woman’s side over her sons. Public discipline is a rare occasion. The wife locked him out of the house after loudly complaining about his flawed allegiances. The couple in
Villa A has never quite gotten along the same. It is unknown if it is because of her jealousy over his taking the side of another woman or because she publicly emasculating him for reprimanding their sons. Either way, as with many parents with children about to move out on their own, they have decided to return to the extended family.
2. Villa C:
The Mendoza’s who live in Villa B own Villa C as well. I describe their life in
Villa B below. They rented out Villa C for a while, but it is now for sale. The delicately painted peach façade contrasts with the actual house it hides, which has had almost no renovations. Its dilapidated state cannot be seen from the outside. When they received an offer on the house, the Mendoza’s made gracious negotiations such that the renters would leave. The potential buyers wanted to buy the two houses for sale, both Villa A and Villa C, to home two sets of related nuclear families in close proximity. The buyers knew they were getting the Mendoza’s house well below the appraised value because of the family’s necessity and as such, the buyers wished to receive a similar deal on the house on the other side, which the owners had maintained less. The family in Villa A refused to sell at such a low price because they have neither the economic urgency to sell nor the family arrangements to move, since their sons have yet to move out. As such, the deal fell through and the Mendoza’s lost both the potential buyers and the existing renters.
3. Villas D & E
To the right of the Mendoza’s two villas are Villas D and E that have no improvements from their original design. The houses are set far back and extremely 121 unprotected in comparison to the brick walls and bars on the windows of most of the other houses. Bars are considered a necessary fixture to a home.37 Some houses do not even have windows—just bars. These two houses have neither. The lack of bars does not represent a sense of personal safety, but rather a lack of economic security.
Villa D attempted to resolve their economic situation: for a while they had a sign to sell ice and popsicles. Now, there is a sign that they are selling a refrigerator. Villa E attempts to resolve their deprivation by housing two nuclear families together—the small, undeveloped Villa E houses seven people (four children to two sisters and the sisters’ mother). Even so, neither has been able to accrue sufficient economic surplus beyond daily needs to enclose their homes with the cinderblock walls that all the other villas have.
Economic advancement is often justified in moralistic terms. Trucks for transporting goods usually feature an elaborated painted tailgate advising the driver behind not to be envious of the accomplishments that God has chosen to grant the driver. While a folk belief in the ill effects of the evil eye is only tentatively held, the envious person is seen negatively as an individual who has not made the efforts to advance him- or herself. As such, neighbors attribute the lack of economic growth of those in Villas D and E to their sloth and lack of entrepreneurial skills. Others in the neighborhood occasionally criticize these characteristics and the results, especially the fact that they have children they cannot support in an unsafe home.
The lack of external fortification not only means the exposure to criminal activity, but also the exposure of their personal life to their neighbors, which results in further
37 In fact, when I purchased my condo in an elite San Diego neighborhood, an Ecuadorian advised that it needed too much improvement: there were not even any bars on the windows. 122 critique. The other residents of this block of Las Orquídeas carry on their life indoors—I found it difficult to ascertain exactly how many people lived in each home until I directly asked or visited. In Villa D and E, the exposure of the personal life to people outside because of the lack of walls around their homes and inadequate space to carry on their life indoors has led to a certain amount of moral judgment for both their lack of decorum and their economic situation. Neighbors accompany the judgments with a general lack of acknowledgement of these people, rather than direct criticism, which is perhaps worse because of the inability to debate or respond to the judgments that propel this treatment.
I think these judgments, in turn, result in a further lack of decorum.
The families in Villas D and E respond to the dismissal of their existence by portending that such judgments do not affect them. They behave in a manner that cannot avoid commentaries, such as drying their clothes in the front yard where the bare- footed children play, or even defecate. The grandmother in Villa E told me that this behavior is because they do not prescribe to the neighbors’ pretentious views. The neighbors act as if they are living in Samborondón, when in reality the pretensions are false.
However, both her and her daughters seem to launch similar critiques of people’s behaviors in other neighborhoods, where they chose not to live, and use similar characteristics to validate their lives. By constructing the values regarding pretension and sloth around a different threshold, they are not debunking the judgment system used against them by creating an alternative system of extreme relativism, but rather revamping the existing system to create an oppositional interpretation of their position. These two villas illustrate that even though there are drastically different economic characteristics in this particular neighborhood, they still share a similar set of values for judging behavior. 123
4. Villa F
On the other side of the street, a woman in her late twenties in Villa F rents the moderately improved home with her four-year-old son. Previously she was given an eviction notice from time to time, and then was told that the owners, who live on the other side of the highway, were going to use the fenced in garage area. This never occurred though, and it is rumored that the few different cars that do park in that area are men who now pay her rent. Rumors abound as to how the unemployed woman covers her expenses, such as a domestic servant, and the whereabouts of the boy’s father. As is obvious by the lack of response when the electric company comes by and yells last names for one last chance to collect, her lights are turned off from time to time. It seems that the bill is paid shortly after each shut-off. The two-months of delinquency before the next shut-off and the number of returns of the electric company indicate a short lag in paying the overdue bill once the lights are turned off. Although she is judged for what is perceived as loose morals, others acknowledge her son and her to some extent in the neighborhood, even more than the poorer families in Villa D and E. Although morally questionable, she does behave in a manner that leads to economic advancement and provides adequate care for her son through her domestic servant. On the rare occasion that a few of the children on the block are outside playing under the watchful eyes of their parents, the little boy is allowed to play as well, even though his presence is not requested or planned upon. He has been allowed in a few of the neighbors’ houses to play, whereas the other children on the block do not know the names of the children in
Villas D and E. 124
5. Villa G
Villa G contrasts strongly as a three-story mansion—it is not only painted, but
has accenting trim and tinted windows. The woman in her late thirties who lives there
spends the day alone. She has expressed her loneliness due to her husband’s long trips
with his trucking company. He does drop by the house during the day sometimes, often
accompanied by a friend/employee, but her loneliness persists. She frequently orders
hand-sewn blouses from Mrs. Mendoza. This is not because she needs a new blouse, but
because the time visiting for design and fittings is worth the four dollars to her (which is
considerably less than she would pay in a store) and because if she helps out the
economic situation of her friend, it may mask their increasing economic differences.
The woman spends much of her day at home preparing for her daughter’s arrival
on a privately owned “expreso38” from school. To combat her loneliness while her nine-
year-old daughter was at school, she got a puppy, similar to my mixed-breed German-
Shepherds,39 even though she was afraid of my dogs that were extremely protective of
me. The puppy did provide company itself, and also with those who visited to see the
puppy. When it died, she decided she would not get another dog because it hurt her too
38 The expresos may be actual buses or pick-up trucks that bring the children to and from school for just less than the $20 a month it would cost for the parent to go on a city bus back and forth twice a day, saving a considerable amount of time and discomfort. Although the schools usually do not own the expresos, they are affiliated with a particular school and the quality of expresos depends on the quality of school, which is related to the students’ parents’ income. 39 My dogs’ quality of care and training makes them considered purebreds. Even though people would close their gates and yank their children inside when my ninety-pound dogs would barrel outside without leashes to run up to an abandoned lot to relieve themselves, all peered from inside to see if there was an off-chance that I would play fetch with my dogs, or make them sit or jump up. It became known as the gringa’s circus. Big dogs are an economic indicator—the owner is well enough off to feed not only one’s family, but well enough off to feed a pet so that it grows large. Also, large dogs are often used for home protection, which indirectly implies that the home contains something of value. In fact, several families got puppies who did not have them previously with all the attention given to my dogs, although few of the creatures lived very long. 125 much when it passed on. Her rising economic condition and her friend’s falling status has exacerbated her loneliness. Although the houses of disparate repair in the same neighborhood would make it appear as if class does not matter, it does. Social activities such as visiting the stores and attending functions cost considerable amounts of money because people are expected to buy small items for their children when they ask and transportation expenses can quickly add up. The Mendoza’s are unable to go shopping as they once did—they cannot even afford the bus fare, let alone the purchases. Even though she could spend her time talking with Mrs. Mendoza, the concerns that foment their topics of conversation have changed. Mrs. Mendoza wonders what previous necessities have become luxuries to be cut from the budget and the lonely neighbor wonders what luxuries have become necessities to fulfill the expectations for her rising economic status. Her husband’s employability has led to this loneliness: he must be away quite often and it has created a divide between herself and her confidante on the block.
6. Villa H
Tie rods protrude the roof of one-level Villa H awaiting the next floor. The home is not decorated ornately, but has been consistently improved upon. The residents of the other villas know little about the residents of Villa H. As stated above, there is not much public life in the street. He always smiled and greeted others, but he, his wife and son did not have much contact with the neighbors. Neighbors greet the owner when he lets his expensive Chow mix out for only a minute to hose down the dust in the garage area, something everyone seemed to do daily, but all at different times. When I asked 126 why he does not let his dog relieve himself in the abandoned lot down the street,40 he told me that the dog’s outings are quick because he fears someone would steal it. No one would steal mine because people do not envy me in the same way. As he continued, he implied that people would wish to lower his family to their status, but that just taking my dogs would never lower the North American anyway. Plus, people fear the clear training that my dogs have—most dog training includes attacking. My dogs’ fetching ability would logically be a training luxury in addition to the training basics of attack behavior.
7. Villa I
Villa I recently got new rain gutters, which is much more significant than it seems because not only are the gutters themselves concrete, but they have been installed in a way that puts the villa closer to having a second floor to their house, which they already have a stairway to. A grandmother, her son, her daughter-in-law, and their daughter live in the one-story home. The grandmother raises the three-year-old girl who has some health defects. She was born with her neck bent to the side and one eye paralyzed.
Although physical therapy and glasses have corrected her defects to a functional level, it is still evident in some of her mannerisms. Not only does the grandmother take care of the little girl alone all day, but also has taken over almost all of the rest of her care. The mother seems to have given up a real connection to her, which has led her father to spoil the little girl in an attempt to compensate for the mother’s lack of interest. The little girl is attached strongly to her father and will run into the street to catch him when he is arriving from or leaving to work as a taxi driver.
40 I was concerned that even though all I asked assured me that this was acceptable behavior, it might not be. I thought that the other dog owner would know the more appropriate behavior. 127
The young girl is prone to fits of rage, which the father temporally fixed by dunking her into a barrel of water. She would behave herself around the daughter of the
Mendoza’s, Briana, who was a year older, and as such playing with Briana was sometimes used as a reward. Unfortunately, it is an unstable reinforcement because Briana’s parents sometimes punished her by not letting her play. The ability to impel good behavior from the little girl by offering time with Briana has been such a successful system that when she began school, the parents sent her to Briana’s school that is halfway to La Alborada.
The stark economic differences in houses are also reflected in the children’s schooling. With continuous strikes and dilapidated conditions at public schools, few children of this neighborhood attend these. But, few go to the same private school, which differ markedly in quality and cost. The daughter in the three-story Villa G goes to the most expensive one. Briana and the little girl in Villa I attended a middle range school. However, with the worsening economic status of the Mendoza’s, they eventually switched Briana to a private school in walking distance to save on both transportation and tuition. The grandmother in Villa I attempted to convince her son to switch her granddaughter as well, although the mother is hesitant because she does not want it to seem like they are incapable of paying for a more expensive school, especially since they have no transportation expenditures with the husband’s taxi.
8. Villa J
Villa J is the only house bigger than the trucker and his lonely wife’s villa. A rooftop patio crowns the three floors towering next to its one-story neighbors in Villas H and I. The white paint on their house is a bit graying, as is their economic level.
However, all the accoutrements meant as economic indications to the neighbors are 128 present: they live in a large home with a vehicle in the garage and have domestic help and pets. The small set of rooftop rooms for the help is about the same size as the impoverished Villas D and E. The female maid and male employee have a child, who is also a veritable maid. The child sometimes sits in the stairway adjoining a garage for an extremely dilapidated truck where she tortures the pets, perhaps because they are treated far better than she is—they are allowed to lay about and receive gluttonous portions of food.41 Even though well fed, they are clearly not pets in the U.S. sense, but just an expression of economic level. Nothing was said to the owner of a dog who attacked the cat. I cannot imagine any further reprimand if someone attacked the child either.
Once, the maid was sent to let the Mendoza’s know that the family would consider renting a portion of their home to me, not because of economic necessity, but as a kind gesture to the homeless, family-less foreigner. They did not put up a for rent sign, which the neighbors would perceive as an economic need beyond the current income of the family. Eventually the people who were renting the Mendoza’s other house moved in there, paying twice as much rent as they paid to the Mendoza’s for less privacy, when the
Mendoza’s had an offer on the house. Again, the residents of Villa J represented this suggested arrangement as a favor to the Mendoza’s: they needed to have the tenants leave their home to sell it, and, with the rental offer, the tenants could leave sooner. They did not have to scour the city to find an acceptable place. The residents of Villa J maintain class differences in the treatment of their help and others in the neighborhood more stringently than other neighborhood residents do. The recent income of some neighbors
41 The pets seem to have bonded to each other under her taunts. The dog protects the cat from her and from other neighborhood dogs. 129 and downturn of others leaves relations with those of the same economic level confusing.
It is unclear who will become or even remain at the same stature. Perhaps Villa J was more willing to offer favors to the Mendoza’s, who were associated with foreigners and the rising trucker’s wife, than they would to those of Villas D and E.
9. Stores
The residents of these villas conduct the majority of their shopping at the small stores on the other side of the block on the main highway rather than in the larger grocery and department stores in La Alborada. A hardware store primarily serves long distance commuters on the highway. This small set of locales also includes a telephone center for calling internationally, an internet café, and a beverage distributor. While the residents do patronize these locales, they frequent the bakery and grocery store daily.
A married couple runs the grocery store. The parents of the young woman sent her to Italy in order to prevent her betrothal to the storeowner. She returned to him anyway a few years later with some savings. Together, they have expanded the store from one locale to include the neighboring locale as a butcher shop and another grocery store a half a mile further up the highway. Their local success has mitigated the lack of acceptance for their engagement. Since she was a pretty twenty-year-old, the woman’s family had hoped for a more established spouse than the short, pudgy thirty-year-old storeowner. They are commended for the strength of their love, dedication to their business, and strong connection to the community as their local success exhibits. They still have no children and behave as newlyweds behind the cash register.
A couple runs the bakery as well. For almost a decade, this bakery has continued in the same location with the same amount of business. The husband maintains the 130 storefront while the wife bakes and cares for their six-year-old son. Anytime an individual purchases a packaged treat such as cookies or juice, the child insists on having one as well. There is always a rush of locals at 4 p.m. when the empanadas come out of the oven. They soon run out. Some comment on how, if the couple had initiative, they would make more empanadas, more frequently, or begin to sell the elaborately decorated sheet-cakes with Western cartoon characters that have become a common fixture for children’s birthday celebrations, rather than traditional single-portion sweet breads. They lack the entrepreneurial spirit needed to advance, unlike the grocery store owners.
10. Park
The residents of these villas reach the store side of the block by walking through the abandoned lot by the gully at one end of the villas, or through a park at the side of the villas. The residents of these villas do not know the people on the other side of the park and vice versa. The park is not considered a place children can go to play so the two sides do not congregate. The park borders on the unknown, and its lack of ownership to either side has resulted in dilapidation. The slide is rusted, the swing chains are tangled, and broken glass is strewn about the seesaw. Part of the disrepair is due to its lack of use because no place really is seen as an appropriate place for children to play outside the house without the watchful eye of the parents. Also, children do not need toys to play.
As with many parks in Guayaquil, they are mainly used late at night for drinking or smooching with an inappropriate partner. The Latin American Jerry Springer, Laura, surprises each guest on her show with surveillance footage of his or her infidelities in parks. The amazing part is not so much that the woman who has brought her spouse on to confront his wandering ways (and perhaps receive presents from Laura for “throwing 131 this dog out onto the street”) is shown footage of him cheating, but that inevitably there is also footage of the woman herself in a different park committing infidelities, or even footage of each of the individuals with whom the spouses cheat with others in another park. Parks are generally considered suited for a different kind of play than child’s play.
I have described this neighborhood to such an extent, even though the individuals are not the primary focus of this dissertation because this dissertation requires a background in a number of cultural contexts that have combined to create the value structures of this modern, changing situation of emigration. Economic disparity and differences amongst somehow homogeneous neighbors is relevant for this urban anthropological project. Individual circumstances such as the neighborhood at home, those who have gone abroad, personal background, along with macrosocial factors such as the media, government policy, economy and globalization are all relevant pieces to the puzzle of a child’s response to parental emigration in their developmental niche.
I consider this neighborhood a perfect place to get a glimpse of the “middle class” who were most affected by the economic crisis in the late nineties and have been the most likely to emigrate. While it may seem that this set neighborhood is not representative because it is below the national birthrate, the numbers have been falling nationally and many families in Las Orquídeas are young and may have more children in the future. One to two children per household is probably a much more accurate number for the “middle-class” of this age group that is the age group of emigration.
From my work in other neighborhoods, Las Orquídeas is representative of the
“middle-class” in the way that they interact and the volatility of their economic position.
In this one portion of a neighborhood, we have people who are all but destitute (Villa D 132
& E), people who are on their way up (Villa H and I), people who have made it and are rising (Villa G), people who made it and may be falling (Villa J), people who want out while they still can (Villa A), people who have found a way back in (Villa F), and the people I will write about, whose future is uncertain (Villa B and C).
The goal of knowing this neighborhood is to know the Mendozas, who will help us know the variability of experiences for those emigration leaves behind. First, I turn to a composite of the right way to raise a family based on informant interviews. Based on my interviews, it is clear that Ecuadorians have expectations about what a family should be. I will describe this normative vision so we can compare it to the actual family life of the Mendozas. Then, I provide a description of the past of the focal family for this chapter, the family that stays behind. In the next chapter, I present four case studies of cousins who emigration has left behind, in varying contexts and with varying results.
THE CONCEPT OF THE CHILD & PARENTAL ETHNOTHEORIES
Anthropologists who research children have noted the role of cultural learning for understanding the process of child socialization for a particular group of people. The kinds of interactions that particular people see as the best method for cultural reproduction inform their methods for childrearing. Not only will understanding the parent’s ideas about childrearing help to understand cultural reproduction, but also it will help us to understand the cognition and behaviors of the parents themselves as well as understand the child’s socialization context (Goodnow 1996: 315). This context is central to understanding children’s adaptations to parental emigration. To know what children may perceive as absent, we must first know what others perceive as needed. 133
Parents’ ideas about children’s needs, capabilities and natural inclinations, or their
“concept of the child,” help shape the process of enculturation that people value and the role that others—especially parents—will play in that process (Parish 1994). As with many aspects of culture, a particular “concept of the child” will stand out as the predominant one in a particular group.
Parents’ understandings about the nature of children, the structure of development, and the meaning of behavior are to a large extent shared by members of a cultural group or subgroup. These understandings are developed in the context of life in a particular cultural place and time, and they are related to understandings about other aspects of life as experienced by parents, including most immediately the nature and meaning of parenthood, the family, and the self in society… These culturally organized understandings relate in systematic ways to action— including, for example, styles of talking to children, methods of discipline, or seeking advice from experts. (Harkness & Super 1996: 2)
In some cultures, such as in Bahktapur (Levy 2005: 449) and China (Tobin et al. 1989), children are seen as shapeless and in need of significant adult guidance, and in others, such as amongst the Piri, children are thought to develop with relatively little adult intervention (Levy 2005: 447). In Western religious doctrine, Puritanical views saw child labor as necessary for the purification of souls, whereas other Christian philosophies depict childhood innocence in angelic cherubs (Zelizer 1998). In some modern societies we incessantly ask children to decide between clothing and food options, but rarely let them go outside alone, whereas in other settings children roam freely but are not asked questions, because they lack the understanding to properly make decisions (Tobin et al.
1989). These sets of cultural ideas, each part of what anthropologists call a concept of the child, determine behaviors from how parents discipline their children to how governments design public policy. 134
The United States concept of the child indicates that children are domestic and dependent (Panter-Brick 2000). The more involved the parent, the better until the parent becomes overbearing and stifles the child’s growth (Watson 1998). In contrast, Weisner and Gallimore (1977) found that “nonparental caretaking is either the norm or a significant form of caretaking in most societies.” As such, sometimes what the parent views as the best method for socialization may not even predominantly involve the parent interacting with the child, which differs significantly from the dominant Western notion which has shaped a great amount of research.
In this section, I present a compilation of information from a number of informant interviews and naturalistic observation that my informants appear to share widely. Informants of different ages, occupations, and with different numbers of children expressed similar concerns regarding how to care for children. Beliefs on raising children relate to one another in a systematic manner, and as such, Harkness and Super (1996) refer to them as parental ethnotheories. In their edited volume on the topic, they describe the development of these belief systems: “These understandings are developed in the context of life in a particular cultural place and time, and they are related to understandings about other aspects of life as experienced by parents, including most immediately the nature and meaning of parenthood, the family, and the self in society”
(ibid.: 2). Here, I construct a version of the Ecuadorian parental ethnotheories, which influence behavioral choices and the interpretations of observations. This is relevant for my overall theoretical discussion because it not only provides a contrast of the families with émigrés to what is considered “normal,” but also provides information for understanding the divergent opinions that many have regarding émigré families. 135
Parents worldwide wish that their children survive in good health with culturally approved means for achieving subsistence (LeVine 1977, 1988). The Ecuadorian families
I studied did not necessarily consider it difficult to teach culturally approved means if they can meet economic needs. Children are not Locke’s blank slates; they are innately good. Parents just have to be sure to not screw it up, and keep children from being a nuisance to others, as no person should be. No limitless “providing more” is incrementally better for children. “Need” seems a finite category with the family’s purpose to provide love, discipline, education, and a positive example for children. A mother has primary responsibility for the satisfaction of these needs, and a father should help and provide the economic needs to do so. The differentiation of parental roles in
Ecuador reflects the strong differentiation of gender roles because similarity and differences in economic behaviors across genders influence the similarity and differences amongst parental roles (Hewlett 2001).
According to informants, the desire to satisfy these needs is inborn for parents. I was told, “Someone wants to be a good parent in their genes.” A beings’ purpose in life is to procreate.42 Ecuadorian families see children as the reason a family exists and measure the family’s success based on how good the children become. Although it is part of human nature to want to be a parent, many acknowledged that learning to be a parent is not easy or automatic. Slowly, the parent learns in practice and from previous role models. The methods for learning to be a good parent may arrive as “direct implications of the forms, structures, and constraints provided by the… contexts” or may “have been
42 This belief expands to animals as well. When I spayed my dogs, I was told I just destroyed their reason for living. 136 actively arrived at through some long process of trial and error, like so much other useful local knowledge, and worked into local tradition” (Levy 1996: 140). In addition, these methods may arise from “conscious reflection on one’s experience as a child, as an adult assuming the parent role and as a parent growing in the parenting role” (McGillicuddy-
De Lisi & Subramanian 1996: 164). Ecuadorian parents focused on nature for explaining the desire to take care of children, and experience for learning how to do so.
Many were skeptical that someone could not want to be a good parent contrary to nature. A couple that does not want to have children is selfish and blinded by material goods rather than what really matters in life. While the desire to be a good parent is inborn, negative influences in upbringing can suppress this drive. If someone does not want to be a good parent, he or she must have been mistreated. An experience in their upbringing has counteracted the natural drive to nurture their children. They must have a disorder or never have experienced a happy environment if they look at a child that has come from their flesh and not want to care for it. They may not have the family support in order to have the desire to learn how to be a good parent.
If someone is not a good parent, the child will not positively contribute to society.
When the child enters the labor force, they will not be able to fulfill their role and will be an “antisocial” because he has picked up the attitude that the parents have given him.
The term antisocial refers to marginal members of society, which reflects the fact that children need to behave appropriately in social interactions to be a functioning member of society. Signs at schools say, “Please greet others” and even young children reprimand others for putting their back to someone. However, “antisocial” does not just imply a person who does not want to interact with others, like a misanthrope, but is the word 137 used for criminals and vagrants. The word does not indicate the individual’s desire to avoid society alone but their lack of providing a positive impact on society as well.
Even though there are societal repercussions when a parent raises a child poorly, general society will not protect a child because one should not judge others. People can see if a mother is neglectful, unaffectionate, or drinks. Only if you know someone really well, or “have confidence,” can you voice a critique, and normally a husband will not even criticize a wife. Sometimes a person’s mother-in-law or mother will tell them if they are not raising their children correctly. Some claimed no support existed (even though there is a government department dedicated to mistreated children and educating parents) and with the current economy, it’s difficult to be a good parent.
Physical Needs
Children cry when hungry, dirty, or tired and the mother should respond quickly.
At first, a mother should give her child maternal milk for nutrition, antibodies, and to bond with her child. The mother will slowly include “papillas,” or concoctions of wet mashed up fruits and then transition into juice and normal fruit. Ecuadorian children are not weaned at a certain age (most are weaned by four), but little by little they leave the breast and go to the bottle depending on the child’s stomach. Some children’s stomachs cannot tolerate the fat in cow milk and they will vomit and have diarrhea. Toddlers reaching for the breast in public locations are not seen as aberrant. After a year, the child will begin to eat the meat, rice, and soup that their parent’s eat, out of imitation.
This transition is not as difficult as in other societies. According to Erikson
(1963), the manner of such transitions has an influence on the resultant personality of the adult. Amongst the Sioux, children were breast fed upon demand for an average of three 138 years and breastfeeding would take precedence over the father’s sexual access (ibid.: 135).
In fact, Erikson claims that children weaned the mother off breastfeeding. This early practice helps to socialize the “cultural demand” of generosity (ibid.: 137). However, the children were not free from all frustration.
This paradise of the practically unlimited privilege of the mother’s breast also had a forbidden fruit. To be permitted to suckle, the infant had to learn not to bite the breast… they would “thump” the baby’s head and how he would fly into a wild rage… Good future hunters could be recognized by the strength of their infantile fury. (ibid.: 136f)
These early childrearing practices helped to socialize the valued “hunter’s ferocity” and generosity. These characteristics of childrearing lead to adult behavior such as the Sun
Dance where the man tears his breast muscle from his body and as women’s oral fixation with chewing leather and threading porcupine quills through their teeth.
Erikson contrasts the Sioux with the Yurok, who experience “accelerating autonomy by early weaning” (ibid.: 175) and later value self-restraint (ibid.: 177). This system of particular characteristics of childrearing as a method of instilling cultural values is not a simple, one-to-one relationship. Erikson stated, “We are speaking of goals and values and of the energy put at their disposal by child-training systems. Such values persist because the cultural ethos continues to consider them “natural” and does not admit of alternatives” (ibid.: 138).
Ecuadorian children do not face the frustration of the Sioux or develop self- reliance like the Yurok in their transition to solid foods. Instead, they experience parental involvement and support. When children are able to feed themselves at age three or four, mothers continue to help to feed children because, alone, the child will eat less. Children need to consume all their hearty soups in order to grow. 139
When older, children should drink juices and avoid food colorants. In fact, children learn that they can eat anything from pork rinds and white gum, which are healthy food because they are not colored. Strawberry yogurt is considered a junk food because of the pink tinge that the strawberries make it. Children quickly learn these color rules. While riding the bus, one four-year-old girl pointed out to me a white house with a red roof receiving the finishing touches in a new neighborhood along the highway. She said, “If I take the roof off of that house, I can eat it. But not the others.”
Children frequently eat cereal, small bags of chips, and other snacks throughout the day. On the way home, parents regularly purchase candy on the bus from vendors to bring home to their children. Children often expect these treats, and they are not considered part of the child’s nutrition. Planned foods that the mother provides at home compose the diet, not the treats brought home or consumed in the day’s activities outside the home. The nutrition provided at home assures health, along with cleanliness.
Children are not expected to clean themselves alone until they are seven or eight.
Bathing is frequently an afternoon activity after the noonday sweat and before the cold air of the night is a health risk. The fear of health repercussions from mixing heat and cold continues into adulthood, where women are aghast at the idea of ironing and washing dishes in close succession. There is less attention to washing hands. This may be because children do not eat finger foods for meals, but soups and rice. The finger foods of snacks, which are not part of nutrition, require no special preparation.
Discipline & Consenting
In addition to nutrition and cleanliness, children need to receive balanced discipline from their parents. Parents are seen as the sole providers of discipline, which is 140 not considered just punishments but the establishment of regimens and structure. Similar to a good cop/bad cop scenario, one parent should be strong and the other weak so that the child receives the necessary protection and affection. If both are strong, the child will lack affection; if both are weak, the child will take advantage of the parents. No parent is entirely either one: they both have to be both. If the same parent is always weak, the child will misbehave for that parent. If the same parent is always strong, the child will not feel connected to that parent and the child will ignore his or her discipline. Balance between the weak and strong roles will prevent the child from taking advantage of the parents and let the child know that they can receive love without conditions.
This balanced care from both creates a normal level of treatment from both parents. With this balance and equal care from both parents, behaviors are encouraged and discouraged by stepping outside normal equilibriums. In terms of operant conditioning, discipline itself seems to be composed of negative punishment, or taking away a reward, to discourage behavior and negative reinforcement, or letting bad behaviors slide to encourage accompanying behaviors. Children rarely receive positive punishment, or spankings, to discourage behavior or positive reinforcement, or rewards to encourage behavior. Since children regularly receive rewards of small snacks when the parent arrives at the house, it would be difficult to have a particular reward set apart as reinforcement rather than a daily occurrence. However, children do notice the removal of these rewards or enjoy when leeway is given. Negative reinforcement, or removing a bad stimulus, is most noticeable when children are allowed to skip responsibilities such as homework when they are interacting well socially with other family members. 141
In their six culture study, the Whitings (1975) found that the children’s learning environment as in parental reinforcement and sanctions have a significant role in encouraging or discouraging “appropriate” social behavior such as nurturance and aggression. The reinforcement of leeway and the punishments of removing rewards match Whitings’ discussion of shaping aggressive behaviors, such as tantrums and other asocial behavior and shaping nurturant behaviors, or familial ties.
The Ecuadorian balance of discipline is important because it prevents children from fits of rage, which are seen as the worst behavior a small child can have. Fits of rage in public are an “antisocial behavior” that indicate a future when the child will not contribute well to society and adequately consider others’ needs. Children will try to manipulate parents through tears, but children who are not properly disciplined overstep the boundaries and scream, rather than just cry, and cause a scene. Parents frequently give in before the child reaches tantrum behavior in a public place. However, this does not mean that the behavior is accepted and encouraged. Because of the embarrassment of previous fits or the expense of acquiescing to children’s requests, the parent may not bring the child to the public place the next time. Socializing outside the house is a reward. Usually these fits of rage are discouraged with the removal of rewards.
If this does not work or if the child begins to doubt the stability of rewards of socializing, parents may resort to positive punishment, or the implementation of a negative stimulus, in extreme cases. As mentioned above, the little girl in Villa I was dunked in a barrel of water to cure her fits of rage. The rewards of playing with Briana had become few-and-far-between and the mother never brought her to public places. All agreed it was time for drastic measures to prevent the girl from becoming antisocial and 142 that the father had behaved appropriately. The daughter is strongly attached to the father, so if he is the one who dishes out the discipline, it has a stronger effect. I do not think there would have been the same acceptance of the punishment if the mother who does not take much interest in her daughter’s care or the grandmother who should not be in charge of the punishments had dunked the little girl.
While discipline is important, children are mostly consented. The term “consentir” differs from permissive in its agentive focus. When we claim that parents are permissive, the term focuses on the parent’s choice to allow the child’s behavior. In Baumrind’s
(1967: 60) study of the connection between parental behavior and resultant child behavior, she defines permissiveness as being unable to enforce directives consistently, to resist pressure from the child, and to exert influence upon the child. Consenting focuses more on the child’s construction of a request, and the parent’s agreement. The agency in this interaction is on the child, not the parent. It is a child’s persistence in requests that leads to consenting, not a parents’ lack of fortitude, which leads to permissiveness.
In fact, for Ecuadorian families, a parent is lacking if they do not consent. The parent does not understand that they are caring for a child who cannot understand the complexities of a world. If a parent never consents, then the parent has dominance issues. They are trying to assert themselves as important rather then help their child develop the love and support a child needs to become a contributing member of society.
Basically, the parent is not appropriately balanced in his or her care.
In general, the parents I observed seemed to consent most of the child’s requests, whenever possible. There was no fear that the child would become unaccustomed to limits, and sometimes children were consented when parents felt strongly that it was not 143 the best for the child. Even parents who bring their children to special allergists who recommend that the children avoid food coloring and cold foods will allow the child to get gumballs and ice cream if there is a chance that the child would cry in public. While this primarily happened when the child was in a public space and might have caused an antisocial scene, the parents consented to children at home as well. Unlike the Sioux who saw rage at punishment an indication of future societal functioning (as a ferocious hunter), Ecuadorian parents see rage as an indication of future difficulties. If children are not consented when there is no reason to refuse their requests, then they will not grow to understand the need to consider the effect of their requests on others. An antisocial future is worse than temporary allergic reactions or a cold. When a child makes a request, it is consented because children cannot necessarily understand why it would not be fulfilled. Similar to Chapin’s (2004) discussion of child consenting in Sri Lanka, contrary to Western ideas of the effect of spoiling, children eventually learn social expectations.
Seeing their parents’ disappointment or concern at the request, children learn to stop making requests that would require acquiescence from their parents. As such, this consenting nature does not seem to create spoiled, demanding children. The structure and great concern on appropriate social behavior successfully negates this tendency.
Balanced care means appropriate consenting is as important as discipline. A local storeowner who had raised his six children heavily criticized a neighbor’s nanny because when pushing the stroller, if the child wants to go one way, she may go the other. He says that if the child wants something and it does not make a difference, you should just consent the child. There are sufficient opportunities to discipline a child—one does not need to create them arbitrarily. This is similar to the idea of picking one’s battles. 144
Upsetting the child for no reason tells the child that you do not care about its wellbeing and that you discipline indiscriminately. Rules and authority will seem arbitrary. This will lead the child to disregard all rules. For instance, you do not want to raise your voice all the time, because then when you raise your voice because the child is about to step out into traffic, he or she will not hear you. When the nanny does not listen, the nanny is affecting the child’s disposition, which is formed around age five or so. Other instances discipline, when it matters, function so that the children learn not to take advantage of the parents. If children are consented, they will learn to be agreeable to the wishes of others. They will have seen the benefits of such congenial behavior.
However, a spoiled child will try to take the power from their parents, and will cry just to cry. The tears will not be because of a particular need or want, but because of a desire to control the parents. If the child gets away with too much, he or she will think that the mother allows such behavior and he will not know how to accept discipline.
They will arrive late, grab a plate without appropriate recognition for the sustenance, or be drunk or do drugs. While love should not have conditions, support should. The children have to suffer through discipline or you form a small criminal, or “antisocial.”
This demonstrates the weight placed on disciplining children for appropriate social behavior in greeting others, dancing at parties, and not making a scene in public.
Affection
While parents should be the primary providers of nutrition and discipline, affection should come from the entire extended family. Extended family should provide additional love and consolation for children. In Ecuadorian Spanish, there is no term for extended family. There is a term for nuclear family, and family overall, but there is no 145 term that implies family minus the nuclear unit. Family responsibilities indicate that the nuclear family is responsible for most of the child’s care, but all family provides affection.
The amount of caretakers per child affects the amount of soothing and stimulation a child receives. LeVine (1983: 52) stated that the concept of the child in high-fertility cultures includes much soothing and little stimulating but that the concept of the child in low-fertility cultures is diametrically opposed: little soothing and much stimulating. I would argue that the amount of soothing also relates to how many family members are present. I think that high fertility cultures tend to have more extended kin present. When the extended family is present, the Ecuadorian children experience the characteristics of high fertility cultures even with the decreasing birth rates. From my observations, it seems that there is not much stimulation when other family members are around because, while adults can provide affection and converse with others, it is difficult to stimulate children and converse with others at the same time.
Siblings provide affection and consent children on small items as well. They do not provide discipline, but should set a positive example and watch out for the siblings when outside the home. The siblings may help with shopping at the corner store.
Female siblings may help with some feeding and dressing, but normally do not provide discipline or take over larger tasks, like bathing and cooking.
With the closeness of extended family, parents expect children to talk to and to greet family with a kiss on the cheek. Even if a child has never met the family member, he or she should be on a familiar affectionate basis. Being too shy to kiss a relative only results in more attention when the relative tries to win the child’s affection or incessant comments are made as to why the child will not kiss the relative on the cheek. 146
Grandparents should be especially tender and consenting. The fact that a child can always take advantage of a grandparent is not seen as a problem. The consenting compensates as extra affection to make up for any time the extended family is away from the child. The parents are the ones who raise them and live with them. Aunts and uncles may assist in raising the child, but generally will not question a parent’s decision.
Children are not supposed to be shy in public either. They should dance in lined- up couples at birthday parties and school functions. They perform and march frequently.
Girls are selected to be the class princess and boys are chosen to be the escorts. Children are not taught to fear strangers, but greet strangers and kiss those who they meet on the cheek.43 Signs at school saying “Please Greet Others” are not meant to be a behavior just at school, but a behavior at stores, on buses, and on the street. One little boy who grew up in the U.S. told me that here in Ecuador, one has to be very careful crossing the streets. People do not stop. I said that one should be careful crossing the street wherever one lives. He replied that it is a more important concern in Ecuador. When I asked what the more important concern in the United States was, he told me that there, one has to be careful of strangers. Strangers will steal you, dress you up as a girl in the mall bathroom and take you away. In Ecuador, he did not have this fear. Here you greet people you do not know as if you know them, so they are not strangers.
Positive Environment
While no generalized fear of strangers is established, the possibility of a negative influence from the environment is a concern for parents. Siblings should provide a good
43 While widespread in theory, there are exceptions in practice. I was to greet all I meet with a kiss on the cheek, even if I do not know them, because hopefully they will become a friend. One host never asked me to join him in fetching milk from the indigenous woman again. Although one should greet every person with a kiss, she was not a person to him and my greeting her with a kiss was shocking to both him and her. 147 example, but since the mother is seen as the one who spends the most amount of time with the child, she is the one who should assure a positive environment. If not, children will learn bad habits from those around them inevitably. In my interviews, there was no acknowledgement of the possibility of positive influences from peers—only family. One parent told me, “Those who join wolves, learn to howl.” Children need to learn good morals, ethics, and religion. If the mother does not control the child’s environment, then even if the family is educated and wealthy, the child is going to learn bad things.
Negative influences are a greater concern once the child is older because the child has more freedom and the environment is harder to control. The mother can make suggestions and help, but she cannot impede an adolescent anymore. She is still concerned with the adolescents’ food, health, and emotions, but only to see that her earlier teachings are continued. She is transitioning into becoming the child’s friend. If she has listened and provided good advice while the child was growing up, she then becomes the adult’s advisor and friend. She does not need to provide additional care if she has done so correctly earlier. A person may forget now and then to say hello, or take off his or her shoes, but the mother does not say anything. She should have provided a positive enough example that her child can now raise his or her own children.
Part of the purpose of discipline and protection of environment is not just to teach right and wrong, but the idea of discipline itself. There should be sleep time, television time, eating time (important to avoid gastrointestinal problems), and homework time. If children learn when young, from four to seven, about discipline as they should, then they will obey afterwards and be able to get ahead in life. If the mother did her work beforehand instilling basic principles, it is easy to care for the child in puberty and 148 adolescence because they will have a base of communication. Then, the mother only needs to give support and ideas of how to relate to others outside the family since the child’s social circle is expanding. Children who do not learn discipline will have problems in adulthood because they will not understand the boundaries of appropriate behavior.
Education
Parent’s involvement with education requires preparation for school with language development and help with schoolwork once older. Ochs and Schieffelin (1984) observed that specific caregiver speech and involvement in language development is neither universal nor necessary for human development of language. With their observation of cases in the United States, they pointed out that parents tend to treat children as conversational partners and attempt to negotiate the children’s meanings. On the contrary, amongst the Kaluli, children are expected to pick up language from their verbal environment. Language training in Ecuador is a mix of these two behaviors.
Training is age-graded and discontinuous: at a young age, when interacting with particular family members, parents treat children as conversational partners. This is especially true for the group of middle class women who live further away from their home. Alone with the children like in the United States, these women talk to the children during mealtimes.
However, once older and in school, schools take over the education of children. Parents may correct words that are miss-conjugated or laugh at mispronunciation, but children do not receive direct instruction from parents once in school.
While language learning and potty training is important for school readiness, parents do not spend time preparing children for school otherwise. There is no fear of idle time. There is no great concern for educational toys, planned activities, or television 149 avoidance. The idea of downtime enhances the actual structure of other times, which are not extremely structured themselves. There is no idea of time wasted without learning— schools are in charge of that. Ecuadorian parents do not fervently prepare children to be ready, if not ahead, for daylong neighborhood public schools where they compete with the neighbors. Children do not normally attend the same schools as the neighbors because of the inadequacies of public schools and differences in discretionary income. It is not that they do not care—Ecuadorian parents are greatly concerned with selecting the private school, ranging from $10 to $200 a month, for their children to attend.
Parents hand over children’s learning entirely to schools. Levy indicated a contrast between the concepts of the child in Bhaktapur, Nepal of “enormous social and cultural complexity” and the “very small… village community” of Piri, Tahiti (Levy
1996). In Piri, children are expected to learn by oneself whereas in Bhaktapur children are expected to learn from others, which leads to differences in the conceived importance of formal education. These differences were observed in the use of directive discursive language: Piri parents tend to scold whereas Bhaktapur parents tend to reinforce.
Ecuadorian children do learn from others—this is the reason for the concern of assuring a positive environment. Frequently parents do not interfere with schools because they believe that schools know better what children should know. Just as with Tobin et al’s
(1989) study of Japanese preschools, parents do not question teacher behaviors because of the training and authority their position implies. Also, parents who have a lesser education level than they desire their children to achieve are less likely to question teachers. In the United States preschools Tobin et al. studied, the idea that teachers are paid from tax dollars and are a kind of caregiver for children led parents to critique 150 teachers. In Ecuador, if a child does not seem to be learning, parents are likely to switch the school the child attends, rather than alter the educational attention the child receives at home or confront the teacher. Since parents do not determine the educational activities at home, schools and parents aren’t separate items to alter. The half-day schools send home detailed assignments that require the parents to laboriously assist their children—even in pre-K—to do for hours.
Teachers at school expected parents to be highly involved with children’s learning and saw parents as needing to be prepared for the tasks of school, rather then children.
In her research in three communities, Heath (1982) found that differential school success resulted because of the early learning of verbal forms in the home, or learning to take from books. While no child was deprived, the school system selectively valued and shaped skills that some of the children had and others did not. Ecuadorian teachers do acknowledge that some children “capture” more quickly than others can, but consider poor academic achievement as a direct result of parental involvement. Parents are required to complete assignments and some parents do not have the educational background or time to assist children successfully.
The reason for the importance of parental involvement is related to the nature of homework tasks. Unlike McClelland (1961) who indicated the importance of self-reliance and independence for individual achievement motivation, Ecuadorian parents do not expect children to achieve their assignments on their own. Some parents could see the humor in my complimenting the assignments the parent accomplished, but others did not understand how I could see that the child could possibly accomplish such tasks on their own. Sometimes tasks require accumulating materials—such as visiting a paper store for 151 glitter and tissue paper or finding pictures of blue items to cut from magazines and newspapers. Also, many tasks are very exacting. There is considerable wrote memorization and perfection of handwriting, for hours, on graph paper. My sloppy handwriting for field notes was of great concern for some children. A couple times I congratulated a child on the completion of a homework writing assignment, such as a four-year-old who had painstakingly written the numbers from one to sixty in the exactly appropriate set of squares. The assignment was clearly not adequate for the mother. The angle of lines of some numbers, even though in the right squares, was not correct. Most other assignments required the memorization of particular lists, without thought as to how the lists were constructed. Kindergarten children were repeatedly asked, time and time again, the parts of the plant. After hours of repeating, the words soon had no meaning or connection to the actual question. One frustrated child emphatically told her mother that the public officials include the “cocinero” [cook] and “putada” [slut] instead of
“consejero” [councilor] and “diputado” [deputy]. Children find these incessant questions annoying because they are rarely the direct recipient of their parent’s attention outside of homework. They are used to having their own space and seeking their parents’ attention when desired, not being focused on when they would prefer to do something else.
THE ROOTS OF THE MENDOZA FAMILY
Since the tendencies of the culture and/or reflection on one’s upbringing influence parental ethnotheories, I discuss here the background of Eduardo and Marisol
Mendoza. I address them because their siblings provide examples of the diversity of emigration experiences. With the description of their neighborhood, of the general concept of the child, and the following discussion of the family background, it will be 152 possible to understand the context of the children in this family who experience emigration. First, I address how Eduardo’s parents raised their six children. Second, I describe Eduardo’s wife Marisol’s family. Last, I discuss the home-life of Eduardo and
Marisol extensively in the section on their family below.
MENDOZA FAMILY CARDOSA FAMILY 1 2 3 4
Italy Italy 7 12 13 Italy U.S. Spain 5 6 8 9 10 11 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 Mendoza Grandparents: Mendoza Cardosa Family: 1. Sr. Tercero 16. Eduardo 2. Sra. Lucía 17. Marisol Mendoza Parents & Spouses: 30. Briana 5. Adolfo 6. Luisa Cardosa Grandparents: 7. Cinthya 3. Sr. Raúl 8. Existence Rumored? 4. Sra. Nydía (deceased) 9. Rosenda Cardosa Parents & Spouses: 10. Kingner 18. Veronica 11. Stacy 19. María Luz 12. Fernando 20. Luis 13. Nydia Cardosa Children: 14. Miguel 31. Norman 15. Patricia 32. Isabella Mendoza Children: 33. Shakina 21. Pedro 22. Carolina 23. Ramona Key: 24. Existence Rumored? Marital (affinal) tie 25. Kingner Jr. Divorced (affinal) tie ---- Blood (consanguineal) tie 26. Roberto 27. Liliana Focal Family 28. Gabriela Family Abroad 29. Marcos Children of Émigrés Male Female
FIGURE 6: MENDOZA CARDOSA KINSHIP CHART 153
Mendoza Patriarchs
Eduardo’s parents, Señor Tercero Mendoza and his wife Lucía met as teenagers in a small village in the province of El Oro, which is to the south of Guayaquil. Lucía’s family did not approve of their marriage. Her family had a considerable amount of land and Tercero’s father was a working-class alcoholic. Over decades of marriage, Tercero has proved to be a good provider, loyal husband, and respectful man. Working the land, he provided the resources necessary to care for their children, even if not luxuries.
He has maintained the repute of the family as well. The Mendoza family is still well respected in the village because of their connection to the previous hacienda owners of the area through Lucía and the devotion of the six children to their parents. The family name is often on political tickets and the Mendoza patriarch is frequently entreated to make requests on behalf of the community at the municipality. The previous hacienda ties to the family worked well with the continuing paternalistic relationship between small towns and the government in Ecuador.
The Mendoza patriarchs have four houses on their parcel of land in the village where they raised their children. Now, both Tercero’s and Lucía’s mothers live on their land in the same village. In addition to the small one-bedroom wooden houses on their land in the village for each of their mothers, the Mendoza patriarch’s have two houses as well. They mainly live and cook in the old wooden house where they raised their children. The concrete house their children built for them is where family who are staying with them sleep and where Tercero watches television in a hammock. The furnishings of both houses reflect their six children’s desire to equip their parents with what they need for the modern world. However, Lucía still cooks in an opened tin barrel 154 with wood rather than using the electric stove, and filters her coffee through a sock, rather than using the coffee maker. Eduardo, who purchased most of the appliances, does not seem concerned that they do not use the appliances. It is not a waste of money, because his parents have all they need, even if they are still too traditional to use them.
Tercero and Lucía are in surprisingly good health in their late-sixties. Every week, he climbs the mountain behind the village where their cattle are at pasture. The four- hour horseback ride halfway exhausted me, but he climbs up and down a few times a week, sometimes without a steed. His wife lovingly packs a care package for his days away. She usually stays behind near their mothers and caring for her granddaughter.
Eduardo was the first-born child. He attended elementary school in the village, and his parents sent him to Guayaquil for high school. He went to college to become an engineer, and has recently completed his masters in hopes of achieving a better-paying position. He previously did very well, making 10 times the monthly Ecuadorian salary as a naval engineer. He worked a considerable amount of overtime, including work on boats in Peru where he was able to bring his wife and daughter on vacation. They purchased a side-by-side fridge, land at the beach, and a second house (Villa C in Las
Orquídeas, which they now hope to sell). However, due to some corruption in his warehouse at the shipyard, he was fired recently as the scapegoat with no notice after fourteen years of employment. He and his wife, Marisol, have been looking for work that would not cost them more in transportation and childcare than they would be paid.
When younger, Eduardo had received significant support from his parents— funding for college, start-up expenses for his home, and money for his wedding. When he was employed, he had begun to return these favors to his parents, purchasing the 155 majority of the major appliances in his parents’ home and supporting his younger siblings.
This is a normal cycle for families: to invest in the first child in hopes that he will be able to invest in the following children and return the investment to the parents as well.
Unfortunately, when he lost his job he could no longer fulfill the cycle and even needed some help, including money for an operation for his wife, which he was too proud to ask for. For this reason, he is trying to sell the home next door and the land at the beach.
Patricia was the second child to Lucía and Tercero. She attended school in the village and married a man from the neighboring small town, where they now have an auto-parts store. They do well and are able to support their three children. However,
Patricia frequently asks her better-off siblings to purchase what she needs for her home to help their parents, like her own washer and dryer. She also requests items that she says she cannot get for her children in the small town, like expensive sneakers or funding for an elaborate birthday party. The siblings accede to the requests because Patricia presents them within the discourse of helping their parents. Patricia can make these requests because she has stayed near the village, unlike them, to care for the parents; if they refused the requests, they would be neglectful children for not providing for their parents, directly or indirectly. Occasional comments are made regarding the fact that Patricia makes requests that her parents would never venture to ask. The result is that the parents are helped, so no refusals are given. Sometimes contact lags to avoid such requests.
Fernando was the second boy and third child. As the middle-boy, he grew up in the shadow of his older brother, Eduardo, who received the majority of the family’s resources and of his younger brother, Kingner, who was considered the favorite. He was less connected to his home village and left earlier with less education than the other 156 children. He did well as a trucker, but eventually the days on the road wore on his marriage and his wife and he separated. His brothers take the opportunity when they all return for village festivals and saints’ days to reprimand him regarding his drinking and life choices. The marital separation and employment troubles led him to emigrate.
Kingner was the next child, and although he admits that he was his father’s favorite since he was the youngest boy, he laments the fact that he did not receive the educational opportunities that his brother Eduardo received. After serving his mandatory year in the military as a bomb disabler, his paternal uncle was able to get him a place in the incoming class of the police force. He was working his way up in the ranks of the police force, when a high-ranking officer forced Kingner to marry his daughter, Rosenda, because she was pregnant. Kingner’s family did not attend this wedding, because they disapproved. He at first claimed he was unsure if the child was his, but once the child was born, he became the proud papa. His parents have been slow to warm up to the child because of the distance and strain between Kingner and Rosenda. Eventually,
Kingner and Rosenda separated and he met a foreigner who he emigrated with.
Cinthya was the second girl and fifth child. She attended school in the village and later stayed with Eduardo in Guayaquil for high school. While in Guayaquil, she became pregnant. No one but Marisol, Eduardo’s wife, knows the identity of the father, although both Eduardo and Kingner have their suspicions. Cinthya could not support her daughter in Guayaquil, so she returned to her parents’ home with her daughter, Ramona.
When the grandparents took over the majority of Ramona’s care, she began to see
Cinthya as her sister rather than her mother. Cinthya tried a few different careers, like selling Mary Kay cosmetics, but there were not many opportunities in the village. 157
The activity that began to pay off for her was seeking documents for those abroad, beginning with Kingner’s first wife Rosenda. “Tramitadores,” or people who seek documents for others, are a normal factor of Ecuadorian life. At the civil registry, department of justice, and department of motor vehicles, men with plastic brief cases charge a small fee to help people find forms or appropriate lines. Rather than being an expert for the general public at a particular government office, Cinthya was an expert on a particular person. She would retrieve all the documents at a number of offices for one person, and soon others would request her assistance as well. This familiarized her with the emigration process and the opportunities abroad. She discovered that those working abroad could afford to pay her for what she did, and this notion of income abroad along with the contacts she established was formative in her decision to emigrate.
The youngest Mendoza child, Luisa, has stayed the closest to home. She was not sent to the city for education, even though resources were available, because of Cinthya’s pregnancy. Luisa married a classmate and they live a block from her parents. She works as a teacher and her husband sells wares out of their house. They have had a difficult time making ends meet in the village, but receive a considerable amount of support from her older siblings. When her second child was born, shortly after the first, her brother
Eduardo paid for contraception. Unlike the firstborn daughter Patricia who seems to resent the achievements of her siblings who have gone to far off corners after she participated somewhat in their upbringing, Luisa graciously accepts help from her family members without making requests. She does not see herself as stuck in the village or a remnant of the past, but as the continuation of her family, who have a considerable amount of land in the village, even if its produce is not as lucrative as beforehand. 158
The In-Laws: Marisol’s Family
Marisol’s father has continued their traditional lifestyle as well in the small rice farming community where she grew up. Her mother passed away a month before
Marisol’s wedding. She has two sisters, María Luz and Veronica. Her older sister,
Veronica still lives with their father. After she was jilted at the aisle twenty years ago, she has been prone to fits of rage or days without speaking. Marisol remains concerned with her sister’s wellbeing even though she moved to Guayaquil to attend school to become a bookkeeper. Marisol makes Veronica simple clothes out of extra fabric when she sews for the neighbor. Veronica visits her sister Marisol in Guayaquil occasionally, which gives their father a much needed break in caring for her. Marisol worked as a cashier at a department store before she married Eduardo and had their daughter Briana.
Her younger sister, María Luz, married Luis who she had met in their small town.
Seeking work, the couple moved to Guayaquil. They had two children shortly after they wedded. When the third child was on the way four years later, Luis again felt he did not have sufficient employment to care for his children. He migrated to Spain a few months after their third child was born, and two years later María Luz followed him to Spain, leaving her children with her mother-in-law. Marisol felt that she was unable to take all three children in with her own daughter Briana. María Luz still depends on Marisol to pick up packages she sends, transfer money between bank accounts, and find paperwork.
Eduardo & Marisol’s Daily Life
Marisol and Eduardo had similar upbringings in small farming villages and both came to Guayaquil for further education. They have prospered from when I first met them. When Eduardo and Marisol first married, they rented a house in Las Orquídeas a 159 block down from the two houses they now own. When Eduardo began to earn a good living as an engineer for the navy, they purchased the house where they now live. The home in Las Orquídeas is on the opposite end of the city from the naval base where he worked in La Floresta, but they chose to live there because Eduardo’s paternal uncle, their only family in Guayaquil, lives nearby. Marisol invested the extra income as she could into the home and property to prevent Eduardo from spending it on consumables.
It was a wise decision, because with the rampant inflation, bank defaults, and Eduardo losing his job, the real estate was an inflation-proof investment.
While their life has not changed significantly—the primary focus has always been the care of their daughter—, their daily concerns have changed since Eduardo lost his job. Her foresight in investment and continuing concern for running her household frugally provided her with the ability to continue her household when they no longer had an income. Eduardo continued to look for different work options, but they were usually well beneath his qualifications, required too far a commute, or did not pay as promised.
Marisol has attempted to supplement their income sewing for some of the neighbors and to spend less on clothes for her daughter, Briana. She made casual clothes, couch covers, and even graduation gowns for the neighbors, along with the anthropologist’s gown to attend the Miss Universe Pageant. Marisol has a natural talent for sewing and she has augmented her skills with an educational newspaper series. She has been hesitant to try to launch herself commercially because she does not like the negotiation of prices and already feels that her time is too scarce for her daughter.
Marisol spends the first few hours of her morning preparing her four-year-old daughter Briana for school. Previously, this meant having her ready for the expreso that 160 would arrive at seven a.m. to bring her to a school midway between Las Orquídeas and La
Alborada. At this school, the teachers were dedicated to the children and there were a number of pageants and presentations to exhibit their school. Marisol received a discounts on Briana’s tuition because the administrators liked her family, noticed Briana’s high academic and social performance, and understood that the family was currently in tough economic circumstances. Perhaps the school believed the lack of money was temporary. Unfortunately, even with the break from some additional fees, like books and chipping in for custodial pay, they could not afford the tuition and transportation. They stopped trying to scrape by when the school told Briana she was selected to be a cheerleader for a soccer game. Briana exuberantly announced her selection to her parents, who were supportive until she gave them the note from her teacher that they needed to spend fifty dollars on a uniform. Marisol and her husband had successfully transitioned from their previous ability to buy little treats for Briana to their current situation rather smoothly. When Briana requested something in a store, her parents told her that they would get it for her in December, without her really knowing when
December was. However, her parents could not put off the cheerleader uniform requirement for one game. Briana was aware when the game was, and would see that she did not have the uniform in time. Previous uniforms did not require them to purchase an exact item: Marisol was able to sew a cowboy costume for the last dance performance and an outfit like the newest pop-stars for the talent show. The requirement of purchasing the uniform demonstrated the fact that one parent who was in charge of the situation made no consideration for other parents. 161
Marisol had been in a battle with the PTA over this lack of consideration before.
For the Christmas party, the PTA director wanted all the parents to give ten dollars so the children could receive the same present. Another parent on the PTA would provide the present from her store. Marisol was upset because she said the present was worth less than two dollars. Marisol’s insistence on speaking her mind embarrassed Eduardo, even though he knew she was right, because it showed that ten dollars mattered to them.
Her dislike for this school was not solely economic. Briana was well ahead in all of her assignments because her mother had helped her extensively in kindergarten. The school used first grade to get everyone on track, since it was a growing school with a number of children just starting their education in first grade. Marisol felt that her daughter should be able to skip into second grade. Briana came home from school frequently crying because she still did not know how to read.44 Some homework assignments on learning colors, numbers, and letters were the same assignments Marisol had done with her daughter in kindergarten. Eduardo agreed to let Briana change schools, even though the neighbors’ daughter had gone to the school to be with Briana, because of his wife’s insistence with him and the PTA.
At Briana’s new school, just across the highway, they paid less, did not have transportation expenses, had the use of a small swimming pool, and were able to have
Briana start in second grade if her mother was willing to do all the homework assignments she had missed in the first few months. Briana did the four extra hours of work a day, although sometimes with the extreme and uncharacteristic treatment of threats or bribes. Marisol told Briana that she would give her notebooks to the street
44 The anthropologist’s tendency to read and write only exacerbated the situation. 162 children if she did not use them. Briana should appreciate her notebooks. Alternatively,
Marisol motivated Briana with the reward of an ice cube (her allergist told Marisol that
Briana could not have cold food), which would be melted by the time the homework was completed. She soon learned to read, which is somewhat easier for children in Spanish than in English. She only needed to learn the combination of every consonant with every vowel, since the combinations are pronounced the same in all words, rather than learning a complicated system of silent letters and different vowel sounds in different cases. The schoolwork occupies most of the afternoon and evening, so Marisol spends the time while Briana is at school preparing her soup for lunch, cleaning the house, and sewing.
Preparing lunch usually requires a trip to the store for a tomato, a small packet of mayonnaise, or noodles. Based on their economic situation, I was concerned regarding the purchase of trial size juices and soaps, since I believed buying in bulk was a more affordable way to supply one’s home. In Miller’s Theory of Shopping (1998), he explains how London families are proud of their thrift in feeding their families. Their concern over the family’s health and tastes reflects of their love and represents their devotion.
Shopping is the construction of the other as the desiring subject. The purpose is not so much to buy the things people want, but to strive to be in a relationship with subjects that want these things. (Miller 1998: 148)
Miller points out that “saving as an experience is by no means the same thing as actually spending less money” (1998: 49). In the typical Ecuadorian family, saving does actually mean spending less money. The Mendoza’s, along with many Ecuadorian families, do not have liquid income, credit cards, or the ability to tie up a significant amount of money in food that would not be consumed for a month. When I considered how much I had invested in my home in backup bottles of ketchup and jars of pickles, I realized that I had 163 limited a serious amount of liquid income, which perhaps would be equivalent to some other debt that was gathering interest. This family does live paycheck to paycheck, with no cushion of credit. As such, paying a cent more for a smaller item (which was not always the case once I actually did the math on a number of items45) is better than paying the dollars of late fees for not having the cent needed for a bill.
The typical Ecuadorian household opposes the families in Miller’s Theory of
Shopping on another characteristic as well. Whereas in the London families, the homemaker shopping reflects how much concern she has for her family and how much her family needs her, in the Ecuadorian families, the homemaker frequently does not do the shopping. She sends the husband or an older child to the store to pick up the small item that she needs as a reflection of how much interest they have in the meal that is being prepared. If Marisol went instead of her husband or one of the older children who were staying with her, she would bring Briana, who would become part of the shopping experience. Briana would know what they had come to the store for, wait in line with her mother, and might suggest things that had run out in the house. The store was the house pantry—just on the other side of the block, the house did not need to be stocked. If lacking something while cooking, someone went to the store they would have it.
The children enjoy the trips to the store because they are not frequently outside.
People did not visit for long periods or hang out on the street on their way home from the store as I saw in smaller Ecuadorian villages. Interacting with the public is a reward that acknowledges appropriate public behavior. The street was not considered part of the personal domain. Children did not play in the street and rarely in other’s houses.
45 With dollarization, many prices were arbitrarily round up or down to limit the need for change. 164
I described the life of Briana in-depth because I think that her views on the families and the lives of her cousins are informative. Briana is keenly aware of not just the economic position of her family, but the roles as well. After learning the names for family members—mother, father, brother, and sister—she came home and dramatically lamented her situation. Her existential questioning of the meaning of life was quite amusing: “What is a child doing in this world without a sibling?” She has learned to accept the different family types of her cousins and the numbers of people who reside in her room for a while so that she sleeps with her parents. When I asked why people lived in different places, she said that’s just where they live. Her cousins’ parents living in
Spain, Italy, and the United States did not seem to contradict her idea of the family—the examples were just a different kind of family. The grandparents live in the countryside, they live in Guayaquil, and the other people live where they live. However, when it came time for me to leave, she was confused because Guayaquil is where I live.
I had become quite attached to Briana and took her perspective seriously in my study of children. It was telling what situations she could accept and what changes she could not. She saw some changes as the status quo and predictable, whereas other lacks of changes were unpredictable. Part III addresses the way that children like Briana come to know the transitions in their lives, including emigration. Before covering children’s responses to emigration such as cultural learning, culturally constituted defense mechanisms, and individual defense mechanisms in Part III, I provide a background for understanding the variable environments of these transitions based on Briana’s cousins. Chapter 6 — Uprooted Children Experiences of Migration
To introduce the typology of responses in Part III, this chapter presents the diversity of experiences that parental emigration entails. Just as the culture of migration in Chapter 4 and as the ethnography of family in Chapter 5, I continue to provide background for understanding the different contexts in which the responses to parental emigration form. I continue to describe the family that stays from Chapter 5 with
Briana’s cousins. In this one extended family, children faced very different situations of emigration. Out of Eduardo’s siblings, his sister Cinthya left Ramona behind, his brother
Kingner and Kingner’s wife Rosenda left Kingner Jr. behind, and his brother Fernando left Roberto behind. Eduardo’s wife Marisol also has an émigré sibling. Her sister María
Luz and María Luz’s husband Luis left their children Norman, Isabella, and Shakina behind. Even though from the same family, each émigré left for a different reason and left their children behind in a different situation with different results. Such diverse emigration experiences in just one family demonstrates the true variability that exists.
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THE GOOD SEPARATION: RAMONA
When I met Ramona in the village where she lived with her mother and grandparents, she was happy to have me as a play partner. The darling three year old in a gauzy dress and I played for hours, while her grandmother cooked and her uncle who was visiting and grandfather went to town. She entertained me as her guest, showing me the plastic toys she had, freely mixing dolls of different sizes with animal figures and toy cars.
When her Uncle Kingner returned at dusk for dinner of handmade tamales, he offered to bring me to the town to attend a political rally and meet key members of the community. I agreed, but had not considered that Ramona had already booked me for her nighttime television watching with her grandfather. Late night TV time meant that sometimes she was up late enough to see her mother return from organizing papers in nearby government offices for émigrés. Ramona objected to my departure after dinner and wanted to go as well. To remain home would be neglectful of her social obligations to me. Her grandmother hugged her and told her that she could not go because the foxes were out. She acquiesced but whispered to me to be careful of the foxes. Many had left and not returned. Her grandmother knew how to convince her that she needed to stay home, and to accept people’s permanent departure. She had been doing it for years.
The grandmother was adept at preventing Ramona from throwing temper tantrums or being obstinate over her demands after raising six children of her own.
Ramona’s mother Cinthya began to take extended time away from home in order to seek papers for other émigrés a few months earlier. When her mother Cinthya decided that she would emigrate, Ramona already referred to her grandmother as mom. She had always referred to her grandfather as father because she never met her father. Marisol 167 tells me that the father does not know that Ramona exists. Ramona was accustomed to her adjusted family, but other children were not as accepting of the arrangement as she was. According to her grandmother, occasionally other children would tease her, saying
“Those are not your parents. They’re your grandparents. Your mom is in Italy and who is your father?” Ramona did not seem to have any memory of this teasing and I had never observed such interactions with her or any of the other children. But there was concern in many of the transnational families that the child’s family arrangements led to confusion; children would not be brought up right if they did not understand what a grandparent was for and what a mother was for. Proper childcare could not be provided if the entire family did not take on their appropriate roles. Ramona’s occasional confusion of calling her aunt her cousin magnifies these concerns, even though Ramona does not seem at all troubled about her alternative selection of kin terms.
Based on her adjustment, it might seem Ramona had time to come to terms with her mother’s emigration. This was not the case. Like many of the children in my study,
Ramona did not receive much notice that her mother would be leaving a few months after her fourth birthday. When her mother left, Ramona was told that her mother would be right back, and Ramona could not go because of the foxes. Cinthya was able to emigrate much quicker than others for two reasons: she was already familiar with the paperwork involved because she had helped others with their papers and she had a contact abroad who wanted her to come. Her ex-sister-in-law Rosenda, Kingner’s ex- wife, had been living in Italy for almost a year and knew people who were looking for a nanny. With Italian sponsorship, Cinthya got her papers together and legally emigrated in a few months. 168
Rosenda’s kindness did not last. She expected Cinthya to pay the rent for a place for the two of them and enjoy social time out, whereas Cinthya preferred to send money home faithfully each month, even paying $30 to send $100. The fees for money transfers are expensive with Western Union, but she does not have a bank account to transfer or to save money. Cinthya’s brother Kingner in the U.S. warns her that she needs to worry more about establishing herself in Italy. Her brother Eduardo in Guayaquil tells her that she should buy a home in Ecuador, perhaps the one he is selling, so she can return. Yet,
Cinthya continues to send home a considerable amount of discretionary income because she cannot send to her parents and to her child separately, putting one off for a month at a time as some émigrés do, since her parents and child live together.
Cinthya had an easy time adjusting to life abroad. She went from being a young single mother in a traditional society that judged her where she could not take care of herself or her family, to being a woman in a cosmopolitan society with her own means of support. Much to the dismay of both Rosenda and Cinthya’s family, Rosenda’s boyfriend recognized Cinthya’s diligence and the two were soon in a relationship. Rosenda was disappointed that the individual she helped emigrate so she could depend on her instead took away someone else she depended on. Cinthya’s family is fearful because the only other relationship they know about is Ramona’s father. They worry that Cinthya will once again forego her own advancement for a man who does not offer proper respect.
The family’s concerns focused on Cinthya because there was not much concern for Ramona. Her grandparents physically cared for her (as they had done for their six children) and her mother economically cared for her. No one could critique Cinthya’s devotion. She calls frequently to check in on the family. Her mother informs her when 169 her daughter misbehaves, but the grandparents provide the discipline. The daughter does not ask her mother to return when she calls, but does ask her to send her presents.
Ramona’s mother’s devotion and her lack of changes helped her to adjust.
Ramona did not have to change schools or even bedrooms when her mother left. She is behind in school in comparison to her younger cousin Briana who is two years younger, but this is partially due to Briana’s unusual success and the lack of quality schools in
Ramona’s village. She is not considered behind in her studies in comparison to her classmates in the village school. She seems completely accustomed to her makeshift family and is affectionate with her substitute parents. She does not demonstrate the same affection towards her mother, especially when Cinthya first arrives.
Ramona was used to people coming and going, and experienced surprising stability in comparison to other children of émigrés when her mother left. The interesting part of her story came when her mother returned for a visit. When her mother returned, Ramona became the center of attention with unaccustomed advantages.
Her grandmother spent the majority of her day caring for her household, which was time consuming because of her continued dependence on traditional means, and her grandfather was away for days at a time when he went to care for the cattle. When
Cinthya returned to visit, she began to shower her daughter with presents and activities.
She wanted to demonstrate that she still cared for her child and her emigration did not mean abandonment, but instead meant an even greater devotion because of the items she could provide her child. However, it seemed that Cinthya consented rather large items without concern for providing physical care, discipline or regiment. Remember the distinction between extended family and parents: one provides lavish affection 170 occasionally but defers to the balanced other for decisions. The Mendoza family did not approve of this behavior because it highlighted how Cinthya had changed while away.
When Cinthya went to Italy in late 2000, she was legal and was able to return when she wanted. Her planned return from abroad in 2001 did not seem to be any different from when she would leave town for a few days in order to seek papers from federal offices. When she returned the second time in 2003, the interactions seemed significantly different. She had been missed much more. When she arrived at the airport in 2003, her daughter Ramona, her parents Tercero and Lucía, her brother Eduardo, her sister-in-law Marisol, and her niece Briana greeted her at the airport. All were crying except for Briana. When seven-year-old Ramona saw that her four-year-old cousin
Briana was not crying, she asked why. Briana asked why she would cry. She does not cry when her other aunts arrive. She is happy when her aunts come to visit, not sad. Briana saw certain people’s return and departure, regardless of how far and how long, as normal.
After the tearful airport arrival, they all returned to Eduardo and Marisol’s home in Las Orquídeas. Ramona calmly played with her cousin Briana on the floor, close to her grandparents. Her mother would interrupt their play to ask her to pose for photos.
Ramona did not cling to anyone in particular. Not the mother who had been gone, the grandparents who took over her care, or even me who she had asked to be her mother three years ago. Leaving would put me at risk from the foxes, so I should stay and be another mother. Unlike some children, she did not fear that her mother would take her away from the home she had adjusted to in her absence. She could see her mother rejoining the family and living where she had lived as long as she could remember—with her grandparents and temporarily with her mother. She understood that her mother was 171 visiting for two months and then would return to Italy. Ramona also understood that she would not be able to spend the whole time with her mother. Just like before, her mother had responsibilities at different government offices and social engagements that Ramona could not participate in. Although there had been so much concern about Ramona’s confusion since she now referred to her grandmother as mother, Ramona did not seem confused or even concerned that she had two people she referred to as mom. The grandmother and mother were not confused either in practice. When Ramona requested a possession or told a story, she was addressing her mother Cynthia, whereas when she wanted food or care, she was speaking to her grandmother Lucía.
Her stronger emotional attachment to her grandmother was obvious in a common child’s game. Briggs (1970) mentioned a similar use of games to learn familial roles amongst the Inuit. In Ecuador, when a child is overly shy with a relative, that adult relative may grab close hold of a relative both the child and he or she have in common, and proclaim their relationship possessively. An unknown uncle may grab the child’s grandmother and say, “My mother” and act as if they are going to take the beloved grandmother away to be solely his mother. The child will then proclaim property rights as a grandchild, and the hugging contest will serve to lessen the shyness around the uncle and draw the child closer by understanding their familial connection. It is important that the intermediary relative is important to both, so there will be ownership debates.
Children continue to do this amongst themselves to play when there are a number of relatives around. During a photo session when her mother had returned, Ramona grabbed tight hold of her aunt Marisol and shouted in a baby voice, “My aunt.” Briana recognized the game and hugged Marisol and claimed “My mother.” Eventually, Briana 172 won since it is her mother. Children tend to acknowledge when to acquiesce. Next, they fought over the grandmother, and Ramona won. Even though they were both grandchildren, Ramona lived with her grandmother. After Briana was the clear winner with Eduardo, they switched to Cinthya. Neither seemed very invested in the particular battle and it is unclear who actually won. Ramona did not seem to fight any harder for her mother than for the other members of the family, as would be expected.46 This game was intriguing to me because, when I first arrived, Cinthya referring to Tercero as “My father” rather than “Our father” in a conversation with Kingner confused me. Was he just her father? Was he not Kingner’s father? Was there some sordid past of stepchildren or affairs? The distinction of “my” father was not meant to highlight the lack of paternity to Kingner, but instead the importance of paternity to Cinthya. The personal relationship, regardless of another’s personal relationship with that individual, tends to be what is emphasized in a conversation. An aunt does not say to a child,
“When your mother was young…” as is frequently done in the States, but “My sister used to…” This interaction seems to support the importance of social interaction and affection with a wider extended family, rather than an indication that the nuclear family is a central reference point in social discussion. The individual’s role in the family of procreation does not come to supercede the individual’s role in the family of orientation.
The first night excitement of Cinthya’s return soon dissipated. When she began telling stories about the excitement abroad, people were interested in hearing about her
46 The “My Gringa” version with me was a little awkward—I had lived with Ramona for a while and stayed in contact with her longer but she was in the village while I became very close to Briana in Guayaquil, where I resided at the time. The battle seemed as if it would continue endlessly since there was no way to resolve the issue, since I was “Gringa” to them both and there was no set rule as to who a gringa would belong to more. The suffocating game in equatorial heat was eventually terminated when Cinthya, who was taking photos of the game, asked for the children to pose for a different photo. 173 life. Through a thick Italian accent, she told them how life was different, how she spent her day, and how elegant the houses were. Yet, no one expected Cinthya to have changed so much. She had begun to devalue her own country and seemed to have lost her traditional values. Lucía was shocked to see thong underwear and only skimpy outfits in her daughter’s suitcase. Cinthya claimed that the suitcase with more sensible clothing had been lost on the plane. She left out booklets of photos of herself lying around half- naked on the beach. Cinthya often recruited me to confirm her stories about how wonderful the world is outside of Ecuador—fine dining and large department stores.
Marisol was quite amused at Cinthya’s recruitment of me to her side—it indicated that even though Cinthya thinks she knows the first world, she does not. Marisol quietly smiled in amusement at Cinthya’s comments because she knew that I preferred
Ecuador—I could design my own clothes and eat lunch for a dollar. The slower pace of life meant I had no stress and enjoyed my job of “hanging out” and “playing with kids.”
For over a month, whenever I arrived and Marisol offered me a glass of water, she would humbly apologize for the fact that sparkling water does not run from the tap like in the glorious land of Italia with cynical humor and implied commentary on Cinthya. If I liked anything Cinthya bought at the elite mall (usually, even if I did, I did not see it as worth the exorbitant price), Marisol would design a version of it that more closely suited my interests and color choices, for less than a tenth of the price. This way, Marisol assured that my views overlapped with hers and confirmed her decision to stay.
Cinthya’s changes in attitude were not only reflected in her attitude toward
Ecuador, but her spending habits as well. While people do not frown upon spending on small treats for children to express their affection or other momentary expenditures to 174 avoid a child’s antisocial behavior, Cinthya spent money differently than others. She did not buy small items for others to express her concern, but bought clothes for herself in the elite mall and large presents that she extensively hyped as unique and modern like something she would find in beloved Italy. She segmented the family when she chose to buy lavish presents for some and nothing for others. When the family realized how much money she did spend on herself, rather than her future, they were no longer concerned that she was being taken advantage of by the requests to send money. Her sainted giving seemed slight in comparison to her excessive spending. Sensing the shift in views, she claimed that she did not like the clothes in Italy because they were too skimpy, but the suitcase full of clothes she brought for herself and her daughter, along with her choice to buy European clothes at the elite mall in Ecuador, seemed to indicate otherwise.
Cinthya would leave the house to shop or visit others frequently, leaving Ramona behind with her aunt Marisol. Ramona did not seem to mind. However, this changed drastically after a traumatic event. When the grandparents had to return to the village to care for the animals a few days after Cinthya’s arrival, Cinthya and Ramona accompanied them. On the trip back a week later, just before Christmas, the bus Cinthya and Ramona were on was hijacked at gunpoint. Although no one was hurt, the thieves did fire a gun and steal the luggage (which contained all the Christmas presents she had brought back for everyone47). Now Ramona stayed very close to her mother, and her mother would pick off lice and worry about her medical treatment. Cinthya began to shower Ramona with more gifts that were not necessarily special and unique, just expensive and constant.
47 No one commented on the logical blunder of bringing the presents with her from Marisol’s house, where she had left suitcases, to the village, where she had left suitcases, and then back again. 175
After the hijacking, Cinthya’s overspending did not just relate to herself, but to
Ramona as well. The excessive clothes and small toys always attracted some attention, but Cinthya did not stop at necessities or prevention of antisocial behavior. Briana did not complain when her cousin received a number of presents that were not shared, even though she shared her room and toys with all the cousins that came to visit. However,
Christmas seemed to be especially injurious to her usual good demeanor. Briana had been hoping that this Christmas, Santa would bring her a Barbie computer. She had seen it in the toy store adjoining the grocery store and department store in La Alborada.
Marisol and Eduardo could not afford the $80 toy for their daughter so they told Briana that the store ran out and did not bring her to the store. Cinthya could afford it and she bought one for Ramona. Ramona had not asked for a Barbie computer in her letter to
Santa. Briana’s disappointment was obvious and justified. However, it got worse.
Cinthya explained how to play with the computer once batteries arrived (she had sent someone else to the store), but she seemed disappointed that no one considered her the holiday heroine for getting the computer. She could afford such toys for her daughter thanks to her hard work and savings in Italy. Marisol and Eduardo could not.
Cinthya did not encourage her daughter to share the toy with her cousin, but suggested that Briana sit next to her cousin and watch. Cinthya behaved in a manner that made it clear that the toy belonged to her daughter, as she did with other toys: she placed the items back in separate packages for storage to discourage the usual mixing of different sets of toys and so that a request to play would allow her to re-bestow her gifts.
Cinthya told me that emigration meant that she could now better provide for her daughter. She thought it would make everyone value her decision to leave since they 176 seemed to judge her, not realizing it was because she valued her decision to emigrate so much that people judged her. All had originally understood her choice as the best option for her, but her demeanor told others that she saw emigration as the best option overall.
Ramona was disappointed when no one wanted to watch her play with the computer. She had not actually wanted one, and did not know what one was. They did not have toy stores with such modern toys in the village. She enjoyed the time it took her mother to explain it to her, but was disappointed when we all focused attention on assembling a cute dollhouse Eduardo got as part of his severance package from the navy.
The more attention paid arranging the furniture like in the photo and placing the curtain stickers on the house, the unhappier Ramona became. She would bring the computer over to show everyone, and then retreat as soon as her cousin wanted to play. When
Marisol brought Briana to the park to distract her from the computer, Ramona put the computer away and sat down to watch television. Her mother retreated to the kitchen to eat. As with most of her behaviors, others commented on her weight gain and excessive eating after time in Italy. While weight gain was seen as normal for a woman who had a child in Ecuador, the availability of a normal interpretation was overlooked and the behavior was attributed to her overall loss of Ecuadorian values. Rather than seeing her weight gain as an appropriate lessening of sexuality now that she was a mother, her family equated her culinary gluttony with her economic greed as something that grows in Italy.
Soon it was time for Ramona to return to the village with her grandparents because her mother had to get a new identification card before her return to Italy and
Ramona had to return to school. She did not want to go. Cinthya ingratiated Ramona for a month without time regiments or expectations of appropriate social behavior, and 177
Ramona no longer believed that the foxes would get her. This time, separation from her mother was much more difficult. Whereas before she was lucky enough not to lose anything and could keep the same life when her mother left, this time her mother’s departure meant she would no longer gain continuously and would have to return to the same life. Ramona did not know how to accept no as an answer anymore. She was better behaved when her mother had first arrived, but she had learned to play her mother
Cinthya and her grandmother Lucía off of each other. The tendency of extended family to defer to parents became confusing: who should one defer to whom for Ramona’s care?
Her mother seemed to agree to anything that did not require much effort, and her grandmother would not second-guess the mother, since a grandmother should not. Lucía preferred to defer to the grandmother role when possible so Ramona would have at least some time when she experienced the different roles to understand familial obligations.
At first Cinthya said she was just going to Italy for five years. Now she says she will never come back to stay. She has no plans to bring her daughter to Italy. The mother says that her daughter should stay and complete her studies in Ecuador and then decide what she wants to do. The family tells Ramona about the plans and admires that
Cinthya went to find a better future. However, they dislike that she really is not thinking in her future in Ecuador: she is not saving or planning. She should not spend so much money on unnecessary things, especially since it is done in a flaunting manner, or behave as if she is superior to others. Saving isn’t normally a priority, but money often trickles away on items that do not count. Her brother Kingner is disappointed as well, although not because she plans to stay abroad. He does too. He is disappointed that his sister has changed so much. He feels he is still the same after life in the States. 178
THE BAD SEPARATION: KINGNER JR.
For Ramona’s case, the interesting aspect of her story is the lack of change she had to go through initially, and the significant changes that were seen to have occurred to her mother. In Kingner Junior’s case, he went through considerable transitions in his living situation: his mother went to Italy and he went to live with his grandmother, who later followed her to Italy, and his father went to Mexico and then to the United States.
I met Junior’s father Kingner while working on an earlier project of recovery after
El Niño. He offered to bring me to his village where people adapted through “mingas,” or community work projects. In 1999, I met his two-year-old son. It was somewhat awkward because the child was already residing at his grandmother’s house, who did not take kindly to her ex-son-in-law being in the company of women, especially U.S. women, even if a purported researcher. Kingner was involved with a woman from the U.S. so the reactions towards me were extremely cold once they realized I was not Italian. When we arrived, the child was outside barefoot playing in the dirt in a diaper. Kingner was outraged to see his son in this state. He had bought his son new clothes on his last visit, including the sneakers that Junior’s cousin was now wearing. Not only did the attire bother Kingner, but also the neglect of keeping him away from dirt did as well; his son has vision problems that meant he should avoid getting dirt and dust in his eyes.
Kingner decided that he would take his son to the store before they went to the park to ride the electric cars.48 His mother’s brother came along, as was the normal occurrence, Kingner told me. The family was afraid that he would kidnap his son and
48 The Powerwheel’s battery powered cars bought for personal use in the U.S. are beyond a normal family’s income. As a microenterprise, one can buy a few and occupy a public space to rent them out hourly. 179 then he would have no reason to send them money and they would have no reason to criticize him, which he claimed they thoroughly enjoy. Junior was a little distant with me at first, but began to warm up when Kingner began asking my advice on what to buy his son for the day’s wardrobe. When I pointed out that a three pack of socks was cheaper than one pair he had originally seen, he asked my advice on other items as well. This kind of shopping seemed advanced to him since he was used to trial sizes, the least expensive item, being the most reasonable purchase and buying only for the current needs. Once dressed, he brought his son to the park and placed him on one of the electric cars.
The antagonism with his in-laws following his wife Rosenda’s emigration was a continuation of previous dislike for Kingner. As mentioned earlier, Rosenda’s father forced Kingner to marry his pregnant daughter with threats of loss of employment.
Kingner never fully embraced the marriage, even though the wife incessantly made gracious efforts to create a bond with her husband—she named their son after her husband to assure the father of paternity and she would back down from arguments whenever Kingner would lightly threaten to leave. Although he supported his wife economically, she was a veritable single mother because Kingner would purposely accept assignments outside the city, which would require residence at the barracks. He enjoyed village life, being from the countryside himself, and liked being away from his wife’s constant expectations of him to reciprocate her affections. His lack of objections to out- of-city placements, as most officers made, led to his continuous placement away from his wife rather than the normal rotation that other officers experienced in assignments.
After two years of living away from his wife, he met the woman who would become his second wife, Stacy. She was a U.S. citizen on route from the beach resorts 180 back to the Sierra. After a few months of courtship, Stacy found out about Kingner’s wife Rosenda. Her anger demonstrated to Kingner that he was more than a fling to her, and they decided to marry. Kingner had been saving money to begin a bus company in the village of his upbringing. He spent all of these savings to get a divorce from Rosenda.
The divorce itself was not the most expensive part of their separation, although it was much more than a month’s salary. Non-consensual divorces are time-consuming and nearly impossible for couples with children under thirty to ensure that children are not left in broken homes because someone does not have the maturity to fulfill mainly his, but also her, familial obligations. To receive consent for the divorce, Rosenda insisted on
Kingner paying for an airline ticket to Italy where she could join her cousin. Rosenda told others that the dissolution of their marriage occurred because she chose to migrate to Italy and a corpulent, rich foreigner seduced her husband once she was gone. She has no plans to bring her son to Italy. Even though the divorce papers specified that Kingner had full custody so that Rosenda could emigrate legally without being cited for child abandonment,49 she would not allow her ex-husband Kingner to have the child or bring
Junior to live at his parents’ house with Ramona. She left the child with her mother and expected Kingner to support the child and the household where the child resided, as he would do if she had not emigrated. This is the motivation for the chaperone—the family claimed that they fear Kingner will take the child to live with his parents.
The chaperone requirement and family antagonism began to cause a divide between Kingner and his son. While stationed outside the city, he would call regularly to
49 Emigration in Ecuador requires not only a visa to enter a country in many cases, but also all departures from Ecuador, of nationals or foreigners, require an exit visa. Obtaining an exit visa requires that the émigré’s children (who are listed on their passports) are under appropriate, legally responsible, care. 181 speak to his son and he would return periodically with gifts and bring his son on outings.
When Junior lived with Rosenda, spousal attentiveness and acquiescence to all his requests greeted his returns. Now, to spend time with his son, he would have to face critique from the in-laws. These critiques that he was a terrible husband and father were hurtful. He felt that it reflected poorly on his parents, who he did not want to disrespect by creating an appearance that they had improperly trained him to be a parent. For this reason, he did not bring his parents to visit their grandchild. His parents and in-laws were always divided—his parents did not attend the wedding because they did not approve. They approved of the second marriage because they could see that their son felt he had found love, but were disappointed that the love meant he would leave the country.
The parents did attend the second wedding, and the luxurious beach-cliff extravaganza was a bit shocking to them. There was a cake for five times the number of guests simply so it could fit a fountain. Junior did not attend the wedding, even though he had met his stepmother before. The in-laws claimed he was too young to understand what was happening, and since the couple had planned to emigrate, there was no reason to worry about the child having a relationship with his stepmother.
At his maternal grandmother’s home, Junior heard a lot about his mother. A poster-size photo of Rosenda proudly displaying her engagement ring filled the wall above the living room couch, but there were no photos of his father. His grandmother made consistent disparaging comments about the father having chosen to leave his mother because he chose to leave Ecuador, even though he did not have to, because he had a job. She claimed he did not leave to better his family, but for loose morals. 182
Kingner had never planned on emigrating. He had stable employment with social prestige. Unlike his siblings, he did not have a passport and chose a country with entry restrictions. It took five months to leave Ecuador. In the spring of 2000, the Ecuadorian government made the decision to limit booklets for passports. Even with connections in the military and choosing to seek his passport in a province with less of a demand, it took three months for his passport. The wait in Guayaquil was said to be over a year.
Once Kingner had his passport, the rest of his emigration journey was not direct and easy either. Even though he had married a U.S. citizen, as an Ecuadorian, he needed to get a visa to Mexico. As discussed in chapter 4, Mexico is not a normal site of emigration because of the difficulty of entry. The visa required the temporary purchase of property, bribes to change documentation of bank account balances, false recommendations from employers of his continued employment, and fake car titles.
Even though Mexico required as much documentation as the United States, the documentation was not the problem for Stacy and Kingner. Stacy was especially adept at getting samples of alphabets from different notaries’ typewriters in order to match the paperwork with non-reflective tape for photocopying. The problem was time: it took longer to wait for a visa to the United States, which took a year and a half, than for a tourist visa to Mexico. Kingner could not receive a tourist visa to the U.S. because, once married to a citizen, the embassy considered him a risk for overstaying the visa.
Kingner did not adjust as easy as his ex-wife Rosenda, who already had a passport, did not need a visa, and had friends abroad. Rumors abound that Rosenda remarried and pregnant. Rosenda denies these rumors. Cinthya reported that Rosenda wore out her welcome seeking someone hand-outs, rather than work. (Of course, 183
Cinthya is not exactly an unbiased source since she is seeing Rosenda’s ex-boyfriend.)
Kingner found great difficulty in being unable to provide for his new wife or previous family while they were in Mexico waiting for his papers to enter Texas. Even once he could provide for his family by finding stable employment in the U.S., the support never seemed to be enough according to his in-laws. Rosenda would call collect from Italy to criticize him, and he felt discouraged seeing the wealth of others in Texas and annoyed at people’s assumptions he was Mexican. In the villages in Ecuador where he worked as a police officer, he was at the top of the social hierarchy. In the U.S., he engaged in manual labor, which was deprecated in Ecuador, regardless of the fact that he made an excellent wage. This feeling of inadequacy and impotence limited the contact he had with his child.
Hochschild (2002) claims émigrés do not return because of laws and costs.
However, just as when some stay and others emigrate, the return of some indicates that it is possible and we should look deeper than stated macro-obstacles to individual factors to see why some return and some do not: Kingner did not return or call frequently because of the guilt he felt about leaving his child and the diatribes of his ex-in-laws.
Although not machista in Ecuador, he began to pick up the misogynistic characteristics of his Mexican co-workers to compensate for his threatened masculinity in the U.S. This is a common trend in immigrant couples in the United States (Menjívar
2003). The author points out that marital strife arises in immigrant couples in the U.S. because, frequently, the men engage in employment that reconfirms their home values of machismo whereas women are exposed to egalitarian relationships as domestic servants.
In Kingner’s case, his wife Stacy already had the egalitarian ideas and was disappointed with the changes in her husband after he left Ecuador. The fact that he has been unable 184 to bring his son to live with him compounds the disappointment in the marriage he had wanted. His increased income has meant that he can now send money to his son, and he hoped eventually to bring his child to the U.S. for better medical care and education.
Most thought this was a bad idea. It would mean that Kingner had no plans of return, so had abandoned his country, and a child should not live with a stepmother.
Stepmothers are considered to be inevitably cruel to stepchildren and are apt to treat the children like domestic servants. Fathers are at work and cannot adequately protect their children from this mistreatment. Even a good-natured stepmother would show more love to her own children, which any stepchild would notice. I think this may be due to the low divorce rates, which means that most stepmothers care for children that were conceived during their marriage due to their husband’s infidelities, rather than an actual indication of the care provided in remarried couples, which are rare.
The depictions of the two parents’ commitment to their son do not match the objective behaviors. Kingner is considered to have abandoned his son and Rosenda is not. Since the mother left first and the father was still in the country, it is the father who abandoned his family. He sends money now that he is established in the U.S. Kingner could not while in Mexico for the most part because of the low wages and he was not allowed to work legally. His mother-in-law reported him to the Institute for Children and
Families, which meant that if he returned, he could not leave again without addressing their complaint legally. He used to call regularly, but he began to call less after having to face the vitriolic comments of his mother-in-law. The guilt he felt over these incessant comments on his inadequacies led to lessened contact with his child. 185
While the mother does not send money, to those observing the situation from the outside, she is not seen as abandoning her child. The mother is normally not expected to provide economic care, but affection. As such, she has covered her expectations because her family takes on the child’s care. This may be another reason she does not want
Kingner Jr. to live with Kingner’s parents and Ramona. Rosenda seemed to adjust well to life in Italy, according to reports from Cynthia, and does not feel guilt over leaving her child behind—she left him in the care of the child’s father and her mother.
However, those directly involved in Junior’s care comment on her abandonment of her child. This criticism expanded once Rosenda brought her mother, who she had left in charge of Junior’s care, to Italy. Kingner was not aware of these plans until after
Junior had gone to live with his aged great grandparents he barely knew in a rural area without school nor a telephone. The maternal grandmother’s departure was criticized—a married older woman with grown children, a daughter abroad, and a home has no reason to emigrate other than to partake in a life of vagrancy. Neither Rosenda nor her mother frequently call the family members they left behind.
The child’s situation had become critical. Under the care of his great grandparents, his vision problem deteriorated and he risked blindness. An operation was necessary, and Kingner paid for the operation with no contributions from the mother.
He also covered her family’s transportation to the doctor and food while in the city for the operation. Since the vision problem was generally attributed to the mother’s side, where others have had a similar stigmatism problems,50 her lack of interest in funding the operation was seen as especially heinous. After the first operation, the great grandparents
50 I do not know the accuracy of this statement, but both sides of the family made this causal attribution. 186 could not fulfill the therapy requirements (covering one eye and then the other for set periods a day) and keep the child out of dust, so he soon needed a second, painful operation. At this time, Rosenda’s father’s sister-in-law took on Junior’s care, who already had a son a year older. They were aware of the fact that Rosenda’s mother had emigrated and left Rosenda’s father behind. While they did not know much about the child’s past, the new family knew that he lacked the appropriate support from the mother and was more open to Kingner’s involvement than other members of Rosenda’s family.
The new substitute caregiver in her mid-thirties has greatly improved the child’s situation. The second operation went well and she carefully follows the therapy regimes.
Although the second operation cost eight times more due to inflation, Kingner once again paid for the operation, transportation, and lodging, with no contributions from
Rosenda. He did not complain because, after the child’s previous living situation,
Kingner greatly valued the fact that his son was now receiving appropriate care and he did not suffer through diatribes when he contacted his son. He renewed ties with his son and sent his wife to assist in Junior’s care. Kingner could not leave his construction job for a week, and Stacy could take sick days. Perhaps she was concerned about the inflated expense of the operation, or maybe she saw the opening of establishing good ties with
Junior’s new caregivers. It may also be that she appreciated that the change in care had limited her husband’s guilt over leaving behind his family when he married her.
Junior seems to have adapted well to his new caregivers. Whenever the family visits Junior’s previous caretakers, he does not leave his new parents’ side and insists on sleeping in the same bed as them, even though he has never done this at their home. The new maternal caretaker has done well trying to compensate for his lost time at school and 187 poor scholastic achievement due to an inability to see well. Junior is a year behind in school and, even though two years older than Briana who can read, he still cannot recognize all his letters. His new mother happily recounts stories of his stubborn character. For instance, when Kingner was chosen to be an escort for one of the princesses at his school, he refused to smile in photos because he got stuck escorting the twin that he did not like. They thought it was especially amusing that the stubborn little boy was already choosing mates based on personality rather than looks—his father left his attractive Ecuadorian wife Rosenda for what they heard was a corpulent gringa. This was the only characteristic they knew about Kingner when Junior arrived. Junior’s caretakers have established strong bonds with the child and spoke with Kingner frankly that, even though they would not require a chaperone when he visited, they did wish him to relinquish his desire to bring the child to the U.S. They understand that Junior is
Kingner’s son, but they would miss him if he left.
Kingner sends money to support the child’s new family and regularly contacts them. He has loaned money to them for their business and the new family occasionally brings Junior to visit his cousin Briana in Las Orquídeas since they have family in neighboring Vergeles. After regular visits, Junior has gotten more comfortable at Marisol’s house—he accepts beverages without coaching and chimes in during conversations. He no longer fears asking questions about his father and frequently asks the ages of different paternal relatives. With the lack of pictures of his father, he sometimes confuses his
Uncle Eduardo in photos for his father. They both have prominent ears, which is the asset of his father that has been commented on in all his homes. While watching Dumbo at his Aunt Marisol’s house, she asked Junior who Dumbo looks like. He quickly 188 responded his father. After a minute, he reported that he has his father’s ears and his mother’s eyes. The negative implications of either inheritance did not trouble him.
With the improved relationship between Junior’s new caretakers and Kingner, contact has increased. His stepmother Stacy sent photos to Junior and some gifts as well.
Junior refers to her as the lady who sends him presents and sees her as an intermediary to make requests of his father. Stacy seems to have noticed the lessened depression in her husband’s life with the new caregivers and tries to reward the decrease in judgment her involvement in Kingner’s life receives. The new family’s distance to Kingner’s ex-wife
Rosenda and ability to see first hand who had been neglecting the child prevents them from criticizing Kingner. In fact, since they now have custody of Junior, they informed the Institute for Children and Family that the claim against Kingner for neglecting his child should be revoked, since the person who made the claim had relinquished the care of the child to them and they receive support beyond the national minimum.
This lack of criticism has led Kingner to be more involved in shaping his son’s life. He wants to pay for a private school, but the new parents have discouraged this transition because of the number of changes the child has already gone through and their fear that eventually monetary support will be limited for necessities and they will not be able to pay tuition. Kingner sends money regularly to his child monthly through an ATM card that he sent to Marisol. This intermediary situation has meant that he also aids his parents and Marisol and Eduardo’s family. Just as with Cinthya, including other family members in the process of remitting leads to larger remittances to cover more family members. He sends money to help with his parent’s cattle, under the guise of purchasing some, but, generally, the profits of his cattle become loans for future cattle. He 189 purchased the land at the beach that his brother needed to sell. Marisol and Eduardo sometimes keep the money paid back to Kingner through them as loans to themselves.
While his sister Cynthia in Italy has set up a system of regular small payments, Kingner has been susceptible to large sporadic payments of up to a thousand dollars in one month because his inability to send money while in Mexico prevented the creation of a normative level. Also, people assume that in the U.S. he must be doing very well, since it is a more desirable location of emigration than Italy and a man is considered to have higher earning potential than a woman since he does not need keep a house. Kingner acquiesces to the large requests because of the guilt over his part in his son’s loss of his mother when entered another marriage that seems to be passing through difficult times.
With increasing marital difficulties and the removal of the ex-mother-in-law’s claims at the Institute for Children and Families, Kingner and his second wife Stacy decided to return to Ecuador as a second honeymoon51 around Valentine’s Day, which happened to coincide with both his mother Lucía’s and Junior’s birthdays. Stacy heard that Junior wanted to celebrate his birthday at the neighbor’s house because, after attending a party there, he thought it was something specific about the house. Stacy was aghast that the boy did not realize that his birthday, in and of itself, was worth celebration in his own home, so she decided to throw an elaborate birthday party. Partly, she does not want to be seen as the enemy and finds the opportunity to bestow unique items, without stepping on anyone’s toes, as a way to do that. There was not only a Western sheet-cake and balloons at the birthday party, but a clown, party favors, hats, and an ice
51 The trip did not quite fulfill this function though. In fact, it furthered the marital strife because Stacy could see the extreme differences in her husband when they had returned to the previous context. 190 cream vendor. Junior was aware of the role “the woman who gives him presents” played in the elaborate affair because she was the one who brought him to six different bakeries to find the specific Spiderman cake with incredible the hulk candles he wanted. In the first bakery, Junior selected a cake he thought was “nice.” Stacy replied, “Yes, but is it the exact one that you want, because that is what we will buy.” Unlike an Ecuadorian child who just indicates a small treat that momentarily jumps into sight, Stacy expected
Junior to come up with something he may have never seen, that may not actually even exist, so that it could be suited exactly to his desires. Like the devoted mother in Miracle on 34th Street who seeks a bone that squirts water that may not exist, Stacy would find the exact perfect item so the child would know the value of the holiday. Kingner adjusted to limitless providing more as the way to care for children while abroad. He diligently drove around two cities to collect anything they could find for the party. Just as with their wedding when they scoured stores to find the appropriate ceramic figurine party favors and unique fixtures for cake stacking with a fountain, they did so for his son’s party.
Respecting and appreciating Stacy’s involvement in the party, Junior deferred to her at the party. She had told him to greet each guest and give them a bag of party favors and a hat. He vigilantly stood at the top of the stairs awaiting arrivals and even when
Rosenda’s family tried to draw him away to pose for photos that would be sent to his mother in Italy, he refused. Although Rosenda’s family thought that he should be there to entertain by posing for photos, Stacy thought that he should be there to host by distributing the wealth of the party. Rosenda’s family was not happy with this and
Junior’s new caretaker was placed in the middle. While normally the extended female kin assist in distributing food at the party, the women of Rosenda’s family stubbornly spent 191 their time commenting how Stacy waltzed in and took over as if it were her own home.52
When Stacy began to help with the food distribution after observing the new caretaker’s frazzled nature, the comments just got more biting and louder. They continually announced the photo’s destination for the mother of the child, as if to negate any claims the new maternal figures in Junior’s life would make. Stacy and Kingner were not wary of such announcements—they were happy to have photos of the party they had provided for his son sent to Rosenda. Stacy liked the photos because she knew the ex-wife had lied and said she was an obese ugly old lady who wooed Kingner away with money.
Some were so convinced of Rosenda’s descriptions, who had never actually met Stacy, that they insisted she must be a third wife. Kingner liked the photos because he thought that maybe it would enrage that side of the family with enough jealousy to begin to care for his son or to mitigate any continuing claims as to his lack of concern.
The visit and birthday party was significant to Junior. Unfortunately, it made him realize that his mother had not returned and his father did not return enough. His new caregiver told me that before Junior did not seem to care if his father called, but this changed after the visit, just like with Ramona after her mother’s second visit. Both Junior and Kingner cried when they separated a month later. The next year his birthday went by without notice other than a monetary transfer to cover gifts and a sheet-cake.
These changes in homes, new people to depend on, and sporadic uneven contact has been difficult for Junior. Unlike Ramona who did not really experience much of a
52 Part of their distaste may be that the corpulent foreigner was actually attractive. Rosenda’s family claimed Kingner chose money over beauty because he is an idiot. Finding out that Stacy was not hideous may have led to the strike of fulfilling their familial obligations. They told me, Where was Stacy’s female kin to help? She could not even put together a party right because people in the U.S. do not value family. She bought items rather than gathered family. Kingner left a family-devoted woman for money. 192 change with her mother’s original emigration, Junior went through not just changes of location, but changes in kinds of care as well. He went from living in Guayaquil where he was the sole recipient of his mother’s affection, to living in a smaller town with older cousins as the recipient of distributive care, to living in a rural area where he received almost no care, to living with a family with several children. Now he has a stable family and is considered better off even though they are distantly related. Distant relations are better than a stepmother—perhaps they do not love him equally to their own children, but they will not resent them. He is the only child of the cousins to be considered to have suffered abandonment because both parents have started a new family abroad.
While the father was originally criticized, covering the two operations, the party, and stipends have relabeled him as having made mistakes, but not a bad person because he has taken on his financial responsibilities. The mother at first was not considered to have abandoned her child since she left him in the care of her mother, but she is condemned now because of the lack of care her child suffered. The father has taken care of Junior’s economic needs, and the mother has neglected his physical care. Although
Kingner preferred other arrangements for Junior’s physical care, this was not his place.
He would not have rectified the judgments towards him leaving his son with alterations in physical care. Rosenda feels no need to rectify her economic contributions to her son, but continues to insist that she has not begun a new family abroad and alludes to the distant ties of the new caregiver to her family to compensate for her lack of involvement.
THE UGLY SEPARATION: LOS SOBRINOS NORMAN, ISABELLA, & SHAKINA
The next case of an uprooted family connected to the Mendozas represents another unique experience of parental emigration. Marisol’s sister María Luz and her 193 husband Luis left three children behind when they went to Spain. Unlike Ramona who went through no change or Junior who went through drastic changes in household, school, and care, the experience of Norman, Isabella, and Shakina is in the middle. They were put in the care of their paternal grandmother, who they knew well, and moved just once while she was their caregiver. Ramona received compassionate care, and while
Junior may have been neglected in some cases, none of his care was intentionally malicious. However, these children faced mistreatment after their mother’s departure.
I first met three-year-old Shakina in 2003 when she was at Marisol’s house with her paternal grandmother and her great aunt. She was extremely shy, which is often ridiculed to be reduced as discussed above, but instead her great aunt told me she does not talk to people. That’s just how she is. They did not make the effort to provide the treatment to rectify her shyness. She would nod to accept juice from her Aunt Marisol, but did not speak or interact with anyone for over an hour and no one directed conversation at her. Her female relatives talked about the Vagina Monologues that was on television after a popular soap opera the night before. Even my foolproof method of quietly playing a game where you fling plastic flies into a spinning mechanical frog’s mouth did not work instantly to win over Shakina. Eventually, Shakina hesitantly picked up a plastic fly I had flung a bit too far and accepted an invitation to join me to play silently. When her cousin Briana returned, she was a bit more open to interacting with me, especially when I changed my sweaty clothes from the noonday sun just as Briana changed out of school clothes. I seemed to have some other childlike behaviors along with playing outside of adult conversation. When her grandmother returned to the room or began discussing her care, she would become self-aware and retreat, lower her 194 shoulders, or look down before returning to play once the grandmother settled in to a seat in the kitchen. When Shakina soiled her pants, her great aunt stayed sitting at the kitchen counter. Her great aunt asked Shakina why she did not tell someone she had to use the bathroom, and without waiting for a response, used it as proof of her earlier claim that Shakina does not communicate. Marisol dressed her in Briana’s clothes—even though Shakina “does that,” no change of clothes had been brought for her. Marisol started explaining to Shakina that she should let say if she has to go to the bathroom and
Shakina stared off into space. She did not resist care, but did not seem an active participant as other children did. Her cousin Briana realized she wanted shoes as well, to go with her whole new outfit, and that Shakina needed a belt because the pants were too big. Briana pulled and yanked her around like a rag-doll to get the belt through the loops.
Shakina seemed to seek care from peers, rather than adults, as Weisner and Gallimore
(1977) pointed out as a tendency in children who are accustomed to sibling care. The extensive sibling care was not an intended consequence of the parents’ emigration.
María Luz and Luis thought that after their emigration, the children would continue a normal childhood—one characterized by physical care, discipline, affection, a positive environment, and attention to education. The father decided to migrate to Spain in 1999 when he could no longer meet the economic needs to provide for his children.
The older children were told that the father was leaving to work for a while. He was able to support his family immediately as a taxi driver. He had a difficult time adjusting to life without his wife, and she decided that once the baby was two years old, she would join him in Spain. When she left in 2001, she told eight-year-old Norman and seven-year-old
Isabella that she would return for them as well. The children cried, but the parents 195 consistently updated them on the plans to bring them to Spain. Since the mother went after the father, they accepted the logic of a progressive chain of emigration.
When María Luz made plans for the care of her children while away, she asked
Marisol to take in her three children. Marisol said that she would be willing to take the youngest, since she was close to her daughter’s age, but did not have the time to take care of all three. (Junior’s new caretaker expressed a similar logic to take him in because he was close in age to her own son). Marisol told her sister that she could not in good conscience take in children that she could not provide with all the necessary care. María
Luz did not want to divide her children and left them in the care of her mother-in-law.
The paternal grandmother moved into her son Luis’s house when María Luz left.
However, this arrangement had to change. Perhaps unbeknownst to Luis, on one of his deliveries in Spain some items turned up missing and the mafia became very upset. Luis and María Luz went into hiding working as a gardener and a maid at a golf resort. When the mafia tracked down the grandmother at his home in Ecuador, the grandmother and the children had to relocate. They chose to move back to Luis’s natal village. No economic compensation seems sufficient to cover the additional expenditures of moving to the community (even though consumables cost less). The paternal grandmother spoke to me about how difficult her life is. However, the difficulties were more for the concern she had to dedicate to these difficulties than the effort she had to exert to resolve them.
Most of the complexities in her life seemed to be items that Marisol actually resolved.
The grandmother believes that others should take care of her needs so she can take care of the children and household. Yet based on observations and interviewing the children, caring for the children and household seemed to be items that the older two children did. 196
When Luis sends money to his mother for rent in the village they moved to and for the care of his children, he sends it to Marisol. Marisol then must take a bus to go to two banks in La Alborada, risking theft while carrying the money from one bank to the next, in order to transfer the money into the grandmother’s account. When the grandmother calls Marisol’s house to check on the status of her monetary transfers, she will not say her name or leave messages. Marisol also picks up packages that María Luz has sent for the children. To get these packages, the grandmother and children visit
Marisol once a month.53 Marisol expressed to me that it would have taken less effort and the children would have been better off if she had taken them in, rather than taking care of the grandmother’s needs so she could neglect the children at exorbitant prices anyway.
On visits to Marisol, the youngest child sometimes quietly asks if she can come to live with her. Isabella tells Marisol as well that she would rather live with her. Norman says that they cannot move because the grandmother needs them—she would be lonely without them. He also says that he would be bored at Marisol’s house. Marisol does not let him go outside and wander around like he can with his grandmother. However, he does not seem to have as much time to wander around as he would like and Isabella said that she cannot talk to her friends anymore either. They have to spend their time following the grandmother’s directions to care for the household and their sister Shakina.
53 Marisol even hid a taxi that the grandmother had repossessed in her garage, while the grandmother found a place to store it. Marisol eventually just found a place for car (which María Luz paid for). While Briana was happy that we went on an outing when I tried to drive the car a block to the garage for it to be stored, we discovered that the car would not actually enter into gear. The value of the car was only in the plates (which are difficult to acquire and heavily taxed as professional plates) of almost $1,000 which could be stored without paying for a garage. Since the grandmother did not have to pay for the car’s storage, she did not hesitate to store the car, worth maybe a $100. The sister paid nearly $150 storing the car for months. 197
The grandmother met Shakina’s care with general disregard. Shakina is still incontinent well past the normal age of potty training and she is much smaller than her cousin Briana who is the same age as her. The description of when I met her above and she soiled herself seemed to be a typical reaction to her physical needs. Even though her
Aunt Marisol said that the diarrhea was from a stomach infection and she needed medicine, the grandmother said that this is how she always is because she does not eat.
Observations at mealtimes seemed to indicate that Shakina in fact did not eat a normal amount, but for a different reason than the grandmother implied. Once Marisol had prepared soups for the children’s lunch, there was a clear distinction between how
Briana and how Shakina were fed. Marisol told Briana stories and asked her about her day, encouraging her not to talk with her mouth full so Briana had to eat diligently in order to get her story out in between the spoonfuls of soup her mother shoveled in. The great aunt and paternal grandmother sat at the kitchen counter, next to where Marisol had placed Shakina to be fed, and occasionally gave her a bite in between talking to each other about other concerns. Eventually, the grandmother set down the spoon and said she cannot feed her because of her arthritis. Without asking Shakina who was staring out into space, the grandmother said she did not want any soup anyway. After feeding
Briana, Marisol took over feeding Shakina, who did eat the soup with coaching. She would not respond to stories like Briana did, but did mechanically follow the commands.
After eating, Shakina told Marisol that she did have to go to the bathroom again, which ended up confirming Marisol’s concern over her diarrhea. The grandmother went to the pharmacy across the street for two hours to get medicine, leaving Marisol to take care of 198 both the toiletry concerns and post-lunch clean up. When the grandmother left to get medicine, Shakina whispered to her aunt that she wanted to live with her.
She did not continue to seek care from Marisol once her older siblings Norman and Isabella arrived. Shakina seemed to turn to her siblings for care rather than adults.
When her siblings were busy, rather than asking an adult, she waited. For instance, on a walk to the bus stop, Norman and Isabella lagged behind to try to drop rocks on the crabs in a gully. When her cousin Briana took her father’s hand to cross the street,
Shakina looked around a little lost and then just stood in line with the adults who were about to cross the eight-lane highway. The siblings seemed to be oriented to their sister’s care on an as-requested rather than as-needed basis, similar to the grandmother’s philosophy. Norman and Shakina said that they did not need to pick lice off their little sister, like they did each other, because Shakina did not like it. Physical needs of their little sister were not a set of rules, but rather a fulfilling of requests.
Norman and Isabella had a similar philosophy in addressing their sister’s discipline as her physical care. When attention was drawn because something was wrong, then they disciplined her. Isabella seemed to focus on the result that led to the attention, rather than her sister’s intent. In one case, the three siblings, Briana and I went to the mall. The children went into the play area at the Kentucky Fried Chicken and a worker told us that the area had been rented out for a birthday party; we were not allowed to be there and had to leave. Isabella emphatically explained to her cousin that she had to get out, hurry up, get your shoes on, you should not be in here. When I told Isabella that there is no need to be so harsh, none of us knew (I was a little less threatened by the reprimands of the KFC employee than the children were), she said, “But she’s not 199 allowed in there.” Weisner and Gallimore (1977) pointed out that sibling care can vary characteristically from parental care, depending on the child. Siblings may be more lenient because they do not want the child to complain to parents, stricter because they fear the repercussions if something happens, or just different even when trying to imitate parental care because of the perspective they have from their position as a child themselves. It seemed that Isabella was imitating her grandmother rather accurately not only in motivations to address physical care, but also in discipline. She did not consider the child’s perspective and understanding—just whether or not she got in the way.
On a separate occasion, Isabella told me that her grandmother was an angry person because she gets mad if they break a dish while washing them. I had asked, is it different if you break a dish because you were rough-housing with your brother or while you were washing dishes, trying to do something good? A little perplexed, she said, well, if the dish is just chipped, then she is not as mad. Much younger children normally achieved an understanding of the role of intent when assessing right and wrong, according to Kohlberg (1968). However, Isabella did not seem to be able to separate these two because of never having had the experience of being able to model more advanced modes of moral reasoning for her development. With the sister’s role in discipline and physical care, Shakina began to see her sister as a mother. She did not attach to her grandmother and call her mom as Ramona did.
This attachment to an individual who primarily provided physical care rather than affection led Shakina to have no secure base for exploration54 (Ainsworth 1979). She
54 Although I critique some uses of attachment theory in Part III, my use here indicates a cultural investigation of what the child would perceive as physical care and affection rather than a formulaic treatment of care based on Western perceptions. 200 barely spoke and played with others. This lack of exploration could also be because of the kind of strangers she was exposed to. In the village where the three siblings lived with their grandmother, they had two female cousins who lived with them as well. The female cousins were rather precocious for girls in their early teens spent hours after dark in the park (which is known as a location for kissing boys, not playing on the swings).
Sometimes the cousins will even bring Shakina with them, trying to amuse others by getting the shy little girl to swear. Shakina did not swear to be cute and receive positive reinforcement but to get them to stop harassing her. It is not so much that the grandmother ignores these behaviors, but, according to Isabella and Norman, the grandmother is not at home to observe them. She apparently goes out to bars at night.
Since care of Shakina occurs when required and no one else is doing homework to influence her request for assistance, her education receives little attention. The grandmother took Shakina out of kindergarten because she was not learning anyway and the money could be better spent. Shakina is developmentally very far behind her cousin of the same age. While her cousin can read and write, she can barely trace a line. After watching Briana’s time spent on homework, Shakina started to take some interest in writing. She would slowly scribble on a page, and then bring it to her older sister who would stare intently for a moment, and then decide which letter it most resembled.
While the other children I observed had been trained to be receptive and cordial to strangers so I did not describe the process of winning their trust, I did describe the process of winning Shakina’s trust when we first met. Gaining the trust of Isabella and
Norman was different than the other children as well. Not only had they not been taught to respond to strangers cordially, but also they had constructed their own world and did 201 not look to adults as being relevant to their life. However, I did eventually gain their trust when they realized that I was not really an adult in their terms.55 I was not there to be sure they behaved or tell them what to do; I was interested in laughing and playing; and I never seemed to have my own things to occupy my time.
Once, Norman and Isabella blatantly let me know that they did not consider me the same as other adults. One day both Norman and Isabella were trying to convince
Marisol to let them go outside to play. They were not very adept at eliciting consent like other children since most of the time there was no need—they just did as they pleased with no watchful adults around. At first they tried to say they wanted to go to the park, and when that was denied since the park is dirty and dangerous, they said they wanted to go to the store. Unfortunately, the item they claimed they wanted to buy was something that was already in the fridge, so Marisol denied that request as well. I had seen Norman try to use manipulation even when clear communication would have resulted in acquiescence to his desires. When he had his own money and wished to buy something in the mall, rather than asking he tried to sneak the purchase. It normally would have worked: no one was ever watching him anyway. For the park instance, when Marisol left the room, I asked why they do not just tell the truth (I had assumed there was someone they wanted to talk to outside). Isabella at first denied any secretive inclinations.
Norman said they can tell me they want to steal mangoes from the neighbor’s tree.
Isabella quickly shushed him, and he shrugged and pointed to me with a devious grin.
The sister quickly contextualized their mission to me with the fact that the mangoes fall
55 At the school, I was once asked to inspect a closed bathroom stall because the boys had convinced the girls that the reason for its out-of-order status was because there was a severed head in there. They did not ask other adults to confirm or disconfirm claims—I was just a braver person in their world. 202 to the ground to spoil and they really like mangoes. When I let them know that they would have a hard time finding a way to convince Marisol to let them outside and not watch their activity, she looked relieved and her tense shoulders relaxed. While Norman still was not upfront with some of the occurrences in the village, even in the face of her sister’s insistence and evidence, as will be discussed below, Isabella opened up entirely to tell me many specifics on the kind of care their grandmother provided after this mango interaction. Her brother had a more complex system of trust. He knew I did not care if they were up to something devious and child-like (in fact, sometimes I was at a loss in my battle to not reinforce misbehavior with my inevitable amusement at his dry wit and cynicism), but knew that I would be shocked that the grandmother was doing something terribly wrong. And I was shocked at what I heard. While at first I was concerned that they had to spend their time taking care of their little sister who received sub-par care, I soon found out that there was much more of a reason to be concerned.
The older children did not receive any attention to their physical needs of clothing and nourishment. When Isabella received a package from her mother with new clothes, her cousins, reminiscent of Cinderella’s evil stepsisters, shredded her dresses.
Afterwards, her mother sent items for the cousins too. Norman took care of himself.
Even though children of their age are expected to take care of themselves as far as cleanliness, their parents still care for their nourishment and the household. Norman and
Isabella not only prepared food for themselves, but also prepared items for their little sister—rather than always desiring junk food, they made tomato salads, sandwiches, and cereal. They tended to rely on items that did not need cooking or extensive preparation.
They washed their own dishes after preparing food and discussed housekeeping items in 203 a way that resembled both an old married couple arguing about who contributed more to the household and children who were conducting the normal chores expected of them.
Norman said that the grandmother sends him to the store repeatedly to get items—while going to the store was not objectionable, he was annoyed that she did not send him once for a few items. She sent him for chips and candy for her repeatedly throughout the day.
Being sent to the store is a normal chore for a child, but as discussed earlier, it is a chore to help the parent prepare a meal. He complained that the grandmother never sent
Isabella to the store. She defended herself saying she would be washing clothes (by hand) and taking care of her little sister, so he has to go. This complaint of her time constraints seemed accurate. Although they argued about who should do what, they did not argue that the grandmother should be performing the task instead of them.
Since Norman and Isabella do not seem to question the grandmother’s expectations and appear so well behaved, it would seem that there is no need for discipline. Norman appeared well above the normal morality level for his age: he said that you should not rob from a bank because when people went to get their money, it would not be there. Rather than fearing punishment from the law or deciding based on interpersonal relationships, Norman considered the social contract of society with others he did not know. His ability to behave appropriately and to question authority may have come from experiencing arbitrary authority. The children were left without structure and undisciplined for items that other children would not get away with—only Marisol spoke up when they were rambunctious during mealtimes or in public spaces, like on the bus.
Even though discipline was not used to teach proper values, Isabella was physically beat when she did not follow the grandmother’s commands. While some 204 amounts of spanking is not looked down on or considered inappropriate from a parent who has a strong connection to the child, all involved knew that her physical treatment was unacceptable. When Norman stood up to the grandmother for hitting Isabella too hard, she upped the physical treatment of him. The rotund woman kneeled on his throat and told him if he ever told anyone how she treated them, she would kill him. He did not speak to me about the mistreatment they received. I heard about such interactions once their mother returned and they no longer had to return to the grandmother’s care because they were moving to Spain. Even with the evidence of bruises,56 the confidence with me regarding devious plans, and his sister’s testimonials, he did not confirm the occurrence.
I am more apt to believe Isabella’s reports because during the child attachment interview57 Norman answered in a manner that indicated half-truths or blatant misrepresentations regarding his grandmother. As described in the methods section, I asked children to select adjectives to describe caregivers. While most children supported their adjective choices with specific examples and Norman followed this trend when responding for both his parents, he did not use specific examples with his grandmother.
Although he selected some negative characteristics for his mother and father to present some humorous stories, his sarcastic sense of humor evaporated when I questioned him about his grandmother. He chose wise to describe her, which is a characteristic normally attached to people of her age group. When he chose energetic, he started to reference how she was in the community—her going out. He backtracked and said he chose this
56 Isabella said one bruise was from being hit with a hairbrush for tattling on her cousins mistreating Shakina when her grandmother was getting ready to go out 57 I present an analysis of the results of the psychological projective measures in regards to what they indicate for children’s adaptations to parental emigration in Part III. Here, I only present some data from Norman’s child attachment interview to demonstrate my reasoning for depending on Isabella’s reports of their home life, which more closely matched my naturalistic observations, over Norman’s reports. 205 word because she is happy. Afterwards, he was more careful in selecting since he had not realized I would ask why he chose each item. With creative marketing, he said she was despairing, because they were going to leave and she would miss them (it did seem that she would miss the economic support) and intelligent because she solves her problems.
Her resolutions were asking his mother for money or his aunt for her time. Perhaps since
I did not question the accuracy of his statements, his next choice blatantly contradicted observations—he said she was caring. While Norman seemed to hesitate and to craft examples, Isabella did not. Even during the role interview when I asked about what a grandmother’s responsibilities are, in general, she quickly responded, “Mi abuela no es una buena abuela” (My grandmother is not a good grandmother).
With the harsh discipline administered to the older children, it is no surprise that they did not exhibit much affection towards their grandmother. Both seemed to interpret affection, based on the kind of physical care they gave and received, as caring about what other people are doing. Saying “clean up your room” is evidence of caring. They saw both negative and positive attention as an indication of someone caring. The children were allowed to roam free, so any attention was something of note. The grandmother not only did not tell them to clean their room, but according to Isabella, messed up the house after they had cleaned it. There was no concern for their environment. Norman made a joke about drag queens who wear short skirts. When I asked who drag queens were, he said they are women who are neither rich nor poor and work in cabaret. His description of what a cabaret was seemed to indicate more than secondhand knowledge.
There was no concern for their education: even though the mother sent money earmarked for private schools, none of the children went to one because the grandmother 206 claimed that she could not afford it. Shakina was pulled out of kindergarten and Isabella was removed from school because she would be going to Spain. Even though she did not have a passport yet, there was no reason to spend money on transportation to school.
After the golf course in Spain granted permission for the couple to bring their children from Ecuador, María Luz sent money for passports and visa processing. Even though there was no wait for passports in 2003 and María Luz sent money through
Marisol earmarked for passports several times, there was a long delay in getting the passports for the children. The original plan for the children coming to Spain was somewhat complicated. Children are forbidden to fly without adult supervision, but child guardians are not allowed to get family reunification visas. As such, the children cannot come accompanied or unaccompanied. When María Luz found out her cousin received a visa for Spain, she asked if the woman would fly with her children so that they could come. When the grandmother was informed of this plan, she said that after caring for the children, the couple was ungrateful if they left her behind. Also, the grandmother said she could not leave behind her sister who would be alone, or her other grandchildren who also lived with her because their parents had abandoned them. The fact that eight visas were expensive to apply for and would never be approved did not bother her. Her noncompliance with any paperwork and threats to inform the mafia of their location led
María Luz to acquiesce to her demands and she paid for passports and visa applications for the additional five relatives. When all relatives but the three children were denied visas because they did not fall under the categories of family reunification law—as both
Marisol and María Luz knew would occur simply from reading the directions on the form—María Luz caught the next flight back to Guayaquil. She was scared that the 207 grandmother might go into hiding with the children until María Luz found her a visa.
The grandmother was not informed of the visa status (the return was reported as for an interview requirement for their visas). The grandmother did not know until after she arrived at Marisol’s house with the children that the children would be going to Spain.
The trip to Spain was a surprise to the children as well. Out of fear that they would let the grandmother know, the children who had been continuously updated on their parents desire to bring them to Spain were not told when a date for its occurrence was finally known. Shakina was scared to go to Spain because she was told that the people are very proper, which is how many Ecuadorians perceived the Spanish.
However, Shakina interpreted this as meaning that people on the street may hit her if she was not behaving appropriately, as her grandmother did to her older siblings. Shakina was told that the Spanish will not forgive her behavior because of her age, as her grandmother does. Isabella was happy to go to Spain—she said it was worth leaving everything she owned behind, even though she really liked her bathing suit. It did not matter because her mother would buy her new things. In some of her stories with the storytelling card game, the mother did come home and miraculously fix every concern the protagonist might have. She was happy that the grandmother and her cousins were not going, since she had treated them so badly. Besides, they were all ingrates because whenever her mother sent money or presents, the cousins never said thank you.
I think Norman would be a good candidate for a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. He said he did not want to go because his grandmother would miss him.
When I asked how he felt about going to Spain, even though he had to leave his beloved grandmother behind, he would come up with obscure reasons as to why he did not want 208 to go—the hole in the o-zone is directly over Spain so people age faster. People become pretentious, like his mother who insisted on kissing people European-style on both cheeks rather than just the one as done in Ecuador. His mother did not even closely resemble Cynthia’s pretensions; in fact, it seemed like she had not changed very much at all. Perhaps this was because she lived in the countryside on a golf course rather than in a city and because she maintained a similar life with her husband as she had at home.
While María Luz did not seem to have changed personality wise while in Spain, there did seem to be some changes in her interactions with her children. They were self- sufficient and she seemed unsure as to how she fit in. The older siblings would still care for the little sister, telling her she could not have soda or threatening to get the belt if she did not eat. The mother made no efforts to enforce Norman and Isabella’s care of
Shakina. After not eating her lunch, Shakina told me she was hungry, and I told her she should tell her mother. I informed her that her mother would be happy that she wanted to eat. However, the mother was not aware of how to respond to Shakina’s subtle attempts at attention and I fed her. Shakina did not seem to know how to respond to her mother’s attempts at care either. When the little girl was writing on a piece of paper and
Marisol was helping Briana with her homework, María Luz asked Shakina what she was doing. Shakina told her she was waiting for her sister’s help.
Although unsure how to involve their mother in physical care, they immediately sought her mother for affection. The three children greeted their mother with tearful long embraces. After her mother’s return, Shakina played freely, talked, explored, and smiled. She was potty trained in the week at Marisol’s house. Rather than hiding from strangers behind her grandmother, she would draw when asked and blow kisses. 209
Isabella has changed as well. She said that now she is more relaxed because she can be a child again. Isabella said she was hurt that her little sister was getting so much attention and that she felt unneeded since her little sister had other caregivers, but she understood because that is how younger children are treated. Norman stopped his devious plans to escape from the house—he did not complain of boredom but hung around the house conversing freely with the adults. He even once asked for his mother’s help to reach bread on top of the fridge, even though he was a little embarrassed about it.
The grandmother still does not accept the family’s desire to remake their lives in
Spain. She said that she will miss the children, but inspects the money María Luz still gives her for transportation with much more care than she ever interacted with the children. The children did not wish to return to their grandmother’s house when their mother needed to gather some of their things. Isabella said that of course she does not want to return to the village and she is happy that she no longer has to lie to anyone about how her grandmother treated her. María Luz has requested that neither the children nor her sister talk about what happened, especially to her husband Luis. She does not want people to talk about the lack of care the children received because most do not consider her to have abandoned her children. She left them in the care of a family member, maintained the marital unit, returned as soon as possible, and the husband took care of their economic needs. It is a successful story, from the outside. The truth that the grandmother mistreated the children and blackmailed her own son would indicate that the father might not care for his children well, since he has a mother who does not know how to care for children. María Luz said they do think about retiring in Ecuador, after they have lived their life in Spain, if the children wanted to as well. 210
THE INDIFFERENT SEPARATION: ROBERTO
Roberto’s father Fernando’s migration to Italy differs from the previous cases.
While Ramona’s parents were never together, Kingner’s parents’ emigration was seen as leading to their separation, and Isabella, Norman, and Shakina’s parents were able to stay together, Roberto’s father emigrated after his parents’ divorce was established. The alteration of contact with the father would have occurred regardless of his emigration because of the divorce. He did not change homes, schools, or care when his father left.
I met Fernando in 2000 at his parents’ house. He was sullenly sitting in a hammock while his brothers told him about how he should get his life in order. His wife had left him and moved to live with her parents and his trucking business was bankrupt.
He was reportedly drunk most of the day and was wasting his time with unacceptable women rather than attempting to get his wife back or work to support his child Roberto.
Roberto’s parents Fernando and Nydia lived near the village of the Mendoza patriarch for their first ten years of marriage. Nydia spent a significant amount of time alone because Fernando worked as a truck driver. Rising gas prices, exacerbated by spending on drinking and entertainment, eventually put him out of business and he turned to even heavier alcohol abuse when his wife left him. After another two years of this, he began to observe what his brother Kingner and sister Cynthia would send home to his parents. His social condemnation and their respect led him to decide to follow them. He thought about his successful siblings abroad and asked Kingner for money to join Cynthia in Italy. With promises of paying him back once working, he emigrated.
Fernando had an easier time adjusting to life abroad than his brother Kingner.
He knew what to expect because of Cynthia’s stories. Thanks to her connections, 211
Fernando sent remittances soon after emigration. However, not everything was perfect.
He worked as a painter for Cynthia’s boyfriend, but supposedly the boyfriend does not pay what is due so his remittances have been unstable. Nydia has not complained about the support, which is significantly more than she received during their first few years of separation, and his son seems to have accustomed to his father being abroad.
The decision of who would take care of the child while the father was away did not involve any transition—Roberto already lived with his mother and maternal grandparents near Quito. Even though it took eight months to prepare to emigrate,
Fernando did not tell his son Roberto about his plans. He called his son once he was already there. It was not a big change to live without his father. When his father worked as a truck driver, Fernando would be gone for long periods, but would visit occasionally.
Fernando is not legal abroad and for this reason has been unable to return to visit his son.
Fernando and Roberto have maintained contact via telephone and Fernando sends gifts to his son. The son has begun to ask his father how much he is going to send, and Fernando’s parents Lucía and Tercero claim that such disrespect is the influence of the child’s mother. They think that she is selfish with what Fernando sends back.
Tercero once took a shirt from a care package, with permission from Fernando, for
Fernando’s nephew, and his ex-wife Nydia complained extensively.
She has become unhappy with his emigration because word has returned to her of a relationship abroad. She resents the fact that he was unwilling to resolve his alcoholism and support his family while in Ecuador, leading to their separation. She had believed that he chose to emigrate to take responsibility for his family. Emigration meant a resolution to Nydia: she thought Fernando was going to leave the bottle and support 212 their son. However, it seems that a mistress who went to England has maintained contact with him and he is considering traveling to England. The family presents the mistress as a sugar-momma who is after Fernando, who cannot possibly resist since he is a man. The Mendoza’s are unsure if she was involved in the dissolution of his marriage.
Fernando claims that the reason he wants to leave Italy is not to have a relationship with this woman. He claims that he wants to leave Italy because he can no longer tolerate watching how his sister Cynthia’s boyfriend treats her. When Cynthia moved in with her boyfriend’s parents, she left her brother Fernando alone to pay his own rent on a contract he entered into with her. Fernando could not afford the place on his own. She now pays the rent for her Italian boyfriend and his parents rather than sharing rent with her brother. He had thought about returning to Ecuador but this is not truly an option. He left with the desire to save enough money to begin a business in Ecuador—this goal expanded to include providing an education for his son, which has meant extending his plans. If he came back without savings, he would be seen as a failure, with no work ethic who disrespected his brother who fronted the money for his trip. This is the reason he wants to go to England—he stay in Italy where his sister is disrespected and cannot return to Ecuador without disrespecting his brother.
Even though I do not have extensive details on the child in this particular case, I present it for two reasons. First, it is an additional example of how emigration networks function such that a number of family members in one extended family end up emigrating. And second, it provides an interesting contrast with the above cases.
Ramona did not go through change because her mother never really was in charge of her care. Kingner and the three siblings went through drastic change because both their 213 mother and father left. Roberto did not go through change after emigration—he went through a divorce and then parental emigration. While some critique the fact that
Fernando did not have enough courage to tell his son to his face that he planned on emigrating, it is not critiqued on the normal terms of emigration. As to be discussed in
Part III, emigration is frequently deprecated because it leads to family dissolution. In
Roberto’s case, the family situation did not change. He plans to return and supports his son economically. He has not abandoned his family or his country.
The four case studies in this chapter represent very different contexts of emigration. It is important to observe the parents’ motivations to emigrate (no marriage, dissolution of marriage, continuation of marriage, or established divorce), the kind of care afterwards (changes in caregivers and kinds of care), kind of contact in the transnational family (returns, telephone contact, or remittances), and changes in the émigré (attitudes towards home country and country abroad, emotional adjustment abroad). These differences lead to different responses to parental emigration, as I address in Part III. Part III: Responses to Parental Emigration
After describing the research goals in Part I and the context and experiences of emigration in Part II, I turn to the different responses to parental emigration in Part III based on cultural context, social approval, and home environment.
In Chapter 7, the children accept parental emigration as positive through cultural learning in a small indigenous village. The cultural context and home environment both positively value parental emigration. This concordance between the two leads to social approval for the child.
Chapter 8 presents children in urban Guayaquil who adjust to parental emigration through manipulating culturally constituted defense mechanisms as they negotiate a diverse cultural context to find social approval. With the set of contrasting views in the cultural context, the children experience some difficulty in adjusting to their home environment and receiving social approval. The peer culture and culturally constituted defense mechanisms allow the children to find such approval.
214 215
In comparison, the Guayaquileño children in Chapter 9 adapted to parental emigration through negotiating individual responses to the situations which sometimes resolves their conflict. Some of the children do seem to experience distress even with their defensive thoughts, and others find a solution to parental emigration that leads either to great pleasure in their home life or successful social adaptation.
In the concluding chapter, I pull together each of these items to comment on methods for studying urban sites, cultural change, and parental separation.
Chapter 7 — Devoted Sacrifice Parental Emigration & Cultural Learning
—Six-year-old Pablo watched as I attempted to change the batteries in my tape recorder. One rolled away and made it through the cracks in the floor boards. He giggled at my attempt to grab it and came over to the site of its disappearance. We both peered through the gaping spaces between the wood planks. When we realized that his parents were downstairs, we began to whisper and stifled our giggles with our hands over our mouths. They apparently did not notice the falling battery. Pablo told me how his friend Carlos had concrete floors since his mother went to New York. I pointed out to him that Carlos did have concrete floors, but could not see his mother. He laughed and said of course not. “You can’t see through concrete floors.” (AQ 4/12/98)
The notable characteristic of Carlos’ story to Pablo was the floors, not parental emigration. Pablo calmly discussed Carlos without anxiety at imagining the feelings of parental loss in emigration. His lack of focusing on the exchange of parental loss in connection with the achievement of concrete floors illustrates the cultural values he had learned. Pablo had redundantly heard from a number of sources the value of parental emigration, rather than the loss it might be considered to entail. In this chapter, I discuss
216 217 the strength of the socialization of cultural values in child development. I consider the examples a demonstration of the strength of cultural values because the children interpret parental separation in a manner that is contrary to what might be expected based on both
Western ethnopsychology and academic child development theory. Western child development theory would expect children to react to separation from an attachment figure as a loss, yet these children internalize cultural values that do not interpret parental emigration as a loss. These values prevent the children’s distress because they code what could be a difficult life situation as the normal, or even preferred, form of parental care.
In brief, I argue that the acquisition of cultural values affects the interpretation of experiences. I suggest that child development theory, specifically attachment theory, can be value-laden. The idea of children’s attachment patterns as resultant of specific parental behaviors frequently neglects the role of cultural influences on a child’s perception. I show that children can, in some circumstances, attach to parents who do not demonstrate the ideal forms of care in the expert models. In fact, the physical absence that emigration entails precludes ideal parental behavior in attachment theory.
To begin, I review theory on the socialization of cultural values and attachment theory. Then, I will describe a sample of ethnographic research that I conducted which sheds light on the human capability of adjustment through cultural learning. In the particular cultural context of a small village with indigenous roots in the Andes
Mountains, the concept of the family not only accepted, but preferred parental emigration. I present this case study because I believe that it provides a contrast to the factors of modernization that lead to the complications of the cases that I described in
Part II and that will be the focus of Chapters 8 and 9. 218
CULTURAL TRANSMISSION
“Culture” can refer to all of the “socially inherited past human accomplishments” that are passed on in society and provide the means by which individuals are able to negotiate their daily lives (D’Andrade 1966). Culture can refer both to these achievements, “the product,” and to the way that the achievements are passed on, “the process” (Cole 2002). I see the product “culture” as what Geertz refers to as: “an historically transmitted pattern of meanings embodied in symbols, a system of inherited conceptions and expressed in symbolic forms by knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (1973: 89). The set of “products” are organized into “a conceptual structure which makes possible the identification of objects and events” (D’Andrade 1992: 28). The identification process implies expectations to fulfill the definitions in the cultural model.
Here I focus on the process for “transmission” and “inheriting” the cultural models, or socialization. The ethnographic description in this chapter describes the inheritance of the product of parental emigration as devoted sacrifice.
Bourdieu’s (1977) socialization research has focused on the structure of cultural constraints within which individuals act. Habitus is where the accumulation of socialized cultural “product” resides in the individual.
The habitus is the product of the work of inculcation and appropriation necessary in order for those products of collective history, the objective structures (e.g. of language, economy, etc.) to succeed in reproducing themselves more or less completely, in the form of durable dispositions, in the organisms (which one can, if one wishes, call individuals) lastingly subjected to the same conditionings, and hence placed in the same material conditions of existence. (ibid.: 85)
Doxa is the set of behaviors that match the dominant society’s habitus. There are no contestations, contradictions, or confusions in doxic space. 219
However, when circumstances change and an individual behaves in a heterodox manner, others will sanction that individual. The sanctions serve as orthodoxy to reinforce the original doxa. I select Bourdieu’s perspective on the accumulation of cultural values in the habitus because the role of sanctions and acceptance of others is relevant for understanding how the children’s interpretations of parental emigration are supported or contested. For the village discussed in the ethnographic example of this chapter, parental emigration as a devoted sacrifice is doxa.
Sanctions often take the form of polite corrections between a cultural novice and a cultural initiate. As a cultural novice, my views were often corrected.58 For example, one twenty-three year old male in this village served as a guide to find locations in the beginning, and later expanded his role to explaining how the world worked to me. When
I lamented a young girl’s loss of her mother to emigration, he asked why I thought it was sad. He asked, “What do you think aunts are for?” He pointed out that I was the only one who was sad. The young girl played with her cousins, had everything she needed for school, received devoted care from her aunt, and spoke with her mother regularly. He asked if my mother was an only child or if all my grandparents had died because I seemed not to understand family. In Chapters 8 and 9, the sanctions are more complicated and hidden because the acceptance of parental emigration is not doxa. The children here had a unified set of redundant controls that interpreted their parents’ emigration as positive.
Bourdieu’s concept of sanction-enforced doxa has limitations. Although he attempts to describe how the individual is enculturated, he presents it as a one-way
58 Perhaps the corrections I received were more polite than those for children who did not understand something they should received. I had a reason not to understand certain obvious facts and people treated me with a certain amount of respect. 220 process because of the overbearing strength of the habitus as the source for motivating behaviors. Since the habitus is socialized directly from the dominant doxa and is how behavior originates, Bourdieu’s theory removes an individual’s ability to innovate or contest. In fact, although Bourdieu acknowledges the importance of sanctions to prevent the questioning of doxic knowledge, he does not explain how or why anyone would ever think or be able to behave in a manner that is contrary to the doxic knowledge.
Guatemalan anthropologist Fischer (2001) puts forth a similar critique of Bourdieu:
Bourdieu appears to argue that individuals are constantly improvising their culture, yet these improvisations can only be made on the basis of past cultural experiences that are conditioned by the internalized cultural logics of the habituses. Nonetheless, Bourdieu fails to extend his argument to account for the processes of cognition through which the habitus is manifest, and he ultimately under cuts the power of cultural agency by resorting to a form of material determinism. (ibid.: 18)
Bourdieu does not include the role of the individual in the enculturation process and as such leaves the means of culture change beyond the control of people. For example, cultural change may result from meteorological phenomena or ecological variation, but there is no manner for cultural change to originate from individual innovation. Yet, there is significant variability within culture that should be acknowledged (Palacios & Moreno
1996). A benevolent reading of Bourdieu might claim that pre-existing variability can lead to variability in the habitus amongst different individuals, who will lead to innovation when they interact. However, the origin of the pre-existing variability remains unknown.
Other accounts of socialization do allow for within-culture variation. Spiro
(1997) describes the process for cultural reproduction as consisting of a social transaction between actors, or cultural transmission, and a psychological operation within actors, or cultural internalization. He writes, “Cultural reproduction is conceived not as a single and 221 impersonal process… but as a dual and personal process” (ibid.: 3). In other words, culture is reproduced through culturally meaningful interactions with others and through an individual’s internalization of cultural meanings. Spiro is emphasizing the individual’s role in the process of cultural reproduction and asserts that it is not a passive process.
One does not merely receive enculturation; it is a process of negotiation.
Parish as well warns against the unilinear view of unquestioning socialization: “A person does not passively “internalize” and “enact” cultural norms” (1994: 242). Cultural transmission from a cultural initiate to a novice itself does not indicate that the value will be inevitably internalized. Individual psychological processes are involved. Parish writes,
“Culture is normally transmitted from generation to generation by adults to children, and from those experts in a particular cultural domain to novices. But this notion of transmission may be misleading if it assumes that learning is essentially a passive process without active involvement by the learner” (ibid.: 432). By viewing socialization as a series of feedback loops between cultural initiates and novices, contestations and innovations are possible through variations in the internalization process.
One conception of the possible variations of socialization is Spiro’s “Scale of
Cultural Acquisition.” This scale indicates four different levels of knowing cultural propositions. Cultural knowledge may be internalized, or it may be just a cliché and not motivate behavior. Theories that address the idiosyncrasies of individuals in a limited manner such as Bourdieu’s habitus frequently assume that all cultural values are internalized. Spiro indicates the significance of understanding an individual’s conviction to a cultural value for understanding their behavior. 222
At the first level of conviction a cultural novice acquires an acquaintance with the proposition without, however, assenting to it. At this level, the cultural initiate is indifferent to the proposition or may even reject it outright. At the second level of conviction, the novice acquires the proposition as a cliché. That is, although he (or she) assents to the proposition, he honors it more in the breach than in the observance… It is only when a cultural proposition is acquired by the cultural novice as a cognitively and emotionally salient belief—the third level of conviction— that it may be said to be internalized… it is held to be true, proper, or right… If a cultural proposition is acquired at the fourth level of the scale of acquisition, the cultural novice not only internalizes it but has a powerful emotional attachment to it, so its psychological salience is especially strong. (Spiro 1997: 8f)
These four levels of cultural acquisition—acquaintance, cliché, salient, and powerful attachment—could explain the differentiations between the habituses in a particular society that would lead to contestations.
Since the levels of cultural acquisition indicate that internalization is not a given for the transmission of cultural knowledge, it is necessary to understand why the individual internalizes some “products” and not others. Because of the possible variations in the enculturation of an individual, redundant controls may exist. This can help to eliminate the variation in indoctrinating doxic cultural values that the society views as most significant to proper social interaction. Levy focused on redundant controls to assure the socialization of the valued gentle behavior amongst Tahitians.
But for prevalent modes of behavior such as those presented here, there are many redundant influences. If a child is not affected by one shaping form, he will most likely be affected by another with a similar import… Such a set of convergent influences insures that most people will be, or at least will act, reasonably gentle for one reason or another. I imagine that such redundancies of control are a necessary feature of most culturally determined behavior. (Levy 1973: 467f)
These redundant controls may serve to insure that particular “products” of culture are more likely to be internalized than others. 223
Internalized cultural values permeate all aspects of an individual’s life. Copious ethnographies demonstrate the influence of internalized products of culture on the individual’s perspective on personality (Benedict 1934), religion (Obeyesekere 1984, Spiro
1996b), morality (Parish 1994), gender (Blackwood 2000), political views (Strifler 2002), emotion (Levy 1973), health (Fadiman 1997, Bluebond-Langer 1978), mental health
(Kleinman & Good 1985) and many other topics. However, even with the prolific publication on the effects of culture, some psychological theories that seek universals overlook the role of culture. Although some aspects of the original conception of attachment theory acknowledged the role of cultural values in determining the effect of attachment figure’s behaviors on children, these factors are often overlooked for a more simplified view of child development that directly maps onto Western values.
ATTACHMENT THEORY
Definition of Attachment Behavior
The evolutionary roots of attachment theory distinguish it as a human universal
(Kagan 1976). With the wide range of species from goslings to humans that exhibit attachment-like behavior, the behavior is theorized to have a survival function in the protection of the young from predators (Bowlby 1969). The reason the behavior serves for protection is because it entreats adults to care for the young and places the young in close proximity to those who may be able to protect it. Bowlby (1956: 129) defines attachment behavior as “any form of behaviour that results in a person attaining or retaining proximity to some other differentiated and preferred individual, who is usually conceived as stronger and /or wiser.” In this behavior, children are naturally motivated to attach to, or seek affection, security, and comfort (Ainsworth 1989) from a primary 224 caregiver, even when that caregiver is abusive (Bowlby 1956). Attachment behavior includes smiling to attract a caregiver’s attention, crying to spur a caregiver’s desire to remedy the undesirable stimuli, and movement towards the caregiver. These physical drives for proximity change into mental drives for security.
Children enter a sensitive phase of determining attachment figures after six weeks and have bonded to a primary attachment figure at one year (Bowlby 1969). Attachment begins intensely and then, at approximately four years of age, the behaviors are less likely to be triggered in normal development. After infancy, if the child does not see the attachment figure, he or she will try to find her or him (Rajecki et al. 1978) whereas if the child does see the attachment figure, he or she may explore the surroundings (Ainsworth
1963). When afraid, a child finds assurance in a caregiver’s presence and anxiety in his or her absence (Bowlby 1973). Children can form more than one attachment relationship, and may even have a number of ranked attachments in addition to one central figure
(Bretherton 1980) based on a number of factors including quantity and quality of contact, responsiveness, and confidence in the figure’s return (Cassidy 1999; Colin 1996).
Bowlby (1958) saw the reason for attachment behavior as related to infants’ drive for social interaction and affection. While others had acknowledged the importance of the mother, Bowlby acknowledged her importance as a physical and emotional presence.
The mother was more than just a supplier of nutrients, following Harlow’s laboratory studies on rhesus monkeys (1959). In the experiments, the monkeys had two options for surrogate mothers: a bare wire monkey and a cloth-covered monkey. Half received nutrition from the wire mother, and half from the cloth monkey. Regardless of which surrogate provided nutrition, the baby monkeys preferred the cloth mother. They 225 exhibited exploratory behaviors when the cloth mother was present. Harlow concluded that contact comfort was more important than providing nourishment for attachment.
In so far as psychologists and psychoanalysts have attempted to account for the existence of affectional bonds, the motives of food and sex have almost always been invoked. Thus in attempting to explain why a child becomes attached to his mother, both learning theorists… and psychoanalysts have independently assumed that it is because mother feeds the child… Yet, once the evidence is scrutinized, these explanations are found wanting. (Bowlby 1979: 70; italics in original)
Viewing attachment behavior as a primary motivation for comfort, rather than a secondary one formed after meeting nutritional needs, was contrary to psychoanalysis.
Bowlby (1969) believed that the persistence of attachment behavior into adulthood after learning and its high-intensity arousal under situations of distress indicates that the behavior is for protection from predators, not nutrition. Attachment behavior serves as protection because an isolated animal is more likely to be attacked; attachment behavior is strong in young, pregnant, and sick animals that are especially vulnerable; and juveniles attach more strongly to punishing figures. He attributed this last observation to the fact that a punishing figure is likely to be seen as strong and able to protect the juvenile. Bowlby emphasized the importance of the mother’s role as more than just a source of food but as a source of secure attachments that will have lifelong benefits. Attachments last the majority of one’s life and the formation, maintenance, and loss of attachments involves strong emotions (Bowlby 1979: 130f).
Patterns of Attachment
Securely attached infants display behaviors characteristic of security, are more cooperative, and exhibit less anger (Ainsworth 1979). Maternal sensitivity (van
Ijzendoorn et al. 1995), paternal sensitivity (van Ijzendoorn & DeWolff 1997), and the 226 sensitivity of other caregivers (Goosens & van Ijzendoorn 1990) have all been linked to secure attachment. Belsky (1999) has also connected attachment figure’s responsiveness, attention, and contact to secure attachment. Secure attachment is linked with less anxiety
(Collins & Read 1990), less hostility and ego-resilience (Kobak & Sceery 1988), and less depression (Armsden & Greenberg 1987).
The secure behaviors not only indicate a good relationship with the mother, but also the security necessary to take advantage of the physical environment surrounding them. The children are more curious and self-directed (Ainsworth 1979). Curiosity and self-direction is necessary to seek physical experience with the environment, which leads to further learning and questioning of previous ideas. The mental operation of accommodating internal mental schemas (or re-calibrating previous ideas) in order to assimilate new information is the process of mental equilibration. Equilibration is central to both moral (Kohlberg 1968) and cognitive development (Piaget 1961). These greater opportunities for equilibration amongst securely attached children can lead to higher moral and cognitive development. Research indicates that these children seem more competent and sympathetic in peer interaction (Ainsworth & Wittig 1969). Securely attached individuals have better relationships with others, including siblings (Teti &
Ablard 1989) and teachers and social workers (Weinfield et al. 1999). The ability to consider others’ viewpoints would mean a higher level of morality for children because it is based on conventions in interpersonal relationships rather than based on fear of punishments or material exchanges. The ability to consider others’ viewpoints could also indicate a higher level of cognitive thought because the coordination of others perspectives is seen as an indication of formal operations (Piaget et al. 1956). 227
Not all children become securely attached. Bowlby’s work on attachment theory sees maternal absence in early critical periods as detrimental to a child’s well-being, even if nutritional needs are met. After working with 44 juvenile thieves who had prolonged disruptions in their relationships with their mothers (1944), Bowlby argued that early separations between the mother and child could lead to psychological disorders in later life. He further supported this proposition with institutionalized children (1951). The connection between early experience and later effects has been a foundation for attachment research. Macdonald (2001: 62) writes, “[Bowlby] concluded that warm, intimate, and continuous relations with the mother (or permanent mother substitute)—in which both mother and infant found satisfaction and enjoyment—were an essential basis for longer-term mental health.” Bowlby discussed the effects of partial deprivation as insecure attachment, or a child who would intensely need love or feel resentment, sadness, and guilt. A child who experiences complete deprivation is distant, detached, and has stunted development. As an adult, he will not have a depth of feeling or motivation, and may partake in criminal behavior (Bowlby 1944). These deprivations can lead to one of three forms of insecure attachments: anxious-avoidant, anxious ambivalent/resistant, or disorganized/disoriented (Main & Solomon 1990).
Insecurity that causes a withdrawal from emotionality and indifference to separation to cope characterizes the anxious avoidant pattern. A mother who over- stimulates or controls her child is linked to avoidant attachment (De Wolff & van
Ijzendoorn 1997). Mothers who “evince a deep-seated aversion to close bodily contact” or are “more rejecting and angry” rear children who exhibit this attachment pattern
(Ainsworth 1969). Later, these children are more aggressive, noncompliant and avoidant. 228
A child with the second pattern, anxious ambivalent/resistant attachment will be upset at the mother’s departure, but will not feel assured when she returns. These children exaggerate attachment behavior as a strategy to cope with their insecurity. In contrast to avoidant attachment where the mother over-controls the infant, ambivalent attachment has been linked to unavailable and unresponsive caretaking (De Wolff & van
Ijzendoorn 1997). These babies are more often constitutionally difficult. If the mother cannot respond appropriately, the child will become anxious and these children are more easily frustrated, less persistent, and generally less competent (Ainsworth 1969). Warren et al. (1997) have connected ambivalent attachment to later anxiety disorders.
Lastly, irregular attachment behaviors characterize the disorganized/disoriented pattern. Main and Solomon (1986) later added this attachment pattern to Ainsworth’s categories of insecure attachment. Disorganized attachment has been linked to mistreatment (Carlsson et al. 1989), chronically depressed mothers (Lyons-Ruth et al.
1990; Lyons-Ruth et al. 1986; Teti et al. 1995), dysfunctional households (Erel & Burman
1995), and mothers without adequate assistance (Crittenden 1985). Aggression characterizes these children in both longitudinal (Goldberg et al. 1995) and cross- sectional (Greenberg et al. 1991) studies. The aggression can lead to a reinforcing loop of social incompetence; negative social interactions can lead to greater negative affect and thereby more negative interactions because the child did not receive an adequate understanding of relationships in formative years (Gergely & Watson 1996). Children with disorganized attachment have the highest rate of later mental disorders of any kind of attachment (Carlson 1998; Lyons-Ruth 1996; Ogawa et al. 1997), including dissociative tendencies because of the connection of the attachment pattern to loss (Liotti 1995). 229
Stability of Early Attachment Patterns
While the outlook sounds grim for children with disorganized attachment patterns, some children are able to cope with the experience of maternal deprivation.
The process of detachment from the primary figure and finding new attachments allows for adjustment to maternal deprivation. This re-attachment can occur because “the phase of protest… never continues indefinitely: sooner or later, as despair grips the child, a new response gathers momentum—one of denying the need for the mother—a response in which repression is playing a large part” (Bowlby, Robertson, & Rosenbluth 1952: 82f).
The response to maternal deprivation involves protest, despair, and detachment (Bowlby
1969). Fonagy summarized Bowlby’s definition of these stages:
Protest begins with the child perceiving a threat of separation. It is marked by crying, anger, physical attempts at escaping, and searching for the parent. It lasts for as long as a week, and intensifies at night. Despair follows protest. Active physical movement diminishes, crying becomes intermittent, the child appears sad, withdraws from contact, is more likely to be hostile to another child or a favorite object brought from home and appears to enter a phase of mourning and loss of the attachment figure… The final phase of detachment is marked by a more or less complete return of sociability. Attempts by other adults to offer care are no longer spurned, but the child who reaches this stage will behave in a markedly abnormal way upon reunion with the caregiver. (Fonagy 2001:7)
This description is informative for assessing the behavior of the children left behind. The process of detachment has a predictable set of phases.
While it is possible to overcome loss without complete debilitation through psychodynamic processes such as repression as described above, Bowlby did emphasize a certain lasting effect from early separations. Marvin and Britner (1999) found this to be true even when the deprivations did not continue beyond a significant early experience. 230
The role of maternal deprivation in the socialization process can have long-term effects on a child’s personality regarding emotional expression, self-image, and cognitive functioning. Based on his work on emotions, Bowlby (1953) concluded that deprivation can lead to a lack of emotional depth. Also, if the child feels rejected by the attachment figure, he or she will feel unworthy of love and have a negative self-image (Baldwin 1992).
Bowlby saw that certain kinds of attachment can influence the information that the child can access (Bowlby 1987) or even have neurological implications (LeDoux 1995; Schore
1997). In other words, an anxiously attached child may be best able to access feelings and memories that match his or her attachment pattern of anxiety, even if not representative of his or her life history. According to this research, habitual pathways are formed for the expression of certain emotions and contrary information is less accessible.
The attention to parental behaviors as causal factors for children’s attachment behaviors and the stability of attachment patterns has led research to indicate that attachment behavior is universally affected. Research claims that certain objective parental behaviors will have predictable behavioral responses for the child, without considering the individual’s subjective perspective of correct treatment. For this reason, some researchers implement the strange situation cross-culturally without attention to the alternative valuations that such responses might have in the particular cultural context
(Harwood et al. 1995: 15). The strange situation is a brief separation between the parent and the child to observe the child’s reaction. It is believed that a child’s reaction has the same meaning cross-culturally as an indication of future behavioral patterns.
However, this is not an accurate reflection of original attachment theory. While in other animals, attachment behavior is seen to lead to “the ontogenetic development of 231 biological regulators… in human development psychological interpretive capacity evolves in the context of the repetitive interactions with the mother” (Fonagy 2001: 17). In this statement, Fonagy claims the attachment relationship is significant in one’s ability to understand and to create meaning out of interpersonal interactions, which is humankind’s adaptive strength. There is an “interpretative capacity.” Children deduce a set of expectations of parental behaviors based on their perception of a status quo. The summary of attachment theory above indicates selective attention to this capacity.
This interpretative capacity is often overlooked in studies with Western children that have composed the research on reactions to parental behavior and on the lasting effects of attachment patterns. While this research may be accurate for the particular cultural context, the creation of expectations may vary for other contexts. Attention to the role of culturally shaped perceptions does not contradict attachment theory at its base. I believe that it is true that children will react to parental behaviors and that these behaviors will have later effects. However, the connection between certain behaviors and responses to resultant personality should acknowledge the child’s context in creating their expectations. Expanding beyond specific parental behaviors, Fonagy et al. (1993) have demonstrated a connection between the parent’s ability to consider the mental state of the child and secure attachment. In other words, rather than research that assumes the appropriate response for secure attachment, Fonagy et al. indicate that the child’s desired parental behavior is important for secure attachment. In many cases these may overlap— children’s desires for parental behavior may agree with what researches have defined to be desirable behavior. However, we need to allow for some variability in the connection between parental behaviors and the results for children to be able to consider cultural 232 variation. This means that meeting children’s expectations, which depend upon experience, may be more important than a set of objective, universal behaviors.
Erikson’s (1963) model for psychosocial development includes the acquisition of trust in early parental relationships as formative for future intimate relationships as attachment theory does, but the child’s perception of behavior is more obviously central to Erikson’s theory. Erikson emphasizes the goal of fitting into societal norms with each stage which more clearly indicates the source of possible cultural variability in children’s expectations of their parent. What the child perceives as reliable parental behavior determines if the behavior establishes the caregiver as an outer predictability and inner certainty. This means that the child does not find great anxiety and disappointment in their parent’s responses (can predict it) and feel trust in those behaviors (are certain of it).
This set of perceptions is based on previous culturally-constructed parental behaviors.
Therefore, rather than focusing on a measurement of objective maternal responses to children’s needs, we need to understand the children’s creation of expectations to determine if these maternal responses are considered predictable and certain.
Role of Appraisals in Attachment
Bowlby’s research was applied to create a set of “practical recommendations,”
“ranging from economic aid to mothers in distress to phasing out institutional care in favor of care in loving, homelike situations” (Eihrenriech & English 2005: 252). While these recommendations may have been appropriate for the cultural context they originally meant to address, the expansion of the theory has neglected the role of cultural context.
Parents’ behavior was observed and determined to be overprotective, rejecting, or appropriate (D. Levy 1966). Eventually, through empirical research in homes, Prugh and 233
Harlow noted in a reassessment of maternal deprivation with Ainsworth that the role of the child’s perspective in interpreting parental behaviors mattered, rather than just the researcher’s categories for judging parental behavior. “It is to be emphasized that instances of “masked” or covert deprivation may have as devastating effects upon emotional development as the more gross maternal deprivations highlighted by Bowlby”
(Prugh & Harlow 1966: 206). The “masked” or covert deprivations refer to the fact that these deprivations are hidden to the observers who sought what were primarily studied as maternal deprivations. The child does not see these behaviors as “masked” or covert, but the effect occurs because the child appraises the parent’s behaviors as deprivation.
While some children may perceive “acceptable” parental behavior as deprivation, on the contrary, other children may perceive “unacceptable” parental behavior as appropriate. Even the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1994) which is often criticized for ethnocentric perspectives acknowledges the fact that perception can affect the child’s interpretation of parental behavior. Reactive attachment disorder is
“associated with grossly pathological care.” However, in the descriptive features to the disorder, the role of perception is central: “Grossly pathological care does not always result in the development of Reactive Attachment Disorder; some children may form stable attachments and social relationships even in the face of marked neglect or abuse”
(ibid.: 116). The child’s perspective is considered here.
Much of the clinical evidence that Bowlby collected dealt with children who experienced real deprivations, but he does mention the importance of appraisals of availability, meaning the child’s judgment of caregiver’s responsiveness and accessibility
(Bowlby 1973). Bowlby wrote that during critical periods the child composes an 234 expectation of the caregiver’s behavior that is an accurate reflection of the actual experiences (Bowlby 1973: 202). These appraisals allow the individual’s subjective experience to be incorporated into attachment theory, which can seem like a mechanistic formula. Expansions of Bowlby’s theories have created a set of influences on the internal working model of attachment figures and allows for the incorporation of cultural factors:
1) expectations of interactive attributes of early caregivers created in the first year of life and subsequently elaborated; 2) event representations by which general and specific memories of attachment-related experiences are encoded and retrieved; 3) autobiographical memories by which specific events are conceptually connected because of their relation to a continuing personal narrative and developing self-understanding; and 4) understanding of the psychological characteristics of other people… and differentiating those of the self. (Fonagy 2001: 13)
This set of factors indicates that actual deprivations lead to the predicted results when the child’s expectations see the behaviors as deprivations. However, it also allows for instances when the child’s interpretations do not match those normally seen as deprivations. The child’s interpretations of deprivation may include the same behaviors as attachment theory does, may include more behaviors than attachment theory does, or may not consider some behaviors deprivation that attachment theory does.
Even though Ainsworth’s etiology of attachment patterns is often implemented as a heuristic, she also emphasized the importance of the infant’s representation for understanding attachment behavior. She claimed that the child’s perspective of the separation in accord with what the child thought should happen was a better explanatory model for the child’s response to separation in her method of the “Strange Situation”
(Ainsworth et al. 1978). This research indicated that secure attachment is when the child’s internal working model has appraised the attachment figure as “available” whereas 235 anxious attachment is when the child’s internal working model does not consider the attachment figure “available” and will seek ways to cope with this lack.
The creation of this representational system is arguably the most important evolutionary function of attachment to a caregiver. Adopting this perspective helps redress the prevailing bias against the centrality of the family as the major force in socialization, but it also shifts the emphasis from content of experience to psychological structure or mental mechanism and involves expanding on current ideas of the evolutionary function of attachment. (Fonagy 2001: 31)
By expanding attachment theory to have a greater focus on the process of creating appraisals, we can understand the effect of socio-cultural factors that lead to systematic differences in the effects of maternal deprivation. If children create different appraisals of their parents as an outer predictability and inner certainty based on the expectations of their parents created from previous experience, then it is logical to assume that children create appraisals of parents as unpredictable and uncertain based on their expectations.
Much research on the effects of maternal deprivation on attachment behavior has been framed within the Western concept of the child. The acknowledgement of within- and across-culture variability of socialization, as discussed above, and the importance of the appraisal system in the creation of the internal working model of mental representations indicates the role that cross-cultural ethnography can play in explaining the connection between maternal character and later children’s behaviors in interpersonal relationships and psychopathology. Appraisals allow for cultural variability.
My critique of attachment theory is not a critique of its underlying assumptions of children bonding with their parents based on experiences of care. Instead, I believe that the implementation of attachment theory in research ignores the role of appraisals that should be relevant when researching across-cultures and in multicultural settings. This is 236 frequently not done. For instance, Boris et al. (1997) continued to establish categories to classify the clinical aspects of attachment behaviors based on James’ (1994) listings of risks to forming secure attachment. The Randolph Attachment Disorder Questionnaire
(Randolph 1997) for diagnosing attachment disorders does not incorporate the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual’s note on the possibility of attaching even when experiencing grossly negligent care. The questionnaire instead is a frequency checklist of parental behaviors.
Not only does diagnosis focus on objective parental behaviors, but therapeutic responses do as well. In holding therapy (Magid & McKelvey 1987), the parent is directed to hold the child to provide the nurturance the child lacks. This intervention assumes that the change in objective parental behavior will resolve attachment issues.
This therapy is critiqued because of the role of force, control, and dominance (cf. James
1994). However, the critiques do not point out that intervention therapy should offer what the child perceives as lacking—which may not be literal holding, but other behaviors they perceive as necessary for security. Perhaps a child longs for verbal reinforcement or for a limitation of threats. The child being forced to receive hugs that the parent gives through directives may be mixed communicational messages.59 While there is debate and activity in the field of attachment theory, most centers on diagnosis techniques and the identification of likely populations to experience attachment disorders based on the objective view on the kind of care they receive, like foster-care children (Wilson 2001).
While one can find articles that misrepresent any particular theory, I do believe that attachment theory as ethnocentric is a fair representation of both expert literature and pedagogical texts. In a psychology textbook (Gray 1994: 455), review questions ask
59 Bateson (1972) argued that such mixed messages create a “double-bind” that can lead to schizophrenia. 237
“What early caregiver behaviors are predictive of secure attachment?” There is mention of cultural variability in acceptance of children’s attachment behavior (some people do not see clinginess as negatively as Americans) and that whether the father or mother performs certain attachment behaviors varies across cultures (ibid.: 454f).
However, as frequently occurs in psychological treatments of cross-cultural variability, the depth and significance of these differences are not realized. The fact that parents perform different behaviors does not mean that different parental behaviors can lead to different kinds of attachment based on the construction of appraisals. The differences in parental behaviors alter the results for children, based on the same theoretical foundation. The same connection of appropriate parental behavior and resultant children’s attachment applies. In other words, the differences across cultures merely indicate that there will be different frequencies of attachment patterns. It does not mean that different behaviors are considered normal and lead to different patterns.
For instance, parents responsiveness to children may be more clingy and smothering in certain locations, yet children do not respond in the same way as if a parent in the U.S. is clingy and smothering depending upon the cultural expectations of parental behavior.
Another textbook on social psychology (Aronson et al. 1997) explains the kinds of relationships that occur based on parental interactions. For instance, it states (ibid.:
388): “Infants with an avoidant attachment style typically have caregivers who are aloof and distant.” The section makes no mention of cultural variability. In fact, the section represents the “key assumption” of attachment theory as the connection between these early attachment styles based on particular parental behaviors and the way it will “stay with us throughout life and generalizes to all of our relationships with other people” 238
(ibid.). These examples demonstrate that although attachment theory is acknowledged as important, the role of constructing an internal working model of a parent based on individual experience in a cultural milieu is often overlooked. The implementation and instruction of the theory, both in academic and clinical contexts, reflects the folk model that certain parental behaviors have a direct relationship to the formation of attachment patterns. This representation is not accurate when cross-cultural research is considered.
Cross-Cultural Research
Culture’s influence on the formation of bonds is important. Harwood et al.’s research (1995) indicated that parents’ ideals for attachment behavior vary. For instance,
Puerto Rican parents accepted clinging behavior while exploratory behavior was sometimes seen as negative—expert and U.S. folk models believe the opposite is ideal.
The meaning of attachment behavior can thus be considered part of a culturally constructed web of meanings regarding the relationship of the self to other… to begin to understand the culturally contextualized meaning of attachment behavior, it is necessary to begin to understand the cultural constructs that inform the behaviors observed. (ibid.: 15)
The parental perceptions of appropriate behaviors alter the parent’s responses to children’s attachment behaviors. The positive reinforcement children receive when exhibiting the appropriate attachment behavior influences their ideas of when parents should respond; children learn stimuli that elicit desired parental responses (Maier 1965).
Ethnographic research demonstrates the role of experience in children’s constructions of parental expectations. It indicates extensive variability in children’s perspectives on ideal parental behavior based on maternal behavior. For instance,
Scheper-Hughes (1992) has indicated that, in “maternal triage,” a mother may not become attached to her young infant because of the high rate of infant mortality. 239
Children do not later resent parents for what would be considered earlier gross deprivations (Scheper-Hughes 2001). The author did “not see these practices as unnatural, inhuman, or unwomanly but rather as reasonable responses to unreasonable constraints and contingencies” (Scheper-Hughes 1992: 400). An instance of extreme deprivation as normal is not the only example of variability in maternal attachments in the literature. For the Ik, Schaffer (1977) concurred with Scheper-Hughes explication of no maternal attachment as a result of starvation, whereas Mead (1935) tied the lack of maternal attachment among the Mundugumor to the great abundance of resources.
Various kinds of family environments can form unique and unexpected kinds of attachments as a result of socioeconomic factors as well, such as the cases of protracted exile separating families in Chile (Flores-Borquez 2000), war in Mozambique leading to childcare by extended family (Charnley 2000), or Thai child prostitution as a way to reinforce kinship ties (Phongpaichit 1982), where parents indenture their children for an advance of the year’s salary (Montgomery 2000). Felsman (1984) discussed “home- based” street children that remain in some form of contact with their families and may even sleep at home. Their labors in the street may be seen as physical and moral abandonment according to the Western sentimental and domestic concept of the child
(Panter-Brick 2000), but the children do not see their situation as such.
Research indicates that this alteration in kinds of childcare can lead not only to children taking on tasks ranging from unpleasant to horrific to demonstrate their familial devotion, but also that, in some cases, the pain itself, not just bearing through it, indicates family connection. While scarification may be seen as child cruelty in some societies, in some African cultures not scarifying your child is abuse. Facial scarification in West 240
Africa is used to identify ethnic groups, families, individuals and to express personal beauty (Coleman 2002) and to indicate a civilized nature (Vogel 1986: 25).
It is the responsibility of every member in the society to nurture [children] and ensure their well-being. This nurturing, however, is not devoid of what other societies would regard as maltreatment. Beginning from childhood, for example, some societies cut off the small finger of a the child while others perform facial scarification as rites of incorporation to the broader society or for curative reasons. (Guma & Henda 2004: 98)
The case of scarification indicates the children’s acquisition of cultural interpretations of behaviors in regards to parental expectations, even when those interpretations seem contrary to an evident interpretation of the experience.
Children’s adjustment to divorce involves matching parental behavior to a culturally appropriate set of parental expectations as well. Burgoyne et al. (1987: 141) claim children cope with divorce better if they split their time equally between the two parents, or have parents who can reach an amicable agreement. This may be due to the difficulty in reaching a compromise between patrifiliation and matrilocality in Western society (Simpson 1998: 157). Divorce as separation straining parental behaviors seems to influence children less than the definition of the family as stable and logical.
All of these cases not only indicate different kinds of socialization for the children, but they indicate differences in what is considered normal. The connection between what is considered normal, or the children’s formation of appraisals and expectations, affects the child’s ability to form a secure attachment in accord with particular behaviors. Children feel secure when their expectations are fulfilled, so we must pay attention to how they have formed their expectations. In this chapter I address the transmitted cultural values relevant for understanding the possibilities of children’s 241 adjustment to parental emigration. I consider these values a doxic space. The children do not need to negotiate diverse values or modify mainstream perspectives to fit their own situation. Other cultural values do vary in this insular village. However, there was no debate regarding the valuation of émigrés. The homogenous set of values regarding emigration are expressed in such redundancy that the children have accepted the interpretations of parental emigration as devoted sacrifice while rebuffing other interpretations, even when such interpretations are suggested as possibilities. In Chapter
8, I address the lack of unity and address within-culture variability in children’s acquisition of culture in the city of Guayaquil. In Chapter 9, I discuss the role of children’s negotiation of diverse values when the existing set of values leads them to develop problematic interpretations of their attachment figures. Cultural influences, the role of variability, and the negotiation of values are relevant to understanding children’s psychological adaptations and social adjustments to parental emigration.
EL SUEÑO AMERICANO
In 1998 I conducted field research in a small Andean village in Southern Ecuador, called Cañaridel here. This research demonstrated the ability of children to accept, to support, and to normalize parental separation based on the cultural values redundantly internalized in socialization. In Cañaridel, one day is very similar to the one that came before and the one that will come next. Objectively, parental migration is part of this normal day-to-day activity, but not subjectively. For instance, Xavier interacted with people at home, school, and in the village without his mother’s migration to New York being notable or worthy of mention. Nine-year old Xavier, his seven-year old sister,
Marta, and his six-year-old brother, Angel, live with their maternal grandmother and 242 grandfather. The children reside in the same home they lived in with their mother four years ago. His grandparents lived on the same lot of land in a one-room house before his mother emigrated, and joined the children in the larger house when she emigrated. His two sets of aunts and uncles with their five children live on the same lot.
The grandparents took over the one-room store on the main route to town that their daughter managed before emigration. More than half the families in Cañaridel have a store. Yet surprisingly, the stores all have business because stock amounts sometimes vary and people enjoy the shopping excursions to visit others. The wares are similar in each store: rice, lemons, vegetables, vegetable oil and small sample sizes of personal products. Some stores have a unique item or two. Xavier’s family store more frequently had avocadoes because his father could bring the heavy product on the bus he drove.
Xavier’s father drives the bus from the small village of Cañaridel to the larger village of Gualeceo—almost a three hour trip. Many commute to Gualaceo to take buses a further two hours to the third largest city in Ecuador, Cuenca. The family store, on the main route of the town, is one of the bus’s stops. Many get off the bus there, knowing it will be fifteen minutes or so before the bus continues on the half-mile to the village center. Xavier’s father frequently stays in the city on weekdays. His father explains the stays in the city as due to the desire to begin the bus route early in the city each weekday.
Xavier’s father claimed that many of the teachers in the villages live in Gualeceo or
Cuenca, and he can take advantage of the commutes passing all the small villages in the morning. With the appropriate haste, he can bring them back after school shortly after two. Then on the weekends, he stays in the village so he can take advantage of the commute to the city markets from the villages on the weekends. He now lives in the 243 smaller home where the grandparents once lived. His manner of commute also allows him to take part in weekend social activities without being present for weekday home activities. He has no need to take care of children or his wife during the week.
Xavier’s grandparents are primarily responsible for the children’s care. The grandparents also help to take care of Xavier’s cousins. Even though it was somewhat obvious to me which aspects of care the grandparents took on to compensate for the emigration of Xavier’s mother, the grandmother had trouble explaining exactly which items she did for Xavier, Marta, and Angel that she did not do for her other grandchildren. She was not Xavier’s mother—she was his grandmother. Xavier’s mother is still his mother. The grandmother did not highlight the monetary contributions or other characteristics in order to justify this continued connection between Xavier’s mother and the children. The role was self-fulfilling, regardless of the behaviors. The kin connections rather than behaviors were significant for determining the role. Her remittances did not make her the mother, and being away did not make her not the mother. These actions were not part of the consideration for deciding her role. All family members contributed monetarily. Xavier’s father does from his bus route. The aunts and uncles do too, but to a much more limited extent. The grandparents contribute money from the store they run as well. There was no differentiation between extended and nuclear family. All the children received care from their grandparents and their aunts and uncles. While Xavier’s cousins received economic care from his mother, he received care from their mother also. Often, the laundry for all the children was combined, and all the younger girls’ hair would be combed and braided at once. In a chain, the girls would comb, pick lice, and braid the hair of all the other girls. The older children did not cook 244 for or bathe the younger ones. They would bathe together and assist in the shampoo rinsing. This was not the same as being responsible for bathing someone—it was similar to pointing out to someone that he had his shoes untied, zipper down, or mustard on his cheek. It was assistance with an oversight amongst peers, not a care behavior.
Caring for additional children did not burden the grandparents. The excess laundry did not burden the aunts—the two aunts did the laundry together and did not seem rushed or busy. They lackadaisically dunked the clothes into buckets of soapy water with no regard for color or size separation. I realized from my attempts that the pace was necessary to prevent from drenching oneself or dropping items back into the dirt. The grandmother cooked the food for all the children for breakfast and lunch, and occasionally for dinner as well. All the children ate their meals in the store in a jovial mood. Their parents would filter in and grab a bowl, or eat while out at work. Neither
Xavier nor his sister took care of the younger children at home. They would all walk to school together. There was no change in anyone’s role due to Xavier’s mother’s emigration. The women washed the clothes. Men worked. The older generation prepared food. The younger kept themselves busy in social activities with each other.
There is no attention to the mother’s emigration as determining their activities.
When directly asked, the grandparents acknowledge that they can afford school uniforms and books for the children now much easier than before because of the remittances.
However, it was mentioned as if one member of the family had a better paying job.
Xavier’s mother had attained economic security and job stability. The family did not need to work as hard since they had remittances. The children were able to have the opportunity to do well in school. 245
Xavier wakes up when the roosters crow—literally. All three children sleep in the same king size bed. The clothes are thrown over a rough wood branch that is hung from the ceiling. There is no organization to the clothes—school clothes are not on one side, nor are the children’s clothes separated into individual sections. As Xavier pulls down his uniform from the branch, he knocks his sister’s skirt and his brother’s shirt onto the ground. Marta protests this act to Xavier as she grabs her skirt off the floor and throws her little brother’s shirt at him, who was still in bed. Xavier and Marta pull on their clothes and younger Angel tries to catch up. The older two use the outhouse while Angel finished getting dressed. Xavier kicks the other clothes that have fallen onto the ground into the corner with the previous days’ dirty clothes. The youngest stops at the outhouse and the older two wait. Then the three children head outside through the family’s cornfield and a block to the family store.
When they arrive at the store, their grandmother gives them their breakfast of porridge and coffee mixed with soda. They take their bowls and spoons out back where two of their cousins are already sitting. The other three cousins are not there yet. Soon, the father of the missing three comes in, grabs a roll and a cup of coffee. He announces that the remaining children are on their way. Their mother is mad at them because the older male cousin pushed the youngest. Shortly afterwards, the middle one comes in and goes out back to eat with a self-satisfied grin. She was the good child today. The other two cousins arrive shortly afterwards dragging their feet and kicking dirt. The children have a considerable amount of time to talk, make faces, and play until it is time to leave for school. When the oldest cousin uses some money he has saved to buy a treat from the store, the younger children insist that they should get one as well. When they receive 246 a treat, the oldest is not upset. He has confirmed himself as more manly and grown up than the other children. This makes his mother’s reprimand for his behavior seem inappropriate in a way. He is a man and should be treated as an adult. Xavier neither asked for a treat nor refused. He knows that he is on the borderline between child and adult expectations. He60 said he does not ask because it is not worth the effort. His grandmother treats them all the same, so the younger ones can ask and he will receive.
All the children left for school together. Slowly, more children from other homes joined Xavier’s family on the way to school. The children did not walk quickly. The boys would stop to taunt an occasional tied up pig or throw rocks down the hill. The girls walked together in a group clutching their books. The groups became somewhat age- graded because the children tended to pay attention to others of the same age and they had more to talk about amongst themselves from classes. By the time they reached the school, over twenty children were in their group. When they arrived, the children ran about in the schoolyard for a bit until the bell rang for the school day to begin. It did not ring at an exact time, but once enough teachers had arrived to manage the classrooms.
The children filed into their classrooms. Xavier’s class had fifty-eight students.61
It only had two empty seats—I am not sure if other children who could no longer attend school originally occupied the two seats that remained empty for the year. While Xavier’s class was a few students larger than other classes, most classes were filled to capacity.
There was a large age range in Xavier’s class—children were his age up to even four years
60 Many conversations about his decisions and behavior took place after the actual event. This is partially because he was usually up to something so we couldn’t talk about it when adults were around and also because when other children were around, he didn’t want them to tease him about me being his girlfriend. 61 I sat in on this class because of its size and age range. When other children complained about me not visiting their class, some children said that I went to fourth grade because that was the level of my Spanish. 247 older if they started school late, had sporadic attendance, or failed a grade. The children, including Xavier, were quite loud. Unable to manage so many students in activities, the teacher said he resorted to written exercises. Eventually all students would finish the written work and the ones who finished early could play amongst themselves.
The first lesson of the day addressed conjunctions and sets in arithmetic. They began by learning empty, finite, and infinite sets. The children copied down the examples from the board and listened as the teacher explained. After this “lecture” on math sets, the children began an exercise they copied from the board. The children used red pens in order to write down headings, such as “Solve” and “Operations” and to do their work in blue. On this day, the children answered a question regarding how many colored pencils there were in a number of boxes: the children had to solve for the total number and the number of each color. Then, they did a second example on pens. Some took longer writing down the problem in the perfect script and colors than to do the math.
The teacher explained to me that he disliked the children spending so much time copying down the questions. He told me about the photocopiers and textbooks teachers use in the city. There was no money for photocopies and these textbooks are not appropriate for the village. The children have trouble doing problems that relate to places and items they have never seen. This is in accord with Piaget’s steps in cognitive development (1968)—it is more advanced to perform operations on abstract items than those one has physically experienced. This teacher was unique. He was from outside the village and continued working there even though he had served his mandatory time in a village school. He felt he was making a sacrifice by serving an underserved community with exuberance. It was true that usually beginning teachers served their mandatory time 248 in small villages and then moved on to city schools. He said educated teachers refused to live in the villages and that they did not like the commute. However, he continued here because he felt bad that these children always have inexperienced teachers and suffer from teacher strikes in the public schools. His devotion, experience, and desire to address their unique needs may be why he had a larger class than the other teachers— perhaps he had less attrition or the director originally assigned him more students.
Xavier behaved the same as the other children. He finished his work a little earlier than others and talked with his seatmates. In fact, the teacher was perplexed as to why I had focused on Xavier. He asked if I knew his mother in New York. Had I met his father on the bus in from the city? Did I get off the bus at the family store and meet them that way? When I said that I studied him because his mother was an émigré, the teacher said he knew. He re-asked me if I knew her in New York. He said that there were other children who were émigrés’ children, but it took him a few minutes to think of them. He told me émigrés’ children were not any smarter even though they did have better grades than other students. (Their academic performance was the reason he saw for studying them.) However, it was no secret why they did better. These children performed better because they could come to school more frequently and had notebooks.
He did not see the differential success of émigrés’ children as due to emigration or innate ability. It was an economic difference. He said they still were not as smart as the children in the city. The children in the city could be completely devoted to studying. The difference between the children was the amount of time they could spend studying.
The next lesson related to natural sciences. The children paid attention to the parts of the plants with much more attention in lecture than they did to the kinds of 249 number sets they learned about earlier. However, they talked amongst themselves as they wrote down the functions of the stem, stalk, leaves, flowers, and fruit. Some conversation began around the topic—their favorite fruit or the teas their grandmother makes from the stalks. Conversation evolved to other topics. The teacher walked around and asked the students from close range about the topics, or critiqued their pen choices.
After the science lesson, the children went outside to practice their marching.
While the day was packed with back to back learning (much more learning occurred in the village’s half day of school then in the city’s full day at a private school), preparation for upcoming festivities took up a considerable amount of time. This was not a seasonal fact—the village’s, province’s, and country’s independence day and religious holidays were fairly equally distributed throughout the year. Generally there was some kind of performance to be prepared for, whether a pageant or parade.
The children from the third through sixth grade classes came out to practice marching. Xavier ran to grab a flag and his sister was given one as well. The flag-bearers headed the parade. Xavier’s cousin held one side of the banner for his grade. His grade was the first classroom to march. One teacher admitted to me that they give the flags and banners to the children who have the best uniforms and attendance records—the fact that they were children of émigrés was not the cause. The teachers could be assured that the children would be present at the parade, would have practiced enough, and would be dressed appropriately. The children practiced marching, turning, and stopping to military precision. The pent up energy eventually came out and the children who did not have responsibilities tried to break off to play. The younger children peered out the windows at the marching children. Sensing the tension, the teachers called recess. 250
Xavier was the center of attention for having a soccer ball. He apparently had snuck the ball to school. He refused to tell me how at first. He alluded to the day before when I would not tell him the answer to his homework assignment because, otherwise, I said, how would he learn. He said writing in the notebooks was my homework and smiled big. I caught him a few days later leaving it outside hidden in a bush on the way to the store for breakfast and then picking it up on the way to school.62 The other boys crowded around him and at first all seemed to be on the same team. Soon, they formed two separate teams and began discouraging others from joining in. The teams related to the different grades and their establishment as teams from previous recesses.
Seven-year-old Fausto was discouraged from playing—primarily because he was a few years younger than the others. He complained to me. Since we had not been formally introduced, he might have thought I might take on the role of an authority and allow him to play or maybe he thought that since I was from outside the village I had access to numerous soccer balls. He said he had a ball at home. This seemed to equate him with the ball owner who was central to the activity. He had received the world-cup themed ball from his father, an émigré in New York. Fausto was not allowed to bring it to school. I asked if he would allow everyone to play—I wanted to see if his mistreatment would be generalized as a rule of how to treat others. Fausto was very pragmatic. He said not everyone can play. There would be too many people. You only want to play with people who play well. (This was the reason why he was not allowed.
The other children had assumed he was too young to be at their level.) He seemed to
62 I felt an odd amount of pride at accomplishing my homework. Xavier said the same, “See, you can do it” that I had told him a week before when he finished his homework, and, “It’s easier to just be told, isn’t it?” 251 equate owning a ball with the ability to play. It also seemed that owning a ball meant that you were related to an émigré. Soccer balls were not sold in village stores but were sold in toy stores and five-and-dimes in Gualaceo. It is notable that the items émigrés purchase are not luxury items that can’t be found in Ecuador. They do not send back
Gameboys and Bratz dolls to Cañaridel. In fact, remittances are often spent on just a higher quantity of normal items. The soccer ball meant that daily needs were met because money could be spent on luxury items found outside the village. Here, one’s daily needs being met normally meant that someone in your family was an émigré.
Soon a couple of the female teachers brought the “colada” (a lukewarm juice made from quinoa) out in a bucket. The children lined up to have a ladle poured into a plastic cup. The ladling of the colada commenced a more tranquil period of recess. The children threw their plastic cups into a bucket filled with soapy water. Some trickled inside into the classroom and played quietly. Afterwards, the rowdier boys, including
Xavier, came into the classroom. They pushed and kicked each other in a playful manner. When the teacher came in, the students sat down without verbal instruction.
The class was given a photocopy handout with a story and some questions. The teacher told me the story not only helped reading comprehension, but also related to science skills. Here is an excerpt from the story:
There was once a large rock that lived surrounded by a bunch of smaller rocks. The big rock said that the smaller rocks were his dearest children. One day some men arrived and they examined the [rocks]… “These rocks have a lot of iron,” they said… They take the small rocks… The big rock was left very lonely. He felt that they had taken his children. Soon after some wise men came and examined the big rock. “It’s a magnet,” they said… “It always looks for things made of iron…” But what the wise man never could have suspected was that the rock went looking for his dearest little children. 252
The children read this story about the rocks being separated. There were some vocabulary questions and then questions regarding magnets. There were no questions regarding parental separation or searching for one’s children. After school I discussed this story with Xavier. When I asked Xavier about the story, he told me all about magnets. Since they did not have refrigerator magnets or other common magnets to play with that other children might have, magnets sounded like wondrous and miraculous items. I asked about the rock’s feelings. He regurgitated part of a question he had to copy into his notebook: Generally in stories, the inanimate objects feel and act like persons. It’s called personification. He said that a rock does not really feel anything.
They’re just rocks. Think of all the ones people throw at dogs and down hills. If rocks actually felt, that would be bad.63 I pushed further—as I found myself often doing to get children to address parental separation in Cañaridel. I asked if the rock reminded him of anyone. Xavier told me it was big and round and then laughed about the female neighbor who was rather corpulent. Finally, I asked directly, “The separation between parent and child: Does that make you think of anyone in your family?” I hoped he would comment on his mother missing him and how difficult it was to be apart. He responded, “Oh!
That’s what you mean. Yes, it’s kind of like my grandmother. Her child has gone away and there is always this pull and connection between them.” When I asked, he said that he has a similar pull to his mother but that it was different. She knows where Xavier is.
His mother might come back and care for his grandmother soon because his grandmother’s eyesight is going. If not, his aunt will care for his grandmother. I asked
63 I mentioned that the dogs can feel when they are pelted with rocks, but he said that you should only throw rocks if the dog would attack you. Unfortunately, all dogs were believed as on the verge of attacking. 253 again if it was the same between him and his mother (i.e. she should be caring for him).
Xavier replied no. His mother’s eyesight is still good. It will be a while until he is supposed to care for her. The blatant question, “Yes, but shouldn’t your mom care for you?” was met with confusion. He replied that she does. I decided to be more specific: shouldn’t she feed and cook for you? He said she buys the food and the food would be cold if she cooked it there by the time it got to him. He laughed and pointed out that his grandmother quite frequently cooked for me as well. I did not think my mom should send soup did I? It would be quite far to ship soup, and the soup probably would not be very good based on the lack of culinary skills I seemed to have learned in my upbringing.
It was almost the end of the day of school after the reading lesson on magnets.
The children copied down a homework assignment from the board. They were supposed to copy a chapter from their history book over into their notebook, using the appropriate colored pens for headings and text. Once the children began to be loud again because many had finished copying down the homework, the teacher started lecturing. He discussed the fact that the children were getting older. It was time they started to care for their own hygiene better. The teacher described how the body sweats from the underarm and that it is important to prevent bad odors from this. In addition to regular bathing
(most bathed once on the weekend), the children needed to use lemon as a deodorant.
They should use just half a lemon (the common lemons were smaller than plums), and squeeze some under each arm. He told the children to tell their parents that they needed lemons. The children were to use the deodorant, but the parents should provide lemons.
I later asked Xavier about the deodorant lesson. He said he did not think the teacher should talk about things like that when both boys and girls are there. Besides, 254 most people know to do something, and those who do not have proper hygiene are not going to start because the teacher said so. The teacher just wanted them to be quiet. I asked Xavier what he would do. He said that the lesson did not apply to him. He had clean uniforms because he had more than one—some children wore the same uniform five days a week. Also, he has a roll-on deodorant that his father brought him from the city. Since his mother’s remittances covered Xavier’s daily needs, his father bought luxury items for the children. They would have more than just the school shoes.
Although such items did not set them apart from others, their life seemed calmer.
Xavier’s sister, Marta, also had access to certain hygiene items that other children did not have. She began taking little shampoo packets from the store and washing her hair more regularly than normal. Since the girls wear their hair in braids, they do not need to wash it as frequently. Some girls wash their hair just once a week. She began my schedule of washing my hair every other day. (The cold water shower over the outhouse hole was not appealing enough for daily showers.) Marta took her hair out of the braids on the way home from school one day and flipped her hair around. It looked like she was pretending to be in a slow-motion shampoo commercial. The other girls would help her re-braid her hair before arriving home. Some other children started to copy her, but could not get their parents to consent to the extra expense in frequent shampooing.
Children whose parents had extra income— émigrés and city workers—could convince their parents to give them the extra packets of shampoo, if the parents were not worried about the children getting sick from the cold water. These small items—shampoo and deodorant—did not set children apart drastically and outwardly. In fact, girls did not wear their hair down, even if they did have the extra shampoo, because then they would 255 be different. But, the emphasis the children put on their soccer balls and other daily items that they could get did set them apart in a way. Their life was not different. It was the same life—same school, needs, meals—just better. They did not have items from abroad for the most part, but more home items.
The distance of the village to the main city led the parents to be less likely to send packages from abroad than other émigrés—someone would have to transport the package from the airport to a bus company to a different bus to get to the village. It is likely to be lost, opened, or broken in the different portions of the trip. For this reason, the parents send money. All is sure to arrive when Western Union passes the money on, for an exorbitant fee. People lack trust in banks because of the corruption that led to the closure of banks and freezing of accounts. The parents do not always send the same amount and there are not set bills to be paid. People own their own homes so they do not pay the rent or mortgages. Electricity is frequently taken off of a main line and not paid for. If it is paid for, the amounts are very low to encourage people to continue the legal way of payment. Few people have home phones. The children go to public schools. For this reason, money from remittances is not earmarked or spent before it arrives. The receivers of remittances have much more leeway regarding how to spend the amounts here. Therefore, the children tend to have more of the same, rather than a few of something different. They receive the same care—just more of it.
On the walk home from school, the group is even larger and slower than the walk to school. Boys kick rocks on route, throwing dirt up in the air and the girls slow down even more to avoid the boys’ dirt. The children slowly leave from the groups to head down rocky paths or turn to a side street to head home. Only about a dozen remain 256 when we reach Xavier’s family store. Most head on to their houses further up the path to his house, and a few wandered even further along the road out of town. Xavier, Angel, and his cousins stay outside while Marta entered the store to announce their arrival. The grandmother sends the children home to change because lunch is not ready.
The older children did not seem to watch out for the younger ones, but there was not much danger. There was no traffic. No one could get lost with almost fifty children on one route home. No one would harm the children—everyone knew everyone else.
On one occasion there was a somewhat ferocious pig tied along the main route and an older child shooed the younger ones away. Another day an older child threw a rock at a dog that was near their path—this can be interpreted as for his own amusement or to protect the younger ones who were nearby. There were no instances that clearly demonstrated older children taking great care to watch out for younger children, but there were few instances when adults did so either. Adults gave children directions for appropriate behavior on occasion, but not physical care or strict discipline.
The children headed back to the house to change out of their uniforms. Marta objected when Angel wanted to put on something from the floor. Angel retorted that it wasn’t dirty—Xavier dropped it there in the morning. Angel had never worn it. Marta told him, if it’s on the floor it means it’s dirty whether he had worn it or not. Xavier walked back to the store once he was dressed and Marta waited for Angel. They headed out back to eat again and their cousins were there already. A six-year-old male cousin held the chicken foot up from his soup and nibbled at it happily—he seemed to want to show off but did not realize that all the other children would each have a chicken foot and portion of an ear of corn as well in their bowl. The children nibbled at the skin to 257 the chicken feet, a treat to eat and play with. When the grandmother came out to bring the older children a second course, she chided the younger ones who were playing with their chicken feet. She threatened to feed the feet to the mean pig up the road. The older children ate their second course of rice and beans with a spoon. No one used forks or knives for dining. The spoons are bent and flattened on the sides from cutting meat.
When done eating, the children stacked their dishes in a large tub where their aunt would later wash them after she ate lunch. No one checked to see how much the children had eaten. The grandmother stayed in the store while the children ate. She did not ask them about their homework or how their day went. The children discussed such items amongst themselves. When the aunt arrived to wash the dishes, she asked her children if they ate well for their grandmother. Since the children were running about in the dirt outback (which makes washing dishes difficult), the aunt told Xavier, Angel, and
Marta to go to town to wait for their mother’s call and to take their older cousins along.
When Xavier and his cousins arrived in town, a handful of boys were playing soccer. Xavier and his older cousin joined the game with no problem—no one objected, because the two did not mess up the teams’ balance and because Xavier had his own ball so he could refuse to allow them to play in the future. The others sat on the steps to a local store and ate popsicles. This store had a phone—unlike their store—so their mother called here three afternoons a week. The phone company did not charge the store owner for receiving a call. However, since it tied up her phone line preventing her from renting it out to other customers, the arrangement did entail an expense to her.
Many émigrés’ children received calls at her store—there was an unspoken schedule and when children were sitting on the steps, people tended to wait to rent the phone or went 258 to the local phone company that had booths. It costs slightly more per minute at the phone company, but then they could call immediately and not inconvenience those calling from abroad. The store owner would sometimes wander to the local stores of the children of émigrés if she had run out of something for personal use or the children would bring items to her. On this day, Marta brought some avocadoes. The bushel her father brought was ripe and they could not possibly eat them all (or sell them all). The popsicles were worth less than the avocadoes by far, but the avocadoes compensated for the phone call as well. The exchanges were not as direct as this one sounds, but no one ever seemed to reclaim the generalized exchanges. If the store owner felt cheated, she could go to the individual’s store and ask for something, expecting not to pay.
Marta was called in when the phone rang for them. Angel went over to try to tell
Xavier, but waited until the ball had gone out of play. Then Xavier ran to the call. No one objected that the teams were uneven when Xavier ran off—he had to go so it would be unfair to expect his cousin to stop playing. Marta snitched to her mother that Angel tried to put on dirty clothes, that Xavier brought his soccer ball to school, and she was behaving and eating. She then passed the phone to Xavier who tried to claim that the ball was allowed at school—it did not seem to work and he quietly said he would leave it at home. While parents do not normally discipline their children in public, the store owner seemed to be a fixture rather than a person observing. The conversation was very short with each child—possibly because of its public venue, the expense it implied for the caller and the store owner, or maybe because the topics had become routine. When the call was over, Xavier attempted to join back in the game, but when he saw his sister was heading home, he and his cousin took a few more shots and ran to catch up. 259
Once home, they discovered that their father had left a Kung Fu video from
Gualaceo at the store when the bus passed in the afternoon. The movies were a dollar, and even though some of the children could not read the subtitles, they lined the bench of the store and watched. The grandmother sent the cousins back to their house—the store was too small to have them all inside. This was why they ate outside, but with the movie, none wanted to go outside so she told the cousins they would eat at their home.
When the cousins left, Xavier and his siblings ate dinner in front of the movie.
Their grandmother realized they were dawdling to watch the movie and collected their plates. A few other boys gathered to watch the movie when they were supposed to be buying a few items for their parents. Xavier, Angel, and the other boys started to pretend to fight. They were sent out front to play. A few of the other boys rushed the items home they were supposed to buy, some probably ate quickly, and ran back with more children. The news of a new movie brought a few of the fathers back to the store as well.
When the bus pulled up, the children continued fighting. Xavier’s father asked if they had seen the movie. The boys nodded exuberantly and showed a few Kung Fu moves off. The father went into the store to snack on some bread and soup as people unloaded from the bus. Some milled about at the store or headed off to their final destination. Xavier and his siblings headed into the store to see their father. The father pulled some pencils out of his pocket. He had bought the pencils from a vendor on the bus and asked if they had homework. They all said no—only Xavier actually had homework. Younger children did not get homework and the older children only got homework occasionally. When I questioned him about what I had considered lying, he said that he did not really have homework. The teacher would not check to see that he 260 copied over the history chapter until the next time they did history, which was after the weekend (it was Thursday). Their father joked that if they have no homework, he’d take the pencils back. He reached out to pretend to take the pencils back—it was a rather unusual kidding behavior for what is often the quiet-manner of the community men. He often seemed more like a brother to his children than a father since he did not have to be concerned with the minutiae of their daily care or the stress of their economic care.
The play fighting poured outside and the children began imitating the Kung Fu movie fighting again when their father talked with a couple of men who had wandered over earlier to see the movie. The men reached at the volleyball net Xavier’s father had set up in front of the store inspecting some holes—his store was a frequent gathering place since it was a bus stop, had a VCR (which kind of made it the town cinema), and the volleyball court. Some women had begun to mill about as well to see when the bus would return to the city. Inspecting the net was generally a way of spurring a game.
Xavier’s father got the ball from inside and played a quick game of Ecua-volé with the other men—a version of volleyball where there are three people on each team. One needs to bump the ball, one volley, and the third spike on each side of the net. U.S. standards would consider the volley carrying, but the emphasis in this version of volleyball was more on teamwork between the three rather than zone playing. The spike was never surprising after the two set up hits and therefore the sport seemed less aggressive as well. Ecuador never does well in volleyball at the Olympics.
The children were called in during one of the matches for a snack. The youngest had asked for bread and all the cousins had returned to see what was happening at the store. They ate out front watching volleyball rather than out back. The men kept track 261 of the points and serves with lines in the sand and a rock and the children talked about the score amongst each other. When it got dark, the grandmother sent them to the house because the mosquitoes would be out soon. The cousins went home too. The house was not insulated from mosquitoes and they did not use nets, yet she considered it a better place for them to be. The children returned home, walking slowly.
Usually the grandfather also went home with them, but he stayed. The spectators meant they could sell beer and soda. The grandmother chatted with the women waiting for the bus to leave and the grandfather chatted with the men watching the game. When the set was done, even though some of the men continued playing, Xavier’s father got on the bus and drove some of the volleyball spectators and players to the village center and then back to Gualaceo. Many got off along the way in smaller villages on route.
The children had not said goodbye to their father before he left. They would see him the next day. They did not say goodnight to the grandparents. They would see them the next day as well. Even saying goodbye to their mother was not an event. The current state of connections was not a series of transitions between the care of one adult to another. All played a part and would continue to do so in the future. When asked when their mother would return, the children shrugged. They had no idea. The grandparents said she would stay until the children were older and did not need as much money for their care. The father said he did not know how long she would be gone. Perhaps until the economy changes. Children were not told that their care would change at some point. The emigration of their mother was their life situation—not a temporary situation.
The particular cultural values involved in the concept of the child (as described in
Chapter 5) lead children to form different ideas of appropriate adult behaviors. In the 262 discussion of the children of migrants, Suárez-Orozco and Suárez-Orozco (2001: 67) indicates that children may be able to cope with otherwise troublesome separations if the cultural meanings accept, support, or normalize the fact of parental separation. The reason why Xavier could see his mother’s emigration as normal is due to the particular set of cultural values in Cañaridel. He did not realize her emigration as separation.
According to Levy (2005: 455), “the conditions of life and learning… do not generate this sort of critical consciousness” in all societies. There are “ways of controlling such possible awarenesses” and “intrapsychic controls against the fully conscious eruption of such thoughts.” Similarly, in Cañaridel, redundant controls and overwhelming acceptance, even admiration, of parental emigration prevents the realization that one is missing care that they should receive. The reason I separate acceptance and admiration is because there was not a continuum of values but somewhat of a division: some accepted and some admired parental emigration. The previous egalitarian cultural logic meant that the émigrés’ children did not admire their parents’ sacrifice of emigration as unique—it was parental devotion. To claim your parents were more devoted would be bragging and improper. However, other children did admire what the children of émigrés had.
Situated in a valley of the Andes Mountains, Cañaridel’s population of less than eight hundred people experienced such substantial male emigration that the village population consisted of seven women to every one man. Some women, such as Xavier’s mother, did emigrate as well. Parental emigration did not indicate abnormality or difference. Grandmothers frequently cared for their grandchildren and fathers were normally absent. The traditional economy of small-scale farming and market sales in nearby villages had become nearly obsolete. The extended families continued to live 263 together on communal plots as a remnant of the previous farming traditions. While an artisan guild of knitting sweaters continued to be a primary economic pursuit for the women, many relied on remittances from abroad. Emigration to the U.S. took strong hold in this village after the fall of the Panama Hat industry (as described in Chapter 4).
Male migration has been stable over the years with increasing female migration, although smaller in comparison. For this region of the southern Andes, Herrera and Martinez
(2002) found that only 27% of homes declared not receiving remittances. The preponderance of individuals receiving remittances was a powerful force for the process of normalizing and accepting emigration in public discourse. Here, I discuss why emigration continued to be accepted, even long after the fall of the Panama Hat industry forty years earlier, and how this acceptance of parental emigration affected the concept of the child and thereby children’s ability to adjust to parental emigration.
El Sueño Americano literally means the American dream. This dream is not just part of imagination, but a way of life. I argue that the beliefs constituting El Sueño
Americano affect diverse and far-reaching aspects of individuals’ lives in this village.
Because of its prominence in daily life, people see the discourse as a given, not debatable.
Even if not internalized at a higher level of conviction, individuals assent that the perspective is true. El Sueño Americano not only supplies guidelines for common behaviors, but, as formidable reality, it also supplies reasons for displeasure. Following
Bourdieu, rejecting such set, agreed-upon beliefs, or doxa, is difficult because others will reinforce the doxic space with sanctions. Rejecting set beliefs is difficult from a psychoanalytic perspective as well. It may indicate a rejection of what is considered reality, which can lead to deviance or isolation. This means that even when a widely 264 accepted cultural belief leads to psychic conflict, one cannot easily dismiss this belief without a different type of psychic conflict. This possibility of reproach leads individuals to accept the values normalizing emigration, even when not émigrés themselves.
The discourse on El Sueño Americano tells people that, even though Ecuador is a beautiful country with great resources, one should migrate to the U.S. because
Ecuadorian politicians and bankers are corrupt thieves that leave no opportunities for the people. Based on field research throughout the coast and sierra, most people thought that migration was the best option for their families’ future in 1999. Ecuadorian migration expert Herrera found “idealistic visions” [visions idílicas] regarding the migrants as well (2004: 216). They did not see improving Ecuador as an option. People in
Cañaridel countered my attempts to highlight the less than perfect characteristics of the
United States with, “You do not understand the situation here” [No entiendes la situación acá]. They received my statements regarding the difficulties in the U.S. as an insult to their intelligence. People in Cañaridel were sure that they had all the information regarding their options. They had made their decision: Helping their families economically through migration to the U.S. is worth risking their lives.
El Sueño Americano is not only a matter of abstract dreams; it determines concrete actions in lived lives. The villagers traveled to the larger cities of Guayaquil or Quito to begin their emigration journey legally, or went to the northern coast to leave on boats illegally. Sometimes legal and illegal migration becomes blurred when individuals received legal, valid visas based on falsified documents and borrowed money to alter bank account balances. Because of the abruptness of illegal departures, I do not have significant information regarding these journeys. Illegal emigration is less valued because of the risk 265 of being caught and its indication that one cannot meet the legal visa requirements. Legal emigration requires a certain amount of education and economic assets. Sometimes villagers appropriate the consulates’ decisions on someone’s worthiness for a visa based on what they can contribute to American society as a valid and justified indication of their worth as a person. Illegal emigration is also looked down upon because failure can further exacerbate a family’s precarious economic situation by depleting existing resources. For this reason, people were persistent in their attempts for legal emigration.
Even during a bomb threat, almost a thousand people waited in line at the U.S.
Embassy for a number to wait in another line only to receive paperwork to fill out and wait in another line. People from Cañaridel began their journey to the consulates long before knowledge of a bomb threat that day could be known. Knowledge of such threats upon arrival did not change plans for attempting to emigrate.
Such threats do not change the plans of those who provide services for persistent line-waiters either. The line-waiters still want to rent plastic chairs for the line and buy beverages to combat the sun’s rays. For blocks around the embassy, numerous people work making copies on street corners, filling out forms with typewriters on makeshift tables, and taking the non-glossy, ¾-frontal, black-and-white photos for visas. The photographers do not take other photos in these small studios. They know to have the applicant remove all earrings. Typists have the return spacing on set to the visa forms.
They do not need to read the directions. The copiers are full of the half-sheets for copying credentials. One need not specify two-sided to meet the visa requirements—the person working the photocopier knows this. No behavior beyond striving for El Sueño
Americano takes place here. The discourse determines a body of daily activity. 266
Whereas not every Ecuadorian stood in line at the embassy, this does not mean that people did not attempt to accumulate the money and qualifications to fulfill El Sueño
Americano. The way a visa lottery influenced the general public at this time demonstrates the widespread effect of the discourse. In a visa lottery, people only send their name and demographics rather than property titles, employment information, and bank account statements that a U.S. visa usually requires. Those who had not made any previous attempts to emigrate (perhaps because they knew of their inability to meet legal requirements) might leave Cañaridel or send a proxy during a lottery. When I observed a visa lottery in 1999 before the institution of online submission, people lined up for blocks outside of every post office to send in their lottery forms. The post office limited the number of stamps one person could purchase so that they would not be re-sold at higher prices. Envelope scalpers stood on street corners. Entrepreneurs accosted passersby to wait in line for them for a small fee. They told me their logic—everyone wants a visa but may not have time to wait in line. When the “line-waiters” reach the front, they buy more stamps than they have pre-sold and sell the remaining ones at a hefty mark-up.
Not only did line-waiters find entrepreneurial positions in visa lotteries and at the embassy, but also at government offices. For this reason, in the first half of 1999, there was a six-month waiting list for an Ecuadorian passport. Scalpers had bought the numbers to corresponding passport booklets three months in advance (which purposely became a limited commodity when the government noted a drastic increase in passport submission and emigration). People who have never left the country and have no concrete plans to do so have a passport because “You never know.” Since getting a passport or exit permit requires a voting stub, voter turnout is substantial in Cañaridel, 267 even though it requires a distant commute for some. With unstable politics, I was told, you have to get your voting stub whenever you can because “who knows when the next
[election] will be” [No se puede saber cuando será la próxima]. People feel that it is important to prepare in case “by chance” their opportunity to emigrate appears.
In addition to preparing for any opportunity to fulfill El Sueño Americano, they did not overlook opportunities that presented themselves. In Cañaridel, a number of people asked me to marry them and take them with me. People offered to be my maid or cook
(which may have been spurred on by the fact that I believed that every grain of rice was instant rice and could not hand wash my clothes without becoming drenched). I do not believe that the general public asks these questions to every tourist who passes through, but when someone believed that there is a viable chance, he or she did not hesitate.
While people indicated that a chance to migrate to the U.S. is the full achievement of El Sueño Americano following its establishment as a primary location four decades earlier, they see other locations for migration as acceptable. Any chance to migrate to a
Westernized country partially completes El Sueño Americano because it comes from the desire to have all the opportunities that the U.S. offers. They saw Italy and Spain as countries that are easier to migrate to,64 but have some similar economic opportunities as the U.S. However, people are not indifferent about these locations. When people migrate to Spain and Italy, it is not because they chose those countries, but rather because it is too hard to migrate north. El Sueño Americano does indicate a destination—but it can be fulfilled by striving for an American life in another country. However, as more people
64 This portion of my research was conducted prior to the institutionalization of the Schengen Accords in 2003, which required Ecuadorians to apply for a visa for many countries of the European Union. Still, the visa requirements and processing time for the EU are considered easier than those for the US. 268 return, Italy and Spain are losing their idealistic appeal. Ecuadorians see Italy as a place with few options other than prostitution and healthcare of older men (which are often synonymous). As discussed in Chapter 4, Ecuadorians see Spain as a place with excessive prejudice “because we can work and speak the same” [porque podemos trabajar y hablar lo mismo]. Instances of Spanish citizens beating Ecuadorian migrant workers frequently appear in the news. People return from Spain with stories of intense prejudice. Yet, nothing but wired money, body bags from illegal journeys, and rare deportations seem to return from the U.S. so people still believe that opportunity paves the streets. They used to believe gold paved the streets before dollarization informed them that even the dollar has its limits (Rae-Espinoza 2002). Even though “America” or the U.S. is often seen as the completion of El Sueño Americano, a few said that the Americano in El Sueño Americano referred to them—South Americans are Americans. The dream of these particular
Americans was migration to a more advanced country. The meanings overlapped even if the phrase referred to the origin of the individual rather than the destination.
Although this idealistic view of emigration had begun to tarnish in other areas, this region maintained their strong beliefs regarding the benefits of migration. The motivations for the shift in discourse in Guayaquil, to be discussed in Chapter 8, did not affect Cañaridel as drastically. The natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions in the center of the Andes and El Niño on the coastline did not directly impact them. The topographical difficulty in reaching Peru from their location prevented the flight of cheap wares to Peru at marked-up prices after the resolution of the war and prevented the influx of Peruvian migrants as cheap labor a few years later. While these occurrences did influence the national economy, the economic crisis in 1999 did not begin or alter 269 migration in this area. The prices of luxuries in Cañaridel were already inflated because of the preponderance of remittances and distance from primary ports of importation. The close connection to areas of production for necessary items like clothes and food prevented the rampant inflation that hit other areas. This geographical and economic insulation from negative influences on their location prevented changes in the views on migration that occurred in Guayaquil (cf. Chapter 8).
I have discussed how El Sueño Americano shapes the psyche of the people who want to emigrate. Central to the following discussion is how the discourse shapes the people who are left behind in Cañaridel. Emigration has shaped discourse regarding family structure, economic pursuits, and other aspects of quotidian life. When people found out about my impending marriage, women informed me that the first marriage is an important decision because it determines the future. Surprised at the continual specification of “first,” I for elaboration. Miriam told me that a woman looks to have a first child with someone who is likely to marry them and emigrate. Then, the first husband will send enough money for her, the child, and, with good accounting, her future children. Once they have a husband who has emigrated, they can be with whomever they want or have children out of wedlock without fear of lacking economic support. Miriam discussed a husband who emigrates as a security blanket that allows entrance into womanhood and life out of one’s parents’ household. She discussed marrying an émigré the same as you could imagine a small town girl hoping to marry a city doctor. Marriage to a successful man was a method of advancement and security for women.
El Sueño Americano affects couples where neither person plans to emigrate as well.
I accompanied a respondent, Lucía, to the gynecologist. The gynecologist told her that 270 she had contracted a sexually transmitted disease from her husband’s affairs. Although upset at the difficulty of being sure that she, her husband, his lover, and all the lover’s lovers get the medication at the same time, the information that her husband was unfaithful did not surprise her. As Queen et al. (1961) noted, promiscuity rules vary greatly across cultures even though all have rules. In Ecuador, the rules for men vary from those for women, and the rules for chicas de la casa [literally house girls, meaning good girls] vary from those for other women.65 Lucía told me that her husband does not hit her and provides for her newborn. When I asked if that was so remarkable, she said the only other men who don’t hit are those that have emigrated. They all cheat. I do not present Lucía or Miriam’s perspective on spousal relations to demonstrate a unified system that consists of El Sueño Americano. It would misrepresentative to believe that these perspectives reflect the actual experiences of the whole population. However, this discussion is meant to show that even though people may not be in agreement about the specific results and actual occurrences surrounding emigration, it penetrates many daily experiences; it shapes how people perceive their options in everyday life and emigration is highly valued as a life choice. It may not be more highly valued than a lucrative job in a nearby city, but it is not differentiated as more deleterious to children either.
DEVOTED SACRIFICE: ACCEPTANCE OF THE “UNACCEPTABLE”
Beyond the ideology of men and women left behind, migration affects children as well. Since economic drives are a primary motivation to emigration and economic needs
65 This lack of surprise at a husband’s infidelity is repeatedly demonstrated on the television talk show Laura, the Latin American Jerry Springer. Wives are generally not surprised when their husband’s “bad girl” lover approaches the stage. Tears and appeals to the show’s host for assistance are the general reaction. However, when the significant other of the “bad girl” (who considers her a “good girl”) or the lover of the “good girl,” the wife, comes to the stage, fights ensue and chairs are thrown. 271 intensify when one has a family to support, thus, many children lose one, if not both, parents. According to Freud, the loss of a mother, as the child’s first love object (Freud
1966: 405), is a significant source of emotional distress. Mourning can result from the conscious loss of an object (Freud 1917: 245)—which could be either a father or a mother—and the world can “become poor and empty” (ibid.: 246). This kind of suffering from social relations is “perhaps more painful to us than any other” suffering from the external world or from our own body (Freud 1961: 26). Even for children who may already have suffered because of the deprivation of food or shelter, psychological suffering rooted in conflicts from disruptions in interpersonal relationships may be unbearable. This is relevant to the fact that gross maternal deprivations are important not only because of the neglect of physical needs, but moreover because of the neglect of appropriate social relations. Children’s attachments are based on the security the figure provides, and emigration in Cañaridel does not mean inability to provide security.
Early perceived rejection by one or two parents affects attachment and the ability to trust in future interpersonal relations. According to Erikson,
The infant’s first social achievement, then, is his willingness to let the mother out of sight without undue anxiety or rage, because she has become an inner certainty as well as an outer predictability… The general state of trust, furthermore, implies not only that one has learned to rely on the sameness and continuity of the outer providers, but also that one may trust oneself and the capacity of one’s own organs to cope with urges; and that one is able to consider oneself trustworthy enough so that the providers will not need to be on guard lest they be nipped. (1963: 247f)
The children who fail to acquire trust “become neurotic not from frustrations, but from the lack or loss of societal meaning in these frustrations” (ibid.: 250). Without trust, it is difficult to be a functioning member of society. If the physical loss is interpreted as 272 beneficial, then it will not be perceived as a psychological loss. Obeyesekere (1984) saw societal meaning in frustrations as a reason why people can be more resilient in the face of loss as well. The children I worked with in Cañaridel did not seem neurotic, frustrated, or lacking societal meanings. Their losses had significant positive societal meanings.
Attachment Bonds to Parents in Cañaridel
Before I address the observations that led me to conclude that children did not experience psychic distress after parental emigration in Cañaridel because of the cultural values described above, I would like to address possible alternative explanations. I do not believe the children had to adjust to parental emigration because it was not a traumatic event. This may indicate that the children did not experience trauma at the loss of the caregiver because they were not attached to their émigré parent. All social relationships are not attachments. Or, these children were more primarily attached to the individuals I have interpreted as secondary caregivers than to their parents. However, even though I do not have empirical longitudinal data for these children since infancy, I would argue that it is unlikely that they were not attached to their parents. I partially base this argument on generalizations from the experience of younger children’s upbringing to represent émigrés’ children’s likely earlier experiences and the émigrés’ children’s later behaviors as an indication of earlier experience. I believe that this generalization is justified because the children I studied did not have parents who left during the period of attachment formation, from ages six weeks to two years (Bowlby 1969). Departure at this time could interrupt the formation of attachment bonds and indicate that I should not use general familial behavior as an indication of the earlier lives of émigrés’ children.
However, according to reports, these children experienced a normal village upbringing. 273
Their parents did express an interest in emigration, but no more than any other individual that El Sueño Americano affected. As described above, the desire to emigrate was not unusual; in fact, in Cañaridel, the completion of this desire was not unusual either.
The children in Cañaridel experienced a great amount of physical contact with their parents from early on. As the women cooked, spun wool, or knitted, they kept infants strapped to their backs. When their hands were free, some women did hold the young infants on their laps, although primarily facing outward and did not speak directly to the children. Sometimes they would hold the children out to have them observe a notable event. When I brought the movie “Babe” for the children to watch on the VCR
(it was translated and less violent than the other movies, yet did not introduce new values,
I thought), the women took over the store bench. They rewound the video to watch repeatedly a scene where the farmer shears over forty sheep. To sit on the benches, the women removed the infants from their backs. This instance stuck out in my mind because I was amazed that the shearing scene (not the talking pig) was the notable part.
To me, the scene said “farm work tiring.” To them, it seemed to demonstrate the great wealth of the U.S.. Although few of the Cañaridel émigrés, especially the majority in New
York City, had agricultural jobs, it was an indication of life abroad.
More important for attachment research, I noticed how the women would direct the infants’ faces at the television to show what they were noticing. It was not a behavior similar to mothers who hold their babies up to the mirror and point out the “baby” they both see, but almost seemed as if the infants had become an extension of their own body.
They talked amongst themselves and used the infants’ faces as a pointer to notable elements. Infants become a fixture of the mother’s bodies in their daily activities. 274
Once able to wander, children were set down. The children did not have diapers.
Cañaridel women were not as hygienic with the bathroom as other Ecuadorian women.
The women would sometimes squat along private roads to urinate under their layered skirts. With the lack of specific locations for bathrooms, the children were set down rather than potty trained. Some families did not have outhouses, but used the yards.
The children came back to breastfeed when they pleased. There was no weaning and sometimes children would reach out to breasts that were not their mother’s.
Basically, young children did not experience explicit instruction but just constant physical contact earlier to learn the rhythms of life. The physical contact required to establish attachment existed and children did depend on their parents for the needs they could not meet. However, with low expectations for accomplishment, the children did not continue to rely on their parents with fear of reprimand in their exploration. Their secure base was not tempered with punishment. I do believe that they formed attachments here.
The first reason I would argue that the children of émigrés did establish attachments to their parents prior to emigration is because the children that I did observe in infancy evinced attachments to their parents. The children used their mothers as a secure base from which to explore. As the mother cooked, the children would stray further away and play about on the dirt floors with kitchen utensils or items that had been previously dropped and forgotten. Many children did keep a watchful eye on their mother as she cooked or washed clothes, but seemed to explore extensively when set down after a period of time swaddled at the mother’s hip as she knit.
The children seemed to attach to their fathers as well. While the less obvious involvement of fathers in care has led to a “deficit” model of fathers (Cole and Bruner 275
1974), father bonding does occur during the child’s period of forming attachments as well
(Lamb 1981). Hewlett (1991) described research that indicated that the highly stimulating interaction American fathers had with infants was the reason that attachment bonds do develop, even though fathers do not tend to the child’s physical needs. While in the U.S., the “normal” father is the one who does not share household responsibility, especially childcare (Hochschild 2003: xiv), the normal father in Cañaridel shares in childcare, but not other household responsibilities. In fact, one father who took part in the household chore of sweeping dust off the floor attributed the behavior to participating in childcare.
He claimed that he swept because his child had allergies. He did not sweep because he cleaned the house, but swept because he took care of his child.
According to LaRossa and LaRossa (1981), American fathers interact with babies for extrinsic rewards, typically in a behavior that Lancy and Grove (2006) call “baby parading.” In Cañaridel, fathers do interact in this “fatherly” role that contrasts with maternal care. However, these extrinsic rewards for American fathers are limited to a few public spaces. In Cañaridel, much more space is public and therefore a location of father contact, perhaps motivated by extrinsic rewards. Many families have small stores, which individuals visit (even if they have their own store) to socialize and extend networks.
Children do their homework and families dine in the stores, and the father pays attention to children when people visit. Also, fathers are not exceptionally busy. They have time to test their child’s temperament or ability with sports and do so with amusement.
This extension of the public sphere leads to not only more contact between
Cañaridel fathers and children than amongst the American cases, but also the Cañaridel fathers behaved more nurturing. Nurturing behaviors are frequently characterized as 276 what leads to attachment between mothers and children. According to Lamb et al.
(1987), American and European fathers are in physical contact with their children between 10 and 20 minutes per day. Cañaridel fathers would hold their small children if they were in the way during a store transaction or during the mothers’ chores. Also, since social activity took place close to the family, the fathers would have the children on their laps while watching television or just milling about if the child approached. Such nurturing behaviors were not seen as contrary to a fatherly role—feeding, bathing, and dressing would have been, however. Cañaridel fathers do not distance themselves from the father role towards a breadwinning role as LaRossa and LaRossa (1981) found that
American fathers did. The role of breadwinning is an important part of being a good father. For this reason, I argue that children do in fact attach to their fathers in Cañaridel.
Secondly, I would claim that it is unlikely that these children were not attached to their parents before emigration leading to a less critical experience of departure because these children seemed to continue to be attached to their parents even after emigration.
While it was neither logistically possible nor age-appropriate to view these children’s attachment behaviors in the strange situation, they did exhibit behaviors that would be considered the result of secure attachment. They did not seem any less cooperative than other children. In fact, some seemed more affectively positive and less avoidant than children who did not have émigré parents. As I describe below, parental emigration seemed to indicate a positive societal meaning that led to significant ego-resiliency.
It could also be argued that, even if the above discussion indicates that children are attached to their parents, maybe they are more principally attached to the individuals who become substitute caregivers than the parents. Ainsworth (1979) claims that even 277 when there are diffuse ties to a number of caregivers, children will form a primary attachment to one principal caregiver in early infancy that will continue throughout life.
The children I studied without parental emigration did form primary attachments to their mothers. As described above in the section on the Ecuadorian concept of the child, extended family is involved in care, but are not the primary caregivers in early childhood.
The parents provide the balance of discipline and physical care, while the extended family provides affection and siblings provide a positive example and some care. In Cañaridel, grandparents are more likely to prepare food communally for the extended family, but still do not engage in discipline. While children are primarily attached to parents, these other caregivers become increasingly important as children grow. In infancy, the primary needs are physical care and nutrition. Once in school, needs change and in the normal situation, as with parental emigration, others provide physical care and parents become concerned with the growing economic needs of the child. Children need assistance on homework and preparation for schooling (clothes, notebooks, and scheduling).
Providing homework assistance can be considered part of the sibling’s role of providing a good example. In addition, the siblings’ assistance with some minor kinds of care, such as braiding the younger child’s hair, may seem more principal as assistance needs with feeding and bathing decrease. This means the parents’ tasks focus more on economic needs than physical needs, and while others become primary caregivers for physical needs, it does not represent a change in their roles. The importance of a good education requires uniforms and materials for a public school (children in Cañaridel do not attend private schools). The decreasing needs in physical care from parents and increase in economic needs often leads parents to emigrate. Food is not expensive in Cañaridel 278 because of the existence of subsistence farming. This means that parents do not emigrate while children are pre-linguistic. Children can understand the cultural values that aid in the interpretation of parental emigration when parents normally leave.
I do not believe that the ease of adjustment to parental emigration is because of a lack of attachment to the parental émigré. I do believe it is because of the uncontested positive interpretations of parental emigration in discourse. The children in Cañaridel who experienced parental emigration were linguistic and past the age of attachment. For this reason, the influence of cultural values on the interpretation of parental emigration discussed in this chapter should not be expanded to children who are pre-linguistic. I do not consider this limitation of population a limitation on the validity of my research. I hope to address the effect of cultural learning—which indicates that values must have been learned—on the interpretation of the departure of a parent. I offer this as an alternative to the tendencies of research to link directly parental behavior and children’s feelings of deprivation without any acknowledgement of children’s perception or the acceptance of the parental behavior in wider cultural values. For this reason, only linguistic children who had the opportunity to form attachments are included.
Lack of Psychic Distress in Cañaridel
Cultural experiences, such as those that follow from the pursuit of El Sueño
Americano, shape the needs of the individual and how the individual sees fit to deal with these needs. The cultural values Ecuadorian children learn to codify the “loss” of a primary caregiver do not lead to psychological distress. The history of working in other village markets for the sale of produce, traveling for the sale of sweaters, long-standing international migration after the fall of the Panama Hat industry, the close presence of 279 extended family, and continued, established transnational ties all influenced the interpretation of parental emigration. The emigration of a parent is not seen as a loss. In fact, an émigré parent was an “inner certainty” and an “outer predictability” as a matter of cultural understanding if not of physical presence. Rather than believing that their parents did not love them enough to stay with them, cultural values teach children to believe that their parent loved them so much that they made the sacrifice of leaving to provide a better life. In adopting these values, they “ethicize” the loss.
The larger social context in Cañaridel supported the children’s positive interpretation of parental emigration. The Ecuadorian concept of the child sees the role of a father as providing economic support (as described in Chapter 5). The parents who emigrated were better able to fulfill this expectation. According to Herrera (2004: 216), migration is not seen as the disintegration of the family but defines the “appearance of new dynamics of the reconstitution of family ties for these families, along with that of the rest of the families in the changing socio-historical spaces.66” In fact, migration can be seen as a family strategy to “fight the battle with capitalism” and “guarantee the reproduction of the family unit” (ibid.: 221). This reconstitution is partially possible because of the greater flow of communication and revolutions in transportation for this area with globalization (ibid.). Coontz (1992) indicates a similar acceptance of alternative family structure amongst African Americans because of a longstanding historical establishment of father absence as normal. Stack (1997: 22) saw these same behaviors as
“the adaptive strategies, resourcefulness, and resilience of urban families under conditions
66 Original Text: ...la aparición de nuevas dinámicas de reconstitución de lazos familiares y por otro lado que estas familias, al igual que el resto de familias con espacios cambiantes, socio históricos. 280 of perpetual poverty [and] the stability of their kin networks.” The greater aggressivity, crime, school drop out rates, and drug use could be attributed to economic and neighborhood factors. Adams et al. (1984) mention the frequent dismissal in research of the possibility of fatherlessness having no effect on child socialization. It is frequently seen as the cause of poor academic performance, issues with sex-role identification, delinquency, and mental illness. They write, “Do the deleterious effects so often attributed to fatherlessness really result from fatherlessness or from the poverty, exploitation, and prejudice so often experienced by children living in fatherless homes?
We do not know, but the evidence suggests that fatherlessness counts less than social inequity does” (ibid.). The individual’s expectations and sense of security may be more significant than the conclusions drawn for such families from a middle-class model.
Similar to the alternative family as normal for African American families, transnational families were normal for the children in Cañaridel. These children are not pushed into finding an adaptation to a difficult situation as with Obeyesekere’s priestesses
(1984). The priestesses needed to adapt to a difficult situation through selecting particular cultural values to represent their idiosyncratic behavior. This negotiation process is evident for the Guayaquil cases presented in Chapter 8. In Cañaridel, a non- problematic interpretation is readily available in the mainstream. Children discussed their parent’s emigration with no hesitation or negative affect (once they realized it was a topic of conversation). Parental emigration was part of daily life, just like eating soup with every meal or changing out of a school uniform for afternoon play.
The children I observed did not seem to go through a process of detachment.
While children were at first sad that their parents left, they did not attempt to run away, 281 become aggressive, or search for the missing parent in protest. They did not withdraw from contact with other caregivers as is characteristic of despair. The levels of sociability with other caregivers were continuous—detachment from the parent would alter the relationships with other attachment figures. Also, detachment from the primary caregiver followed by re-attachment to another caregiver would lead the child to act “abnormally” when their parent returns. Cultural values not only allowed the child to maintain bonds with the primary attachment figures who emigrated, but they also construct a situation before the separation encounter that is similar to life during separation.
Because of the difficulty I had receiving human subjects’ approval to work with children who would be experiencing distress, I was hesitant to ask the children directly about parental emigration. I expected that my presence as a confidant would lead children to confide their pain in me. This was a partially correct and a partially erroneous view. I did become a confidant for a number of situations—ranging from minor annoyances such as not getting candy to troubling situations of abuse. I began to ask about family. Children seemed to focus primarily on rules. This was odd since they experienced few rules and reprimands—teachers at most would count to ten on rare occasions when the children were very loud and relatives sometimes asked if the child had done what they were supposed to do. Seeing an opportunity, I asked who enforced rules. There seemed to be no connection of a rule or a care behavior to a person. In fact, even a neighbor could catch you doing something wrong so you had to be very careful and sneaky. Finally, after weeks of surveying household residences (almost two- thirds of which had an émigré in the family) and discussing families with children with no mention of parental emigration, I asked. Some children shrugged. Some began 282 discussing the advantages. None expressed anxiety or sadness over parental emigration.
However, there was an unexpected divide. The children who shrugged and did not differentiate tended to be émigrés’ children. The ones who discussed the advantages were children who had their parents present, but did not have all their needs met. For instance, Hermalinda said that when your parents migrate, they just don’t do village stuff but you still have everything. When pushed further, she said they no longer grow corn, but you still have corn in your soup. They do not knit, but you still have clothes. You don’t have to feed chickens, but you still get chicken sometimes. Maybe even more often. Sensing that I must be confused, she said it is just like working as a deputy.
Political offices require the individual to leave the community (albeit for a shorter time and distance than an émigré), and the individual can afford to buy what they used to have to make. Some other children who did not have émigré parents had romanticized (or perhaps realistic) ideas of emigration. The émigrés’ children said it is not any different.
People think it’s special because they do not know that it is the same. Whether the same or better, parental emigration was certainly not considered worse. In private, twelve-year- old Wilmer told me that his father left because he loved them and did not want to waste his time playing ball and roaming about like the others. He wanted them to have it all.
When I asked details of their parents’ emigration, the children could restate them for the most part—even children who were four when their parents left could talk about the departure because they had heard about it from other family members or asked their parents. These discussions usually took place on holidays or birthdays. Celebrations seemed like a time to discuss family lore. They could also describe how their parents took care of them as well. Some clearly stated items they could only know from others. 283
Eight-year-old Jhoanna commented on how she had made her mother’s breasts pancake- y because she breastfed so much. Her mother had gone to Spain four years ago. Nine- year-old Manuel said his father used to play ball with him all the time. He said this is why people want him on their team for soccer. His father went to New York five years ago.
These children fondly remembered their parents with laughter and pride. I asked what their parents still did for them, since they no longer played soccer. This question was rather amusing. They no longer breastfed them either of course! I asked how their parents are still connected to them. Rather than pointing out the objects that their parents bought or sent, they mentioned their family members. The connection of their parents to them was through their family, not objects that were bought with the remittances. Not only did the children seem to be contented in their daily life or even in blatantly discussing the particularities of their parents’ migration, my curiosity about their parents’ migration amused them. I was from New York so must know many migrants. It seemed odd to travel so far to ask questions about people who were so close to my home.
When I explained that I was not interested in the migrants, but the effects on those left behind, the children spoke of positive economic changes after much thought. They did not imagine their life as a comparison with other children who do not have émigré parents but between people with employment and those without.
I claim that the children have not detached from the émigré attachment figure because they continued to refer to this person as a provider of security. In projective tests, children included émigré parents in stories the same as if they were there. These were an accurate representation of the kind of involvement the parent had. While the selection of cut-outs required that the émigré parent was embodied in the stories, 284 sometimes children would tell a story and the parent cut-out would be speaking, but not set down on the scene page. The child would need to do their homework or help their sibling, and the parental cut-out in their other hand would be offering discipline comments characteristic of Ecuadorian care. For instance, in a seven-year-old boy’s story, the floating parental cut-out encouraged the child to greet appropriately the family member cut-outs who were on the page. Distance and absence is not a limitation on the ability of the parent to continue in his or her role as a provider of care.
Another reason I argue that children have not gone through a process of detachment with their parents is because they do not react to “reunion” with the parents with abnormality. Parental phone-calls and packages from abroad are not met with hesitation. They are not met with excessive exuberance either. The items are greeted the same as when the parent arrives home from a bus trip with candy. This occurs because, just as with the examples of consenting described in Chapter 5 when the parent is physically present, the émigré parent continues contact with an expected, balanced regularity. When Yulexi’s mother calls from abroad “passing one day,” she carries on a conversation similar to those I heard Briana Mendoza have with her mother during lunch.
She tells stories with no theme or urgency. The stories trail on with numerous “and then” connections that include facts relevant to previous stories or stories to be told later about the day’s occurrences. As described in the concept of the child for Ecuador above in Chapter 5, children are accustomed to periods of intense attention, such as mealtimes, and periods when parents are immersed in their chores. The chores may be for them— washing their clothes or preparing their foods—but do not involve them. This regiment in normal childcare is uniquely capable of allowing parental care to continue with a similar 285 structure even when the parent is abroad. Therefore, there is the opportunity for children not to experience change in relation to their parent in both behavior and sentiment.
The third reason why I believe that children in Cañaridel did not detach from their parents is because their relationships with their other caregivers do not change.
Grandparents and siblings were involved in certain kinds of care. As the child grows, these kinds of care that involve secondary caregivers become the principal kinds of care the child receives. The émigré father continues almost the same exact role—providing the economic needs for other family members to provide care. While the émigré mother’s role has changed, through contact, she still expresses her concern. Cultural values help the child to view the distant economic support and present physical care as synonymous expressions of love. While there are changes regarding the affection that
émigré parents can provide, affection was never from parents alone. The physical behaviors with some caregivers alter—they sit by their grandfather watching TV rather than their father. It is important to note that these children view their distant parents and present caregivers as providing security. This is not a case of psychological separation from their parents and re-attachment to others. The cultural value of distributive care allows the children to reallocate roles without selecting one caregiver over another, which helps to prevent psychic distress from the émigré’s physical separation.
Even with the substitution of care from other family members, the responses and attachments to these caregivers do not vary from before. Perhaps this lack of change is due to the fact that before migration there was a strong attachment with these secondary caregivers. But where there was room for variation and change, I did not observe any.
Children were not anxious about the departure of their secondary caregivers. Such 286 anxiety might indicate a strong bond with the caregiver and fear of loss because they lost their previous attachment figure. Their exploration distance did not vary greatly.
Children roamed about in the familial corn fields they were allowed to roam before.
They went to stores of close family acquaintances, just as before. The children did not seem especially attentive to the location of the caregivers who continued to be present.
The children in Cañaridel did not fit the expected process of protest, despair, and detachment nor did they fit the criterions for Separation Anxiety Disorder in the
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (1994: 110). Separation Anxiety Disorder is “excessive anxiety concerning separation from the home or from those to whom the person is attached” that leads to “social withdrawal, apathy, sadness, or difficulty concentrating on work or play.” I chose to address this disorder because the onset of six matches the sample and because it develops after some life stress when in a close-knit family. Migration is named as an example of such life stress (ibid.: 112). Here, I compare each of the criterions for the disorder to my observations of children in Cañaridel.
As described, these children did not evince excessive anxiety with substitute caregivers (Criterion A1). When older, their responses to separation from primary caregivers were less extreme, yet they still fit the expected stressors. They were less distressed when they voluntarily separated, were left with other attachment figures, or were left in familiar locations (Ainsworth 1979). They did not appear to be especially intrusive or needy in comparison to other children. The importance of proper demeanor with relatives and the likelihood of caregivers to consent to requests means that it would be difficult to become over-demanding. The control in discipline, meaning the stability and regularity of responses, leads to self-reliant responses in children (Baumrind 1967). 287
Children were not especially fearful that something would happen to their attachment figures either (Criterion A2). I asked a number of children regarding their ideas of life abroad. The sacrifice in parental emigration was not because of the danger of the journey or life abroad, even though both were actually more dangerous than life in
Cañaridel. It was a sacrifice because they were away from their family and worked hard.
Criterion A3 of Separation Anxiety Disorder indicates that children will fear being lost or not being reunited with their parent. Perhaps there was no fear of being lost since the children did not stray outside the village. They knew all of the geographic regions where they were allowed to roam. Mountains and hills functioned as landmarks for some older children who did stray further. Parental reunion was unique. It was not the case that the children had set ideas, dates, and locations for their parental reunion. This may be due to an understanding of the extenuating circumstances that are involved in migration journeys. Some children did refer to their parent returning some time in the future when they were better off economically or the idea of joining their parents abroad when they were older and were ready to sacrifice for their family as well. These conjectures were not passionate dreams representing longing. Children discussed these ideas of parental reunion when asked with the conviction and planning of a child who wants to be a doctor this week after wanting to be a singer last week. While I would not say that the children are assured of their future parental reunion, I would say that they do not fear not being reunited. There may be no need for reassurance of a set time of arrival because the parents are not seen as separated. They are still a part of the child’s life.
The fourth criterion for Separation Anxiety Disorder is that children refuse to go to school (leading to academic difficulty), visit people, or run errands. It represents a 288 social withdrawal. The children were not afraid of errands—they visited and ran to stores when asked just as other children did. Émigrés’ children had a greater dedication and desire to perform in academics than other children. Over the phone from abroad, parents would ask how class went, if the children needed something for school, and felt that the children should get a good education. The questions were usually to check appropriate behavior more than a desire for scholastic excellence, but school was a topic of conversation when children were behaving well-enough at home. Substitute caregivers would refer to the sacrifice as being motivated to provide for the child’s education.
The children also exhibited the normal range of behaviors as far as time alone
(Criterion A5). Alone time was limited since most children did not have their own rooms, but it was not feared. Some children (both émigrés’ and non-émigrés’) relished alone time as an opportunity to experiment, explore, and scheme. Children would spy through windows, sift through people’s items, and sneak items from stores. Katrina sought alone time. She would secretly act like her favorite actress in a movie. There were no broadcast channels in the village and the men normally bought movies, so the rare
“chick-flick” she saw was quite formative. The woman was preparing herself for a date.
Rather than using thistles for rosy checks as women in Cañaridel did, Katrina tried to take blush from her family store. Cosmetics were what set her family store apart. Her mother started to sell Avon after her father emigrated because she had the start-up funds available. Without many clients who had the money and desire to purchase her products, her sample kit became items to sell in the store.
I do not have significant data on their sleep periods (A6). The children of
émigrés did not seem more tired. Their above average attention level in class could 289 indicate a better sleep level more than motivation. Children could not explain much regarding their dreams, so I am unsure regarding the nightmare criterion (A7). However, in comparison to other children, I do have significant data regarding the absence of psychosomatic symptoms. Separation Anxiety Disorder is likely to lead the child to express a number of physical ailments. Children in Cañaridel did not. The lack of doctors in the village may prevent the normal responses that motivate psychosomatic symptoms. In Guayaquil, children were frequently treated for allergies to colorants, hot/cold foods, or dust. Even when there were no changes in symptoms, parents would repeatedly attend, sometimes expensive, always time-consuming, doctor’s appointments to treat ailments that seemed untreatable. Medical treatment in Cañaridel normally does not involve doctors. Chamomile tea treats a fever, papaya seeds treat stomach ailments, and other “foods” are used for treatment. Medical treatment does not stand out from normal care—a child needs soup for lunch and tea for a fever. For this reason, cultural values may limit the expressions of psychological conflicts in somatic symptoms.
Émigrés’ children in Cañaridel do not evince behavior that indicates either detachment from parents or the psychological ramifications of a stressful separation. The cultural values provided interpretations that parental emigration is not separation. The reason why children are able to see physically absent parents as emotionally present parents is because of the particular holding environment in Cañaridel. According to
Winnicott (1965), when the child is no longer absolutely dependent on the parent, the holding environment needs to provide psychic maintenance that helps the child be in contact with a repetitive, simplified version of the exterior world so the child can find stable and simple reference points that are necessary for a good integration (Nasio 1994). 290
Kegan (1982: 116) refers to the holding environment as “the particular form of the world in which the person is embedded… and out of which the person grows.” This expansion of the goals of caretaking from what literally provides protection in physical interaction as in attachment theory to what psychologically provides protection in objects relations theory explains children’s ability to adjust to parental emigration. If children needed the physical connection to feel security, then they would be unable to adjust to parental emigration. However, they are able to feel security with the transnational ties to parents and presence of other caregivers because it allows them to find a positive, meaningful integration into the cultural values of Cañaridel. Since they do not interpret the parents distance as separation from the parental role and find positive valuations from others, they feel attached to their caregivers. The values not only inform the children as to how to interpret their own separation, but also encourage children to accept others’ interpretations of parental separations. The two perspectives reinforce each other.
Social Support for Interpretations
For children to receive unquestionable support for their painless interpretation of parental emigration, others would have to ascribe to their interpretation as well. If the values were strongly contested, children would begin to question the positive valuation of their parent’s departure. Such debate was not apparent or overt in Cañaridel. Adults did seem to espouse a set of ideas that valued parental emigration. Not only was I corrected when I expressed concern for émigrés’ children, but one other adult was corrected too.
The case of thirty-three year old Cleve shows the lack of acceptance for disputing the positive valuation of emigration. Self-named shaman Cleve was acknowledged both positively as a bearer of previous cultural values and negatively as an outdated vestige. 291
His grandfather raised him. He was one of the few village residents, aside from the elderly without children who cared for them, who still slept and lived on woven mats of reeds. It was more difficult to sweep the mats, and they were considered technologically behind wood floors and especially behind concrete floors in luxury and style.
Cleve enjoyed sharing his knowledge of medicinal plants with me. His continued criticism of community members who bought Herbalife tablets rather than using the medicinal herbs that Herbalife bottled was a transition into discussing changes in the community. He told me that he does not mourn when someone dies trying to emigrate.
They have left the community because they do not care about their traditional ways and therefore the community should not care about them. He said that there is work here for the women in knitting and the men in farming. He also mentioned the fact that everyone had a store—so they had more than enough if they were able to have something to sell— so there is no reason to leave. Life is bountiful here if they remember how to work the land and the importance of taking care of each other. Cleve discussed the extinction of plants and the extinction of the communal ties as reciprocal processes. While most individuals still believed in the healing powers of his medicines (there was no connection to spiritual realms with his medicine), they found his other beliefs out of touch with reality. More and more, his diagnoses seemed to support his condemnation of modern aspirations—packaged foods or electronic fields from televisions were the cause of allergic reactions. The acceptance of his medicine waned with his rejection of others’ more popular views. He had received more work in the past for help with healing rituals, but now only the poor who could not afford the doctors in Gualaceo came to him. Cleve could only charge nominal fees to impoverished clients to fit his ideas of communal ties. 292
Three years after I left the community, my family in New York received a phone call from Cleve. He called because he had moved to New York. He was surprised to find out I was actually in Ecuador. He explained to me he had emigrated because there was nothing left of value in the community. The community seemed much the same to me without him when I visited—but he had a different perspective. I suppose he had given up fighting the mainstream values that accepted émigrés. Perhaps, his existing tie to the community’s values in medicine waned sufficiently that he felt he no longer had anything in common with them. Either way, he felt that he did not belong in Cañaridel.
The view of family relations as accepting of émigrés expanded beyond the children of émigrés, even to other children. Demonstrating the strong acceptance of this cultural value, some children desired that one of their parents emigrate. I once asked a child whose parent harshly disciplined in public, “Are all that way?” [¿Todos son así?]. He told me no. “Those that love their children lots, leave and don’t hit them.” [Los que les aman bastante a sus niños, salen y no les pegan]. Here, houses with cinder-block walls, running water, and glass windows infrequently intersperse the sod homes with outhouses (or yards for the same purpose). Classmates envied the children who lived in these luxurious houses. Children believed that once old enough, the children of émigrés go to the U.S. as well and live happily ever after with the devoted émigré parents who truly love them—the family that raised them in Ecuador seemed to be middlemen between the devoted parent and the child. These middlemen were part of the process of growing up. Parents who did not emigrate were lazy and did not love their families enough to make the sacrifice.
The interpretation of a “good parent” as one who emigrates received support in the media also. An example of this imagery troubled me before I understood the larger 293 context in which it functioned. Casting seemed wrong or perhaps the advertising agency did not understand children. In a money-wiring commercial, the following occurs:
In an office, a child around age five sits in a chair with his soccer ball. A gray-bearded man reads an email aloud from his computer. He warmly tells the child that his father has sent him money to buy a new pair of sneakers for soccer. The child stands up erect with his soccer ball firmly clutched to his side and stoically says, “Thank you, coach, for receiving my email from the United States.” The coach smiles compassionately.
This commercial annoyed me because I expect the child to ask, “And when is Daddy coming home?,” “Does he miss Mommy?,” or to express the sort of emotion that I might predict from a five-year old child without his father. However, the expectations of child behavior that formed my expectation does not coincide with the cultural values, which the advertising agency depicted perfectly. A child should understand that the parent made a sacrifice for his or her good. Now he can get his soccer sneakers. Parents and children should not believe that the child lacks affection because he or she has an émigré parent. The coach and others who stay behind to care for the children of émigrés offer affection. The fifteen-second ad communicates the concept of the child that forms the cultural values children acquire and use to prevent distress when their parents emigrate.
The cultural values in Cañaridel prioritized providing for materialistic drives achieved best by emigrating over providing affection achieved best by not emigrating.
Through this imagery, sacrificing to fulfill the principal goal of being a good provider and assuring economic security signifies devotion, which substitutes for the lost affection
(which is not really lost since the children continue to live with extended family who have always been a part of their life and care). In this way, the values not only prevent the emotional pain for children who lose a primary caregiver, but also expiate a parent’s guilt 294 for wanting to leave a child. In addition, by convincing the children that economic motivations to emigration are admirable as true familial devotion, the imagery reinforces
El Sueño Americano in the following generation. If the children did not accept the imagery, they would not value the parent who has emigrated as I observed. I believe that the priority on economic motivations that was “good to think with” in childhood will carry on into adulthood where it will perpetuate El Sueño Americano. As such, these cultural values integrate personality, culture, and society in a manner that demonstrates the inappropriate expectations of attachment theory founded on the U.S. concept of the child.
In the next chapter, I further address this manner of cultural values codifying parental separation as preferred parental behavior. However, in the particular context I address, these cultural values are not monolithic. Children must negotiate a sea of values in order to create what I describe as culturally constituted defense mechanisms that ameliorate the psychic conflict that parental emigration can indicate. Chapter 8 — Family Feuds Parental Emigration & Culturally Constituted Defense Mechanisms
—In the role interview, nine-year old Karolina first picked up the slip of paper with “mother” written on it and matched it up to the question of “What is a good _____?” With her characteristic clarity, she methodically stated, “A good mother is someone who cares for her kids and loves them. She completes her obligations to her kids and wants them to be happy. She talks with her kids about their day and school and teachers and friends. She’s content when her kids get good grades and is worried if the kids might get in trouble or talk to bad people.” To indicate the end of her response, she picked up the slip of paper from the matching questions, looked up at me, and then back to the slip of paper in her hand. She smiled and relaxed the professional, soft-spoken demeanor she used to assist the “Miss” with her research. Outside the framework of the “game,” she tied her mother to her general definition: “My mommy is a good mother. She sends good stuff and calls weekly.” (W 10/16/3)
Cultural values and her own psychic needs have dually influenced Karolina’s general definition of a good mother and her assessment of her own mother. Karolina crafted very clear, concise descriptions for her responses to the task at hand. However,
295 296 her “breaks” in professionalism67 revealed the close connection between her ideas of a generalized “ideal” mother and her evaluations of her own mother. In this chapter, I focus on the symbiotic creation of culturally constituted defense mechanisms. With the term symbiotic, I highlight the reciprocal way that personal experiences determine a person’s perception and acceptance of cultural values, even as cultural values determine that person’s perception and interpretation of personal experiences. Culturally constituted defenses involve the acquisition of particular cultural values that suit one’s own needs, yet still receive social approval from others because of the cultural basis of their interpretations. Social approval augments the efficacy of defenses in alleviating distress due to difficult situations insofar as the approval confirms one’s interpretation.
In the discussion of child socialization in the previous chapter, I argued that the acquisition of cultural values affects the interpretation of experiences, sometimes in a manner contrary to the expectations of Western child development theory. The absence of the parent is not the only aspect of the total situation that determines the experience of separation. “Cultures can amplify and/or dampen emotional states and experiences”
(Levy 1973, 1984 as cited in Hollan 2005: 459). The cultural meanings matters.
Not only do the cultural meanings of experiences matter, but the diversity of options of cultural values matters as well. Theories seem to indicate that each culture has a particular set of values that children learn. The actual diversity of values and sources of
67 While most children took the tasks very seriously, she was unique in her clarity. Her scholastic excellence fed into the activity and was accentuated when I no longer worked with another girl in her class. The other girl’s father was employed at the school. This situation led to ethical concerns because other staff members questioned me regarding the little girl’s conversations. Karolina liked to visit to talk about her life, and saw the dedicated completion of the tasks as a manner to assure her “free time” talking with me. Other children were careful to listen to directions because they wanted to earn credits for prizes. However, the interactions with all the children shifted after months of work when the children realized that I kept their secrets and neither judged nor disciplined them. 297 socialization that children experience is often overlooked. Here, I build on the importance of cultural values for understanding adjustment to demonstrate that the tendency to view child development as a unified process is inadequate for addressing the complexity of the real world. Contestations exist in doxic space. The interpretation of mainstream, spoken cultural values may not be the interpretation of an individual. The individual may merely become acquainted with some values, could acquire them as a cliché that does not motivate behavior, or could internalize the values (Spiro 1997: 8f).
Redundancy in the system assures that “prevalent modes of behavior” are internalized:
“If a child is not affected by one shaping form, he will most likely be affected by another with a similar import” (Levy 1973: 467). Due to the role of negotiation and numerous sources of influence on development (which actually conflict in Guayaquil), children are socialized in an environment that is not unified. Attention to within-group variability counters the solidification of cultures as static and homogeneous (Bourdieu 1991).
I describe the symbiotic creation of concepts of the family based on the combination of divergent cultural values and personal experiences. I present theory that analyzes these divergent influences on socialization and discuss how they can lead to psychic distress. Then, I discuss the discrepant sources of values on parental émigrés in
Guayaquil that converge to interpret a child’s experience of separation. Lastly, I show how some children respond to parental emigration with culturally constituted defenses.
DIVERSE CONTEXTS
Causes of Variability
Diverse contexts of socialization imply that there is more than one value or perspective on a particular issue. While homogeneity seems to imply continuity and 298 patterning of culture, rapid change can lead to a diverse context that still implies continuity and patterning. Change does not imply an entirely new set of values or the de- stabilization of existing values, but can mean a perpetuation of the existing structure that is redundantly socialized and socially reinforced along with the incorporation of new values. The reason for these continued reverberations even with the new values can be understood through what Fischer calls “cultural logics” based on his Mayan research.
This leads us to the irony that culture is dynamic while remaining continuous. Cultural symbols are continually construed and reconstrued through practice, and social fields of common identity are redefined through changing categorizations of ethnicity. Yet, the wonder of culture is that, through symbolic transposition and internally logical transformation, continuity is maintained by giving old forms new meanings and giving new forms old meaning. (Fischer 2001: 13)
The new meanings and traditions can emerge from the old “through the dynamic interaction of individual intention (itself culturally conditioned but not predetermined), cultural norms (variably enforced through reflexive social interaction), and material contingencies (encompassing not only local ecologies but also structural position in global systems of political economic relations)” (ibid.: 16). Both culture change and continuity occur without disproving the other. While this may be implicit in many theories, Fischer concisely addresses both in a manner that furthers our understanding of the continuation of certain ideas of children’s needs while not disapproving of different family types.
The conception of cultural logics as the combination of continuity and change
(both through agency and structure) is parallel to Obeyesekere’s (1984) discussion of imagery: from the accepted pool of cultural ideas, people select those that suit their particular needs, and eventually cultures appropriate predominant idiosyncrasies. The practice of social interaction defines the delineation of cultural logics. The émigrés’ 299 children experience the diverse cultural ideologies of Guayaquil in social interactions and follow cultural logics when they create alternative interpretations of parents.
I focus on the diversity of contexts because the children in this chapter respond to parental emigration through selectively internalizing different values on parental roles.
They do not create a different set of values to interpret their parental émigrés—such innovation would be difficult to espouse and to find support for in the wider cultural context. Oppositional perspectives require the individual to reject values that coincide with mainstream discourse (Gibson 1988). Alternative perspectives allow people to combine values more freely—beliefs do not need to be defined as contrary to a particular group. For this reason, their values regarding parental duties coincide with existing cultural logics on children’s needs yet are altered to suit their situation. As Linger states
(1982: 16): “Meaning evolves through time, but today’s meanings are not independent of yesterday’s.” Thus, émigrés’ children in Guayaquil could not create a system that claimed parental émigrés were better parents because of their emigration like in Cañaridel, but that they were still good parents according to mainstream values despite their emigration.
Six-year-old Maríbel represented her life as normal—emigration did not alter the care she received. She lived with her mother and uncle while her father worked in the
U.S. She reported that her father is likely to consent her in everything. He sent her toys from McDonald’s where he worked. The fact that the McDonald’s was in the U.S. did not seem to matter. She calmly spoke about the relationship between her parents. Her mother wanted to move because of the dust in their neighborhood and her father wanted them to stay in the same house. Even though her mother and father did not live in the same country, it did not change the way life focused on the household. Her parents were 300 still together—children often addressed marital togetherness as a linguistic substitute for physical togetherness. Maríbel said that sometimes she does not want to come to school because she has so much homework, but her mother makes her do the homework.
Otherwise, her mother will tell her father. Maríbel’s descriptions of her home life could have been of a child who lived with both of her parents. However, her description never denied reality—it just selectively represented it to fit “normal” situations. A normal set of interactions at home indicates a normal home. She has selected to highlight the mainstream values that indicate her parents are providing her with appropriate care— concern over her environment and education—yet presents this information in a manner that does not demonstrate a flaw in their system of care—the distance of her father.
This paradox of continuity and change in cultural logics applies to values on childcare. For instance, in Kenya, LeVine and LeVine (1988) found that the concept of the child among the Gusii has been adjusted to fit the socioeconomic changes in development, education, and employment, yet still fits with previous social relations such as the use of children as caregivers. Harkness & Super (1992) found that amidst change towards hired childcare, in a Kipsigis community significant continuities with the ideas of children’s needs continued from the past creating a unique amalgamation of parental and hired care. In addition, in a Boston suburb, Harkness, Super, and Keefer (1992) found that even without significant socioeconomic change, the concept of the child consists of elements of the previous set of ideas and elements derived from the present environment.
Beliefs about the appropriate methods for socializing a child and their development are so strong that they persist. Even when a child seems to have significant
“delays,” parents may still believe in the importance of the same schedule of development 301
(Weisner, Matheson, & Bernheimer 1996). Cultural values can be strong enough to resist when change is expected and weak enough to change when no such influence is foreseen.
The goals, sources, and balance between change and constancy seem widespread. I propose that the cultural logic about the parental émigré has changed in some spheres and continued in others depending upon the position and experience of the individual.
Addressing Variability
One method to address the various sources of socialization is Bronfenbrenner’s
(1979) social ecology theory. It divides influences into the microsystem, which is composed of direct influences on the child such as their parents, the exosystem, which influences the child indirectly such as the neighborhood, and the macrosystem, which is the larger cultural setting. The various layers interact with each other to provide the socialization context.
Key factors within each of these systems are the person, process, context, and time.
Person characteristics refer to the makeup of the individual, such as age, gender, ethnicity, and preexisting capacities. When these person characteristics combine with other factors, there is great room for variability. The personal characteristics influence proximal processes, which are the interactions between the child and his or her immediate social and object worlds. The particular meanings of these proximal processes and person characteristics in context are also important. These contexts vary over time.
Bronfenbrenner’s theory addresses the directness of an influence, with the implication of significance to the individual (e.g. a parent’s opinions may be more influential than the opinions found in school), and the number of variables within each social system.
It may seem that emigration moves the parents from the microsystem to the exosystem, but the relationships between the children and their parents are merely 302 geographically distant—not emotionally distant. With the continued significance of the
émigré parent for the child, the geographic distance does not impinge upon the direct influence that parents exert. I still consider the émigré part of the child’s microsystem following Bronfenbrenner’s definition of the systems referring to influences on a child.
The three subsystems’ influence may either encourage each other as they resonate with consistency or contradict each other, but regardless, they influence child development. For this reason, children must be studied in context “to recognize the psychological unity of children participating in a set of relationships” (Veale et al. 2000:
141). Harkness and Super’s (1996) developmental niche also focuses on the child’s socialization context, which allows for a closer analysis of sources of variation. The developmental niche can be used as a closer focus on Bronfenbrenner’s microsystem.
The developmental niche includes the physical and social settings, the prevailing customs about child care, and parental ethnotheories. These characteristics of developmental niches describe the kind of variability in values that the children of émigrés experience.
Influences in each of these subsystems provide the holding environment for the child and offers support for the child’s development. According to Winnicott’s definition of the holding environment, we should not imagine the support as literal, physical support but as an emotional sense of security. The child can find support and security in any of the subsystems—in the immediate context of their family, in their social contacts outside the home, or in the value systems that provide meaning for their lives. While young children are not frequently exposed to all systems or they overlap (e.g. the parents are the source of information on the macrosystem), understanding the numbers of influences allows analysis when they do not overlap or disagree. Since children come to 303 know, to expect, and to adapt to the holding environment of these three subsystems, the cultural characteristics of these subsystems should be analyzed.
In addressing the conflicting cultural ideologies of Guayaquil, there is variability in the context over time for the macrosystem. Below I describe the way that the values that interpret parental emigration have altered. Customs about childcare and prevailing parental ethnotheories altered in the face of criticism of émigrés. The concept of the child is a cultural continuity, but views differ greatly regarding the ability of an émigré parent to fulfill parental duties. This variation of the macrosystem and the subsequent changes in microsystems have differentially affected certain developmental niches. In other words, the rise of alternative values on parental émigrés has greatly affected some children’s context of socialization while others have experienced a more homogeneous context of socialization that the alternative values have not affected. The children who need to negotiate the positive valuations of parental émigrés in their microsystem but are also exposed to the new, alternative negative valuations of parental émigrés may have more difficulty in creating appraisals of parental behavior as certain and predictable.
Distress in Negotiating Multiple Cultural Ideologies
While the children in Cañaridel did not experience distress from parental emigration, I believe that the children presented in this chapter are susceptible to distress because of the diverse cultural ideologies in Guayaquil. They did not experience a unified set of cultural values that interpreted the parental émigré as a devoted sacrificer—these values existed, but the contrary interpretation was widespread and formidable.
Diversity can create a “self-definitional bind” (Levy 1973: 486) where the child has trouble determining his own identity. Children come to know, to codify, and to cope 304 with their parent’s emigration within both of the disjunctive sets of values. Levin (2005:
473) used this bind to “make sense of children’s disjunctive socialization experiences.68”
Competing socialization systems allows an investigation of the dynamics of cultural change on self-definition (Levin 2005: 473).
In addition to the diverse ideologies, the urban context of Guayaquil implies that children of émigrés will have more difficulty defining themselves. Urbanism can lead to a heightened self-awareness. Parish (2005: 484) described characteristics of urbanism that complicate notions of self: “It can be argued that the questions of meaning associated with urbanism—how does one fit oneself into its diversity, hierarchy, multiple roles, strangeness, and complexity—provoke the development of a heightened awareness of self.” Awareness can mean children consciously realize the changes that emigration implies and thereby limit the availability of unconscious defenses.
In Cañaridel, children rarely experienced changes in household or schools. This was not the case in Guayaquil. Of the sixty-two children I spoke to regarding changes after migration, 47 had changed schools69 and 38 had changed households. The changes in Cañaridel with émigrés’ children seemed to be comparable to changes in the life of non-émigrés’ children: both went through discontinuities with age-graded care.
According to Benedict (1938), age-graded care can help to avoid psychic threat through discontinuity in childcare. However, in the urban city of Guayaquil, extended family and siblings are less involved in the daily care of children who do not have émigré parents.
68 Even though Levin was discussing the disjunction from the intersection of colonialism and subjectivity and I discuss the competing socialization systems in Guayaquil that are not due to colonization, there are parallels. The migration flow after the economic and political instability of the late 1990s is a situation of culture change and a powerful, elite ruling class. 69 Some non-émigrés’ children changed schools as well because of the economic instability but the children of émigrés were much more likely to experience the economic changes that led to changes in schools. 305
The rural to urban migration that describes a considerable part of the population in
Guayaquil has strained some of the traditional ties to extended families in quotidian life.
The families live on individual lots, often distant from extended family in other parts of the city or in home communities, rather than together on large parcels of land. This discontinuity can lead to psychic threat in Guayaquil for émigrés’ children because they are not accustomed to distributive care. The change in care from parents to extended family is a change that is not characteristic of typical age-graded care as it is in Cañaridel.
Negative valuations of émigré parents in Ecuador are similar to those found in the U.S. regarding single parents. Stigma occurs because of the “dominant legal and social definitions of family, and the exalted place in those definitions given to the nuclear, marital, two-parent family” (Dowd 1997: 4). The exalted place is justified economically because single parents are expected to be poor; developmentally because children need both parents present for gender and social learning; and morally because single parents are seen as sinful. Family myths predict negative results for children, blame parents for societal ills, and affect public policy. The justifications that Dowd found for stigmatizing single parents in the U.S. match those used to stigmatize émigré parents. For this reason, children represent parental emigration as providing for their needs, as emotionally present, and as moral. As described above in Chapter 7, distress can result if one interprets an important social relationship as lacking appropriate concern.
Responses to Distress
The children in this chapter did not consciously respond to the formidable stigma and negative interpretations of their parents. They did not state that the negative values were wrong—parents who abandon their children are bad. A parent should take care of 306 their children. It would be difficult to contradict the negative values concerning émigré parents. Instead, the children interpreted their parents in accord with existing ideas of parental roles, but altered the ability of the parents to meet these needs from abroad efficiently. There was no statement against the existing discourse. They did not say,
“Émigré parents are not abandoners.” Émigré parents were not a category in and of themselves. They were the same as other parents: if they took care of you, they were good, and if they did not, they were bad. While this sounds logical, in reality these appraisals of parental behavior involved some alterations/selective representations of reality. Children responded in a manner that indicated that there was a misunderstanding of definitions—affection does not mean literal hugs but emotional concern. Suggestions of the importance of hugs were met with confusion or explanations that those are needed when a child is younger. Children did not react defensively or insecurely to such questions. The questions were met with perplexed looks and further explanation. One child smiled and advised me that I should work with her more because I must have been getting too much information from younger children. She could let me know what children her age—eight—actually need from their parents now that they are big.
I do not believe that the children presented in this chapter were consciously presenting selective interpretations. Other émigrés’ children (not included in this chapter) did seem troubled. These children told me secrets including that they purposely behaved poorly for attention or they feared people judging their parent. A few told me they lied and said that their parents returned when they actually had not or would say that their parents left more recently for vacation to people who do not know their family. I address some of these children who did not adjust to parental emigration through the culturally 307 constituted defense described in this chapter in Chapter 9. However, the children presented here did not have the secretive lapses nor avoid topics that might lead to painful realizations. These children seemed confused—as if I was asking the same question twice, investigating minimal, pointless details, or just weird in that I didn’t talk to children with real problems. When I explained that I wanted to study all kinds of children who had parental émigrés, they saw it as a synonymous process of studying children who had good parents and children who did not. Emigration was a detail to their story, not a defining characteristic. They seemed to have adjusted to parental emigration.
In psychoanalytic theory, adjustment to distress depends upon the existence of an unconscious that functions unbeknownst to conscious selves. Unaware to the ego or conscious mind, the unconscious creates representations of reality as a defense to alleviate psychic conflict from external threats. Similarly, the children in this chapter create representations of their parents that match their internal working models of the parent to empirical reality. In this manner, defenses can be a healthy means for handling distress
(Vaillant 1977: 7) and not necessarily pathological (ibid.: 9).70 For the age I studied, characteristic defenses include the denial of external reality, distortion that “reshap[es] external reality to suit inner needs” (ibid.: 383), and fantasy to avoid reality. While denial, distortion, and fantasy may not sound like healthy means to handle distress, their less drastic implementation may provide a resiliency from dwelling on unfortunate situations.
Vaillant states that “we cannot evaluate the choice of a defense without considering the circumstances that call it forth and how it affects relationships with other
70 I discuss the creation of individual defenses in Chapter 9. Here, I describe the manner in which children are able to manipulate the culturally constituted defense mechanisms for their particular situation. 308 people” (1977: 86). The circumstances include the cultural understandings found in the child’s context that are relevant to the construction of the defense. According to
Hallowell (1955: 89), “Culture may be said to play a constitutive role in the psychological adjustment of the individual to his world.” More explicitly, Spiro (1997: 115) defines culturally constituted defenses as defenses for whose formation cultural understandings play a predominant role as opposed to personal idiosyncratic meanings. With this concept, I argue that the cultural meanings affect how children of émigrés mentally process the representations of their reality to alleviate their psychic conflicts. Others accept culturally constituted defenses more than individual defenses because they can understand the roots of the defenses in a shared cultural ideology. The children in this chapter preferred culturally constituted defenses because the careful construction in accord with existing cultural values led to social acceptance.
CONFLICTING CULTURAL IDEOLOGIES OF GUAYAQUIL
A child faces diverse influences in his interactions with people. The child is not solely immersed in the values of their family, but in the conflicting cultural ideologies of
Guayaquil. For instance, Stefania interacted with her family, people at school, and watched television. Ten-year old Stefania and her six-year old brother live with her aunt and her two cousins who moved into her house in La Alborada six months before her mother emigrated two years ago. Carmelita’s husband had left her with their four-year old daughter and two-year old son and went to live in his natal village a year earlier.
Before her mother’s emigration, Stefania’s father had intermittent work and could not support the family. He travels to buy rice in the rural town where his parents live and re-sells it in Guayaquil. His trips have become more frequent since the emigration of his 309 wife—one might consider his home to be his parent’s house in the natal village now. His change of residence is partially because it would be improper for him to live with his husband-less sister-in-law Carmelita and also because, in the village, they do not judge him because of his wife’s emigration. There, the villagers know him and his situation as an individual, rather than a caricature of a husband who could not support his family.
Carmelita is primarily responsible for the physical care of the children and she receives some help from her mother. According to Carmelita, Stefania’s mother sends money to “support the household.” She does not consider the arrangement as receiving pay for caring for her niece and nephew nor as her sister supporting her. The two women and their children compose one household—they are a team. Both fathers’ absences have helped to meld this family because the fathers are the distinction between the children. All the children receive physical and economic care from the same sources.
Stefania’s age has meant that she is responsible for some care of the younger children. She neither bathes nor feeds her sibling and cousins, but sometimes helps to get them out the door for school or consents their requests when her aunt is busy. Even though Carmelita has her hands full with four children, Stefania’s responsibilities are not exceptional nor more due to her mother’s absence. She takes on responsibilities because she is a sister, regardless of her mother’s presence or absence. As Carmelita points out,
Stefania cannot become the substitute mother because she must concentrate on her studies so that she may become a success later in life. There is no need and it would be an indication of the aunt’s neglect if Stefania had to take care of the children. Carmelita did not tie expectations of young girls to help out to maternal emigration, but to a lack of efficiency and effort in caregivers—substitute or otherwise. Émigrés’ children caring for 310 siblings would not be because the émigré mother neglected her children, except perhaps in her responsibility of selecting an appropriate substitute caregiver.
With Stefania’s studies, she will find a good job, will not depend on undependable men, and will not have to emigrate. This desire to prevent Stefania’s need to emigrate is not due to a devaluation of émigrés, but is similar to a farm-worker not wanting his children to do farm work. The desire to have your children achieve more is not because
émigrés are seen as immoral, but because it is hard work. This lack of negative valuations of émigrés and support for Stefania’s scholastic activities is evident in her daily life.
When Carmelita comes into the room to get her six-year-old daughter, she wakes up Stefania. The two female cousins share a bed and Stefania’s brother sleeps on another bed in the same room. Her three-year-old cousin sleeps with his mother Carmelita in the other bedroom. He is left in bed since he does not yet go to school. Stefania dresses herself in her laid-out uniform while her aunt helps Stefania’s cousin get dressed. Her brother lethargically crawls out of bed and Stefania coaxes him to hurry up and get dressed. With Carmelita’s efficiency at dressing the younger cousin, she has time to prepare breakfast of re-heated humitas (a tamales variation with plantains rather than cornmeal) with cheese for the children’s breakfast. When Stefania reaches the kitchen to eat, her cousin is already picking at breakfast in front of the television. She takes her own plate and adds extra cheese. Her cousin protests that she does not have enough cheese
(primarily because she ate it all first). Stefania places some of her cheese onto her cousin’s plate as she joins her in front of the television. When Carmelita asks Stefania where her brother is, she calls out to her brother to hurry up or their cousin will eat all the cheese. Both Carmelita and Stefania know this is not a possibility, but the brother 311 comes running in with his belt undone and shoes untied looking for his breakfast. He smiles when his aunt throws some extra cheese on top of his humita.
Stefania watches for the expreso to arrive and bring them to school. All three children attend the same private school thanks to her mother’s remittances. She says she watches, even though the expreso beeps, because her cousin normally has to go to the bathroom when the expreso comes, and this way she can yell to Carmelita to hurry her cousin up. The expreso arrives and her brother runs to grab the keys to the gate. In the expreso, Stefania and her brother ride in the back of the pick-up truck and her little cousin gets in the front. They hold her backpack so that six children can fit in the truck cab.
Once at school, Stefania walks slowly to the stairway to her class so she can see her cousin and brother run into their first-floor classrooms. She does not treat her cousin and brother any differently and they act like siblings, even though one is a cousin.
In class, Stefania’s leadership and direction wanes as she does what many émigrés’ children do: she lies low behaviorally. She is quiet, does not volunteer to answer questions, and does not try to chat with her seatmate during assignments, unless the others are so loud that her silence would make her stand out. I never witnessed her interrupting or trying to talk louder than other children, even when I directly asked her a question and other children attempted to answer. However, she does not lie low academically. As Harwood et al. (1995) pointed out for Puerto Rican parenting goals, self-maximization for Hispanic children involves proper demeanor more than exploration. Respectfulness is not seen to interfere with individual expression, exuberance, or creativity. Therefore, rather than exploring in a noisy manner, as might be valued for children in the U.S., she exhibits proper demeanor in her academic excellence. 312
By avoiding misbehavior, she avoids excess attention. She knows that trouble means teachers want to speak to your parents. Stefania says that other children get into too much trouble because their family does not teach them well. She is not just referring to émigrés’ children, but all children. I think part of the reason to lie low is also because teachers who address behavioral problems judge parents. Stefania’s re-constructed family ties lead her to desire less questioning of her mother’s abilities. The teachers sometimes discuss what a parent should do, or point out children who misbehave and ask them in front of the class what their parents have done to make them behave that way. Émigrés’ children do not want their parents to be left open to scrutiny, so they lie low.
Six-year-old Maríbel lied low as well. When she first began visiting me, she did not understand the expectations of the context. She would wait until others responded or drew their pictures to figure out how she should respond or draw. Later, when she realized that her visits with me would not result in discipline or familial criticism, she felt comfortable telling me what the boys did wrong or who had taken something from someone else’s desk. Maríbel’s teacher said that she behaved well in class and seemed more directed in her studies than other students. Her teacher attributed this to her mother’s hard work with her. Stefania’s lying low was interpreted as good behavior too.
Stefania diligently copies notes from the board and laboriously writes sentences repeatedly in her lined notebooks as directed. Because of her concentration, she normally completes her assignments earlier than other children. When this occurs, she flips through her notebooks and organizes her desk items while waiting for her seatmate to finish. Then Stefania listens to her seatmate, who chats away about what she saw on television the night before or what her sister said about friends. 313
Sometimes, Stefania’s diligence and good behavior led to other activities. She was chosen to study for a city-wide spelling bee because of her good performance (out of the three children selected in her class, two were émigrés’ children). Also, while I sometimes had to be careful to schedule my time interviewing children to occur during free periods
(for instance, girls were in “free periods” while the boys were at gym or computer classes, and vice versa), Stefania’s teacher encouraged me to take her to talk whenever I wanted.
She said that Stefania could always catch up with whatever she missed. I think the teacher was proud of Stefania’s success and wanted the anthropologist to realize her excellence. Some teachers bragged about the number of émigrés’ children they had in their class—it was an indication of the number of children with difficulties they had to work with. Many émigrés’ children in a classroom were an objective measure of teaching load. I think the teacher saw Stefania’s success as an indication of her abilities as a teacher. Rather than disconfirming the idea that émigrés’ children would have scholastic difficulties, Stefania’s case was interpreted through the same framework. Her lack of difficulties did not mean that parental emigration did not necessarily lead to academic problems. The effect of emigration was inevitable. However, a superb teacher could guide a child when the parent emigrates, as in Stefania’s case. The teacher told me that I could help with what must be residual emotional issues. The teacher interpreted her shyness as due to her insecurity because of a lack of affection from her family. To me,
Stefania seemed secure and content, especially when she discussed her family where she was safe from judgments of others. Her adaptation to avoiding judgment over parental emigration led her to be shy rather than her parental emigration leading her to be shy.71
71 While there are other reasons to be shy, this tendency to lie low when a child wants to avoid attention is 314
In more social classes, such as computer science and gym, Stefania was more active than in normal class. Her sociability increased in accord with the situation.
Teachers did not consider other children who evinced quiet temperaments—even more consistently than Stefania—but were not émigrés’ children as having emotional problems.
They were merely considered to have a less energetic temperament. In a number of situations, any possible negative interpretation for émigrés’ children’s behavior was believed, even if an alternative interpretation was more frequently believed for others.
Stefania’s shyness dissipated somewhat during recess, when children are exceptionally loud. Stefania sat and ate her snack with a number of other girls from her class. She would watch as they showed off their toys or laughed about what the boys had done. She participated in discussions more calmly and laughed along, but did not join in the attempts to dominate conversations with more volume, emphatic imitations, or showing off her possessions. Unlike the other girls, her possessions set her apart rather than integrating her or indicating that she was better. She would have possessions from abroad that others did not have or did not even know were available—this contrasts with the soccer balls and extra hygiene products in Cañaridel. For instance, sometimes she would have purses or other items decorated with characters for movies that had not yet been released in Ecuador. Plus, her possessions were not merely items to demonstrate how much one had, but were reified parental love. Her different black shoes were because of how much her parents loved her, not how likely they were to consent to her.
In consenting, the focus of the act is not on parent’s inability to enforce rules but
an aspect of many of these children’s behavioral repertoire. My interpretation of the connection of shy behavior to parental emigration versus character traits or temperament is further confirmed by the fact that shy behavior was not a consistent trait for these children in different contexts. 315 children’s construction of requests. Perhaps she prefers to leave the agentive focus of the bestowal of objects on her mother, to indicate love, rather than on herself.
Later in recess when some girls got up to run about or chase boys after eating their snack, she stayed sitting with a couple of confidants—both of whom were émigrés’ children. She was less likely to point out gifts she had received from her mother or discuss occurrences from home amongst all the children. She said some did not know nor understand her situation. This lack of understanding was not because of her difference, but the other children’s immaturity to control their behavior or to see how hard parents work for their children. Her confidants not only knew her situation, but experienced the same situations and had the same interpretations of parental care.
Although the expresos did not arrive until 12:45, children packed up their backpacks slightly after noon and teachers considered the rest of the day free-time.
Teachers checked some children’s notations of homework assignments and told other children to tell their parents to pack them a better snack or not to let them bring a certain toy back to school. Stefania and the other two participants in the spelling bee were told to tell their parents that they were selected because they would need help studying and to have their uniforms in order for the competition day. She pointed to the non-émigrés’ child’s socks and said that both navy blue socks should be the same height. (The girl had not seemed to notice the few inches of discrepancy between last year’s socks which she had outgrown and this year’s socks that were bought two sizes too big so they would last longer.) Then, the teacher told the other émigré’s child that his sweater should match the uniform (He was wearing a grey fleece his mother sent from Old Navy rather than a navy blue sweater). Stefania was meticulous so no comments were directed at her uniform. 316
Items such as the Old Navy fleece were the small cues that set émigrés’ children apart from other children. Just as Stefania did not want to show off the items that would set her apart during recess, children did not frequently set themselves apart in attire either. However, in some cases the “necessary” items are fulfilled in a different manner because their parents are abroad. The school uniform sweater becomes a fleece. The black Mary Janes become stylish, strappy wedges. A parent abroad may see the alternative items as more durable, better quality because modern, and often more affordably priced. Plus, émigré parents often prefer the more expensive option (due to shipping) of purchasing items abroad and sending them back rather than sending money to buy items in Ecuador so they feel more involved and know that the children receive what they would like their children to have. The items from abroad remind children that someone from abroad is connected to them in more than economic terms. Imagine the
“My mother went to Spain and all I got was this lousy T-shirt” slogans becoming “My mother works in Spain so I don’t get lousy Ecuadorian T-shirts.” Émigré parents’ presence in wardrobe is another example of their presence in quotidian life.
The children do not highlight these small differences. However, the items do inform them that the kind of care they receive is different, but still care. The children’s lack of emphasis on these items often leaves people who are not closely involved in migration to miss the modern cues—brand awareness is limited when people have not had the opportunity to come to know brands abroad. Odidas sneakers, okley sunglasses, and D.E.I. jeans (rather than L.E.I.) are quite popular items in the city markets.
Therefore, these children look different to someone who is trained to recognize the cues—like the other émigrés’ children—but do not look better or worse, or sometimes 317 even different, to those who are not trained to recognize the cues. Women’s use of
Victoria’s Secrets shopping bags as purses would seem low-class (a paper bag rather than a leather purse?) to some, but is an appropriate class indicator to those whom you would want to notice such class indicators. Bags demonstrating the purchase of expensive U.S. lingerie expose the hidden interior cue of modern undergarments to the exterior.
When the children were released from class to head towards the expresos, chaos ensues. Some children run away from the classrooms towards the bus line to shove into line or run towards classrooms to look for their friends who have different teachers.
Some children neither run towards nor away, but back and forth with indecision as to with whom they want to scream. Stefania briskly walked downstairs, dodging children running about, and met up with her cousin who was still waiting at the classroom.
Stefania asked where her brother was, and the cousin pointed to him frantically running about in circles with other boys. She and her cousin got in the expreso line and her brother’s chaotic circles became more predictable and cyclic to their position in line.
Eventually, he cut in front of his sister in line and they all boarded the expreso home.
While out in public with no responsible adult, Stefania did watch out for her cousin and brother. However, once home, she was no longer in charge of watching their environment. The three walked into the house and dropped their backpacks near the table where they would later do their homework. Each went to change their clothes.
Normally Carmelita would help Stefania’s little cousin change, but Carmelita was not home this afternoon. Stefania’s grandmother came to make lunch and watch the children because Carmelita had taken the youngest child in her care—her son—to an allergist. He was not sick, but her aunt was able to get an appointment for that day weeks ago and 318 wanted to get advice on diet. With direction from Stefania, the grandmother changed
Stefania’s other cousin out of school clothes. The direction that Stefania gave made it clear that she could have changed her cousin’s clothes, but was not expected to. Stefania changed her clothes and to the kitchen for lunch. There was no need to rush her brother for lunch. He looked forward to lunchtime. He could dominate the conversation because his sister was quiet enough and his cousin would be being fed. Stefania would sometimes make fun of him if he mentioned a girl or comment on his behavior at school, but she did not try to change the topic away from her brother towards herself.
The grandmother had made soup for lunch along with rice and breaded chicken.
The two younger children ate soup—the grandmother helped to feed the bottom bit in the bowl to Stefania’s little cousin. Stefania got herself some rice and chicken after she finished her soup. Her brother said he did not want any rice to the grandmother. It was a preemptive strike since the grandmother had already mixed some into the bottom of the cousin’s bowl. Wanting to deflect attention from his refusal of rice (just like rejecting to kiss a relative, eating rice is appropriate behavior and its refusal can lead to more grief than it is worth), he asked his sister why she was with the principal when he went to gym.
The distraction worked. Their grandmother turned her focus to Stefania—more with curiosity than concern since Stefania was never in trouble. Stefania reported that she was selected for the spelling bee. Her grandmother was proud. She told me how, when her daughters were in school, they would be selected as the princess for being outgoing and pretty. She said that Stefania earned her rewards for her intelligence and diligence, rather than being flirty. It was another indication that Stefania would have a different life—one where she could support herself in Ecuador—than her aunt and mother. 319
After lunch, the older two children placed their plates into the sink and the grandmother washed them. She left the soup on the stove for Carmelita. The children receded to the couch to watch TV. Although normally they would start their homework right away, the grandmother said that she could not help them with the homework, so the children had to wait until Carmelita arrived. Carmelita does not help Stefania and only aids the brother in his concentration, the two waited until she came home.
Stefania’s mother called every other day after lunch. After briefly talking to her mother about the allergist and lunch, she first chatted with her son for five minutes. He told her how his friend got in trouble at school for a toy gun but he was behaving himself. He asked if she would get him a toy gun if he promised not to bring it to school.
He described the gun in great detail. He would eat rice with dinner and planned to do his homework as soon as Carmelita got home.
He handed the phone to his sister who was hovering nearby, and ran to the living room to watch television. Stefania asked her mother how she was and reported the spelling bee accomplishment to her. She told her mother the other children who were selected and that she would have to study a lot more. Stefania laughed at her mother’s suggestion of a new dress for the spelling bee—it was not like the girls who get chosen to be a cheerleader. She giggled. One of the other chosen students was a boy, so of course they did not need dresses. However, she did want a dictionary and notebook for preparation. Stefania did not describe what she wanted like her brother—she knew that her aunt would be the one to purchase the items. Stefania put her grandmother on the phone and her mother and grandmother discussed how to redistribute money for the dictionary and notebook and what expense to put off until the next time she sent money. 320
The children watched TV for an hour or so, munching on fruit loops. When the aunt arrived, the children began their homework. She had brought candies from the bus to reward the children once they finished their homework, but they ate the candy before they did their homework. Stefania reported that she had extra homework because of the spelling bee. Her cousin had a time consuming assignment—she had to cut yellow items out of magazines and paste them on a page, crinkle yellow tissue paper into little balls and paste on a sun, and color a number of items yellow. Stefania helped somewhat out of curiosity. She pointed out yellow items in the magazine her cousin was flipping through and suggested they break the rules and paste black on the sun’s smile for additional flare.
In order to catch up for lost time on homework, the grandmother reheated the lunch time soup and made some thinly sliced fried beef for dinner while Carmelita helped with the homework for a couple hours. After homework, the children ate dinner much the same as lunch. Stefania finished her soup herself and got her own meat and rice. Her brother did acquiesce to some rice and meat. He talked with his mouthful of rice about the gun the whole meal. Carmelita fed, bathed, and put to bed her two children.
The older children bathed, put on pajamas, and began to watch TV. Carmelita changed the channel. The news could be rather gruesome so she put on a slapstick comedy. Stefania and her brother usually watched the show and then went to bed. It was a popular option for children because it did not involve actual nudity, violence, or swearing, which was frequent on the news. However, it often treated adult themes. For instance, in one episode, the small town with sugar cane houses receives a visit from a returned émigré. When his sophistication and money attracts a number of voluptuous women, the perpetually-inept clowns of the show decide to emigrate. Comic mayhem 321 ensues when they cannot pack a suitcase, find documents, or figure out how to use public transportation. In the end, the protagonists do not migrate because they decide that they belong in the charming, warm small town rather than in the cold, mean outside world.
When I asked Stefania about this episode,72 she did not separate it from the normal formula of episodes. She told me that she had seen the episode and laughed:
“Those montubios [rubes] can never do anything right.” She said that episode was funny, but that her favorite was when they tried to make empanadas (cheese filled fried dough) to start a business. Just as in the last episode where they ended up covered with clothes trying to pack their suitcase, the flour covered them when they tried to make empanadas.
The cheese would not stay inside the bread. When cheese seeps out into the frying oil, grease splatters about like gunfire from an Uzi. Similar to an “I Love Lucy” episode on an assembly line, slapstick humor and mess results whether making empanadas or trying to emigrate. Stefania saw both making a common breakfast food (which is great with coffee) or leaving the country as situations the clowns would get involved in. She did not separate the two themes based on the moral statement made at the end of the emigration episode—at the end of the empanada episode, it was decided that the women should make the empanadas. Even though they hoped to launch a business with the empanadas, the male protagonists were not capable of cooking. Certain people are capable of completing household duties, and others should take on roles that they can fulfill.
The ideas of roles not only applied to the characters on the television show, but to her life as well. In her storytelling card games (SCG), she would tell stories about behaving appropriately in interpersonal relationships rather than fulfilling specific role
72 I was not there when that particular episode aired, but I knew her family frequently watched the show. 322 expectations. She used more cut-outs than other children in her stories, but did not label the characters as much as some children did. Many people did not even have names in
Stefania’s stories, whereas other children would line-up the cast of characters and sometimes look at me and ask which one was the big brother cut-out or if one of the two was better as the grandmother before even beginning their stories. Stefania did not define the characters in limited terms. Their role was not a shortcut to define their expectations.
In her first SCG, she selected a card with a farm and picked out four characters.
The young character was learning from the older ones how to care for animals. A doctor gave medicine to a cow and the family asked the doctor about the animals’ care. All the family worked together to care for the animals and understand the cow’s needs.
She felt more comfortable with the technique for her next SCG and began her story along the unresolved storyline of one of the popular telenovelas. The young child runs away and faces difficulty on the street (this is as far as the soap had gotten in the storyline). Then, the grandmother searches for the child while out on the street, even though the child has misbehaved, and demonstrates to the child that her family loves her very much. She came home and behaved well with the other children. Here, extended family demonstrated the importance of the interpersonal relationships in the family.
Her next SCG was more closely related to items she was familiar with. This story was longer than the others—just over eight minutes rather than three for the first and two for the second. In this story, a younger brother wanted to play with his older sister but she would not involve the younger child. However, the older sister learned her lesson when the tables were turned on Christmas morning. The younger brother got some great 323 toys and would not share with his sister. The sister got mad, and said that she did not want to play with her brother that day because her friends thought that he was too young to play with them. Then the others (no specification of if parents, another sibling, or grandparents) punished her for blaming others because she should take responsibility for her actions and know how to treat her little brother. Eventually, the older sibling realizes that it’s right to involve younger siblings. This realization was not the end. Stefania involved larger ramifications from understanding/breaking familial obligations than other children did. This story went on to the sister learning how to share with others beyond her family, and then always doing her homework because she was so responsible. This story again demonstrated a more generalized view of care and responsibility.
Other interviews showed that Stefania saw the family as a whole as well, rather than a set of differentiated roles. Family members seemed to have the same roles as each other—there was some specificity as to the capabilities/expectations of those in younger family roles in comparison to those in older family roles. The older family members will eventually teach the younger ones how to fulfill the older roles. Younger family members should be good examples rather than caregivers, but there was still a general concern for the wellbeing of family members. A family is a team sport, but one with few set positions. In her role interview, she said that each and every family member wants you to be a good kid, loves you, and wants you to obey. This way, when children are older, they will care for the parents. When asked what happens if one does not fulfill their specific duties (what if someone is not a good mother?), she said she did not know what would happen. After a brief pause, she answered for the whole family. It seemed as if the idea of just one family member being bad did not make sense—the other kin would correct a 324 bad person, unless they themselves were bad, or they would pick up the slack for the family member who was not fulfilling responsibilities. However, if an entire family was bad, Stefania said there would be negative results—children would be demanding. The child would say that he or she does not love her family, which is very hurtful. The child would not want to work or take care of their grandparents. The family was not a system of unique micro-relationships, but a large system of love and care exchanges that involved parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, nephews, nieces, cousins, and siblings.
This general view of family roles helped Stefania to see the kind of care she received from her émigré mother as normal. Since the source is irrelevant, Stefania’s care situation was not one of substitution because of her mother’s lack, but one of family. She freely alternated between parent-like duties that could and could not be completed from afar in her attachment interviews. She said that her mother was responsible because she gets up early to work (done if present or not present) and wakes the children up for school (only while present). Her mother was concerned because she helped the children with their homework (only while present) and provided for their uniforms (done if present or not present). She did not see her mother’s emigration as a change in care where she had to turn to her aunt for substitution, but rather Stefania’s mother was a composite of the behaviors she had experienced with her over years—when her mother emigrated, it did not begin a new relationship to be contrasted with previous behaviors.
She continued to live with her family, which both her mother and aunt were part of.
Echoes from Stefania’s story appear in the three subsystems. Her life represents an amalgamation of values. I begin with the values found in the macrosystem, meaning the interpretations of emigration by the media, government, and non-governmental 325 organizations. I then explain why some individuals within the exosystem of émigrés’ children accepted these alternative negative valuations and the children’s microsystem with continued positive valuations of émigrés. Both the exosystem and microsystem address particularly the prevailing customs about childcare and parental ethnotheories.
In my selection of treating macrosystems first, then exosystems and microsystems
I do not mean to indicate chronology in the discourse shift of parental émigrés from an unmarked to marked category. I believe that the discourse shift in each of these systems influenced each other both by offering support for their contrary ideas. The subsystems reinforced each other systematically—the resonation of values in one subsystem with those of other subsystems can lead to its establishment as good to think with, just as
Obeyesekere pointed out with the appropriation of subjective imagery that addresses predominant conflict in a culture. Individuals subscribe to values that make sense, and when they subscribe to these values, they are strengthened, expanded, or continued.
Macrosystem
Imagery of the émigré has altered in Guayaquil. Emigration research in Ecuador has focused on what leads to departure, such as social networks, along with some of the current effects of migration on transnational families. This research itself has changed the discourse on emigration. The focus on the interpersonal effects of emigration is necessary to understand the phenomenon fully, but the descriptions of the worst-case scenario of effects on children and of individuals leaving for non-economic reasons have vilified émigrés. The rhetoric from the media, government, and organizations supported such interpretations of émigrés as people who do not contribute positively to society.
Garces’ (2007) work in Guayaquil indicates that the powerful state has solidified certain 326 definitions of acceptable life choices that have permeated many aspects of personal opinions, including safety, employment, and religious beliefs. The interpretations of the
émigrés’ personal, private decisions to emigrate became a public, national concern. Those who leave are now seen differently and the implications of this discourse change are relevant to our understanding of emigration and children’s adaptations to it.
Media:
In just the first month I began archiving articles from El Universo, the Guayaquil newspaper in August 2003, I was surprised with articles that were contrary to the general perspective on emigration in my previous research from 1998 to 2000. Amidst articles on legal changes in visas to the European Union, flight capacities to Spain, and paperwork for licenses while abroad, the majority of articles presented émigrés and their situation negatively. These articles paint a picture of the life of a migrant for those in Guayaquil.
Fourteen articles focused specifically on the difficulties émigrés face. Common topics were racism (877 & 935), 73 mistreatment in detention centers (906) and sexual exploitation (940). Émigrés faced economic difficulties such as lower wages (865 & 963), increasing costs of phone calls (905), and lost money on flights (866). Visas were difficult to attain (972 & 974), leading to the susceptibility of trafficking (960). Those who went did not find an easy life, and some did not find life at all: three articles focused on the repatriation of cadavers (984, 910, & 980).
Not only were the emigration journeys seen as negative, but also the people who chose to emigrate were not represented well. Émigrés ignorantly have the false “illusion”
73 The numbers in parentheses refer to files in the article database I created. Since many did not have authors, I have listed all under “Universo, El” in the references in numerical order. 327 of rapidly finding a stability (1019). One article covered a woman who chose to leave, against the advice of her family, and risked the life of her unborn child (945). Immigrants are seen as a problem in need of a solution (962), rather than individuals with rights or even people deserving of help. As a “problem,” negative characteristics of émigrés are highlighted. One article included a section on their low education level (954). Others focused on the lack of family values: domestic violence such as throwing a girlfriend out a window (961 & 958), child neglect that resulted in the death of an abused, starved child
(904, 925, & 928), and parents who abandoned their children in a detention center to avoid their own deportation (932). Émigrés are criminalized; catching them is a “logro”
[achievement] (942) and reports of detentions (951) have only increased, even while those detained have not increased proportionally. Mafias convert women into prostitutes (936) and men become drug traffickers (931). Émigrés represent the ills that infect society.
It might seem that the loss of such terrible elements would be presented as a benefit for the Ecuador, but this is not the way that emigration is presented. The nation is losing its trained artisans (864) and its investment in certain individuals: people attend national programs for credentials in caring professions, and do not give back when they leave immediately after the completion of the tax-funded programs (959).
The dreariest representations of negative effects from emigration are the effects of emigration on children. Émigrés forget their children (857) and even when they might desire to, cannot reunite with their family (859) without difficult legal battles (937). These articles on child abandonment are accompanied by photos of tearful children—the same photo of a crying toddler reaching out to her mother was used many times—and reports on resultant family disintegration and psychological problems (985, 875, 876). 328
While it may seem that such an analysis of the media is inappropriate because the news focuses on negative items, these articles on émigrés are more extreme than the average reporting of the negative, especially for those émigrés in Spain. Some articles on
émigrés to the U.S. covered positive aspects like cultural affairs and business (907, 965,
863, 858, 957, & 953). Spain is a destination for when someone could not emigrate to the
U.S. Even the one positive article on the Ecuadorian diaspora in Spain had a slightly negative tinge—the article covered the need of émigrés to pray to the Virgen del Cisne
(911) to care for them and protect them. A report on the decrease in sexual exploitation is not positive because it still highlights the exploitation that an émigré is likely to face.
I experienced the media’s focus on the negative perception of emigration first hand as well. In an interview with El Universo, the reporter pressured me to agree that
Ecuador lacks enough resources to care for the children of émigrés and parents should return. When I said that my research does not support this direct interpretation for all children since experiences differ, I was asked again. I must not have understood the question. I tried to express my idea that the negative discourse on émigrés and on the children of émigrés may actually be more harmful to children than the actual emigration in some cases. Adjustment to parental emigration was possible, but this was not included in the article. When an Ecuadorian sociologist Carillo presented research that supported this same interpretation at a national assembly on migration in 2004, she was asked if the
World Bank funded her research. Even the audience of academic researchers and migration policy makers refused to believe that children of émigrés could be okay in certain circumstances—anyone who came to that conclusion must be employed by the globalizing powers that hope to exploit the poor third world countries. 329
The media has entrenched the discourse of the negative effects of the “problem” of emigration. The negative discourse is not the necessary media perspective regarding emigration—in El Salvador, the media represents the émigrés as an essential aspect of the nation (Rivas 2005). Similar to the views in Cañaridel, migrants are seen as laborers who provide for their families with great sacrifice. However, this negative media perspective in Guayaquil has influenced how the government and organizations see emigration.
Government:
In addition to the media’s negative depiction of emigration, the government does not represent émigrés positively either. This does not necessarily have to be the government’s perspective on émigrés. On the opposite extreme, based on the significant value of remittances, the Filipino government aids migrants seeking employment abroad through their consulates, especially women because of the higher likelihood that they will remit money (Ehrenreich & Hochschild 2002: 7). Even though remittances have become a significant portion of the GNP, some sources say second only to petroleum (Acosta
2003: 61), Ecuador does not make any concessions to aid émigrés. The convoluted process for acquiring the documents necessary for visas or legalization requires visits to offices all over the city and prolonged waits. Production of passport booklets stopped in
2000 to prevent emigration. Ecuadorian exit-visa restrictions require documents, even when legally finding the papers is impossible. Those not in the country during the last election are required to have a voting stub, even though there are no absentee ballots.
In this analysis I focus primarily on the direct quotations of government rhetoric in the media, since this is the source of most people’s conceptions of the government’s perspective on emigration. I focus on the effect of the macrosystem on the other systems 330 that influence the contexts of child development. With the state’s public, negative perception of émigrés, the representation of the émigré as an amoral abandoner finds support. The transnational families do not find their perception of their family members’ journey as a choice of employment supported or even acknowledged as a possible view.
My goal of this section is to demonstrate how such rhetoric reinforces and is reinforced by the negative perceptions of émigrés in the contexts that shape child socialization.
Once abroad, émigrés’ needs continue to be neglected in government policy.
Help even with practical concerns was delayed, such as receiving driver’s licenses abroad or addressing the exorbitant remittance fees. Filling the vacant position of the secretary of Migration Concerns after Hernán Holguín quit (828) took almost two months. The replacement Leonardo Ruilova said he does not know about the pending projects of the previous administrator, including items that had been in the newspaper for months.
Overall, the government seems unaware of the needs of émigrés or indifferent to addressing them. The primary concerns of the Ecuadorian diaspora were receiving aid finding employment and legalization in Spain. In the face of complaints about the accords between Ecuador and Spain, the minister of Exterior Relations, Patricio
Zuquilanda (466) claimed that they would not help people find work abroad because it would contradict their goals of creating jobs in the country and returning Ecuadorian capital. Economist Jaime Atienza urged the government to at least attempt to legalize some Ecuadorians through political means and look for legal openings; Ecuador should not “dejar pasar la oportunidad” [let the opportunity go by] (834). President Gutierrez’s trip to Spain for a royal wedding (411) received criticism from some émigrés because no legalization accords resulted—he went to bring Ecuadorian roses to the celebration. 331
Rather than aid in the difficulties that émigrés face abroad, government policy has focused on creating incentive programs to entice return, according to the minister of
Labor Raúl Izurieta, so that the émigrés invest their savings in creating businesses at home (424). This confirms the United Nations’ criticism that countries of strong emigration worry more about the volume of remittances that their nationals send from the exterior than the conditions in which these individuals live and work (1053). At an extreme, rather than combating mistreatment, an Ecuadorian government secretary in
D.C. was the agent of mistreatment of an Ecuadorian domestic on her staff (1004).
Not only does bureaucracy represent a lack of concern for the stated needs of
émigrés, but the government rhetoric furthers negative representations of émigrés as well.
Most blatantly, the minister of Tourism Gladys de Álvarez announced in Barcelona that there is work in the country. [En el país hay trabajo.] Although there were 380,000 cases of
Ecuadorians attempting to legalize (485), she touted the 140,000 jobs in tourism as evidence that there is no reason to emigrate. Rather than taking the opportunity to speak on behalf of the diaspora, or even avoiding the topic altogether since she lacked expertise, she claimed that émigrés “abandoned” Ecuador leading to a shortage of qualified labor.
The abandonment term fit the ideology of Ecuador as the patria or fatherland. It may seem that one abandons children, not one’s father, but, as described with Eduardo
Mendoza above, the Ecuadorian concept of the family expects those children who succeed to care for the parents who raised them. Not to do so is ingratitude, and
“ingrate” is a common, yet stinging, criticism (perhaps similar to hypocrite in the U.S.).
The woman in a well-paid political position said that no one dies of hunger and emigration is an unnecessary abandonment of country. She was unaware that relative 332 deprivation, rather than absolute deprivation, is the cause of emigration in the majority of cases (Giménez Romero 2003: 44). She reiterated the negative view that the government espouses: Ecuadorians’ “principle” reason for emigration is to make money quicker.
Other government voices have represented the diaspora in a negative light as well. The
Ecuadorian ambassador in Madrid, Francisco Carrión stated a desire to help Ecuadorians to integrate in Spain, since the Spanish criticize them as alcoholics who have the habit of listening to loud music and participating in violence (346). The ambassador did not wish to alter the Spanish view of the Ecuadorian diaspora, but acquiesced to these negative depictions of émigrés by stating his goal to change the Ecuadorians themselves. Deputy
Augusta Rivas (204) of the Ecuadorian Commission of Human Rights of the National
Congress stated that Ecuadorian émigrés are a “constant worry” [preocupación constante] for the authorities. Even though on the Commission of Human Rights, her concern was not the rights of émigrés but was the abandoned fields, family break-up, and the social conflicts from large remittances. The concern that the remittances cause discord obscured the ability to cover familial needs with remittances. These concerns are the
“problems of emigration.” Government policy seeks to address the problems that emigration causes, rather than the problems émigrés face. The concern is not with how to help the individuals, but how to prevent them from destroying Ecuadorian society.
Organizations:
Organizations seeking government funding sometimes focus on the problems that emigration causes rather than methods to better the journeys of émigrés themselves.
Émigrés are represented as victims who have been duped rather than entrepreneurs attempting to provide for their family. In Latin America, such organizations have gained 333 legitimacy for their views because of their international ties (Gill 2000) that are widely distributed through their populist appeal (Auyero 2000). The most formidable and revered organizations in Ecuador are associated with Spain or sectarian groups. León
Roldós claimed that, “Emigration is a grave problem for Ecuador because it tears apart families” (510). Regardless of remittances, we need to have the émigrés return. Solving the reasons that led to their departure is not a focus. Conferences seek not as understanding the migration fact, but “avoiding emigration” (869) which implicitly indicates that it is a problem with no possible positive results. In a focal group with eighty school counselors,74 they were asked to come up with the consequences of emigration. The over thirty group responses were all negative: they ranged from lower scholastic achievement to even suicide and eating disorders. Interestingly, the counselors’ representations of their own life histories emphasized obstacles they had overcome to form character strength. However, the difficulties of émigrés’ children were not seen as a possible circumstance of character development. Even though poverty, household responsibilities, and self-reliance (factors that were cited as part of the difficulty for
émigrés’ children) were all experiences that led to character development. The negative effects are seen as a direct, inevitable result of emigration, not due to the situational implications of parental emigration. When asked about examples and children they knew, they would mention a number of “exceptions” to the rule where children excelled due to their parent’s dedication. No number of exceptions contradicted the connection between parental emigration and disaster for children.
74 While Bronfenbrenner places the education system squarely in the macrosystem, I see it as part of the exosystem as well because of the influence of the child’s school on children. 334
Since it’s possible that even with the changes in the macrosystem, people would continue the positive valuation of emigration, I present factors that led to the non-émigré families’ acceptance of the negative valuation of émigrés. With this discourse from the macrosystems, many do not share the view of emigration as a positive family strategy.
Negative Valuations of those “Left Behind”:
One aspect that led to the distinction between these two family types was the frequent discussions of the “brain drain” and of the increased flow of émigrés before the institution of visas with the Schengen Accords. As a concession to the European Union,
Spain tightened visa control by signing the Schengen Accords (Cornelius 2004: 410), which added Ecuadorians to the list of countries that would require an entry visa. The visas seemed to indicate that those who had chosen to stay were actually left behind. Those still in Ecuador were too slow or stupid to emigrate when they had the chance. Active decisions were interpreted as passive resignation. The brain and care drain highlights the pull factors that bring those who are desired abroad to leave. Drain implies that there is a lack of these positive characteristics—intelligence and compassion—in those who do not emigrate. This negative reflection on those who chose to stay led to a backlash of negative sentiment towards those who chose to go.
Civic Regeneration:
A second factor in the appropriation of the negative representation of the émigré is the way that urban regeneration has changed Guayaquileños’ views of their city. When many of the émigrés left, their views motivating emigration were widely shared. Indexes on the “Bienestar General de la Población” [General Wellbeing of the Population] indicated that most Ecuadorians did not have confidence or see legitimacy in their government 335
(CEDATOS 1999). When the survey was conducted, only seven percent believed the government guaranteed them tranquility and only ten percent believed they could find employment. Only seven percent of the Ecuadorians surveyed believed the country could “salir adelante” or get ahead. With the lack of faith in the government, the choice to leave in hopes of thriving in another country was a logical decision.
However, this sentiment has changed following the urban regeneration. Renewed urban pride abounds. Since the mayor’s brother-in-law sells cobblestones, he has decided to tear apart the paved streets (even though there are unpaved streets) and to cobblestone them, which makes them appealing to tourists. This process of regeneration has involved reconstructing the boardwalks at the river in order to create public spaces of pride suitable for tourists. Even those along the boardwalk in precarious sugar-cane houses with dirt roads do not look at the mayor’s installation of palm trees in the affluent Urdesa with distrust. In a newspaper article, residents voiced their belief that, true to his word, the mayor would soon regenerate their area as well. I was told how the removal of street vendors, called “informales,” has made the streets safer and cleaner. Also, he has chosen to reform spaces for security rather than finding security for the spaces. This means that rather than filling darkened, tree-lined spaces with guards, they added lights and removed trees for easier surveillance. Individuals wander around the Malecón 2000 with happiness at the improvements. No one sees any problem with the fact that in 2000 there was only a map of what would come. Word on the street indicates that the government can provide tranquility and is honest, and there is little space to disagree with this sentiment.75
75 I was often corrected for not acknowledging the unquestionable grandiosity of the re-generation: I told someone on the bus that I missed the ice cream vendors and she asked how could I? Didn’t I notice that the streets were cleaner without plastic cups and garbage? When I said that the customers, not the vendors, 336
With the dissipation of legitimate motivations to emigrate, and in some cases even the fervent belief in the contrary, the negative views on émigrés find support and are reverberated in rhetoric from the media, government, and organizations. This renewed belief in safety and faith in the city altered the values that led to emigration and therefore diminished the validity of émigrés claims for emigration because of political corruption.
Patronage Structure:
The third reason for subscription to the macrosystem’s negative valuation of
émigrés that I would like to discuss is more complicated. The flow of remittances has increased some prices, which were already on the rise because of dollarization. Prices did not rise beyond means and then re-lower once out of reach of the majority of individuals as with the law of supply and demand. The prices continued to rise because remittances well beyond what could be earned in Ecuador continued to flow in, which meant that the families of émigrés would be able to afford the heightened prices. While there has always been drastic economic disparity, individuals accepted the class structure because of its previous historic links to patronage. The patronage structure systematizes class disparity into logical relationships and expectations. Everyone in the patronage structure has agency through interpersonal relationships to people who are higher in the structure.
The patronage structure features asymmetrical reciprocity (Fuenzalida 1970: 68) that ties “people of significantly different socioeconomic statuses (or orders of power) who exchange different kinds of goods and services” (Foster 1974: 272). Power relations determine the ability to fulfill favors of increasing importance and therefore one’s littered, she was perplexed. Changing customers was an odd solution. It is easier to ban vendors. Even in an Amazonian market, a hammock salesman told me how great the Guayaquil streets are without vendors. When I said that the mayor would ban him, he said that I did not understand the depth and magnitude of the mayor’s plans to represent modernity to foreigners. He was right. I just wanted ice cream. 337 position in the patronage structure. Linger provides a concrete description. He describes the patronage system in Brazil (1993: 5) and Peru (1982: 80) as a pyramid of inverted V’s.
The top of each V is a patron who is also the client of the V above, and so on until the imagined highest patron in the structure. The vertical cross-sections constitute the chain of command for requesting favors. Linger described this dynamic: “Clients can call on patrons for favors, not only for themselves but for their own clients as well. Hence one is, vis-à-vis one’s own clients, not only a direct source of valued goods and services but also a broker who can intercede with still more highly placed patrons” (Linger 1993: 5f).
A constituent petitions his or her patron and, if a good relationship exists, then that patron either fulfills the request or, as a client, appeals to the next patron up until the patron can complete the request. Interpersonal connections to the individual, rather than a set of written laws, determine the likelihood of granting the favor. DaMatta (1991) discusses the importance of interpersonal relations in terms of a distinction between an individual and the person. An individual is the same as everyone else—almost an object on a to-do list—whereas a person has special privileges as an interpersonal relationship.
A client requests the completion of favors based on the strength of the interpersonal relationship. No one appeals to a patron substantially higher up in the structure, even though that patron could get better results if he or she wished, because the higher patron does not know the client as a person, but only as an individual.
Therefore, the client does not motivate the higher patron to fulfill the request or to petition above. A client’s petition uses a favor and the patron only exerts the effort or asks a higher-up patron if deemed worthwhile. With this structure, time required for responses depends on the strength of the relationship and the position of the patron. 338
However, migration upsets the previous structure. With migration, one does not advance because of personal ties to higher positions. A person advances as an individual and pre-empts the previous structure. Some transnational families have overstepped their class position. The continued precarious position of the middle-class due to economic instability and the rising position of émigrés lead non-émigré families to subscribe to the macrosystem’s negative valuation of émigrés. The overstepping of boundaries is especially difficult because the émigrés are frequently seen as lower class because their choice to leave indicates an inability to succeed through the existing structure.
Association of Migration with Indigenous Peoples:
The positive view of émigrés from a culture of migration was less solidified in
Guayaquil than in Cañaridel due to the associations of international migration with indigenous peoples. Mestizos distinguish themselves from the indigenous peoples.
Indigenous peoples face widespread degradation as the “dirty” and “ignorant” poor. Indio or “indian” is an insult that can refer to one’s lifestyle, dress, or habits regardless of ethnicity. Some explain a yellowish hue to their child’s skin as a result of too much time in the womb. This environmental explanation of possible indigenous phenotypic markers is preferred to genetic attributions. Others have documented that non-indigenous peoples consider indigenous peoples genetically inferior (Linger 1982: 59; Vásquez 1967:
32) and “the principal reason for underdevelopment” (Castillo Ardiles 1970: 71).
Linger76 claims that the need to disassociate from the indigenous peoples because of their negative perception is intense:
76 While Linger expressed this sentiment regarding Peru, the historical process of colonialization and mestizaje is similar with Ecuador. In my experience, his words are reflective of the sentiment of mestizos towards indigenous peoples in Ecuador. 339
It is not only that a doctrine of biologically determined “Indian” inferiority justifies exploitation and alleviates feelings of guilt but also that… there is an incentive to try to throw up barriers against those below. If, that is, the “Indian” is genetically inferior to me, he can never be like me—and I, thank God, can never be like him. (Linger 1982: 62; emphasis in original)
Because of the strong aversion, or even an “unrealistic dread” (Mangin 1955: 182), to being considered indigenous, Guayaquileños are hesitant to appropriate the indigenous migratory past to interpret current parental emigration. They conceive of the indigenous peoples as “a quintessential symbol of helplessness” and as suffering the “powerlessness of an ineradicable nature” (Linger 1982: 72). This prevents the interpretation of émigrés as active, devoted family members when not motivated to do so.
Microsystem & Exosystem
The legal restrictions implemented in 2003 created a divide between those who had emigrated and their family members who could apply for family reunification visas on the one hand, and those who had stayed behind and no longer had the option to emigrate on the other. This is not a divide between the émigré and those who stay behind, but a divide between those who are imagined77 as part of the émigré’s family and those who are not. I refer to the two family types as “transnational” and “non-émigré” families, not to be confused with “émigré” families where the entire family relocates and
“national” families that would imply a stronger connection to the nation than its contrary type. For émigrés’ children, the transnational families compose their microsystem and the non-émigré families, who are neighbors or teachers compose their exosystem.
77 I chose the word imagined because those who were eligible to emigrate with reunification visas differed from those who thought they were eligible. Some visa solicitors were confused as to which documents were needed to reunite cousins and their parents with the aunt abroad. Since no term refers to the extended family, the word “family” in family reunification meant the larger category to the visa solicitors. 340
With this divide between family types, I observed a strong contrast in the social acceptance, support, and normalization of parental emigration between the transnational families and the non-émigré families. Just as with Ortner’s (1984) discussion of practice theory, the individual’s position in the system of cultural values affects the individual’s particular interpretation of the cultural context. While the transnational families often idealize the decision to emigrate as a devoted sacrifice, in contrast, the non-émigré families frequently deprecate the decision as abandonment of country and kin.
The negative depictions of the émigré described in the macrosystem have fueled and supported a competing representation of émigrés that contrasts with the previous one described above for those in Cañaridel. The two sets of conceptions compose parental ethnotheories. While separated in this chapter, these models are not separated in the empirical world. As Bronfenbrenner pointed out, both the microsystem and exosystem influence a child’s socialization. Children come to know, to codify, and to cope with their parent’s emigration within both of the contrasting conceptions. In addition to finding support in the negative depictions of the macrosystem, these parental ethnotheories influence government policy, NGO programs, school involvement, and media opinion on the “problem” of émigrés’ children. To understand fully the socialization of children, we need to acknowledge the contrasting values that exist.
Contrary to standard treatments of socialization, children negotiate divergent, perhaps contradictory, heavily valued norms and can create their own amalgamation of values.
Transnational Families’ Conceptions:
The transnational families emphasize a distributive view of childcare: they focus on the roles that the émigrés can accomplish from abroad and the substitution of others 341 childcare. While abroad, parts of the parental role can be successfully subcontracted, yet the parent is not replaced. Successfully fulfilling the child’s economic needs is difficult in
Ecuador. With emigration, someone else covers the physical needs which is not difficult once economic needs are met considering the amount of extended family.
Transnational families believe that children can understand the choice that the parent has made to provide a better future for them. Children see that even though far away, their parents still love them. In fact, being far away substantiates this love.
Transnational families focus on the sacrifices the émigré makes.
Love for one’s children is a primary motivation to emigrate. The sacrifice of journeying to a far off land to care for your children is family devotion. Parents who did not try to emigrate were lazy and did not love their families enough to sacrifice. Men who emigrate provide for their families. In one village, those who stayed were known to take advantage of the seven to one female to male ratio. Those who were away might cheat, as all men were prone to do, but not with the neighbor and no one knows first hand. By emigrating, they demonstrated how seriously they take their parental duties.
The ability to discipline from afar is a key contention between the two family types. Transnational families claim that the extended family provides discipline and the
émigré is informed when necessary for further discipline. Plus, having a parent abroad, the child can recognize the sacrifices that the parent has made and behave as a tribute.
Similarly, a child does well in school to make parents proud. Transnational families focus on the caliber of schools they can afford with remittances. The school is the educator. Who does the homework the school assigns does not matter—the caregivers do not decide the task. The school the émigré pays for does. The surge in 342
“homework controls” where tutors help children with their homework is evidence that money can provide children with an education. The public school teacher strikes, lack of books, and shoddy facilities demonstrate that for free, children receive no education.
The émigré parents have provided a good example of the rewards for hard work under great strain. Against all odds, their diligence has shown through when they established themselves in an inhospitable society to support their kin. Émigrés as an example teach their children devotion and perseverance.
Non-Émigré Families’ Conceptions:
In contrast, the non-émigré families’ parental ethnotheory focuses on the limitations distance places on good parenting with a view of motherhood as immutable and indispensable. “No one can love like a mother” was an unquestionable fact. Any good parent knows that meeting economic needs is secondary to meeting physical needs.
The non-émigré families believe children can understand the choice the émigré has made: the parent decided money is more important than being with their children.
Children can grasp monetary limitations and appreciate their parent enduring difficult times because they love them too much to take the easy way out. Being without money substantiates the parents’ love. These families focus on negative stereotypes of reasons to emigrate that depict the émigré as not only a bad parent, but also as a bad person.
For the non-émigré families, love for one’s children was proposed as a primary motivation not to emigrate. In interviews, informants did not outright state that the
émigrés are bad parents. Many first acknowledged the macro-social push and pull factors that sociologists frequently cite as the motivations for emigration. Yet, when I asked why others went and they stayed, negative stereotypes about émigrés’ lack of family devotion 343 became apparent. People emigrate to avoid marital difficulties. Men with their mistresses and loose women who are up to no good emigrate. No émigré was safe from the moral depravity while abroad because they were without their family. The family provides guidance to make correct choices, and reflected shame from indiscretions on one’s family is a constant reminder to behave appropriately in Ecuador. Even if an émigré has the best of intentions to be faithful while abroad, they cheat because otherwise they would be lonely. They cannot help but be seduced by the beauty of “whiter” foreign women. It is expensive not to share a bed—splitting the rent is another reason émigrés inevitably cheat.
The non-émigré families not only believe that the parents abroad are unable to provide appropriate discipline, but those left in charge of the children cannot either.
Grandmothers spoil the children because they are out of touch with what it’s like to raise children in today’s society. Aunts, who cannot possibly love a child as their own, do not appropriately discipline the child. Children are prone to misbehavior because they can see the aunt does not love them like their cousins. When they do misbehave, the aunt may punish the child too harshly because she does not really love the child. The children have no choice but to accept the harsh treatment because their parents have left them with no option. Otherwise, when children misbehave, the aunt does not punish them sufficiently because she feels bad that the children do not receive the merited love or the aunt just does not care enough to provide structure. Also, the aunt has no choice but to dole out benign punishments because the parents have a number of options: if the child is unhappy, the parents will send the child to any number of people who want the remittances, but not necessarily what’s best for the poor abandoned child. According to this parental ethnotheory, regardless of who takes over the child’s care, discipline may be 344 too harsh or too lenient—but it can never represent the appropriate balance of disciplining and consenting discussed as central to the concept of the child in Chapter 5.
As with discipline, in education the parents are the only ones who can make sure a child completes tasks. The non-émigré families state that even with the best schools, an un-motivated and emotionally disturbed child will not learn. It is a waste of time and energy to teach children who are not motivated.78 With émigré parents, children will not receive positive feedback for grades and will think it does not matter. Children perform academically to make their parents proud. That cannot be done for absent parents.
Émigré parents are not a good example of the value of education: engineers emigrate to clean toilets. Émigrés do not know how to work with the necessary entrepreneurship to succeed in their own country. Others told me that people emigrate for pride. They work as cooks in Spain, but would never want their compatriots to view them in a demeaning occupation. Émigrés teach children greed, pride, and sloth.
Comparison of Conceptions:
These two conceptions are drastically different: the transnational family’s parental ethnotheory indicates only positive results whereas the non-émigré model indicates only negative, both regardless of the substitute family’s care, child’s temperament, parent’s continuation of contact, and mode of departure. However, these conceptions have grown out of the same cultural context. Previous existing values were recombined to make meaning out of the current social circumstances. As stated, transnational families value the extended family and non-émigré families focus on the immutable role of a
78 For a similar parental ethnotheory that focuses on children’s learning rather than adults’ teaching, see Lancy’s work on the Kpelle (1996). 345 mother. Yet, non-émigré families do not deny the importance of the extended family— they are still necessary for childcare and mentioned as a deterrent to emigration.
Transnational families do not deny the importance of a mother—the émigré is still a mother and provides love, education, discipline, and an example from afar just as a mother who stays provides care at home. These conceptions of the family have a great deal in common. Both think children understand the parents’ decision to emigrate, but have strongly contrasting ideas of whether it was a good or bad decision. Both see the importance of providing for one’s family with honor, entrepreneurial spirit and devotion, but disagree as to who is being greedy, slothful, and unfaithful. Both think children want a good education to make their family proud, but have different ideas of what a parent needs to do to motivate this. Finally, both see the importance of providing a good example, but disagree as to whether or not the émigré parent provides such an example.
While founded on similar conceptions of what children need, the two parental ethnotheories differ drastically in their concepts of how to provide what children need.
Given the importance of children in Ecuadorian society, the similarities between their concepts of children’s needs are obscured in the passionate conviction of their differences. The reason for these underlying similarities in the competing conceptions of children is because of the influence of cultural logics. According to Fischer (2001: 15), while change is an integral part of culture, cultural change has to reconcile itself with the pre-existing cognitive schemas in a manner that permits a sense of continuing intersubjectivity, even when there are dramatic modifications to the cultural values. The two parental ethnotheories rest on the same axiomatic values, but come to clearly different conclusions. 346
RE-CODIFICATION OF FAMILIAL ROLES
Psychic Distress
The children seemed distressed at the airport or when told of the parent’s plans.
Some children did not find out that their parents would be away for an extended time until well after their parents’ departure. The child would be told the father was going to
Spain for his sick sister, and then the father would stay for a year or so to work. Some children felt that this was dishonest and said that parents should tell children before they emigrate. These children seemed to have similar reactions when told that their parents would be away as children who were brought to the airport, along with some anger at the deception. Some children expressed concern that their new caregivers would also leave.
Observations in the airport were more focused opportunities to see the children’s reactions to parental departure. When I observed the Romero family at the airport, seven-year-old Hector seemed very distressed at his father’s departure. While in his mother’s arms, he reached out to his father with his brown eyes welling up with tears.
With his weight and attempts to get down, his mother could no longer hold him. She set him down so he could go and hug his father. Once set down, Hector’s tears turned to a determined grimace. He attempted to pull his father’s leg out of line at the ticket counter.
Hector knew his father was leaving. He asked his father to get him a cookie from the coffee cart nearby. Seeking consent is always a good method of attaining attention.
Hector’s grandmother reached out her hand and offered to get him a cookie. He refused—the cookie was less the goal than getting his father to step out of line. His grandfather went to get a cookie and returned to the line without comment. A quiet mannered man, he did not interrupt to announce the arrival of the cookie. 347
Unlike many children, Hector was told about his father’s impending plans. His grandmother told me that the family thought that it was best that Hector knew. The grandfather nodded. Hector may be upset now, but he would come to realize that his father is still an important part of his life. His grandmother said, “Paternal love can’t be stopped by an ocean.” The mother had told Hector that his father would be gone for a short time. This was sufficient information and nothing else could be done to ease his departure, the grandmother reported. Hector sometimes behaves this way when the father goes to the store without him. The Romero’s saw distress as a normal reaction to the departure of a father: Why would they expect the child to be happy to see his father leave? Of course he will be upset. He loves his father. They wanted to bring the child to the airport to take some photos and so he would see his father off. The grandmother said that she knew a little girl who asked to visit her mother every time she passed the airport on a bus because her family did not let her stay to see the plane leave. The grandfather was much quieter. He said his son was intelligent and should be able to find work, but that the government is so corrupt that he must emigrate. The grandmother said that it will be good that her son can learn about life abroad. They would watch out for his wife, who was a good woman, and the child. The grandmother said that unlike in the U.S., they have more family here. People do not spend their time trying to get ahead and be better than others, but spend their time doing what is best for their family. She said that just as they learned how to take care of their family’s needs, so will their grandson. He will come to respect his father’s decision and understand the difficulty and devotion with which one must care for his family. When it came time to pass through security, the father spoke with his son regarding a few toys that Hector had wanted and 348 he could not afford for his child. He told his son he was just going to visit, would return soon, and asked if he could trust him to care for his mother. The expectation to take care of his mother seemed to comfort Hector. It was as if the statement reminded the child of the importance of fulfilling familial needs, rather than worrying about his own desires.
This idea of seeing migration and one’s position as part of a family that depends on each other is the value that composed children’s recodificaiton of the family for adjustment.
Children did not see the departure as separation when they presented their story afterwards. Children would remember extensive details regarding many aspects of life, before and after migration, but minimized the details on emigration. They could detail the items their parents sent, the opportunities they had, what their parents worked as abroad, but did not remember details of the migration process. As described in Chapter
7, children are attached to their parents who emigrate. However, unlike the children in
Chapter 7, children in Guayaquil could not just interpret their émigré parents as devoted sacrificers to all, as their family presented them. The children knew that teachers and others considered the émigrés abandoners. Perhaps parents knew this as well, but were more willing to contradict a dominant view blatantly. Either way, children presented the
“normal” aspects of their lives that would not elucidate their parents’ status as émigrés.
I described a number of reasons for subscribing to the negative regeneration of the imagery of émigrés for the non-émigré families. This negative imagery has solidified because of the support it finds in the macrosystem. This shift in representations of the
émigré from a worker in a culture of migration to an amoral abandoner who has initiated the disintegration of the family is dramatic. The propagation of this imagery in uncontested space complicates children’s ability to positively appraise the émigrés’ 349 journey. Unlike in Chapter 7, the children presented here found that creating positive representations of their émigré parents met contestation in the macrosocial sphere.
This difficulty in positively valuing parental emigration can lead to the alienation of émigrés’ children. The children are being pathologized: rather than focusing on the needs and the characteristics of their actual situation as émigrés’ children, they are seen as inevitably afflicted. Just as research on divorce (Burgoyne 1987; Simpson 1998) and fatherlessness (Adams et al. 1984) suggests, some children can adjust and others cannot.
The situations that lead to resiliency to difficult situations for some children are ignored.
Not all children experience emigration as abandonment (Salazar Parreñas 2002; Chapter
7), but the more they hear the media, government, organizations, teachers, and neighbors depict their parents in a negative light, the more that they will feel abandoned. As
Anderson-Fye (2003) discusses, with the new discourse on abuse in Belize, public rhetoric that interprets one’s experience as unacceptable can lead the individual to react to their experiences with certain characteristic responses of psychic distress and adaptation, rather than normalizing the abusive behaviors as acceptable through cultural discourse.
With the lack of uncontested, widespread values that normalize parental separation, the children I studied in Guayaquil were susceptible to distress when reconciling their transnational families with the typical family structure. In Cañaridel, children found support for positive valuations of parental émigrés. In Guayaquil, children may find alienation for positive valuations of parental émigrés. For this reason, children created interpretations of their parental émigrés that focused on representing their positive parental behaviors. Children who had not created such representations did experience distress either over parental emigration or over a lack of societal meaning. 350
The development of secure attachment may not only be difficult for children who lose both parents to emigration. Even if just one parent emigrates, the child may have difficulty forming a secure base of attachment because, with the two-parent household as the norm in Latin America, the child may create parental expectations that require both parents. Based on my interviews at the Ecuadorian version of Planned Parenthood,
APROFE79, I believe that fathers do not deny paternity because fatherhood is manly and from God, not a duty arising from bad luck or an accident. Rare paternity tests are blood tests—when a test determines a “father,” in reality any man with that blood type (or possibly other types) could be the father. One father suspected that he was not the father of his wife’s first-born child because then his wife would have been pregnant for eleven months. He told me that he did not argue with the paternity test, even though it was just a blood test, because a child needs a father. After all, the child would not even have a name if he did not claim paternity. Latinos have two surnames: one from their father’s father and one from their mother’s father80. Women do not change their surnames when they marry but add “de” and the husband’s father’s surname to their name. With the two-parent norm in Latin America, the loss of a parent is salient every time a child writes his or her name or introduces him- or herself. This constant reminder of the lack of a caregiver is central to identity construction because it will be salient in self-presentation.
When the father emigrates, the mother frequently remarries or co-habits with another man. Because of the lack of communication between different civil registries,
79 Asociación Pro Bienestar de la Familia Ecuatoriana/Association for the Benefit of the Ecuadorian Family 80 Naming the child with the mother’s two surnames is gaining prevalence, but a child knows that he or she has the same surnames as the mother. The naming process is part of every school day and daily interaction. When giving my name, people asked for my other last name and would pry into my personal life until I provided one and explained to whom the name belonged and my hesitancy. 351 divorce is not necessary to remarry and the cost frequently precludes it for many. One woman I spoke with technically was a trigamist. She had been married twice without divorcing and her cousin was also married under this informant’s name because the cousin was too young to get married under her own name. The new husband does not become a father to the child—the child keeps his biological father’s surname and no one recognizes the new husband as his father. Legal adoptions are infrequent. In fact, the word for “stepfather” [padrastro] is little known in Guayaquil.81 The new husband is not meant to replace the father. The different surnames of siblings reinforce the loss.
Children know if their sibling is a half or full sibling and know whom they need to make their family “complete.” Since the father’s surname comes first and people use it more often than the mother’s surname, different surnames meaning different fathers or a dissociated surname meaning no father is apparent to even young children. Some children felt the need to point out that one girl might lie to me: her mother emigrated, but the father now married the mother’s sister. With the same set of last names from the mother and the new mother/aunt, the people who came to visit the teacher on her behalf seemed to have the correct parent surnames. They feared she might try to lie. Without the inside track, she could have gotten away with the lie, they thought, since she did not have the obvious mismatched name markers other children needed to bear.
Fathers rarely care for children when the mother emigrates. A female touch is needed for physical care and nutrition so a single father could not raise a child. If a second wife cares for them, people expect that she will abuse them or treat them like
81 The fact that new husbands do not become fathers, nor even stepfathers, is an underlying cultural logic that helps to support the interpretation that aunts who provide care do not take the place of a mother. 352 domestic help. For this reason, mothers rarely leave their children with the father. One individual stated that if you left the children with the father, he would be forced to remarry in order to provide his children with appropriate care. Why insure the loss of your husband? It is a better decision to depend upon the existing female caregivers for the child than to expect your husband to find a new one. When the mother emigrates, she may send the child to a maternal relative’s household or have a maternal relative come and live in her home. She normally does not send the child to a single-parent household because the household is already short on parental care for the current children. It is more acceptable to have the single parent come and live in the child’s home, as if the existing ties to the émigré parent and support network related to that home compensate for one caregiver. In the relative’s two-parent household, the child observes the cousin’s luck with two parents and his or her lack of a mother and father. Rather than lament the loss in their situation, the children come to reinforce and to highlight the ties they do have to the émigré. For this reason, children are motivated to present their transnational familial ties as continuing ties. The émigré parent is still a parent with continued ties through a recodification of familial roles in culturally constituted defense mechanisms.
The Spanish language fit this need of hiding the agents of care and of highlighting existing connections to those abroad well. Passive constructions and gendered pronouns are more frequent than in English. Ten-year-old Alex spoke about going home to lunch that would be prepared for him (by a female) and to get help with homework (by a male) without ever mentioning who would be there in response to a child who spoke about his mother’s promise to make empanadas if he did well on the test. Alex had crafted his system of representations. Both of his parents had emigrated, but not together. When I 353 asked if his parents were “divorced” or “together,” he would discuss physical
“separation,” segueing from marital separation. Being “together” became physical togetherness rather than marital togetherness. It was less problematic to discuss the geographic distance, without mentioning the loss of familial ties, than to acknowledge his parents’ separation. I knew his background, even though he had seamless representations of his situation, because the owner of the school was his uncle. Alex had become better at selective representations because his schoolmates had the opportunity to know his personal business. When his mother returned to visit, he could not avoid discussing the transitions, which highlighted the distinctions between normal and émigré care, because she would come to the school. This is a case where social support, as I discuss below, became more important. He and four other boys in his sixth grade class were émigrés’ children. The other boys did not mention when Alex’s mother was around—even though they starred in the school play and “parents” made costumes, they did not discuss who made the costumes, but did laugh and ridicule each other relentlessly regarding the flairs of each costume. They had learned not to question each other’s substitution of different family members for care to support their re-codification of familial roles.
Re-Codification of the Family Structure
Eight-year-old Daniel had ethicized the departure of his mother and the lack of involvement with his father. He lived with his aunt who could not have children.82 No one in this family would accept an interpretation that Daniel lacked care.
82 Daniel, his aunt, his grandmother, and his mother all accepted this as a fact. Medical interventions for reproduction were rare, and especially so for a family that lacked economic and stable male support. Male support seemed to wane in many families during the economic crisis. Men who could not support their families as a devoted worker often adapted to an alternative identity as a man of the street rather than a family man. Other men implemented such a change in perspective in accord with their changing abilities 354
In the child attachment interview, Daniel described all his caregivers in a positive light. He described his father as funny because of an easy going temperament (perhaps because Daniel’s mother’s emigration lessened his economic burden) and fair because his father fulfilled his promises. His father was loving because when he was little, he hugged his son. Daniel’s father was friendly because he helped people out. Many of the father’s trips were labeled as journeys to help friends. Daniel described his father as honest as well because he was like a husband of the aunt—he would buy her what she needed for the house. His mother was brave because she got involved with businesses and preoccupied because she asks how he is and if he is going to go out. Perhaps referring to phone calls, Daniel described his mother as happy because she would play and tell him that she loves him. The mother was considered honest as well—she sent whatever his grandmother needed and new clothes even though her old clothes are not ripped.
All these descriptions were items that are important to both transnational and non-émigré families. Parents who are entrepreneurial, concerned, loving, and honest are highly prized. However, he has selected examples that could be conducted away or at home. Some of these items could not have been accomplished if his mother had not emigrated. The family did not have the money beforehand to express their consideration for others. Daniel is not contradicting the values that normally judge émigré parents—he is following these ideas of what makes a good parent. Yet, he is also claiming that his mother’s decision to emigrate was a good decision. They could not meet the non-émigré families’ ideas of a good family without being an émigré family. Rather than disagreeing
after the economic crisis. One said that you can depend on your friends for assistance. He admitted that this is the reason he only has acquaintances now—he is unable to provide the support a friend should. 355 with their definitions of what makes a good parent, Daniel chose examples that demonstrate that an émigré can be a good parent in the both parental ethnotheories.
The same kinds of descriptions were used for the aunt: she was happy and joyful because she takes him out to the park but sad when he gets bad grades. These examples of care were not ones that were specifically motherly (he did not name bathing, dressing, or feeding), but kinds of care and concern that were familial. One could not point to the care he received from his aunt and say, “Why doesn’t your mother do that?” He was not missing a mother so he did not need an aunt to fulfill that lack. I do not believe that if he expressed his aunt as completing these roles that he would feel that his mother was completing less; I think that he had created an understanding of what each woman completed—together they cared for him as one’s family should.
When I asked about what a father or mother should do, Daniel focused more on being a good person than specific behaviors. To investigate further, I asked what children need from their parents. Daniel talked about general needs that others could provide. When describing specific care needs, he focused on the behavior rather than the emotional meaning in the act. He said that children without émigré parents are different.
I expected Daniel to claim that they had the affection that children need, but Daniel said that children who do not have émigré parents have less love and care from the extended family and the family is not as close. Émigré families more closely matched the
Ecuadorian model of the family. He said that his aunt could not have children, which meant that he could have two people to provide him with love.
Daniel could not remember details when I asked him about the transition to the care of his aunt from the care of his mother. He could remember earlier and later details, 356 but he did not focus on the process of transition. He did not seem defensive or make excuses as to why items were “okay.” In all of his discussions of family and children’s needs, his interpretation seemed to indicate that his situation was preferable to a normal child’s situation, or at least, emigration was the preferable resolution to his situation.
In these cases, the reactions to distress that alleviate the psychic conflict during the emigration of a parent usually involve the re-creation of the family structure and the roles of the family in ways that accord with the predominant cultural values. Yet, it also recodes reality in a manner that does not cause distress. I believe that these children differed from the children in Chapter 7 because of the way they responded to discussions of parental emigration. While the children in Chapter 7 in Cañaridel with normalized positive values on parental emigration discussed any aspect of parental emigration freely, the children presented here seemed to have “memory lapses” and crafted representations of interactions. They would forget the specific details of transitional periods. They would minimize such interactions and emphasize others that did not highlight the ocean separating them from their parents. The children would primarily discuss interactions with their parents that confirmed the relationship as normal—interactions of care and support—and avoid topics that demonstrated the abnormality of the relationship—such as transitional periods. Children freely discussed current contact, but did not have descriptive memories of their parent’s departure or the beginning of their lives with different family members. However, they did seem to have adjusted to the fact that their parent lived abroad. For the children presented here, departure from the country in parental emigration is not seen as a departure from parental roles, but as a continuation of them. Their discussions of parental interaction indicate they interpreted their parents’ 357 departure in a manner that did not indicate a “different” kind of family. While they tended to see parental émigrés as devoted sacrificers who left the country to support them, their adaptation did not rest on this contested interpretation. They more readily focused on the continued care that the émigré parent could provide.
The children unconsciously manipulated the cultural meaning of the interdependence of extended family and downplayed the uniqueness of a mother’s care.
This means that children would describe the role of an aunt the same as the role of a mother. Certain kinds of care such as affection, good examples, and consenting applied evenly to both. More specific kinds of care, such as discipline, were addressed in general terms. Deanna stated that aunts make sure you don’t get into trouble—this was a terminology similar to a sibling being a good example and protecting you outside the home. Yet, she addressed the idea of discipline (normally seen as justified from a role of authority) as making sure that someone followed your good example. These children’s capacity to interchange the roles avoided the distress for the emotional discovery that they are missing something they ought to have. They re-code the roles of the family such that they do not lack care, and therefore had no need to adjust to parental separation.
These roles were acted out in symbolic games (Piaget 1951) as well. As Lancy
(1996: 110) found with symbolic games of Kpelle children in Liberia, play incorporates real world symbols to “represent adult work and activities.” I had the émigrés’ children depict the roles in charades. Children would mimic the same behaviors of care, watchful eyes, and direction when they had selected an “aunt” as when they had selected a
“mother” to personify. Not only did this game indicate a similarity between the roles with those who portrayed the family member, but the children attempting to guess the 358 role presented the same fusion of roles as well. Children would quickly shout a number of female roles, usually grandmother was third after the simultaneous guessing of mother and aunt. The rounds were rather short and children transitioned to acting out more difficult roles—like taxi driver or indigenous person—because familial roles were too easy. “Someone who cares for you” was not the characteristic of a mother, but a defining characteristic of your extended female kin. Perhaps if only allowed one guess in the game, the children would have had difficulty delineating the different roles.
Even children who did not have wonderful substitute care accepted their substitute caregivers as additional parental figures, rather than substitutes. Nine-year-old
Isabella had accepted the interpretation of the person who cares for you being like an additional parent, rather than substituting for an existing parent. She complained about caring for her little sister because her sister Shakina does not listen. When I asked if she listened to her brother, being his little sister, she said, “Why should I? He isn’t my father.” When I pointed out that she is not Shakina’s mother, she said that her sister should listen because she cares for Shakina. Apparently, roles are self-fulfilling. If the individual takes on your care, you should respect them like you would a caregiver. Parent is not an exclusive category but someone who cares for you, whether sister, aunt, or grandmother. Yet, when complaining about her grandmother’s lack of concern for her, she said that it is because the grandmother loves her cousins like daughters, and loves them like grandchildren. Even with the negative care (some would claim abuse) she received from her grandmother, she has accepted the recoding of other’s familial roles with them providing care. Biological connections do not determine roles: a grandmother can love one grandchild like a child and another like a grandchild, or one sibling can be 359 like a parent whereas another sibling is like a sibling. It is not her mother who neglected her care by emigrating. It is her grandmother who neglects her care because she does not love them like her own children. This lack of love is not because of an incapability—she loves her other grandchildren like children. The neglect is because her grandmother was never a very good grandmother and did not take the role her mother had entrusted her with seriously enough. Isabella has accepted the idea that others can fulfill or neglect roles while the parents are away without interfering with who your mother and father are.
Even though Isabella did not feel that her grandmother was a good caregiver, she has chosen to view her as someone who should be. The decision to view her grandmother as someone who is an additional parent, even if she does not fulfill those obligations, allows
Isabella to view her parents as individuals who fulfill their obligations.
The children who had better adapted to their parents’ emigration expressed less emotional distress, avoidance of topics, mood swings, difficulties with peers, and blatant misrepresentations of truth. These children would emphasize the behaviors the émigré could complete from afar. When asked to select adjectives to describe their émigré parents in the adaptation of the adult attachment interview, they would say “funny” because she tells me jokes when we talk or “generous” because he sends presents. In some narratives, the émigrés were a part of a storyline that reflected reality—a package or phone call from abroad. The children would emphasize the essential characteristics of being a parent that the émigré could fulfill, like supporting the family economically.
Seven-year-old Ramona was an expert at emphasizing her mother’s presence in her life while she was abroad in Italy. In day to day activities, she would point out which toys had come from Italy, when her mother would call, what she had asked her mother to 360 send, and how original her shoes from Italy were. As her Aunt Marisol helped her daughter Briana with homework, fed her soup, and bathed her, Ramona did not see these behaviors as an indication of what her mother does. In fact, the Barbie computer fiasco on Christmas day (see Chapter 6) confirmed the fact that her mother took care of her in a way that Briana’s mother did not. Ramona had successfully redefined the role of a good mother as exactly what her mother was—someone who takes care of her from Italy.
Others found alternative reasons to explain changes in care after their parents’ emigration. With the difference between the care that a young child needs in comparison to an older child, some children created a representation of reality in which they do not miss parental care. For example, one ten-year-old child chose the adjective “intelligent” to describe his father and explained that his father helped him with his homework before when he was little. The cessation of the activity is based on the child’s growth, not the parent’s departure. Some of the children who could adjust see their parent’s departure as a logical progression in the kind of care a child needs as one grows.
Isabella and Norman both had significant details on their mother’s decision to emigrate: they frequently tied discussions to the fact that their mother waited to join their father abroad once their little sister Shakina was old enough. The children’s needs had changed. This is why their mother’s departure did not mean that she was no longer their mother, or had neglected their care. Their mother’s departure was her manner of continuing her family dedication by being with their father to provide for their needs.
Children had also disconnected the “domestic unit” from family. Where they lived (with their parents far away from where they slept) did not define their family. The rules of kinship did. Just as extended family that does not live with you is family, nuclear 361 family that does not live with you is family as well. Residence does not determine familial ties. The children that had better adjusted to parental emigration drew a complete family including mother and father in front of a house for the draw-a-family task. Generally, it was not their actual house, but an imaginary one where they could see all the family under the same roof. Not only was the house arbitrary, but household was inconsequential to family. They desired that their family live together, but had adapted to the situation by seeing it as a future possibility. Some houses in the drawings were nicer than their actual houses—they were ideas of what their house would look like when their parents returned.
When they explained their drawings, the children used the cultural significance of the importance of the extended family to adapt to reality. At first, children would name the individuals in the drawing. When asked who they lived with now, some children would name others and say that they did not have the time or energy to draw all their family.
Some other children would draw less detailed stick figures around their original family drawings when they heard the upcoming questions. Yet, their pictures demonstrated that their émigré parents are most certainly not a less significant part of their family now that they emigrated and that location seems inconsequential to family composition.
The acceptance of the role of extended family in one’s life makes geographically- distant family present. Émigrés’ children highlight the relationships between their parents and others in a way that incorporates, rather than replaces their parents. An example of this occurred at the eye doctor with Junior. His aunt Marisol accompanied Junior. and his new caregiver. Marisol brought her daughter Briana, her nieces Isabella and Shakina, and her nephew Norman she was caring for while their grandmother went to the embassy in Quito. The foreign stepmother of Junior came as well. As described in Chapter 6, she 362 came to Ecuador for the eye operation. Eleven-year-old Norman asked why the stepmother had accompanied them to Junior’s eye appointment. Norman went through those present and explained their ties—he understood that the aunt and cousins were part of the extended family along with the woman who cared for Junior, even though her familial ties were distant.83 However, he did not understand what the stepmother’s role was in this family, since both parents are still part of Junior’s family even while abroad.
He could not see how this other woman fit in. The father was the tie to Marisol and the mother was the tie to his new caregiver. Junior explained that the stepmother was a friend of his father’s, quickly presenting the party line. This statement explained her presence as an association with someone who belongs in his drawing of a family without usurping someone else who belonged in his drawing. As an associate, the stepmother’s presence was an extension of his father, which confirmed the father’s presence, but not a member in her own right, which would limit his mother’s continuance. A child can have a number of cousins, aunts, and even more than one grandparent. However, a second mother would imply a substitution of the first. Children did not seek substitutions to re- attach to when their parents emigrated. They sought a manner to perpetuate and reconfirm the connection to their parents through extended kin.
Social Support
Some children found significant support from their peers for their interpretations of their families. In one class of thirty, six were children of émigrés. They had running jokes during class free-time and knew each others’ personal interests. Crushes seemed to
83 With his usual quick wit, he even pointed out the anthropologist in his roll call: she was here to learn like at school and “liked playing like a kid since she didn’t have adult things to do.” I didn’t clean my house, take care of children, cook meals, have a husband to care for, or seem to have a job. My responsibilities of reading and writing were like a child’s homework rather than a job. 363 form amongst the children and they became the “cool” group because they limited their interaction with others. On five occasions, teachers reported that the child of émigrés
“selected their friendships.” This was never stated for a non-émigré’s child. These teachers separately claimed that unlike other children, the children they talked about did not play freely and indiscriminately with others. They were described as “calmer,” “more tranquil,” and “shared between select friends.” This tendency to select friends who confirm their interpretations of familial roles was evident in a number of interactions.
The children of émigrés created groups amongst themselves. Alex’s group, described above with the school play, volunteered for activities together where they could control the topics of conversation, others’ involvement, and their own activities. With the play, they decided the play, casting, and when they would practice. Alex’s position as the nephew of the school owner allowed him extensive leeway in defining his own situations. Not only did they control the school play, but they also were the escorts for the class princesses, composed the soccer team, and inserted themselves as the accompaniment for the high school girls upstairs. Of the sixteen boys in this class, seven were children of émigrés. Six formed a clique. The seventh one, Francis, was occasionally included when another escort for a princess was needed or to complete the soccer team but all involved knew he was the next choice. I describe Francis in Chapter
9. He did not adjust to his father’s emigration with the culturally constituted defense of reconstituting roles. He adapted with an individual defense because, due to his particular situation, he preferred to view his father as gone. Although he did not implement the same views on his émigré parent and support their views, he was still a better choice for accompaniment because he would not judge them for their parent’s emigration. 364
Some émigrés’ children considered only other émigrés’ children as options as friends. For instance, three fourth grade girls who each had one parent emigrate associated with each other. When Melissa found out that Trina had written that she liked a boy in her diary, she refused to be friends with her any longer and made their friend
Ana (to be described in Chapter 9) take her side. Both Trina and I knew it was true that
Melissa liked this boy (one of the six older boys described above),84 but that she would have been humiliated if the boy ever found out. He associated with the older high school girls and she did not want those boys to consider her silly. The diary entry did not insult
Melissa, but she was upset that her secrets were left out in the open. I kept notebooks that were protected from all others’ eyes and knew that I was their friend because I did not tell their secrets to others (they knew this from their consistent attempts to find out others’ secrets). Trina was not Melissa’s friend because she left her notebook where others could read it. Trina was very distraught. She told me that she had no friends now, and that she did not mean to have Melissa read her diary, or anyone else. She was not allowed to bring her notebook to gym—perhaps she hoped to highlight that no one stopped me from carrying my notebooks around. I suggested that it might blow over, or she might have other friends at home or in class, but Trina insisted that she did not. The other children were not options as friends. She said they were “different.” When pressed
(Were they green? Did they like Shakira even though she sold her soul to the devil to become famous in the U.S.?), she said the other children wouldn’t understand her. She even knew another girl named Melissa at home and it wasn’t the same as her school
84 I could suggest that she liked him because he would support her culturally constituted defense that re- codified family roles, but it seems more likely that his close clique of friends, who he chose because they were émigrés, made him cool. She didn’t know the boy well enough to know how he viewed family life. 365 friend Melissa, as if substituting other classmates as friends was equal in absurdity to expecting people with the same name to be the same. When Melissa realized her power to exclude Trina, she became a bit bossy with Ana as well. Ana became annoyed but did not want to be left with no friends. Sensing the possibility of a resolution, I brought all three for a “photo shoot.” You must pretend to be great friends in any photo, regardless of what you think of the person. Exhibiting improper demeanor on film would be wrong because others who do not know the circumstances could see such behavior. Giggles resulted from the extensive attempts to come up with new poses so that they could insist
I take another photo and friendships resumed. What is informative about this situation is not that eight-year-old girls get into fights over crushes on boys, but that when a conflict began amongst the only three émigrés’ children in the class, they did not seek new places to integrate themselves. None sought support from other non-émigrés’ children: Not
Melissa for Trina’s indiscreet behavior, not Ana for Melissa’s bossiness, and not Trina for company when excluded from the other two. The girls were the only options as friends.
This social support network was so extensive that one nine-year-old boy, Lemuel, wanted in. He was in the fourth grade class where five girls and three boys were the
émigrés’ children. Lemuel lied to me and said that his mother had emigrated. While the teacher said the mother had not emigrated, some teachers did not know if the parents had emigrated unless the child had a problem. This was especially true with music teachers or when children advanced grades to a new teacher. It took time to find out the background of children who did not have behavioral issues. So, I decided to talk to Lemuel.
Lemuel listened carefully to what other children said about their émigré parents and often repeated what they said. I made notes on the first day that perhaps he had less 366 support at home for understanding migration because of how intently he listened to other’s stories, rather than interrupting with his own examples as others did.
His concept of a family did not seem to have adjusted in the same way as the other children. When his family drawing and discussions of holidays did not involve any extended family (just a maid was mentioned), I became curious and sought an interview with his caretakers. He did not return the contact information form to visit his home, so
I continued to interview him at school and scheduled an appointment with his teacher.
Not only did he neglect integrating extended family as other children did, but he also did not have memory lapses. I thought this might be connected to a sheltered home life away from the discourse on migration, which led other children to hide details that might lead to judgment. (Since I was lacking verified home data, I kept imputing some unique characteristic of his home life to explain his differences.) He would pick a single time that his mother returned and know the dates. His mother had told him beforehand and explained the reasons. This was odd as well. Most children were not told explicitly about migration plans. Lemuel was pleased to provide exact information questions.
He also described childcare as affected by emigration, whereas other children described “normal” care where migration did not seem to matter. Lemuel said that his father punished him because his mother was away. Other children either said that the parent at home did not tell the parent abroad with a smile (as if they were getting away with something that they should not because one parent over-consented) or that the parent at home did tell the parent abroad and that they felt bad when they disappointed their parents, referring to them as a unit. Lemuel, in contrast, looked confused and said that his father takes care of discipline because his mother emigrated. Emigration defined 367 the situation. For others, either result for providing discipline was possible—migration did not determine the interaction. They were lucky if their parents were not told (just as with those who were not children of émigrés) and they had to behave appropriately if the parent was told (just as with those who were not children of émigrés).
However, not only did Lemuel seem to remember details that other children forgot, but he also forgot details that other children remembered and accentuated in order to establish the continuing ties to their parents. He did not know what his mother worked in abroad. He said she has migrated. Her job is being a migrant. He said he did not know if his mother was happy—he had never been abroad to see her. When he described how his mother showed him affection, he talked about the house they lived in, even though he supposedly had not changed houses since his mother had left, modeling the other children who talked about what their mother sent them.
When it turned out that he was different—he focused on what emigration would mean in contrasts in care whereas other children focused on what would be the same—I became more determined in finding out further information about home. He did not hide migration aspects, yet his teacher thought he was not an émigré’s child. Most
émigrés’ children de-emphasized the transitional moments and discussed contact in a way that did not highlight its physical limitations. Phone conversations were conversations and gifts sent from afar were “bought for me” by parents. When I found out that he was not an émigré’s child, it confirmed my interpretations that émigrés’ children were creating a different way for representing the family and that this set of representations may not be similar to those that other children would have of the family. 368
Lemuel was disappointed and embarrassed that I found out his mother was still at home because then he would not be able to hang out with the other children and play games. He admitted in private to me that he had lied because he just wanted to find out what the “cool kids” got to do. He named them and said that they had lots of friends and family and toys. Their focus was apparently convincing to him, but he did not need to hide the aspects that would be problematic to them in his version of maternal migration. While all developmental contexts require the individual to grow their inner selves closer to the outer world (Erikson 1963), in the particular instance of adaptation and adjustment for the children in this chapter, we can see how children negotiate amongst variable contexts in the outer world to find a particular, suitable integration.
These children had done so well integrating themselves into the outside world that
Lemuel wanted to have their form of integration as well.
These children seemed to have psychologically adapted and socially adjusted. The children found support for their cultural interpretations in their group with other children of émigrés. Based on the lack of unity in their contexts of socialization, they were unable to claim that their parents were devoted sacrificers without facing social exclusion of their ideas or the necessity to defend their interpretations in the exosystem. However, these children were able to assemble culturally constituted defense mechanisms that led to the ability to accept parental emigration. These children did not deny that they were unique—many acknowledged when asked to compare their lives to those of their classmates that some children had both parents at home and some children did not.
However, the fact of parental emigration did not mean difficulties or that life was worse necessarily. It was different. 369
The cases here differ from those in Chapter 7 because the child is in a diverse context that prevents them from interpreting their situations of parental emigration as valued. While in Chapter 7 I discussed how cultural learning could help children to accept parental emigration even though child socialization would not expect such acceptance, in this chapter I discuss how even though child socialization generally depicts a unified set of values, children can adjust to parental emigration in a context of divergent cultural ideologies through culturally constituted defense mechanisms.
The children in this chapter also differ from the adjustments of the children in
Chapter 9 because the psychological adaptation of a culturally constituted defense mechanism allows for social adjustment. The children in this chapter sought the same kind of care as fit the existing cultural logic, but allowed variation in the sources of this kind of care. In the language of Obeyesekere, the individual innovations to parental emigration were shared as objective imagery, meaning that they could find social acceptance. The children did avoid certain situations that would lead to the realization that their family was different from those who would negatively interpret their parent’s emigration. They formed cliques and peer attachments amongst those who would support their culturally constituted defense mechanism. In the following chapter, I discuss children who implemented individual defense mechanisms that do not provide the same opportunity for social approval as culturally constituted defense mechanisms do.
The defenses in Chapter 9 were not directly from cultural values, but since formed individually in a cultural context there are different levels of social approval for the individual defenses. Chapter 9 — To Each His Own Parental Emigration & Individual Defense Mechanisms
——Eight-year-old Sabrina kneeled on the chair to get a better look at the slips of paper on the desk. She perused the adjective choices on the desk to describe her father in a child version of the adult attachment interview. She began in a soft, sweet voice, “My father is caring because he kisses me before bed.” She stated her father is intelligent because he reads to her before bed as well. “He is funny because he plays with me and makes faces [she demonstrated with a scrunched nose and crossed eyes] and fair because he doesn’t hit me and that’s why he’s tranquil too.”
This glowing list of compliments may seem to indicate a good paternal attachment, but in fact indicates a use of fantasy to avoid connection to reality. Sabrina conjugated all the verbs in present tense even though her father emigrated to Spain three years ago leaving her behind in Ecuador. Whereas the children in Chapter 8 were likely to describe their parents in behaviors they could complete abroad (funny conversations), or even could only complete abroad (generous gifts), Sabrina indicated all behaviors that her father could only do if he had not emigrated. Tucking a child in and making faces
370 371 can only be done if the parent is in physical proximity of the child. Even “not spanking” could imply that the father is in a situation where he could potentially spank. Her emphasis on behaviors that can no longer continue as if they could indicates a lack of reality testing. Why doesn’t she emphasize the behaviors her father does complete as the children in Chapter 8 do? As with all the children in this chapter, the characteristics of
Sabrina’s situation prevent her from responding to her parent’s emigration with culturally constituted defenses of positive interpretations of émigrés that represent her life as normal. In her case, the relatives who took over her care have not involved the absent father in her life in a new way so that she could create a new kind of tie with him to solidify their relationship. Therefore, she creates her own individual defense mechanism for adapting to parental emigration. The case studies here demonstrate the creation of individual defense mechanisms based on one’s social context, cultural values, and home environment to meet personal needs for the integration of personality and into society.
In the previous two chapters, I provided examples of adaptations to parental emigration that led to social approval. In Chapter 7, children learned to accept what could be considered unacceptable because of the strength of cultural learning in
Cañaridel. The children in Chapter 8 created culturally constituted defenses based on the diverse values in the cultural context of Guayaquil. Both unified and contradictory cultural meanings of an experience matter for understanding its significance to an individual and the valuation in society, that influence how people psychologically adapt and socially adjust to potentially difficult situations.
In addition to ethnocentric tendencies and depicting developmental contexts as unified, child development theory presents a directional, unilinear process of child 372 socialization. Parents are the distributor and children the receivers of cultural values.
Even with competing cultural ideologies, it appears that children are receiving values.
However, children are active negotiators in the psychological operation necessary for the internalization of the existing set of cultural values. This negotiation means that children are active, not passive, in the process of socialization. Individual defense mechanisms by definition reveal the individual’s active part in creating their representation of the world.
Even in the negotiation of values, the individual is immersed in a context.
In this chapter, I discuss the active role of children in acquiring cultural values.
They negotiate their context to select which values they internalize, regardless of how unified or diverse the cultural ideologies. After describing this approach to socialization,
I turn to a description of the distress children of émigrés experience in the particular cultural and social context of Guayaquil. The cultural context serves as a resource in the formation of defenses and the social context impinges upon these interpretations as they attempt to integrate the individual with society. I define individual defense mechanisms, which is the response to distress that is the focus of these case studies. I present case studies from Guayaquil that indicate the role that children play in choosing how to represent their reality as children left behind. Paired, contrasting case studies demonstrate the somewhat arbitrary nature of these defenses. For each case, I discuss the context, reasons for distress, defense mechanism(s), and the role of social approval.
There is a paradox in this chapter. I am using unconscious defenses to demonstrate that children are active in selecting values and, thus, that child socialization theory should be less parent-oriented. By active, I am referring to their important role in determining which cultural values to appropriate as an individual, even though not 373 necessarily consciously. Their unique composition of cultural values helps to inform their unconscious selection of individual defenses. The “individual” part is meant to demonstrate the activity of the individual child in the dynamic psyche, not consciousness.
ACTIVE CHILDREN
Ideas about children’s needs, capabilities and natural inclinations, or the “concept of the child” vary across cultures. A general western concept of the child pictures childhood as a time of domesticity and dependence (Panter-Brick 2000). Parents care for children and depend on them for instruction. This folk model of childhood often influences the focus of expert models. When confronted with children who have difficulties, we look to parents’ behaviors to understand the precipitating factors.
However, children are more active than theories often acknowledge.
Children seek equilibrium in cultural models to avoid cognitive dissonance.
Equilibrium refers to the fact that these models ought to make sense amongst each other for efficacious functioning. Disagreements between models may be more than a child’s confusion in socialization: cultural values may actually disagree. Then, children can have trouble knowing the expectations that apply in each situation. For instance, telling the truth and being considerate of others’ feelings can contradict in some cases. What is the difference between white lies, fibs, and cheating? Some may never learn the difference, but others create rules as to which cultural values to adhere to in which situations.
In addition to discrepancies between beliefs, children need to negotiate disagreements between individuals. As discussed in Chapter 8, a number of adults influence children, and children actively choose amongst the values. Harwood at al.
(1995: 31f) emphasize the importance of focusing “on the active role of the child in 374 negotiating and influencing multiple interacting systems… The individual, then, must be viewed as an active organism existing within a matrix of sociocultural contexts.”
Adjusting to these multiple interacting systems is a complicated process; children construct cultural models that “provide the organized framework of objects and relations” (Lindholm 2001: 257) which may vary in different circumstances. Diverse contexts sometimes entail diverse expectations. This is a complicated process: children cannot just randomly associate values as they please and hope for the best. For a simplified example, some children spend time in formal education, where parents are not included, and at home, where teachers are not included. These two contexts compose different sets of expectations. However, children follow certain rules at school and others at home. Most children do not raise their hand to speak at home nor do they ask teachers to buy them toys if they eat their vegetables. Based on which behaviors receive the desired response at home and beyond the family, children form secondary motivations that shape later behaviors (Maier 1965). In other words, children are adept at composing collections of behaviors that lead to the responses they want in different contexts. They actively manipulate others. This requires segmenting environments, or the child may feel a disequilibrium and insecure in an unpredictable world.
The process of establishing equilibrium amongst models may not be as easy as a geographic distinction between behavioral expectations for reward. Ochs and
Schieffelin’s research (1984) indicated the need for Samoan children to learn different forms of communication to address people of different hierarchical positions. For the
Samoan children, adults clearly modeled and reinforced proper behaviors. In other cases, differences are not clearly delineated. Covert aspects of the school and community divide 375 may be difficult to traverse for some children adjusting to mainstream schools. Heath
(1983: 7) described how children “retained some of their language and cultural habits and altered others.” The “mutual adjustments on an individual level” show that even with great mismatches, children seek equilibrium but may have difficulty understanding expectations when they are unspoken.
If children were not active in selecting the tenets of each system, many more would have trouble understanding how to behave in each context. The differences in models can range in significance and magnitude. Depending on the significance of the value diverged from, a small difference may be seen as momentous while a vastly different behavior may be seen as merely a unique quirk. Surprisingly, considering the variation by location, positions of others, hidden rules, and even the variance between stated beliefs and actual behaviors, those who cannot adapt are the exceptions.
The above discussion focuses on the diversity of adult sources for values. Yet, children may develop values independent of adults, even when adults are in an authoritarian structure (P. Miller & Hoogstra 1992). Children may learn informally through interactions with other children (Bluebond-Langner 1978). The role of other children’s approval and influence in contrast to adults is central to the cases below. Social approval from peers affects the efficacy of defense mechanisms for the integration of personality and into society in responding to parental emigration.
CULTURAL CONTEXT
Just as the other children in Guayaquil described in Chapter 8, the children in this chapter are under the influence of diverse discourses that lead to distress from a self- definitional bind and urbanism. The negative values in this disjunctive urban context lead 376 to a stigma on émigré parents and the children they leave behind, unlike the children in
Cañaridel. The label of “émigré’s child” implies predictions of future outcomes.85 School counselors predicted that émigrés’ children would have lower scholastic achievement and a number of psychological problems, such as depression, suicidal tendencies, and eating disorders from the moment a parent stepped on the plane regardless of circumstances of departure, quality of substitute care, and contact maintained while abroad. Teachers bragged about the number of émigrés’ children in their class as an indication of how much work they took on. Rather than seeking a remediable cause for problems with
émigrés’ children, all instances were attributed automatically to parental emigration. In cases with non-émigrés’ children, if a child had difficulty in school, the teachers would counsel the parents on how to help their child. However, when the child had an émigré parent, this emotional loss was seen as the source of the difficulties. A conference with the remaining parent or substitute caregiver would not resolve the problem. With the lack of assistance offered to these children, sometimes these prophecies can be self- fulfilling. Émigré’s child was synonymous with problem child.86
The émigrés’ children in this chapter were more likely to be problem children in actuality than those in Chapter 8 who manipulated culturally constituted defense mechanisms or those in Chapter 7 who learned uncontested positive cultural values on their parents. Individual defense mechanisms that manipulated reality often left these
85 As Raybeck (1991) indicated in his comparison of labeling in small-scale versus large-scale societies, the label “émigré’s child” is useful for emphasizing “in-group” characteristics in a heterogeneous society without the social costs of excluding interdependent individuals because it is urban. The parent’s emigration is the defining characteristic and this label aids in predicting the social environment. 86 Teachers believed that I must work with problem children if I work with émigrés’ children. They were a more specific kind of problem children. Teachers would refer a problem child to me who was not the child of an émigré because, if they assumed I must specialize in child distress. 377 children outside mainstream behaviors and perceptions. For this reason, these children seemed troubled. They did not lie low to prevent attention to their differences. They were less socially adept. During recess, they were more likely to eat their lunch quietly alone than join groups of children. Overall, they had more emotional difficulty and problems at school than the other children. These children were more likely to have to sit outside the classroom door in the hallway as a punishment for disrupting class so often or to become completely silent in certain situations. They were also more likely to fight or cry in altercations with other children. In their relationships with me, they were more likely to become over-dependent and expect me to become a central part of their life.
They were the only children to report me as their best friend or one of their friends.
Representing the children with individual defense mechanisms is difficult because of the great variability in their behavior; however, the variability in behavior has a similar genesis. When part of the cultural ideology defines an experience as negative yet provides no adaptation in a projective system, individual defense mechanisms can serve to alleviate the psychic conflict. Although different defenses result, the defenses share the same psychodynamic processes for addressing the child’s unique circumstances.
As mentioned above, some children were able to adapt to the distress of parental emigration with culturally constituted defense mechanisms that recodified the roles of family members, emphasized the importance of extended family, and focused on the distinctions in care a small child needs in comparison to an older child in order to minimize the loss in parental emigration. However, this set of values frequently manipulated in culturally constituted defense mechanisms was somewhat precarious, since it represented an innovative combination of cultural values. Small differences could 378 lead to its invalidation. Due to some factors in their lives, the children described below were unable to manipulate a culturally constituted defense mechanism to recode their life as normal. Even though the daily life of many of these children did not differ drastically objectively from those in Chapter 8, the small ways these children did differ were significant for the efficacy of the culturally constituted defense for ameliorating psychic distress. In terms of Bronfenbrenner’s ecosystem, these differences were primarily in the microsystem because the children in Chapter 8 and 9 shared the same macrosystem and vastly similar exosystems. In other words, even though all the children in Chapter 8 and
9 experienced the same set of negative valuations in the media, from the government, and through organizations along with in the school system as described fully in Chapter 8, their home environment did differ. The small differences in the microsystems have an intense effect on the shaping of defenses because they have the most direct, redundant, and significant influence on children. They affect children one-on-one daily through cathected individuals. Therefore, the objectively minor differences become major subjectively. This use of idiosyncratic factors may leave children exposed with less social support or without an effective manner for hiding their differences and for emphasizing their normality. I present the cases of two children who sought to rectify their social exclusion because of individual defenses through appropriating characteristics of the culturally constituted defense mechanisms.
Although they use individual factors as the primary resource for their formation, individual defenses are not bereft of culture. Their creation is symbiotic with the cultural context and home environment: children are immersed in a particular developmental niche that has a reciprocal role with their own agency in the formation of their defenses. 379
Vaillant (1977: 86) states, “we cannot evaluate the choice of a defense without considering the circumstances that call it forth and how it affects relationships with other people.” I think of each defense mechanism as having two values: the amount it contradicts reality and the amount of social approval it garners. The two values may relate—great contradictions of reality are not highly approved, or, alternatively, widespread approval may lead to contradictions of reality, such as certain religious beliefs.
The ability to contradict reality may aid integrating personality, but approval is necessary for societal integration. Individual defenses can seem somewhat arbitrary, receive varying amounts of social approval, or have varying amounts of efficacy for alleviating distress.
IDIOSYNCRATIC DEFENSE MECHANISMS
Here, I briefly outline Vaillant’s four levels of individual defense mechanisms to characterize the psychodynamic processes available to the children of émigrés. Individual defense mechanisms, sometimes called idiosyncratic or ego mechanisms are a “subtle and almost entirely unconscious process” (Vaillant 1977: 8) and “are carried out silently and invisibly” (A. Freud 1946: 8). The ego uses such defenses to resolve conflict among the four lodestars of our inner life: instincts, the real world, important people, and internalized prohibitions provided by our conscience and culture. Parental emigration can mean conflict with drives for comfort (instinct), with accepting parental separation
(reality), with caregivers’ expectations (important people), and with internalized cultural ideologies (conscience and culture). Conflict may arise between just two or among all four of these sources of human motivation. To alleviate conflicts, defenses serve:
1. To keep affects within bearable limits during sudden life crises… 2. To restore emotional balance by postponing or channeling sudden increases in biological drives… 380
3. To obtain a time-out to master changes in self-image… 4. To handle irresolvable conflicts with people, living or dead, whom one cannot bear to leave… 5. To survive major conflicts with conscience… (Vaillant 1977: 9f).
Vaillant outlines four levels of defenses that can be a healthy means for handling distress
(ibid.: 7) and should not be viewed as necessarily pathological (ibid.: 9).
In accord with A. Freud’s observations of children, the first level of defenses, called psychotic “rearrange external reality” (Vaillant 1977: 81). Characteristic defenses of this level are denial of external reality, distortion that “grossly reshap[es] external reality to suit inner needs” (ibid.: 383), and delusional projection. Such defenses are common in psychosis, dreams, and children under age five.
The second level of defenses is normally found in severe depression, personality disorders, and late childhood/adolescence (Vaillant 1977: 80). These immature defenses include fantasy to avoid reality, projection where the individual attributes unrealized affect to others, hypochondriasis related to affects that are not dealt with, passive-aggression, and acting out of “an unconscious wish or impulse in order to avoid being conscious of the affect that accompanies it” (ibid.: 384). These defenses are relevant to understand the handling of distress due to parental emigration not only because they represent the age of children I studied from 5 to 12,87 but also because they are primarily employed for interpersonal distress: “a means of making a painful truce with people whom we can neither live with nor without” (ibid.: 159). However, social approval is still limited. While the user may avoid anxiety, others may see the defensive thought or act as “socially undesirable, profoundly inconvenient, and… misbehavior” (ibid.: 83).
87 I chose this age group because linguistic children could learn cultural values and because it represented the normal range for parental migration because elementary school was the most expensive period of children’s education. Adolescents could work to fund their own college, if they continued in school. 381
Since level three defenses are likely for all ages and are primarily employed for intrapsychic conflict (ibid.: 84), children may use these to handle distress from parental emigration. Level three defense mechanisms, or neurotic defenses, include: intellectualization (when a person thinks about what they want to do, but without emotion and does not act on it); repression (what appears as simply forgetting something but certain symbolic behaviors may indicate otherwise); reaction formation (when someone acts in exactly the opposite way of how they want to act when the actual desires are unacceptable); displacement (when emotions are transferred to a less important object); and dissociation (a detachment to avoid distress) (ibid.: 385).
Few, if any, children could adapt through the fourth level, mature defenses for healthy adolescents and adults, such as sublimation (indirect fulfillment of wishes), altruism, suppression (recognized repression), anticipation, and humor (ibid.: 385).
Defenses from levels two and three are the most frequent for handling distress from parental emigration, but the likelihood of layered defenses complicates case discussion.
ARBITRARY YET EXACT INDIVIDUAL DEFENSES
The defense’s context is important for understanding its efficacy (Vaillant 1977:
85).88 Context forms the defense for the user and determines acceptance for the beholder. I represent a range of defenses based on home environment, cultural context, and social approval that have opposing external characteristics in manifestation, but similarity in the individual’s satisfaction with their caregivers and social approval.
88 As with my critique of attachment theory’s use, Vaillant may be accused of ignoring cultural values. However, while attachment theory substitutes Western values as a given, Vaillant represents defenses formed in a Western context as individual. Both allow for the incorporation of culture. I incorporate the role of social approval and existing ideologies in the particular cultural context as relevant for both theories. 382
While the pairs differ in the exhibition of the defense, they do not differ systematically in age, parent who emigrated, the émigrés destination, who took over substitute care (See Figure 7) or class. The children in these case studies all attend the same school, which indicates a similarity in class89—they belong to the hypocognized middle class. However, as described above, perceptions of class and actual income vary.
Each family had similar incomes, but based on the variation in the allocation of this income, the families may seem different class-wise. Some parents chose to save for a micro-enterprise when the émigré returned, others spent lavishly to appear higher class, and the majority spent on items that are difficult to categorize as discretionary or mandatory expenses. For instance, Sebastian’s family appeared impoverished when considering how many people huddled on a terrace, but they were saving a large portion of their remittances for his mother’s reunification and chose not to live on the first floor of their home because of the sad memories. On the other hand, Micayela’s family seemed wealthy in comparison because the father spent their extra money on social excursions. This may seem to be a great expenditure beyond the spending abilities of other families, but with the right connections, being rich was not expensive. Others buy drinks, food, and transportation to demonstrate their wealth and have your company.90
All night beach raves require little lodging and clothing. Between these two extremes were the majority of the families who saved little for the future, who spent little on luxuries, but invested income furnishing their homes with modern, but practical items.
89 Just as with an engagement ring in the U.S., there is an idea in Ecuador of spending a set portion of your income on your children’s school. Some spent a higher portion to pretend they had a larger income or to spend more on the child’s education, while others spent less because they felt the school was good enough. 90 I found it was cheaper to go out, have someone drive me and pay for my food and drinks rather than take a bus to the grocery store and cook at home. 383
Oedipal Dreams Context Francis (9) in mother’s care when Beatriz (8) in father’s care when father went to Spain. mother went to Italy. Defense With overbearing mother, child With overbearing father, mother became like father. referred to as child. Efficacy With great home satisfaction, little desire for social approval. Emotional Denial Context Wilson (7) in grandmother’s care Sebastian (9) in grandmother’s when mother went to Italy. care when mother went to Spain. Defense Repressed connections because of Intellectualized because of grandmother’s denial. grandmother’s mixed emotions. Efficacy Compensated for lack of social approval with greater home focus. Maternal Deprivation Context Jimmy (9) in mother’s care when Ramon (8) in mother’s care when father went to United States. father went to Spain. Defense To adjust to deficiencies at home, To adjust to Munchausen’s at acted out for attention. home, became hypochondriac. Efficacy With little home satisfaction, greatly sought social approval. Acting Your Age Context Ana (9) in mother’s care when Micayela (9) in father’s care when father went to United States. mother went to United States. Defense Regressed to prevent mother’s “Progressed” to expedite familial departure. reunification. Efficacy With social approval, adjusted for some home satisfaction.
FIGURE 7: INDIVIDUAL DEFENSE PAIRS
However, if they do not differ systematically in so many characteristics, why do their adaptations differ? I believe they differ because of the child’s home environment and ability to achieve social approval, which influence the creation of defenses. In the first pair, both children are content with their caregivers but receive little social approval.
These children have adapted to parental emigration but are socially excluded with their peers in comparison to other children. In the second pair, the children have trouble representing their lives in a way that would receive social approval because of characteristics in their home environment. At home, they are told repeated that their life with émigré parents is not normal, which inhibits their ability to represent their life as 384 normal to others for social approval. The substitute caregivers exert too much effort compensating for what they perceive as a deprivation in the children’s lives, which leaves the children feeling as if there is something unacceptable about their situation. The third pair of children experience inadequacies at home. Unable to find support at home, they have begun to move away from finding home as the source for determining values and towards a more central utilization of their social sphere. For this reason, the children are beginning to receive more social approval from their peers. The final pair represents two children who actually receive social approval for their individual defenses. The identity they crafted is familiar from cultural symbols; while due to a particular characteristic of their context, they dealt with the psychic distress from the emigration of their parent in a manner that is considered normal. I see these pairs as composing a range of defenses.
On one end, some defenses receive no social approval as with the first pair. Moving through the pairs, we see children who progressively receive more approval.
Oedipal Dreams: Win dad vs. win mom
In the first pair, both children are content with their home life but receive little social approval from their peers at school. These children resolved their conflict over the separation of a parental figure but are excluded. Social approval matters less since they are so pleased with their home life. Francis and Beatriz are children who are content because they have won undivided affection from a parent when the other emigrated.
Francis’s Context:
In Chapter 8, I described how Alex’s group would sometimes include Francis.
He was an émigrés’ child, but was not part of the group of six émigrés’ boys in his grade.
Francis chose an alternative way to adapt to his father’s emigration than the other boys. 385
Nine-year-old Francis lived with his mother, his paternal grandmother, and his mother’s cousin. They were well-off in comparison to other families in general and seemed so in comparison to other transnational families because of the extended time that the father had been gone. Originally, the father emigrated to Spain when Francis was three because they could not make ends meet. Soon, the family’s perception of their needs expanded and the father stayed away to meet those needs. The fruits of his father’s labors were evident throughout the house. They had a flat screen television and each room was fully furnished—even a hallway was turned into a narrow visiting room.
Francis’s mother did not accept the father’s emigration at first because she was very dependent on him. She said she suffers from depression, nerves, and physical ailments because the emigration had a big impact on her. Even though the father was away for such an extended period, most still considered Francis’s parents together.
Teachers confirmed that his parents were together, primarily because his mother did not date anyone. The mother admitted that they had a common law marriage and had never been married, but she was such a good woman that he recognized her as a wife anyway.
When I asked Francis if his parents were together, I noticed a distinction between him and other children. Rather than transitioning my mention of physical togetherness into marital togetherness to hide separation, Francis transitioned my mention of marital togetherness into physical separation and emphasized his father’s distance.
Francis did not hide his father’s departure. He drew just his mother, her cousin, and his grandmother as a family and said that his father was in Spain. Francis knew that his father left when he was three and was much more exact than the other children were.
Francis reported his father lied—he said he was going on a vacation. He said his mother 386 told him of his father’s lie, perhaps because the other children were claiming that they did not remember their parents’ departure, even though they were older than three. Unlike children who used a culturally constituted defense, he did not try to hide the facts of departure that demonstrated how he differed from other children nor did he emphasize his father’s connection to daily life. His father was in Spain—literally and conceptually.
Even though Francis was more open regarding the details of emigration, he still did not express emotion regarding his father’s departure. When I asked if his fathers’ departure made him sad, he nonchalantly responded, “Not too much.” Francis said his father is thinking about returning for his birthday, but he might. Even when his birthday was three weeks away, he was not anxious nor hopeful about whether or not his father was coming. In fact, he seemed quite indifferent. Other statements seem to indicate that he actually wanted his father to stay away. His mother said that her son sends medicine to his father abroad. The father was sick from missing them, but could not buy the same medicines he had gotten accustomed to in Ecuador. She saw this as an expression of
Francis’s caring for his father. Based on other evidence, I think this was so his father would have no reason to return. Francis did seem to feel negatively towards his father in the projective measures. He said that a bad father should be insulted, and the mother did report an instance when the son said hurtful words to the father over the phone. She interpreted this as due to his concerns over her health.
Francis’s apparent indifference to his father contrasted strongly with his feelings about his mother. He proudly announced that his mother sells make-up because she is so pretty. Focusing on his relationship with her, he described her very positively: she was caring because she caresses him and sincere because she speaks the truth (even when it’s 387 something bad). The first time he paused in this discussion was after happy, when he said, “She tells jokes and stuff.” He seemed to have trouble coming up with a happy example. Francis then turned from happiness back to her nurturant behaviors—he said she’s attentive because she pays attention at work to everything, and at home. His mother is intelligent as well. His positive descriptions of his mother became an ideal type of how to be a mother. In the general description of a mother, he said a good mother
“protects their son when someone else wants to harm them and should give them all their love.” This protection of the son may refer to a fear that he needs her to protect him from his father or the social repercussions of what he imagines as their relationship.
While many children said that children turn out “rotten” if they had a bad mother, few thought that someone else would intervene or that there were social consequences.
Francis was at a different extreme—he said that people would be furious if someone is a bad mother. The role of a mother was very central to his idea of what children need.
Francis’s Distress:
Francis didn’t seem distressed. He spoke with and received gifts from his father as frequently as other children. His situation of parental emigration did not differ drastically from those of other children. Many émigrés’ children were told that they should take care of their mothers while their fathers are gone91; none took on this mission quite as seriously as Francis. The difference between Francis’s situation and the situation of other children was the relationship he had with his mother. She considered him a man, frequently compared him to his father, and rewarded his expressions of jealousy over her. She was over-involved with her son, which altered his holding environment in
91 Including Hector at the airport in Chapter 8. 388 a manner that he could not accept the culturally constituted defense. In other words, her extreme connection to him as a replacement for his father altered his home situation: he could not accept his father’s emigration as a normal continuation of familial ties because his mother no longer treated him as his father’s son, but as his father’s replacement.
Francis’s mother described him as an adult. Since he tells her if her clothes do not look right, so she has gotten used to just asking him, “How do I look?” before she goes out. Her outings are rare because of her son’s behavior: Her son asks her who she’s going out with, where, and other questions, or even follows her to see she is not with someone so she has stopped going out. Francis is too concerned about maintaining his father’s honor, she says. Her son sleeps like an adult, even though in his mother’s bed, as well. While most children are afraid of the dark, her son is not. His father had adapted
Francis to turning out the light when he sleeps.
Francis’s mother said that Francis considers himself a man as well. When someone stole his bicycle, he did not yell for help. He just returned to the house quietly.
She asked him why he did not yell or cry for her, or even tell her when he got home. He said he is a man and should take care of his own concerns. His mother giggled at this memory. She hugged him and said that even though he was a man, she can take care of him. She took care of his father and he was a man.
Her comparisons of the son and the father were rather frequent. She said he was just like his father when friends came over. He was attentive to their needs, getting drinks and snacks for them. He wants to be involved in everything. Even though the teacher said his grades were just normal and he did not seem to be a leader at school, his mother said that he would be a politician. His father was like a politician as well. She 389 said that Francis is “The same as an embodiment of [literally: in body as] his father”
[Igualito a papa en cuerpo]. Speaking of his social skills, she seemed to imply the word
“embodiment” meaning that he was the personification of his father, but I include the possible literal translation of “in body as” which implies that he was the incarnation of his father. The statement could mean either of the two in Spanish. The prefacing statements might indicate personification, while other comments seem to indicate that the mother is focusing on the more Oedipal physical similarities of the father and son with incarnation.
Francis and his mother were exceedingly over-dependent on each other. His hypothetical future career choice highlighted their close connection. Francis said he wanted to be a doctor here in Ecuador because it takes too long abroad. His desire to take medical care of his mother and her propensity to depend on him may have inspired his desire to be a doctor close to home. Even teachers were aware of this connection: they claimed that if his grades dipped it must be because his mother is sick. Her ailments were directly related to his grades because it meant he spent his time caring for her and she spent her time in bed, rather than doing the homework together.
Francis had neither fear of his father to push his differentiation nor the space to do so. Not only was his father away, but, according to Francis’s mother, he never hit his son and barely yelled. He always left the punishment to Francis’s mother. Francis confirmed this arrangement, which was contrary to the normal balance between disciplining and consenting. Normally, both parents provide a balance, erring on the father providing more of both. Since the father is out on the street and has money, he is more often consents the child. Also, the father’s temporary time at home means that he more often disciplines: mothers have to spend so much time establishing regiments with 390 their commands, that the father’s discipline is more notable for both his involvement and his normal consenting behavior. For this reason, the mother’s likelihood to handle discipline in Francis’s case may also indicate that she was more likely to handle consenting as well. When a father takes over consenting and disciplining, the mother is still involved in daily care. In Francis’s case, if the mother was consenting, disciplining, and handling daily care, then it is unlikely that the father had much influence at all.
Even though she was the disciplinarian, Francis’s mother did not punish Francis’s jealousy over her. In fact, it was rewarded. She coyly said that he would eventually forget her. He said that it wasn’t true with a big grin. Similar to a child about to perform his favorite routine at a dinner, Francis said that he would never stop sleeping with her, even when he marries. His bride can sleep on the other side of the bed. His mother warmly stroked his head and stated, “That’s what he says now.” She reported he even says that when she dies, he will be buried next to her in the grave. He nodded with a grin.
Francis’s mother claimed she tried to get him to sleep in his own bed when he was little—she explained to him that the father is the man of the house and cares for the mother. However, she stopped trying to get him to sleep in the other bed when the father left. When I asked if it was because he was distressed about his father’s departure, she said no. There was just no reason for him not to. She frequently emphasized the fact that there was no one else in her bed. Her continual comportment as a faithful woman over years of her husband’s separation was a source of renown for her. Teachers, her mother-in-law, and her cousin all commented on her devotion to her family.
Francis’s mother not only encouraged his over-attachment, but she also stated that she could not possibly prevent it. It is part of his nature. Even when he was a small 391 child, he would get in between her and her husband when the couple would dance.
Francis would often get jealous, angry, and aggressive towards the father if she would not dance with her son. He broke a silver frame that had a photo of his parents. Even with his jealousy, she hopes he does not change because he is so caring.92 She listed many instances when he cared for her because she was sick. Yet, she did think his jealous behavior was unacceptable. She said that she would correct him when he got jealous of the dogs—dogs don’t know who their fathers are so they need extra love. He was also jealous of an elderly couple she prepared food for and gets angry when street children ask for money. Francis’s mother was concerned about his lack of empathy in these instances.
She explained to her son that the street children did not have a mother or father and he does. However, he does demonstrate empathy with his friends and family.
Francis’s Defense:
Francis’s projective tests and behaviors demonstrated a number of manipulations of his reality to ward against a realization that he is lacking a father or feels aggression towards him. He projected many of his drives onto his father. Francis took great care in each of his projective tests. He took time to ponder which slips of paper he would select and liked to use more than one background in his storytelling card games (SCGs). While it is difficult to claim that the child is distorting reality in the fantasy of a SCG, Francis’s depictions in the stories do represent his desired reality. The themes of death, father failure, and a meshing of the mother/wife role re-occur. Francis lives as if the distortion of reality in these stories were true—he is his mother’s husband.
92 Some married couples equated jealousy and love. If someone isn’t jealous, that is because he or she does not care if you are with someone. Lack of jealousy is not an indication of trust, but of lack of interest or an affair. Francis and his mother were the only parent-child dyad to equate jealousy with love. 392
In his first SCG, Francis recounted a story with siblings, a grandmother, and a father all mourning the death of the grandfather. At first I was surprised at the lack of a mother, but the father seemed to be the protagonist, rather than a child, as in most children’s SCGs, which would mean that the grandmother was the protagonist’s mother.
He seemed to project himself into the adult role. Everyone was sad about the death of the grandfather. Then, a small child was born to the grandmother and they all cared for the child. A child can make one forget the loss of a husband. At the end of his story,
“The nurse cared for the mother.” However, the mother cut-out was originally referred to as the grandmother, until the grandfather died and a new child was born. Then, the grandmother converted from mother of to the wife of the protagonist. In another SCG, he selected a cut-out that was normally the grandmother (older and in a dowdy dress) and referred to her as the mother. This mixing of mother and grandmother was unique to
Francis. I interpreted it to indicate his desires to fulfill the fatherly role with his mother.
The death theme reappeared in another SCG as well. The father had gone away and everyone visited the father “when someone dies, a birthday, or the anniversary of a death.93” The family chose limited opportunities to have the father involved, rather than the father choosing to visit them. This father had left due to another recurring theme: father failure. In this SCG, a lazy unemployed father had a dirty and misbehaving child.
They had to live in one room because the father did not earn enough money. When the father left (Francis moved the father figure off the page), the child becomes happy. This is another representation of Francis’s beliefs that his family is better without his father.
93 Celebrating the anniversary of a death is not generally a family gathering. One may light candles at cemeteries for the dearly departed, but it is not a time when kin who normally don’t visit would. I find it interesting that he referred to the anniversary of a death, rather than the anniversary of a marriage. This may be an indication that he wishes to end the conjugal bond between his mother and father. 393
One story seemed to contradict this theme of father failure. Francis told a story about a man who studied to become an orthodontist and his mother was the orthodontist’s assistant. They all went out to eat even though they had enough food in the kitchen for a year. I think this orthodontist represented him because he had mentioned earlier his desire to be a doctor. Here, even though it appears that the theme of father failure is contradicted, in actuality the success represents a son’s success. There is no mention of other kin aside from the son and mother. His depiction of fathers and their mothers in SCGs indicated that sons can be the men if the father is absent.
His descriptions of his father in the child attachment interview demonstrated the projection of his own sentiments onto his father when compared with the information from the parental interviews. When Francis was supposed to select adjectives to describe his father, he immediately chose the adjective jealous. Francis said that his father was jealous because he did not let his mother dance with others. The mother reported that it was Francis who did not allow her to dance with others, including her husband.
Francis described his father in a manner that, contrary to most children, highlighted the conclusion of their relationship. While some children emphasized behaviors that could still continue with their parent abroad or distorted reality to pretend that behaviors still occurred when they did not (as with Sabrina in the opening vignette), Francis emphasized behaviors that had ended even though they could have continued. He said his father was punctual: “When he was here, he went to work at the exact time.” It would not be a distortion to say that his father was still punctual. Perhaps he is in Spain.
Although his father never physically punished him, Francis projected his aggression onto his father. He said his father was brave because when there were 394 problems in the neighborhood, he would get into fights and win. Then, Francis’s demeanor changed when he turned to the next word he had selected: careful. Francis went from loudly describing his father to completing the task at hand. His father is careful because he doesn’t like anyone touching his things and wants them in the same order as he left them. Francis’s demeanor at the connection between his father’s ability to fight and dislike of people touching his things while away does not need interpretation.
Francis’s fifth adjective for his father was interesting as well. He said his father was “desesperado.” Desesperado has four translations listed for English: the first three are (1) despairing, (2) hopeless, and (3) desperate. Of interest is the fourth definition: furious, mad. In Spanish, desperate situations lead to anger—not necessarily frustration. Francis paused for an example and referred back to his father’s punctuality and said that he gets desesperado when time passes. Perhaps fearing his father’s fury, Francis referred back to the adjective that confirmed his departure from their lives.
Francis’s choices in the ethnopsychology interview indicated concern over his maternal devotion. He first selected “enamored,” then exchanged it for “content,” and exchanged that for “nervous.” This set of emotions could be seen as how he feels for his mother (enamored), how he first feels about that feeling (content), and then what he feels when he considers the repercussion for that emotion (nervous). Francis said that nervous is when you want to do something and at the same time you don’t want to do something so your legs shake. Wanting something that he is enamored with would make him content, but he stays focusing on this specific cause for nervous energy.
The other emotions Francis chose seemed to revolve around his feelings for his mother as well. He chose the emotion envious and said that it is a feeling when someone 395 wants something that someone else has. It makes you sick to your stomach. Shame and happy could be interpreted to fit this theme. Happy is when someone is joyful and smiles because he or she gets something. Shame is when you are shy that you have to do something. Jealous is when the spouse goes out with someone else, like at a disco.
Francis once again seems to have projected his jealousy over his mother’s choice of dance partners onto the “spouse.” He may project this feeling to remove his responsibility for the emotion and to use his feeling of the emotion to represent himself as the spouse.
Francis’s Social Approval:
As stated in regards to Alex’s group, Francis did not have a great amount of social approval amongst his peers. However, he did not care. He was so extensively immersed in his home life that he did not seek support to differentiate from his family at school to form his own identity, initiative, and autonomy. He could express his maturity at home.
Projection, fantasy, and distortion of reality were all lower level defenses from level one and two. The use of psychotic and immature defenses did not lead to questioning of his defense or outright rejection because such defenses are actually common for children. Francis did not seek approval for his views from others, and therefore people did not question his construction of defenses. His defenses could function even though somewhat precarious because they were not open to scrutiny.
Beatriz’s Context:
Eight-year-old Beatriz’s case is similar to Francis’s in that she won the desired parent from the émigré. In her case, she wins her father from her mother. However, she did not reach this status through becoming the mother. Instead, she continues as the only focus of her father’s attention because her mother went to Italy when she was four. 396
Beatriz lives with her father and maternal grandmother. Next door, her father ran an arcade with Segas and Playstations for rent. The house did not seem especially youthful nor technological, even though his business was. There was no remnant of the mother in the house—neither photos, Italian artifacts, nor young feminine touches. The uncomfortable, plastic covered basic furniture of grandmothers replaced the almost baroque-style of brightly colored overstuffed sofas many young women preferred.
The mother migrated to Italy for three years, returned to Ecuador for almost a year, and then went back to Italy. Even though she left when the banks closed under
President Mahuad, Beatriz’s father admitted that she left to be with friends and work on her self-control—not because of the economic crisis. The couple had marital problems.
Beatriz’s mother returned for the year to try and see if their marriage could work. He said every few days they seemed to fight more powerfully than before, so she returned to Italy.
When Beatriz’s went to Italy for the second time, the couple separated. He said that his wife did not want their daughter so they did not have a reason to fight in the separation. Teachers commended his devotion as a father and indicating his wife’s failures only made him a better father. As a distinguished, thoughtful man, he drew the predominantly female teachers’ attention. The teachers commented on how he has not dated anyone because he is such a devoted father, even though he clearly could find a woman and his wife has left. While it may seem that he appears a cuckold for staying single when his wife has decided to live in Italy, some commented on his dedication to his wife because of his warm heart and the devotion to his daughter.
Beatriz stood out, as did Lemuel and Francis, because she did not hide her mother’s departure. She remembered that her mother left at night and didn’t tell her. 397
She said that her mother works in Italy so that “she can bring them stuff on her returns.”
Notice that the gifts are not presented to establish a continued, normal tie between mother and daughter. The gifts are the reason she returns to Ecuador and the reason for her to return to Italy. When I asked Beatriz if the gifts were worth it (meaning her mother’s departure to Italy), Beatriz told me no. Beatriz dislikes it when her mother returns and her parents fight. Beatriz did not question whether or not her mother’s departure to Italy was worth the presents, but instead answered if her mother’s return to
Ecuador was worth the stuff. That was the debate and her return was not worth the gifts.
Her calculated cost/benefit analysis of her mother’s return was just one example of her lack of emotion regarding her mother’s departure. Beatriz said that she did not cry when her mother left. During this interview, Ana, one of the girls mentioned in Chapter
8 who did not see other options of friends in the diary fiasco, was present during this conversation. Ana, who will be described below, said that she cried a lot. Ana did not remember when her father left nor how. But she said she remembered crying even though she was not supposed to. Tears began to well up in Ana’s eyes once again. I told
Ana that it is okay to cry. Crying means we are sad. After listening to Ana’s description and my consolation, Beatriz loudly reported with a smile that she cried the second time her mother left because she was leaving for good. She nodded and kicked her legs back and forth in her chair. If she were on a swing-set, she would have gathered some momentum from this excited energy. Her joy at reporting her second departure was exceptionally different than other children. First, it was odd because she was happy.
Second, it was odd because she remembered the transitions. Third, she considered it a permanent separation with no hesitation. Beatriz was different. 398
Children who had parents that left just a year ago did not remember the details as extensively as Beatriz remembered her mother’s departure. Some children would remember bits and pieces when specifically asked, but Beatriz had recreated the entire story in a manner that critiqued her mother. Her mother left at night and did not tell her.
She immediately added, “You should tell someone when you go. You cannot just leave the house to go to the store without telling someone, so how can you go to Italy and not tell your daughter?” Emphasizing not telling made her mother sound childlike and not telling a daughter brought into question the fulfillment of the mother role.
Beatriz critiqued her mother’s caregiving skills too. She said her mother takes care of an elderly woman. But the woman died.94 This fact was not presented in a chronology of her mother’s continuing activities but as a casual, causal result of her caring. I asked Beatriz what her mother will do now to continue our discussion of her mother’s employment status, and Beatriz responded that old people require a lot of care and die. This was interesting when considering Beatriz’s responses in the role interview.
The children with culturally constituted defense mechanisms discussed the emotional concern as constitutive of a good mother, while Beatriz focused on care behaviors.
Beatriz had stated that children need a lot of care or they will become delinquent. The elderly need a lot of care or they will die. She depicts her mother as a bad caregiver.
The only positive comment she made about her mother—that she was pretty— was not an especially motherly compliment. In Ecuador, once a woman is married and has children, there is no drive to lose the baby fat. Young, unmarried women are
94 Her sweet voice when reporting such items made her mother sound like a protagonist in a comedy of errors. I enjoyed chatting with her about the inevitable follies of her mother’s life. It wasn’t until long after I took the notes that I realized the implications of her representations. 399 especially tiny95 and a married woman frequently looks more like her husband’s mother rather than his wife. A married mother should not be running about attracting attention.
Beatriz’s comment on her mother being pretty may not only be a characteristic that is irrelevant to mothering skills, but may indicate a refusal to take on a mothering role.
Beatriz’s Distress:
Like Francis, Beatriz did not seem distressed and her situation of parental emigration did not differ drastically from those of other children of émigrés. Beatriz reported that “we” talk to her every other day and someone else took over her care.
However, Beatriz saw the substitution as better, but not because she had care from her mother and others, but because she had care from others, not her mother. Her father’s concerns for her was extreme. He still considered her a little girl, as he had treated his wife, and fawned over his daughter when she acted like a little girl. Beatriz could not see her mother as continuing as a good mother while abroad because her father implied that her mother was not one at home before emigrating. Perhaps she didn’t want to either.
While Francis’s mother compared her son to a grown man like his father,
Beatriz’s father compared his wife to a child like his daughter. Beatriz’s father was eleven years older than her mother. Her father had been with her mother since she was eighteen. He began treating his wife like a child because of their age difference and this relationship continued. He described his wife’s behavior in childlike terms. His wife threw tantrums because she had an explosive character, was aggressive, and was hysterical
95 This may be due to genetics or even anorexia. Many women striving for middle-class indicators just didn’t eat. Normal food was heavy on carbohydrates (large portions of rice and “salad” was pasta with mayonnaise). There certainly wasn’t exercise: people took buses just a few blocks, looked at me oddly when I jogged, and would walk slower on the treadmill at the gym than on the street (if even working out at the gym rather than flirting on nautilus machines). I do not think people were bulimic. Soup with every meal may prevent bulimia because it is a hard and messy food to effectively purge. 400 at times. He continually made excuses for her behavior. When his wife was ten, her stepfather96 physically and sexually abused her. He said he could understand his wife better once she told him this. Beatriz’s father described it as if he had broken the communication barriers to reason with a child. Beatriz’s mother was exposed to her stepfather because she came from a poor family. Remember from the description of parental duties in Chapter 5, that an individual learns to take care of their children from their own parents. Highlighting a failure of Beatriz’s maternal grandmother focused on
Beatriz’s mother’s childhood and indicated Beatriz’s mother’s failings as a mother.
Perhaps he aimed to excuse his wife’s shortcomings with explanations, or sought unquestionable objective data to verify his claims that she was not a very good mother.
He spoke about his wife in a calm, sympathetic tone. He only wanted to help her and guide her. This was not a relationship of equals. Beatriz’s father mentioned that before his wife depended on him too much, and she had become more independent in Italy.
She had “grown up.” Beatriz’s father said he tried to get his wife to go to a psychologist, but she refused. He referred to his attempts to have her change as like, “getting a child to not eat candy that’s bad for them.” He never heard her apologize like an adult should.
Some of the marital difficulties may in fact have been due to Beatriz. Her father said that he did not mind taking care of Beatriz more than a normal father since his wife did not have it in her character, but that he could not allow his wife to be aggressive in front of the “baby.” (He often referred to his eight-year-old daughter as the bebe [baby] or niña [little girl], rather than chica [girl] or even hija [any age daughter] as other parents
96 This is one of the handful of times I heard the term for stepfather used. None of the times I heard it was it used in a positive context. It often indicated someone wasn’t the real, blood father, and therefore would be capable of mistreating the child. It is unfathomable that a real father would. This over-devoted father perhaps had motivations to indicate that only a stepfather, not a real father, would abuse their child. 401 would use.) He said that he put up with his wife’s other character flaws because of their daughter but decided to separate so as not to hurt the baby. This separation he refers to is the conclusion of her return to Ecuador last year when Beatriz was seven. However, he reported, their separation is the same as being married. The couple talks about the baby and now everyone is fine. She has not forgotten her child. Perhaps indicating her continual “marital” role as a mother removes the need for him to find a new wife to be
Beatriz’s mother, who perhaps would not accept their over-dependent relationship.
Beatriz’s father was aware of the expectations that he should begin a new relationship, but he did not mention any desire to do so himself. He said that his daughter has not missed her mother, even since the day she left. If he asks Beatriz about her mother returning, she changes the topic of conversation. She does not want the mother to return because her mother hit her. The mother’s character did not allow her to provide discipline with equilibrium adjustments—removing love rather than beating. It is better that she stays in Italy because the mother has come into her own while abroad.
However, Beatriz misses the role of a mother, and he cited some childlike behaviors that a woman could handle better than him. The grandmother is too old to fulfill the role.
On the other hand, Beatriz claimed that it was her father who did not want her mother to return.97 She said her father said, “I hope she doesn’t come back until next year.”98 Her response was, “You’re crazy daddy. That’s my mamita.” Her father should want Beatriz’s mother to return because the woman is her mother—not because she is his wife. At root, I believe that neither wanted her to return but were conflicted about
97 She was not present during the conversations with her father. 98 From interviews with the father, the statement seems out of character. Perhaps, he ask, “Do you want your mother to come back next year?” looking for confirmation for the arrangement without the mother. 402 dismissing someone who was so connected to the other. If your daughter is the center of your life, it is hard to claim you want no contact with her mother and still want what is best for your child. If your father is the center of your life and you fear a new wife, you would rather have him remain devoted to your mother who is away and no threat.
Beatriz and her father had established a happy status quo. Beatriz had no desire to move on from being daddy’s little girl. She was the princess for her grade to be fawned over in the school pageant. Unlike the other girls who compete for princess by dancing provocatively (even second graders shake their hips and gyrate down to the floor), she sweetly cocked her head sideways and spoke like a little girl. She folded her hands in front of her and rocked her shoulders back and forth. She told her stories in a falsetto voice and with big-eyed excitement. She said she wants to be a veterinarian— while similar to Francis’s goals to be an orthodontist as a doctor, the two medical professions differ. The latter is a profession you only find out about once you have permanent adult teeth whereas the former is what you want to be to take care of your stuffed animals. Providing medical care to animals in Ecuador almost required a juvenile anthropomorphism of animals—normal animals did not receive specific medical attention from a veterinarian99 but were taken care of by the people who herded them.
Beatriz’s father reinforced her overly dependent needs. Her teachers said that she gets easily distracted in conversation and has trouble sitting, paying attention, and taking on responsibilities. She just wants to play and her grades are lower this year. He got her a tutor for her homework when her grades dropped and considered switching her to a
99 For most items, “animals” as pets did not receive separate care. People would go to hardware stores for leashes, grocery stores for dog food, pharmacies for de-worming medicine, and farm suppliers for vitamins. 403
Catholic school. He saw an all-girls Catholic school as what could provide order. The desire for a lack of boys was not because the boys distracted her, but because boys were so different from girls. The boys were rowdy and then the teacher was too busy with them in order to pay appropriate attention to the girls.100
Beatriz’s father was concerned with her wellbeing in another area also. He said she insists on showering with him. He asked if this would harm her. He does not want to act like nudity is a big deal because it never was before and is concerned that she could feel abandoned if he refused. Beatriz is still so young—he asked, should he be worried or is he being his typical over-concerned self? Even though just a year or so younger, her
“being so young” contrasts strongly with Francis’s “being like a man.” But both were part of the child’s natural behavior according to the parent.
Beatriz’s Defense:
In her projective tests, Beatriz presented families without mothers, and when there were mothers, they were inept or unnecessary. She told her stories like she spoke: in a childlike manner. Many children told stories like television shows—a representation of reality. She told stories like fairy tales and began with “once upon a time.” The themes of father devotion, lack of involvement of mothers, and mother failure were central. She considers life without a mother and with father devotion normal.
From the first day of interviews, when I asked Beatriz to draw a family, she drew a mother first and then a female cousin. She drew her father and herself on the other side of the house. When I asked her about the drawing afterwards, it elucidated the
100 I could suggest that Beatriz’s father was avoiding possible competition when his daughter started to look at other boys, but this would be a generalization from other evidence and perhaps an attribution error. 404 unique perspective she had on her family in comparison to other children that had been left behind. When she reported the cousin, I asked her if her cousin lived with her, and if not, why she did not draw her other cousins. She reported that she accidentally drew a female stick figure when she was supposed to draw her father so she made it a cousin.
While it did not seem so at the time, the explanation of an “extra” female figure was notable. First, the cousin indicated that you can draw female figures on accident and they are not actually part of the family. She was not including cousins in her definition of the family. She did not draw aunts or other cousins. Of interest as well is the fact that she drew herself after she drew the cousin. Maybe she intended the female figure to be herself but she changed her mind. Another option to address her “accidental female figure” could have been to draw her grandmother, who lived with her. However, the accidental cousin served to indicate the insignificance of female figures. This figure served to fill the space next to her mother, which left her father and her on the opposite side of the house.
When I asked why she had separated the family between the two sides of the house, Beatriz said only two people fit per side. Some children drew family in the air to fit them all and others drew family in front of the house even though it hid their drawing.
She was the only child to separate her parents—some children did not draw both parents, or even did not draw any parents. She could have not drawn her mother. But again, I think that she feared the possibility that a new woman might come into her father’s life.
The mother was present as stepmother repellent. Even when her parents were in the same house, they were separated and there is no room for anyone else.
The lack of importance of a mother appeared in a SCG as well. She described a very well-behaved little girl. Her father told her how well-behaved she was when she 405 helped the grandmother get something out of the cupboard or bought a milk for the house. Her father brushed her hair and she was very good in school. The mother said that she wanted to take the daughter to the park. The grandmother went to work and the father stayed behind to take care of the baby. The baby said, “What luck I have, my father is so nice.” When the little girl returned from the park, the grandmother felt her forehead and said she had a fever. She asked the mother why she did not bring her back sooner. The mother went for a walk and the grandmother cared for the sick child who got better. Everyone lived happily ever after and took care of the baby.
The notable elements in this SCG need little elaboration: the father is devoted
(even the baby said so) and the grandmother takes the place of the neglectful mother. Of note is the fact that once the mother left the page for her walk, she did not come back.
At the end, Beatriz says “everyone” lived happily ever after, and even reincorporates the baby who had a minor role in the story, but does not mention the mother.
In the role interview, she continued to critique her mother. She said a mother feeds children, teaches them, and takes care of “us” little ones. Unlike the children in
Chapter 8 who capitalized on the distinction between the care a small child would need in comparison to themselves, Beatriz considered herself a small child. This cultural value meant that her mother was not taking care of her (just as she failed to take care of the elderly in Italy). I did not ask about her mother in particular, but when I asked for an example of a good mother, she said her mother did this, using the past tense. Her example was that when her grandmother told her mother to, her mother would cook.
Children who were practically abused used more positive memories to demonstrate their mother’s care. In contrast, Beatriz’s mother was only a good mother when told to do so, 406 like a child being directed as to right and wrong. Beatriz seemed to have appropriated her father’s habit of recreating her mother as a child to indicate her flaws. This example showed Beatriz’s grandmother’s ability to care for her. Her mother’s emigration just cut- out the middle man. However, her grandmother does not become her new mother and thereby new competition for her father—the grandmother was not in the family drawing.
Another SCG demonstrated Beatriz’s view that mothers are unnecessary and bad.
A little girl with a messy room had a mother who would not let her go to school because her room was messy. The father concurred and took over enforcing the mother’s rule.
The mother gave up because she could not get the daughter to clean the room. At this point, Beatriz once again set down the mother cut-out and never picked it up again for the story. The teacher came to the house because the daughter had not gone to school.
Bringing the day’s homework, the teacher yells at the father for not sending his daughter to school. The teacher asks the father how he can have a daughter who is so messy. The father helped his daughter catch up on the homework. Then, the aunt comes over to take the little girl out. She is dressed to leave the house, but when the aunt sees the room she does not take the girl out. Instead, the aunt and father help the girl clean the room
(including the teacher, but not the mother) and the room stays clean forever. Again, the mother is perhaps the problem and they all live happily ever after once she is gone.
While the last story had a direct indication that the mother was at fault—by taking her to the park—this time blame is more subtle. The teacher asks how the father can have such a messy child. Teachers ask children what their parents have done to make them so misbehaved in class. (This is a reason children in Chapter 8 lay low). With the mother gone, the teacher cannot understand how the good father can have a bad 407 daughter. Perhaps if the mother was present, the reasoning would be clear. The fact that the room is never messy again once the good caregivers help the girl clean supports this allusion of blame. Once the mother is gone, the father never again has a bad child.
Beatriz seemed to justify her close relationship with her father in her third SCG.
She told a story about a little boy named Pepito who never came to class on time. The teacher asked the father why he is always late and he said it is because he does not want to take a shower. With the explanation, the teacher said, do not worry. She told Pepito he has to get to school on time. When he came to school the next day on time, the teacher yelled at him because he was dry. Both the teacher and the father punished him.
Most children told longer, more detailed stories as time went on because they incorporated more characters, scene cards, and felt more comfortable with the medium.
This SCG was barely two minutes whereas Beatriz’s first one was over four. In this SCG, the father must force the son to take a shower. This implies a father’s involvement with the son’s bathing. The teacher says that it is okay and helps punish the child when the father does not enforce showering enough. Perhaps she knew that her father wanted to talk to me about her showering with him. Or, maybe the teacher’s involvement with the showering is similar in meaning to the last story: teachers critique parents’ care of children so if a teacher approves, it is okay. I think that she used a little boy in this story, unlike the first two stories, because most people would not be concerned with a little boy showering with his father rather than being dirty or late for school.
In her child attachment interview, Beatriz highlighted the conclusion and distance of her relationship with her mother. She used past tense and emphasized behaviors that could not continue while abroad: caring because her mother hugged her and intelligent 408 because her mother helped her with her homework. She emphasized distance: she’s nice on the phone. Note that many children used their conversations as an example of continued ties, without mentioning the phone whereas to Beatriz the phone defined the situation. Her mother was a happy person on birthdays. Perhaps the example of a “rare” occasion highlights the infrequency of her mother’s joy and/or highlights the infrequency of her presence. Her mother’s presence in Italy was a defining characteristic of her character: Beatriz said her mother is brave because she went to live in Italy. Brave was often used to describe émigrés—this was a reasonable interpretation of with part of the cultural ideology on émigrés and the other children present in her interviews. However,
Beatriz again was different. Rather than being brave because she went to work abroad for her family, she was brave because she “started a whole new life in Italy.”
Beatriz’s Social Approval:
Beatriz had a number of acquaintances, as did Francis, but was not part of a clique. She did not seek out a group of friends to define herself. This is part of the reason she was elected as princess—she played with everybody. She was so extensively immersed in her home life that she had no need to seek to differentiate at school.
I paired her with Francis not just because of their Oedipal similarities but also because of their similarity in the defenses referred to as “psychotic and immature.”
Projection, fantasy, and distortion of reality were all used and did not lead to questioning.
These tendencies were most blatantly seen in the SCGs, but also appeared in behaviors towards and conversations about their remaining parent. These defenses are referred to as psychotic and immature based on the significance of these defenses if exhibited by adults. However, for Beatriz and Francis, the defenses were not psychotic and, even 409 though immature for adults, they matched their level of maturity. Neither sought approval for their views from others because of how immersed they were in their home life, and therefore people did not question their defenses. They did not have to lie low to avoid scrutiny of a precarious representation. They could go home to their wonderfully devoted, supportive parent. In fact, their defenses were not against the painful realization of parental separation, but a manner of creating a reality in which they were the central and only recipient of their parental affection. They included the absent parent to eliminate the possibility of others taking on the role, to indicate their suitability to fulfill the role, and to demonstrate a gracious lack of ill will towards their absent parent. Even when they subtly represent the émigré in a negative light, this heightens the benevolence of their concern for the émigré and garners affection from the remaining parent.
Emotional Denial: Split Personalities at Home vs. at School
Each child in this pair has a difficulty at home that leads them to behave in two completely different ways: the first, Wilson, behaves mild-mannered at home and wild at school, while the second, Sebastian, behaves mild-mannered at school and wild at home.
Neither child’s home life is bad because of abuse or other overt deprivation, but there is a mismatch between their home life and the values they learn which lead them to alter their private feelings and/or instinctual expression. Their primary use of level three defenses makes sense: society’s values indicate a mismatch in their personal life. Wilson was told that he did not miss a mother because his grandmother substitutes and Sebastian was told that he did miss a mother. I do not say “acting out” because their misbehavior is not a way of expressing hidden drives. I think it was a manner of expressing appropriate emotions in one place and distracting from inappropriate emotions in a different context. 410
Wilson’s Context:
Seven-year-old Wilson went to live with his grandmother when his mother went to Italy two years ago. His mother’s remittances are the only source of income for his grandmother, him, and his four-year-old cousin/sister. This other child is actually his cousin, but she has seamlessly adapted to her substitute care by referring to the grandmother as her mother. If Wilson were to agree with the little girl/grandmother’s kinship terms, and keep his own mother, then the little girl would be his aunt, which he seemed to have trouble explaining. As such, he alternated between calling her his cousin, when he referred to his relationship with her, and sister when the grandmother was included in the story. Wilson was somewhat unsettled in resolving his kinship.
The grandmother led to further kin confusion for Wilson. Wilson experienced the emotional discovery that he lacks a mother because his grandmother denies him the opportunity to recreate the alternative representation of his reality because she constantly reminds the child of her representation of reality in her own defensive strategy. The grandmother fears that her daughter will not include her in the familial reunification with
Wilson. The grandmother emphasizes her substitution as a mother, seeking faithfulness and attachment from Wilson so that he never forgets her when he reunites with his mother. His grandmother inhibits Wilson’s perception that she fulfills the role of a redefined grandmother and that his mother fulfills the role of a readjusted mother by declaring incessantly that he is not missing anything because she provides him with everything he would need from a mother. These declarations indicate that the mother does not do this, while the other children see their situation of substitute care as something normal through the re-codification of family roles. 411
Teachers were aware of the shifting of roles as well. Wilson’s teacher told me that he sees his grandmother like his mother. However, the other children who had made this transition did not need to explain the shift each time they named either person. His grandmother wants him to consider her his mother and pushes him to do so. Wilson said that he does not tell his grandmother that he misses his mother because then his grandmother will cry. He said he just wants his mother to return. The grandmother does not say anything to him regarding whether she wants her daughter to return or not.
Wilson had an expansive range of emotional expression. His teacher told me he is hyperactive and can only pay attention for five minutes. He does not have a learning problem; he just makes mistakes for rushing. Wilson’s teacher said he is communicative and does not fight, but he gets sad. The teacher named Mother’s Day as a time when
Wilson was sad, even though it was months ago. I observed that he would mumble, turn his head down, fidget with his hands, and act as if everyone is against him when he sad.
It was difficult to understand what was happening with Wilson. I kept waiting for him to tell me what was wrong in stories, small cues, and representations. However, with
Wilson, the expression of what led to his emotional swings was only obvious in negative relief: what he did not say was what was bothering him. Even though Wilson was the child
I was most concerned about (aside from a few children who were suffering actual abuse), his grandmother came to school and said she did not want him seeing the psychologist anymore. I asked if she had read the consent form she signed, which explained that I was not a psychologist. Seeing her defensive nature regarding the care she provided Wilson, I explained that I wanted to understand how children handle parental emigration: family networks and transnational ties. I explained that many of the children I studied were not 412 problem children and that she should not view my work with Wilson as an indication that he was a problem child. She relaxed and told me about how difficult life is. She began to cry because she said she has poured so much love into Wilson and he will leave. She will be abandoned. She did not consider her daughter’s emigration abandonment, but the emigration of her grandchild would be devastating. She said that I should spend my time with children with problems. She recommended more children for my study. There are children whose parents emigrate and no one loves them. Too many people love Wilson.
Wilson’s Distress:
Wilson’s case is similar to the children in Chapter 8. His grandmother helps him with his homework. His mother maintains ties. However, his grandmother has altered his home environment such that he cannot employ a culturally constituted defense to claim that he continues in a “normal” family with a mother at a distance. He cannot even claim that he lives in a “normal” family with a grandmother/mother. He lives with a grandmother who becomes a mother because his mother does not fulfill that role.
His trouble seeing his family as normal came through when he drew the family.
For his family, he drew a mother, a father, a brother, and a sister. When I asked if he lived with them, rather than claiming that his family lived in different houses as many
émigrés’ children did, or that they lived together when he was little, he tried to change his drawing. He said that the person he labeled as dad was grandma, who he lives with.
Interestingly, the father, who is here in Ecuador and visits him occasionally, is the first to go.101 When I pointed out that he had changed who was who, he drew more people like
101 When I asked about his father, Wilson represented him as an émigré in New York. It was true that his father had gone to New York, but he did not live there. Being in New York seemed to be a reason to have distant ties. Geographic distance would justify the emotional distance with his father. 413 an older brother and another grandmother so that he did not have to erase the father to have her on the page. He had no older brother or sister, only a sister/cousin/aunt. Most children stood by their drawings and corrected me as to what should be included. Wilson did not. He did not know what a family was and just adapted to the interpretations that others expected.
Unable to accept the interpretation of his mother as replaced by his grandmother, he has learned not to discuss his mother. He avoids the topic completely. It seems his grandmother tells him little about his mother. At first he agreed that his mother was in
Spain—he thought Spain was part of Italy. Wilson asked where Italy was on the map.
After hearing how other children talked about their parents, he tried to appropriate some of their discussions: he said he does not know what his mother does abroad, but she is going to send him money for a Gameboy. He said, “That’s $800.” It is really about $200 for a Gameboy—more than in the U.S., but much less than $800. When the other children publicly corrected him, it was poignant. The corrections indicated that his mother is not really planning on sending money because he does not know how much things cost. If you remember Stefania’s brother, he was quite detailed in explaining what he wanted. Wilson did not have this training to demonstrate continued ties. Perhaps this was because he was a little younger, or maybe because his grandmother did not emphasize the mother’s contributions. I did not catch him in such a blatant lie afterwards, but he became the most obstinate, creative, and thorough at avoiding topics.
Wilson would give one word answers when the questions related to his mother or avoid the topic altogether. Even at the first interview, when I asked about his family, he faced down and for the first time, I could not hear him. He lit up and became animated 414 when I told him he could have another piece of paper to draw on. These emotional shifts were clear when we talked about his father as well. His speech went from rampant, jubilant, loud explanations to slow, quiet, and depressing comments. He pouted, frowned, and shrugged. The main reason why this shift was so obvious is because of how hyperactive and upbeat he was at other times. He would knock on classroom doors for me. He would try to demonstrate how to fence with the flag poles. On the way to my office, he greeted the other teachers. Wilson was so upbeat and such a joy—if you had the room for his bouncing—until we reached the topic of his family.
His silence at family questions transitioned into avoidance. For instance, one day
Wilson had trouble kicking a ball because his pants were too big. I had assumed that they were passed down, but I knew he did not have an older brother. I asked where he got them from. It turned out that the pants had been shipped to him. When I discussed what his mother sends him, he said he counts to 20 in English to his mother. English is his favorite subject. His avoidances became more elaborate. He would search for crickets in the office. Although most thought it was silly that bugs bothered me, he would move heavy desks and search for them. During board games, he would stall about questions during his turn then loudly insist that I take my turn. Any distraction worked.
Wilson’s Defense:
The repression appears as simply forgetting something but certain symbolic behaviors may indicate otherwise. Wilson often claimed he could not remember information or did not know, but his emotional change indicated that he wanted to avoid the topic. He defends himself against the realization of mother loss through the cognitive and emotional avoidance of thoughts and/or mention of his mother. For instance, 415
Wilson would often begin to answer and decide he did not like where the questions went.
He could not explain why or how someone feels with an emotion (some younger children could), but said that caring, love, and concern are what you feel for your mother, father, grandmother, aunt, and little sister. He said he felt depressed for his mother and father and when you are depressed you don’t feel like eating. He then said he couldn’t think.
He acted as if they were difficult questions that he had to search his memory for.
Sometimes he would switch from discussing the connection of an emotion with family to school. The switch of context alleviated the difficulty at discussing his family. You worry for your mother and father, but you also worry that someone will erase something off the chalkboard. “Being happy is how your family feels when,” then he stopped. He said
“happy is how you feel in gym because you can be energetic and awake.” He avoided explaining emotions by talking about roosters: one is happy when they are not near a rooster and is content when you don’t fear roosters will peck at you.
In the child attachment interview, Wilson once again began and changed his mind. He said his mother is desesperada, or despairing. When he selected the terms at first, he may not have realized he would be expected to explain the terms. He began,
“My mommy is… because she is in… she is… because I’m…” and then he switched to content. He said his mother was content when he gets good grades and that she is fair because she verbally disciplines him because he shouldn’t get 13’s—he’s smart and shouldn’t be failing. For “sad,” he said his mother is sad and moved on to the next word with no example. I think his rush to move to the next word was because he thought he could tie it to the safe zone of school. He said his mother is intelligent because she helps him with his homework when… He continued, “When, um, when, I say, I go, ‘mommy 416 help me on this.’” He had gone up an unsafe path—something that demonstrated that his mother had less contact with him. She no longer helps with homework. He cannot accept less contact because his grandmother has already tried to establish that less contact is a reason to sever ties. His mother does not take care of him anymore—his grandmother does. It was even more crucial that he highlight continuing ties than the children in Chapter 8 because otherwise he would be expected to replace his mother. He does not claim that homework help stopped because his mother is gone. This would be too much for him. He does not even claim that it is because he’s a “big kid.” I have heard three year olds use the “big kid” card. Wilson needed everything as normal.
Wilson had similar difficulties answering questions in the role interview. He could not explain his opinion about the positive characteristics of a mother in general, because it would obligate him to recognize that his mother does not fulfill them. Perhaps due to his age, he had more trouble seeing a general role of “mother” separate from his own situation. He said a good mother is his grandmother. He could not explain why she is at first. He began to blame his father for being in out of town. Apparently, his grandmother has pointed out to Wilson that she cares for him because his father left as well. Wilson said that his grandmother gives him food and “maintains” him. Maintain is a word usually used to refer to economic child support—not care. Wilson was forced to expand the role of his substitute caregiver rather than expanding the role of his mother to demonstrate continued ties. He placed the cause on his father when possible.
Wilson reported that someone must treat children well so they will be happy.
When asked what happens if someone is a bad mother, he said that children will be unhappy. Usually children focused on the behavioral aspects of lacking care—becoming 417 a crook, not doing your homework, or forgetting to say thank you. Wilson focused on emotion. When I spoke with his grandmother, she told me Wilson was happy. Wilson also reported that he was happy. He had all the care he needed. With this connection between happiness and care, perhaps Wilson felt that he could not express his emotional distress at the loss of his mother to his grandmother without appearing like an ingrate.
Wilson not only repressed elements regarding emotions, but he also displaced his fear of abandonment. In the ethnopsychology interview, he told me that nervous is when you are afraid. You feel this way when you worry that the expreso is going to leave you at school. He shook his foot back and forth and became quiet. He wanted to stay close to home. When I asked what he wanted to be, he said, “A doctor close to my house.” He did not want to go far away, so even though he expressed a desire to reunite with his mother, he was scared when she had begun plans to bring him abroad. He said he would not understand the language and would get lost. Another child feared reuniting abroad as well: One little girl said she did not want to got to Italy because then she would have to go to school at night. Her mother had told her that when it’s daytime in Ecuador, it’s night in Italy. Hoping to explain time zones for her daughter, she left her daughter with the fear that she would have to walk to school in the dark. It is unlikely that Wilson thought of the difficulties of language differences on his own, and the worst possible result of being lost. The linguistic fears soon turned into fears over his misbehavior. He said his grandmother is okay with how he behaves, but that in Italy they will put him in jail. The Europeans do not tolerate behavior that does not conform.102 Not making noise and being well-behaved so people would want him began to creep into his
102 Shakina’s grandmother in Chapter 6 convinced her of a similar fear. 418 discussions and also became items of avoidance. Whereas I had a joking manner with many children who would call me a brat for not taking them out of class enough and I would call them a brat if I saw them trying to get away with something, Wilson was the only child who ever feared punishment from me after he knew me. Other children would purposely lie on top of the table just because they knew I would not say anything. Some would try to get kicked out of class because from the hallway, they could peak down into my office and wave. However, when I told Wilson that he was bratty because he tried to rip the seat board of his desk to use as a skateboard, he shut down. He became completely quiet and still. I am not sure if the disciplinary ideas of the Italian Gestapo had expanded to all foreigners, but I had accidentally hit a nerve. He feared punishment.
In his first SCG, a mother helped a badly behaved child study. But since he played rather than studying, she punished him. He did not know that he had to hurry up because it was time to go, but he had to stay behind because he had not done his homework. Later, the mother called and asked “Why are you so badly behaved?” I encouraged him to continue with the story, waiting for the child to change the behavior and the parent to come home and find the child has completed his homework. Wilson assured me that that was the end of the story. He began changing cards.
Wilson continued this same theme of needing to study and an absent parent in his second SCG. The child in this story went outside when he was not supposed to and missed “when he was called.” But, he still continued playing and not studying. The teacher asked, “Why don’t you study?” Wilson then said, “There.” That was once again the end of the story. The child in this story, just like the previous one, missed the connection with someone, the mother in the first and unsaid in the second, because he 419 was playing rather than studying. His third SCG is similar, except that in addition to playing rather than following his father’s commands to study, he was eating, dressing, and cleaning up too slowly as well. When the child got home in this story after walking home to slow, he had to do his homework alone because no one was there. Each of his SCGs described a child who missed a kin expectation and did not receive a second chance. The stories were clear-cut and the characters did not ponder their decisions.
Wilson’s Social Approval:
Wilson got into trouble in school. His energy seemed to hide an inner sadness that was close to the surface. One teacher commended the fact that he did not get into fights. However, it was almost a lack of social belonging not to get into fights. The boys got into fights because they had groups. Sometimes children would gang up on another child with fewer friends and others would step in to take the underdog’s side. Wilson did not do this. He was not part of the main social dynamic like Beatriz and Francis.
However, Wilson did care about his lack of close friendships because he did not have a home environment to retreat to. Accepting his home life would imply a rejection of his mother with his grandmother’s interpretations.
Also, his defenses did not fit into his peer group at school. Becoming emotionally paralyzed at points was obvious to others. With Francis, trying to be the man of the house was not obvious. I do think Wilson’s defenses were unconscious because trying to explain to Wilson that he could talk about items felt fruitless. I do not think he purposely hid information. Similar to trying to explain to a child who covers their eyes when “hiding” that you can still see them, Wilson was convinced that once he transitioned to trying to find the crickets, the topic of his family was hidden. 420
Sebastian’s Context:
Nine-year-old Sebastian was the other émigré’s child selected for the spelling bee with Stefania. He lives on a third floor with his grandparents, great grandmother, and a cousin. With little living space, much of the day the great grandmother spends out on the third floor porch and his grandfather in a hammock on the second floor. Sebastian’s uncle and two cousins live on the second floor. No one lives on the first floor where he once lived with his mother before she emigrated four years ago. He has another aunt and uncle with three children who spend most of the day in the grandmother’s care.
Sebastian’s mother left out of necessity. During the economic crisis, she went into debt with her mini-boutique. She got a loan to try to restock her store and started to recover with hard work. Unfortunately, Sebastian’s father was a very jealous man and when he saw she had restocked the store, he flew into a rage because he assumed that she had gotten money from another man, but she had not. They had been separated for three years, since Sebastian was two, but her husband still watched her. Sebastian’s grandmother assured me that her daughter was a good woman—she got the loan from a bank. Sebastian’s father did not belief this and ran her over with a car and set her store on fire. She feared for her life. He was a professor and had powerful friends.
When hearing about her dire straits, the wife of her cousin told Sebastian’s mother that she should come abroad. She sold everything to pay for her trip. Sebastian was used to living in the same house as his grandparents, and it would have taken a long time to get papers for him as well. She first went to Belgium but could not get used to the language. Even though she made less, she moved to Spain but had trouble there as well. There, the problem was her own compatriots. They were cruel and would not lend 421 a hand to anyone—no one would even give away a glass of water. When she emigrated,
Sebastian’s father stopped paying his son’s tuition and was no longer involved in his son’s life. Sebastian’s grandmother said that her daughter is different: she did not emigrate to avoid her familial responsibilities. If she had a choice, she never would have gone.
Both the grandmother and the son seem to have partially recreated the story of his mother’s emigration. Sebastian said that his mother did not tell him she was going.
He found out that she had emigrated because she didn’t pick him up at school the next day. The grandmother said that her daughter did tell Sebastian about her plans to emigrate. According to the grandmother, she said, “My little son, I am going to go to work for you, not for me, but I will not forget you.” And, according to his grandmother, she has not forgotten her son. Sebastian’s mother has not failed her son or her family.
She repaid her entire debt in three months and even loans money to her sister-in-law.
Sebastian’s grandmother presents the positive aspects of her daughter’s migration story to Sebastian. The grandmother tells Sebastian that his mother is still very devoted and has made these sacrifices for him. Sebastian hears his grandmother tell him that everything is great, but hears her sob at night. She claimed that she tries not to demonstrate sadness in front of the child. I do not think she realizes he’s there when he is not rough-housing with his cousin. Rather than “the squeaky wheel getting the grease,” in the over-packed house it seemed that the greased wheel was invisible. He walked through while we were talking and his grandmother was crying. He knew that they all crammed into the third floor rather than where he used to live with his mother. He walked by that floor everyday. She expresses her anxiety at the loss of her daughter in her relationships with Sebastian—she is afraid someone will kidnap him for ransom since he 422 is the child of an émigré. When I asked if Sebastian misses his mother, she said yes. No mother wants to have a child far away. You should not let your children emigrate. She tied her concern over Sebastian without a mother to her concern over her daughter.
Sebastian’s grandmother de-legitimates his emotions and her own words. She says he should not be concerned—his mother loves him—but she expresses her own concern. This has lead him to separate the emotion from his thoughts about his mother.
It is difficult to explain his defense of intellectualization because everything seems okay.
The lack of emotion when discussing his mother’s departure, which was highly traumatic because of the fear for her safety from his father, may appear to indicate a seamless adaptation to parental emigration. However, just like Wilson, he does exhibit distress.
Sebastian’s Distress:
Once again, Sebastian does not vary drastically from other émigrés’ children. His mother calls once during the week and on the weekend. The reason Sebastian cannot create a representation of reality that matches his internal working model of a mother and his mother’s behavior is because he has observed his grandmother depressed over her daughter’s emigration. The grandmother has inhibited his acceptance of his mother’s absence with her own incapacity to do so, which forces Sebastian to notice the empirical reality since he has no support for a culturally constituted defense as other children do.
However, he cannot express his sadness at his mother’s departure because then he would disappoint his grandmother for not seeing his mother as fulfilling all expectations and the grandmother caring for him. He would be ungrateful to both of them.
Sebastian had difficulty seeing his family as normal. In drawing a family, he drew grandparents, aunts, uncles, and a couple of cousins. It took a very long time. When he 423 explained who all the people were, I was surprised that there were no parents. There were only the people he lived with. When his mother calls, he gets excited and is content.
He still loves his mother, but he feels his mother’s absence. She does not continue as part of his life conceptually. Sebastian said that he does not know what she does there.
Since his grandmother emphasizes the mother’s continuing position as mother, Sebastian, just like Wilson, cannot adjust to recodified roles like the children in Chapter 8.
In the SCG, he demonstrated his perception of her absence. The child had a stomachache and the mother and grandmother brought the child to the doctor. Just like
Beatriz’s divide in the draw a family test, Sebastian divided the cut-outs on the scene card.
The mother was on one side; the grandmother, child, and doctor were on the other. The grandmother consulted the doctor. Sebastian moved the people cut-outs when they talked like puppets. After the treatment, the child mechanically thanked the mother for paying for the treatment with the grandmother’s mediation, without any physical contact with the mother. Based on this and other interviews, it seems that he still feels as if his mother should be present physically in some parts of his life, and Sebastian has not accepted her absence as a necessary duty of her role as a mother as other children have.
Sebastian’s difficulty at continuing to see his mother as a mother while abroad had led to other difficulties as well. He has divided the role of caretaker in two: the grandmother and mother. The grandmother’s continued emphasis on her daughter’s devotion has left Sebastian feeling that his grandmother is just substituting. If the current status quo is people fulfilling their obligations, then if he were to go abroad and join his mother, she would behave the same. He would be leaving all the physical care behind with his grandmother. Wilson said he does not want to reunite with his mother without 424 his grandmother, but the grandmother says she cannot go because she has seven grandchildren. Also, as I discussed with Norman, Isabella, and Shakina, grandmothers do not receive family reunification visas under the same conditions as children. The grandmother said this lack of desire to join his mother is evidence that Sebastian is detaching further from his mother and getting more used to her. When she first left, he was incontinent and had trouble at school. Now he is fine. For this reason, the grandmother says, she must emphasize more how much the mother does because children have trouble seeing the dedication that work requires to provide for your family.
The children just understand the gifts and fun. His mother is devoted to him in everyway: she sends everything from underwear to shoes and worries that he has food for lunch. The grandmother saw the solution to Sebastian’s hesitancy to reunite with his mother to reemphasize what the mother did do. This might just further his concerns that he would be leaving behind his grandmother’s physical care in Ecuador.
Sebastian’s Defense:
Sebastian demonstrated a complete lack of emotion at school and in interviews.
He told me that “It’s okay that my mother left because she has a good job and calls my grandma.” He discussed his mother’s material care of him with no emotion. He said that she sends him gifts that arrive on time and in good condition. In the child attachment interview, he described his mother’s behaviors rather than his emotional connection with her. He stated two reasons per characteristic without mumbling, long pauses, or side stories. He was efficient, even-handed, and rhythmic. He said that his mother is happy because they all have food to eat, caring because she sends toys, punctual because she 425 arrives when people tell her, good because she send toys, and intelligent because she learns quickly. He even described emotions without emotion, but clear factual examples.
He had more trouble on the mother role interview. While with most interviews he provided clear, exacting examples, he could not answer questions on a mother’s role.
It seemed that he was unsure. He did attempt to answer items though, and even revisit questions he felt he had not done well on the first time. He had said that a mother should care for her children and provide for their studies and food. She said that a bad mother gets angry. He moved away from behaviors with his mother towards emotions.
However, even though the children in Chapter 8 focused on their parents’ material care, Sebastian was different because he felt her absence, as described above with a SCG and the family drawing. He defined love as when you are next to your mother who helps and accompanies you when you are lonely. His mother could not complete these characteristics. Rather than focusing on the characteristics that parents can complete, Sebastian felt her absence. His third SCG demonstrated this. He pointed out that those who are not present do not know what happened while they were gone. A mother waited at home for her children and the grandmother to arrive. They park, and the grandmother tells them to be careful crossing the street. She takes each child, one at a time, to the other side of the street. It took a long time to cross all the children safely, but the grandmother continued with her devotion. When the children enter the house, the mother says be careful crossing the street because a car can run you over and then you have to go to the hospital. Here the story ends. The grandmother took care of children and the mother does not know. The grandmother’s extreme caution on crossing streets was interesting since his mother emigrated because his father ran her over. 426
Sebastian not only emphasized his mother’s absence, but also emphasized his grandmother’s care. In one of his SCG stories, his grandmother took care of all the child cut-outs and two babies. The children helped the grandmother. They all went to play at a park and when the baby cried or someone fell off a swing, the grandmother took care of them. He focused on actual behaviors regarding his grandmother. A grandmother sends the children to school and gives them breakfast. It was interesting how he dealt with the relationship of his grandmother and mother. When I asked if his grandmother told his mother when he misbehaved, he paused. It would be neglectful of his grandmother not to tell his mother. However, if his mother did something about his misbehavior, it would mean she had to take over for the grandmother because she could not handle the situation. There was no clear division of labor to Sebastian, just as Wilson did not have clear roles. He said that his grandmother tells his mother, but his mother does not yell when he behaves badly. Balance in consent and discipline were important to take care of someone. Children often referenced disciplining children (even though mild) as a positive part of being a parent. Sebastian rarely misbehaved though. Performing so well in school is the reason his grandmother said they do not send him to be with his mother and with so many children in the house, none were singled out for misbehavior.
Another instance indicated that he wanted to be sure to present his mother as not the one in charge of his physical care. He said that if you hit your cousin for no reason, you’re a bad cousin. When I asked what happens if you are a bad cousin, he said a mother punishes them. He probably began this statement imagining what happens to his own cousins, and then transitioned it to his own case and said he behaves with his cousin.
Again, the care that he would need from a mother is not neglected. It is not needed. 427
Sebastian seemed to have projected his fears of abandonment onto his cousin.
His cousins’ parents were émigrés together abroad, but he did not remember nor miss his parents. The cousin was not expected to reunite with his parents, and he may have no reason to feel their absence or fear abandonment because they left when he was very little. The cousin was the only relationship Sebastian had where they were equals: Their grandmother cared for both rather than their mothers, both were the same age, and both were cousins to each other and cousins to all the other cousins (neither had siblings). He said his cousin feared being along and a good cousin accompanies his cousin. Happiness and content is being with family. Sad is when you are alone and you feel bad. Sebastian said this happens when his grandmother has to go out at night. You are worried when you are left alone and she does not return until midnight.103 He said that his cousin was worried when he stayed alone. When you are worried, you shake. I asked Sebastian what should be done if someone feels this way, and he said there is nothing one can do.
The one emotion that Sebastian tied to his father was informative. It seemed to blame his father for his mother not being next to his side. Pride is when you can help someone, like when a father helps a son get a job. Pride is normally seen as vanity. It became clear when he highlighted the characteristics that his parents lack. His father could have supported them or gotten his ex-wife a job so she would not have to emigrate.
Sebastian’s Social Approval:
Sebastian did not have trouble at school with teachers. The teachers said he was an excellent student who learns quickly. He is tranquil, shy and respectful. He plays but
103 His grandmother wasn’t neglectful. She left them with their grandfather and great grandmother, but to the boys, they didn’t count as caregivers since one never left a hammock and the other never left the patio. 428 does not yell. However, he does get distracted and does not talk to people about his life.
Yet, even with his success with teachers, he did have trouble with the other children.
While Wilson was too hyperactive to get along with the other boys, Sebastian was too mellow for the other boys. As described above, his intellectualization of his family led him to be very calm for a boy. He controlled his emotions so extensively to hide the inward feelings about his mother’s emigration which contradicted his grandmother’s stated feelings and brought her distress that he also controlled his emotions in other realms. His affect was not entirely flattened, but there was not the typical variation between the excitement for gym, anger at lacks of sharing, shame at being the center of attention, frustration at homework, or sadness when others didn’t follow his commands.
Similar to Wilson above, Sebastian’s home environment is not drastically different from other children. However, it does not offer a safe place to retreat to because it leads to confusion between society’s values and the values in his personal life. According to
Vaillant’s work with adults, level three defenses were used for the amelioration of intra- psychic distress. This indication of efficacy for different levels of defenses seems to apply to this pair of children. Both boys used level three defenses because their difficulty came from integrating the values their substitute caregiver’s offered and their own feelings about parental emigration. They did not experience deprivations or trouble with other people, but experienced trouble psychically assimilated the two different sets of appraisals regarding their parents. Sebastian primarily used intellectualization and Wilson primarily used repression. Both used defenses to alleviate their fear of abandonment. Wilson displaced them onto school and, as described above, Sebastian projected them onto his cousin by describing his cousin’s difficulty in adapting and fear of abandonment. 429
Maternal Deprivations: Munchausen vs. Neglected
Jimmy and Ramon had in common that there were actual inadequacies in their home environment with their remaining parent. While Sebastian and Wilson had slightly altered home-lives that led to extensive defenses, Jimmy and Ramon had greatly different home lives yet seemed to adapt in a manner that made them more normal. Rather than trying to make their home-life normal, they chose to try to make themselves normal at school eventually. This process is dynamic. I describe the two moving from individual defenses towards a culturally constituted defense mechanism for social approval.
Jimmy and Ramon each had a father abroad that did not maintain contact. Their mothers adapted to single parentage in opposite, extreme ways, such that the focus in the child’s care was on the mother who stayed behind, not the émigré. Jimmy’s mother seemed not to care and Ramon’s mother cared too much. The inadequacies differed greatly, yet the two children adapted in a similar manner. They had trouble seeing their family situation as normal and employing culturally constituted defenses. They adapted to their situations differently—Jimmy acted out while Ramon became a hypochondriac.
However, both began to seek more social involvement at school to compensate for home and adapted their defenses to fit more closely fit a culturally constituted defense.
Jimmy’s Context:
Nine-year-old Jimmy was an only child. He lived with his mother while his father was in the U.S. Jimmy represented his father’s emigration in a positive light. Jimmy said that his father is “on a trip” to highlight a temporary status. His father left just two years ago, but Jimmy claimed that he has returned twice to visit his mother. He said his father 430 sent him a Playstation, calls everyday, and has legal papers. His uncle and grandfather are in the U.S., so it is better that his father went there. Eventually, they will all live there.
Jimmy claimed his parents were still together, but reports from teachers and other parents indicated otherwise. His mother had decided that now that she was not a wife, she would not be a mother. Teachers confirmed that the mother was an alcoholic and spent many nights out. Other parents felt sorry for Jimmy because his father was gone and did not protect him from his mother who “wandered the streets like a crazy lady.”
Teachers said Jimmy stubbornly avoided tasks, did not fear repercussions, and called for attention. This search for attention sometimes turned to aggression. One teacher suggested that I should interview a less problematic child than Jimmy because he could get violent. Expecting a Tasmanian devil with crazy eyes, I was surprised with the young boy who never wanted to return to class. In my opinion, he was different, but not wild. While others were ecstatic to use the Crayola markers and have a completely blank sheet of paper to draw their family, Jimmy grabbed a pen and drew three stick figures.
He labeled them mother, father, and son. Perhaps after his “draw a family visit” showed him that the interview times varied—other children in his class who took much longer than 3 minutes to draw and explain a family—he saw a reward in task performance. He chose to answer more than the minimum number of items in games, said that the tasks were easy, and tied his responses in different games together into an overall system.
Intelligence was not his problem. Teachers agreed that Jimmy learned quickly but his problem was that, as an only child, he is spoiled. He has no discipline. While spoiling an only child may sound like the mother showers the child with attention, in fact, Jimmy was neglected. The result of no discipline—whether due to indulging or neglecting the 431 child—is the same. Jimmy was the only child I ran into on the street meandering without a parent. I asked after a number of instances why he was out alone. Sensing my concern and a possible critique of his mother, he said he was going to the store for a popsicle, even though he was on a swing throwing rocks. This seemed odd as well. On the rare occasions children ran to stores, it was usually to get items for their mother to cook, and maybe were consented with additional items. Jimmy’s main purpose was for himself.
Jimmy never had a good concept of the balance between consenting and discipline that other children (and adults) frequently mentioned as a parent’s responsibility.
Jimmy’s Distress:
Jimmy’s representations of parental duties were different from other children.
Some felt privileged when they could get away with more than they should. They did not claim the consenting was due to parents’ negligence but emphasized that parents consent their requests: parents would punish them if they knew the children were misbehaving dangerously, but the children were too cunning and endearing. Lack of parents wanting to punish you would mean they do not love you enough to provide equilibrium. In contrast,
Jimmy felt the neglect and did not seek to avoid parental attention.
In an interview on roles, he was the only child to cite neglectful behavior as part of being a bad parent. Some other children demurred from the question, but most cited negative behaviors such as punishing too harshly or guiding the child wrong as being a bad family member. Jimmy focused on the lack of positive behaviors. Jimmy said that a bad grandmother, “Does nothing.” At first, I did not understand. I asked, “She does nothing different than a normal grandmother?” and he reiterated that it was different. A normal grandmother loves you and cares for you. Most children had trouble deciding 432 what would happen if someone had a bad family member, but Jimmy did not. No one does anything if you have a bad grandmother. His description of an aunt fit this idea of not enough care as well. He said an aunt takes care of you when the grandmother does not. She makes sure you are not left alone and defends you from someone who wants to hurt you. A bad aunt does nothing. His descriptions of emotion reflected the frustration he felt. He defined desesperado (despairing, hopeless, desperate and furious or mad) as when you want to scream at someone, “You don’t defend me!” and you get a headache from screaming. The only thing one can do when they feel this way is stop screaming.
Apparently, no one comes to the rescue of those who are despairing.
This distress was evident in his SCG that followed a soap opera of a child running away from home. In Stefania’s recounting of the soap, the family finds the child who then behaves well because she learns the importance of fulfilling familial obligations. In contrast, Jimmy said that the grandmother looks for the child, but cannot find her. “No one says anything about it.” Just as in his role interview where no one comments on neglect, a child who runs away is forgotten. Roles can be left unfulfilled and nothing happens. They do not mistreat the child—they just forget to treat the child at all.
Jimmy had not yet learned how to avoid familial realizations or to present positively what people completed. He saw substitution as possible, but had no one to substitute for the missing care. This aspect of his distress prevented him from employing the culturally constituted defense mechanism, which emphasized distributive care as normal and thereby minimized the effects of parental emigration. Without cultural values to play a predominant role in the formation of a culturally constituted defense, he was left to create his own individual defense to respond to his father’s emigration. 433
Jimmy’s Defense:
It is difficult to present Jimmy’s defense because he seemed to be tinkering with it in each interview. It was dynamic. Jimmy went from acting out to learning how to hide the negative and to present the positive.104 Jimmy was bright and learned what he could get away with. The frequent punishment he received may seem to indicate that he did not understand limits, but attention was what he sought.
Jimmy acted out his impulses towards his family to avoid the accompanying affect. He displaced his feelings onto classmates and teachers, hoping to avoid the realization of problems at home. He purposely got kicked out of class to sit in the hallway where no one watched him. He was ignored and labeled a problem at school, just like at home. Perhaps the time-out punishments helped him to displace his anger at his mother’s neglect onto his teacher, and even make his parents look good. Jimmy told me that his father worked hard to pay for school and the teacher didn’t teach him. His grades worsened when his father was about to visit. He said he did not know why he got bad grades. Almost a third of the children had to retake failed finals. Jimmy never had to retake finals but did horribly on assignments that required diligence.
Jimmy admitted that he gets mad and dislikes people. He did not know why.
Jimmy brought a knife to school, an unimaginable act. Because of his anger and problem status, like Wilson, other children did not want to play with him. Some parents forbade their children from playing with him or teachers would punish them if they did play with him and he misbehaved. Eventually, he seemed to transition to seeking to fit in at school
104 I think that, in some cases, the repression of people’s failings in interpersonal relationships begins with convenient, occasional conscious memory lapses (or suppression) and then transitions to permanent, unconscious, memory lapses (or repression). 434 because his acting out did not resolve his issues at home, but instead created new problems. His later attempts to fit in at school helped him to deny his problems at home.
Just like Wilson, Jimmy began by lying about his mother. He said she worked in a bank. With my follow-up questions, he realized lying did not work and sought to find an acceptable answer. He told me to try to guess what his mother did. Since Jimmy said he could not tell me and the job related to money I began by guessing bank robber, drug dealer, and a millionaire’s pockets. With the repeated jocular attempts, he laughed that he couldn’t tell me because he didn’t remember. But she had a job. He seemed to be working out how to discuss his family in each interview. What would people believe?
When would they question further?
He eventually learned to avoid questions when there was no good answer with distractions. When I found out his mother was pregnant, Jimmy said that she would marry the child’s father. His alcoholic mother sounded respectable when she was marrying the father. I pulled out his family drawing from before and asked if the father was his father or his soon-to-be stepfather. Perhaps Jimmy realized that saying his mother was going to marry means she was no longer married to his father. He began talking about his father calling. He told me the exact date and asked why I wasn’t writing it down. I should be more diligent. Jimmy was learning how to hide the negative and to present the positive. When I asked if his parents were married, Jimmy talked about their honeymoon at a beach resort referring to the past rather than addressing the present.
Here, past references solidified the conjugal unit without implying a cessation of a relationship by using past tense, or a lack of reality testing by using present tense. A honeymoon ending makes no statement on current a marital status. 435
In a role interview where children selected different kin terms to describe, he avoided discussing his mother. Most children chose mother first. Jimmy chose mother fifth.105 When he reached a question on what makes someone a good mother, he said he did not want to continue the question. I skipped ahead to “How does someone learn to be a good mother?” Jimmy laughed and said, “I’m not a good mother!” Neglect/care was salient with all the other roles, even though he is not a good aunt either. He said nothing happens if you are a bad mother. This was partially an answer to what people do, and partially an answer to what happens to a child who has a bad mother. He referred to people not aiding a child and there being no need to aid a child at the same time, which transitioned his distress from lack of care into a lack of need for care.
He was starting to develop more complex ways to hide without lying. You could tell the truth and not tell the whole truth. His blatant avoidance slowly transitioned into presenting the positive for normality. It served to both avoid realizations and alleviate distress. However, he did not have first hand information regarding appropriate maternal behaviors. He would emphasize behaviors he thought would be correct for a mother: he said his mother yells when he is bad. It means a mother cares. He did not balance her discipline with consenting examples. He referred to discipline since he knew this was something he was missing. With a lack of care, he presented very simplistic views of the family in his projective tests. When people cared for you, everything was perfect. There was never any conflict in his stories. Even though he gave the longest responses for other discussions, his SCG’s were very short. Jimmy told stories about mothers caring
105 He could have not chosen mother at all, but perhaps realized that blatant avoidance sometimes led to an even greater focus on the topic. 436 for children, fathers being present, and people going home. While many children used such details, these facts were “filler” to their larger storyline. For Jimmy, these facts were his storyline. In one SCG he said that the mother is doing housework, the son came in and said he wants something to eat, and the mother makes it. This was the entire story.
He offered no detail as to what he wanted to eat or the mother’s specific housework tasks. No “Thanks for the food mom” or “Did you do your homework son?” In another SCG, the father and son are playing Playstation, the mother and grandparents go to the store, and then everyone goes to “their own houses.” The specification that people go home may refer to the fact that he was left home alone frequently.106 He saw everything as perfect if your family cares: he defined caring as when you feel that someone does things for you, you move quickly because people are there for you. The idea of walking on eggshells so as not to disturb someone fit the idea of an alcoholic mother. He believed that if someone cared for you, you could run about carefree.
He later altered his definitions to present the existence of discipline. At first, he defined angry as what he feels when people talk about going abroad. He defined sad as when you cry because someone says he or she is emigrating. Content is the opposite of sad—you feel this way when someone returns. Jimmy never mentioned his father when emotions were tied to emigration. Jimmy said that it is better that his father went so he can be with his grandfather. He did not transition this paternal bond between his father and his grandfather to himself and his father. He acknowledged the paternal lineage by saying that one learns to be a good father by watching his father, but did not apply it here.
106 Children were actually left home alone a lot: perhaps Sebastian and his cousin, Micayela to be described below, and Norman, Isabella, and Shakina described in Chapter 5. 437
However, he later found a new way to define sad: he said sad is when someone hits you. He transitioned from focusing on emigration in the genesis of emotion that indicated a lack in his life to focusing on discipline in the genesis of emotion that would present his mother as involved. Even if this involvement is false, a lack of being hit is not problematic. Lack of hitting can indicate positive parental behavior because it does not directly cue neglect but in fact groups a neglectful mother in the same category as a good mother in contrast to the category of children whose parents are physically abusive. As described in Chapter 5, parents who do not want to care for their children are deformed.
Jimmy reported that his father’s departure “doesn’t affect me much.” However, this avoidance of emotion for his father changed to reaction formation. He said a father does not yell, takes you to eat, works, and cares for you out of sheer devotion (not out of fear of misbehavior or of losing the child’s love as some said). He was more forgiving to fathers than to mothers: a bad father does not love his child whereas a bad mother is not a good mother behaviorally. A father need only have the emotion to not be bad; no accompanying behaviors are delineated. A mother needs to be good to not be bad.
Although he presented his father positively, small cues indicated hidden negative feelings. Jimmy had great difficulty in selecting adjectives to describe his father. He picked up and returned words quite a few times. In contrast to the children in Chapter 8,
Jimmy chose terms that connected his father directly to the family and did not emphasize currently occurring behaviors. He said his father is punctual because he arrives home on time—he could have said that his father arrives to work on time, or just said on time, but directly ties his father to family devotion that does not occur. While Sabrina in the opening vignette connected her father to herself, Jimmy went further to connect him to 438 the household. Similarly, Jimmy’s father is polite because he does not put his elbows on the table. With intellect, Jimmy was closer to reality. His father is bilingual. Jimmy tied his father to himself with the next two terms without contradicting reality: his father is nice because he supports him. Liking this explanation, he used the same reason for kind.
These terms transitioned to represent his father positively with behaviors he could complete from abroad and perpetuated the tie between father and son.
His defense evolved from acting out as a defense to a system similar to the culturally constituted defenses: he emphasized his mother’s “care” behaviors, hid her neglect, and presented his father as connected to his life. Jimmy may have learned these representations from the child he visited me with who employed a culturally constituted defense. This child was part of the data in Chapter 8. Jimmy later reported that this other child (who he did not know very well at first because he was a new student) was his best friend. This leads to the role of social approval in Jimmy’s case.
Jimmy’s Social Approval:
Jimmy used level two defenses because he had conflicts with his expectations of interpersonal relationships with his parents. For this reason, he was more motivated to seek belonging in interpersonal relationships at school. He had chosen to act out to gain the attention he was missing at home. He was seen as a problem child (which led to questioning of his home life rather than compensating for the missing attention) and he was not able to demonstrate his adjustment to parental emigration and receive support for his interpretation. When acting out left him an outsider, he changed from displacing his emotions to repressing those with his mother and creating a reaction formation for his father. He transitioned from displacing his aggression to saying he does not dislike 439 anyone. Jimmy could not claim that the emigration of his father resulted in distributive care, since his mother had not taken care of him after his father’s emigration. Perhaps his inability to emphasize distributive care is why he needed the reaction formation for his father. The more his father is still connected, the less he needs to emphasize distributive care. Even though his father’s emigration may lead to stigma, a father who is a devoted
émigré means more approval than a mother who is a neglectful alcoholic.
Jimmy wanted social approval. He was the only child to talk about who he wanted to come with to visit me. Even fourth-grade girls in a tiff accepted that they came to interviews together. Jimmy wanted Micayela to visit with him—she was not just in the cool clique, but was the cool clique. She had successfully adapted to her mother’s emigration for social approval. When he defined love, he smiled dreamy-eyed and said,
“Love is Micayela.” 107 I explained that I had divided the groupings by gender because the girls’ free time was during the boys’ gym and computer time, and vice versa. When I refused his suggestion of him getting kicked out of computer time so he had free time when she did, he requested to visit with a boy from the clique who he later reported as his best friend. He declared that, at least I should not have him visit with Ramon.
Ramon and Jimmy did not understand each other. While Jimmy acted out aggressively without parental care, Ramon was meekly introverted with too much parental care.
Ramon’s Context:
Eight-year-old Ramon lived with his grandmother, mother, and 10-year old sister.
Ramon’s father migrated to Spain five years ago because he could not contribute to the
107 He tried to steal her notebook to find out if she liked him. He did not know this, but Micayela’s father did not allow her to be friends with Jimmy. Micayela’s father knew Jimmy’s mother’s drinking, and even though both children had an émigré abroad, Jimmy did not come from a good family because of this. 440 family’s income. Ramon’s mother did not want his father to emigrate. She said, “Don’t go or I’ll die,” we have enough to live with my salary (she was a physician), and that their son was still too little to be without a father. Still, Ramon’s father insisted, so his mother sold her medical practice to fund his migration. No remittances arrived for the first year, and his mother was forced to sell their house to open up a twenty-four-hour pharmacy108 in Guayaquil and performs operations on the side. She relocated there to be close to her mother and far from the sad memories of the children’s father.
Ramon’s mother and Jimmy’s mother adapted oppositely to the emigration of the boys’ fathers. Whereas Jimmy’s mother decided that if she were not a wife, then she would not be a mother either, Ramon’s mother decided that if she were not a wife, she would be a devoted, concerned, and attentive mother. 109 She never had been an official wife: Ramon’s parents were not married. At first, his mother’s family disapproved and took her identification to prevent the marriage. Later, his father had no desire to marry.
Her children were always the tie in the conjugal unit. Her family continued to criticize
Ramon’s father after migration because he could not support his family, as should be easy to do from Spain. Ramon’s mother tried to counter the negative comments, telling her children that they should love their father regardless of what her family says.
The teachers commended the mother’s involvement even though his grades were not very good. Teachers cited his frequent absences for illness, the fact that he began school outside of Guayaquil, and the emotional loss of his father as the reasons for his
108 She does not get much sleep because she is the only person who works at the pharmacy after El Niño. The destruction to the coastline left people without money for food, so, she said, they certainly did not have money for medicine. With less business, she was unable to hire staff to help. 109 This is a similar adaptation to Francis’s mother, but Ramon’s mother treats him like a little boy rather than a husband replacement. 441 poor scholastic performance. Ramon’s mother would sit in the hall at school waiting for his free periods to check his health and work. His teachers pointed out that he was calm in class, but misbehaved for his mother because she did not have the heart to discipline the poor, sickly boy. Like Jimmy, Ramon was lacking discipline.
While at school, his mother found out that I was studying émigrés’ children and wanted to know why Ramon was not included. Ramon was absent the day of the original school survey, so I added him to the study. His mother began visiting me while Ramon was in class to tell me about their life. She said she tried to be strong for the children and would only cry in the basement at night. Her emotional stress escalated when a female called from Spain. The “tall white woman” told Ramon’s mother that she should stop calling Ramon’s father “her” husband. The girlfriend said that Ramon’s father emigrated to be with her, they have a child, and are going to marry. After that, she could not help crying on the street when she had to do something alone that she used to do with him or saw a happy couple. She said she thinks of God and her children to get through these tough times. She still believes he will return to care for their children. She reported that he cries when he thinks about what he has done to his children. She feels no anger—she cannot feel that way about her children’s father. By defining them as mother and father, she reinforces the status of their conjugal bond through the children and Ramon’s mother can avoid questioning of his status as a husband.
Ramon’s Distress:
Ramon did seem distressed, although perhaps less at his father’s departure than at the effect that it had on his mother. He admitted that he heard his mother cry. I think that his mother sought attention as a devoted mother through factitious illnesses. Unlike 442 malingerers who are seeking some tangible gain, people with factitious diseases (who invent symptoms) have a need to play the “sick role” for attention or sympathy
(American Psychiatric Association 1994: 471). Ramon’s mother was motivated by a desire to care, a need for attention, dependency, or an ambivalence towards doctors
(Ford-Martin 2006) which made her claim that her son was sick. This syndrome is referred to as Munchausen’s and Ramon suffered from Munchausen’s by proxy.
Munchausen patients present a wide array of physical or psychiatric symptoms, usually only limited by their medical knowledge and many Munchausen patients are very familiar with medical terminology and symptoms (American Psychiatric Association 1994: 472).
Being that Ramon’s mother was a doctor, Munchausen’s syndrome was a perfect adaptation—she could invent endless diagnoses, prescribe medicine, and display what a wonderful mother and therefore wife she is even if her husband had not made the same acknowledgements of her status. Others did acknowledge her devotion and efforts.
Ramon is an interesting contrast to Jimmy not only because the two boys’ distress was caused for opposite reasons, but also because the two have an opposite view of good parents. Neither saw parental balance between discipline and consenting as important.
Whereas Jimmy emphasized the desire to have discipline because his mother was neglectful, Ramon saw no problem with over-consenting. Jimmy thought no one says anything to bad parents, whereas Ramon thought people do comment on bad parenting.
Ramon was aware of family critique with his maternal family’s comments on his father that prevented the original marriage of his parents, discouraged the father from marrying his mother later, and was the source of the father’s desire to emigrate to support the family. Whereas Jimmy sought involved family, Ramon sought understanding. 443
Ramon confused family roles: he would begin describing “daughter” and explain
“sister.” He represented kin in their relationship to him rather than relationships between kin. Following his mother’s perspective, he was the source of familial ties. He had one recurring expectation for all ties: understanding. No other children mentioned understanding and being forgiving. According to Ramon, people were bad family if they did not understand or if they disciplined you—other children referred to disciplining in positive terms for keeping children on the right track. However, Ramon, who was not used to balanced discipline, saw discipline as negative and unnecessary. He would rather continue with the obsessive over-consenting. Like Jimmy, his home environment differed from the children in Chapter 8. He did not want to emphasize the continuing contact with his father or to cite distributive care. Both would cause his mother distress.
Ramon’s Defense:
While their reasons for distress differed, both Ramon and Jimmy originally used level two defenses, frequently implemented to address conflicts over interpersonal relationships, that led to social alienation. Ramon seemed to be a hypochondriac, which is a natural response to a mother with Munchausen’s syndrome. It may be the way that he psychosomatically dealt with the distress from his father’s departure or his mother’s depression, since he could not talk about either at home. His sadness would mean his mother is not taking care of him—physical symptoms that inspire his mother’s devotion were much better to express his distress. His mother modeled the hiding of emotion over his father’s departure and told Ramon that he should still love his father. However, he did not find social approval and later transitioned towards passive regression. 444
He said that sometimes he sweats, so his mother gives him “syrup110” and he stays home for a week so she can monitor him. When he eats chocolate, he gets sick. He’s allergic to several foods and environmental stimuli. He seemed to suffer from recurring symptoms that would change location, such as stomach pains and headaches. The eight- year-old also reported that he has colic. His frequent absence did not help his social involvement and, like with Sebastian, no one wants to play with a delicate quiet boy.
With this lack of social involvement, he began to transition from presenting his illnesses for attention to presenting his father in a negative light. Bad fathers do not work or love you. Over the course of interviews, his negative comments on his father transitioned into avoidance and then passive aggression. He seemed unable to make blatant attacks at his father without disappointing his mother and her making him write his father a letter. His mother reported that Ramon loved his father because in a letter, he said, “If you need anything, just ask and I’ll send it.” While inconsequential alone, it is emblematic of other behaviors that indicate his father’s inability to care for the family and himself. Unlike Francis who won his mother from his father, Ramon’s father abandoned his mother. She did not treat him as the new man of the house, but as her baby.
In his attachment interview, Ramon picked caring and said that his father helps with medicine. Ramon’s present tense could not be reality, but the statement indicated that his mother took over his father’s job. Then, Ramon transitioned to past tense. He said his father took him out and was trustworthy. Rather than highlighting behaviors that used to occur but no longer do because his father left, he spoke in past tense even for
110 He didn’t specify “cough” syrup or any other kinds, which other children did. Like in the United States, cough syrup, a medicine, and maple syrup, a food, are in different categories. Ramon did not connect particular medicine to particular symptoms. Feeling ill meant medicine—further specification or explanation was unnecessary. 445 behaviors that could still occur. His father was polite because he didn’t disrespect his mother and was loving. Ramon’s father was serious because he didn’t make fun of people.
His definitions of care indicated his father’s shortcomings too. Love required proximity.
He wants “to be close to his mother because he loves her.” Caring is when you feel warm because someone is close. While those in Chapter 8 emphasized love that could occur from abroad, Ramon saw love as only possible up close.
One SCG demonstrated this transition towards passive aggression. Ramon chose the cemetery backdrop for his story. He looked at it, smiled, pondered it for a minute and then set it towards the right of the desk. Like other children, he was constructing a few sets for his story. Then, Ramon placed a living room scene first and a hospital card in the middle. In his story, he establishes a normal routine of a father working and coming home, until one day he leaves behind the wife’s back so they get divorced. The grandmother cared for the children while the mother worked. Ramon went to put the father down on the hospital scene and paused. Then, he set the father above the scene cards. Ramon said that the father didn’t come home until the children were bigger and he exchanged the children cutouts for adult ones of the same gender. The mother was sick and the children went to the hospital to make sure she got better. The father returned and was surprised to see everyone grown up. The father said, “Mi familia,” but they did not recognize him. Ramon then returned the father card to the pile of cutouts.
The mother got better, turned a year older, and they celebrated. They were happy.
At first, I thought Ramon was remorseful for wanting his father to die. He had set this up as the final scene and then did not use the cemetery scene. However, other interview material seems to indicate that Ramon sees medical care as love—his child 446 attachment interview revealed a close connection to his mother’s medical training. To die, one must become sick. If in the SCG no one came to the father’s side at the hospital, they would look neglectful. But, Ramon did not want the family at the father’s side because it would mean that they love him. Therefore, Ramon had the children come to the mother’s side. It’s better to have the father see them happy without him than to have the father die and demonstrate the family’s lack of recognizing familial obligations.
Once he resolved his representation of his father, Ramon began to change his representation of his mother. In the child attachment interview, he described his mother as happy and good because she does not punish him. She’s intelligent because she has studied, referring to her medical training. Ramon said that his mother is understanding— perhaps alluding to the fact that the two have the same problem: his father’s emigration.
This entered his mind, because he described her as worried because she cries. After describing the taboo topic of her sadness, he transitioned back to school. She worries about his studies as well. In interviews, he moved from referring to her emotional distress and her medical training in specific to her care of him in general. Ramon represented his mother as his savior. In one SCG, he recounted Hansel and Gretel.
There were a few interesting differences from the normal version. The house was made of “chocolate” in specific—Ramon’s kryptonite that his mother must save him from— rather than “candy”. Things go wrong when the children hear noises from the basement
(where Ramon hears his mother cry). Rather than finding their way home with breadcrumbs, the mother comes and saves them. In another SCG, the mother saves the children from kidnapping by calling and offering a $7,000 reward, the amount she received from selling their house when they moved to Guayaquil. 447
Ramon’s Social Approval:
Ramon did seek social approval. He reported that he does not get along well with others in school and was sad sometimes. After much thought, he eventually named a friend. When Ramon did not find support for his delicate nature at school like at home, he moved away from hypochondriasis and to emphasizing normal forms of maternal devotion and passive aggression towards his father. He experienced his mother’s over- devotion as Sebastian did with his grandmother. However, unlike Sebastian, he moved towards a culturally constituted defense. Whereas Jimmy leaned towards claiming that he was older and did not need as much care, Ramon claimed he had all the care he needed without his father. His home life was normal and he needed his mother.
Acting Your Age: 9 going on 5 and 9 going on 25
Ana and Micayela each had one parent abroad. Their adaptations were similar manipulations of their maturity levels to rearrange external reality. Because of the characteristics of their particular situations, neither could adapt to the care they received as normal, since they were told that it was temporary to their particular age. One acted younger and one older, like Francis and Beatriz, but not for the same reasons. Age distortions for Francis and Beatriz were to claim unique relationships with their remaining parents. Ana and Micayela were motivated to act younger and older to demonstrate continued normal ties, even though for their temporary age state, so their defenses were much like the culturally constituted defense described in Chapter 8.
Ana’s Context:
Ana lived with her mother, her two year-old little sister, and her fourteen year old brother because her father was in the U.S. He left four years ago just after Ana’s fifth 448 birthday, but maintained extensive contact, including calling and returning frequently. He also sends/brings gifts. Ana said that her father left for work but she still asks her father when he calls why he left. Her father returned for her birthday for a month, but he left when she was asleep. She was told that he left because her school break was over. Ana has been surprised by his departure a number of times. It seems that her father does not want to have to tell his daughter directly and have to refuse her request to have him stay.
Ana did not have trouble in school, because she minded her mother well and completed her homework assignments. She did not try to rebel or assert herself like other children in her class. She was shy, quiet, and mild mannered like many of the five- year-olds who were just adjusting to being outside of their house and at school during the day, except that Ana was nine. When the maid assisted her with her assignments, she did have difficulty at school. At first, the teachers thought that the maid did not understand the assignments—the average education for household servants is quite low. However, it turned out that Ana had refused to do the assignments and would not copy them down for the maid. Eventually, a teacher said, the mother realized that her daughter needs the loving rewards to do her homework. Even though some children do homework for fear of punishment or to do well and achieve, Ana did her homework for hugs and kisses.
Ana’s Distress:
Ana’s family is similar to the children in Chapter 8. She was the example that
Beatriz sometimes followed to pretend she cared her mother was gone. Ana fit in well, even though she used and individual rather than a culturally constituted defense.
Ana experienced distress and could not use the culturally constituted defense because her situation of care was not seen as normal: it was a transitory, temporary state. 449
She could not say that her family was providing age-appropriate, distributed care that involves both those near and far. To comfort Ana that her family was still a unit, her mother told her that when Ana was older, her mother would go abroad to join her father.
Her mother told her that she would not leave her before she was a big girl. Instead of comforting Ana, the result seemed to be that Ana feared growing up. Apparently, her mother could leave in the middle of the night like her father. Ana could not see her father’s departure as a manner to address her more urgent economic needs now that she was older, like the children in Chapter 8, but instead was more dependent on her mother than other children her age. Rather than representing herself as older to justify the
émigré’s distance, Ana represented herself as younger to justify her caregiver’s closeness.
Ana’s Defense:
According to the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual, Ana has a disintegrative disorder.
She has lost some developmental advances she once had and behaves in a manner appropriate to a younger age. However, I do not refer to the diagnosis because there unfortunately is not “reintegrative” or “integrative” disorder for children like Micayela, to be described next, who acted much older than their age. Since many of the children did not map onto DSM categories, I refer to her as using the defense of regression.
Ana did seem much younger than her peers. She was the only girl over six who wore pigtails. She wanted to sit on my lap during recess and announced without qualms how much she cries because her father left. (She was the one who led Beatriz to claim that she cried some when her mother left for good.) She said that whenever her father calls, she asks him why he left. Most children could explain the educational advantages from remittances. Ana insisted that she did not know why her daddy had to go away. 450
Ana said that she wanted to be a singer or a model, but did not sing or have great confidence. Other children her age chose practical professions that would lead to wealth, like being a doctor, and had ideas as to how to achieve the goal. Others who wanted to be a singer referred to the television show in Ecuador that was similar to American Idol.
They would volunteer to sing or act in the school pageants to display the likelihood of their dreams. Ana did not do this. She seemed to fight adjustment to more advanced concerns actively and maintained herself as younger than the other children.
Her mother seemed not to notice Ana’s more immature needs. This would be difficult to notice since Ana’s mother only has one daughter of this age and does not have the benefit of a number of same aged girls to compare to Ana’s developmental status. In the role interviews, Ana highlighted the need for care. It was not based on generation.
Mother, father, brother, and a family should all take care of you. When she described the role of sister, she described herself, the receiver of care. When you have a bad family that does not care about each other, people will say, “That’s a bad family. They are not united.” For Ana, caring behaviors mean union rather than presence.
Ana did not express much distress in her SCG’s.111 Even though they were the longest SCG’s of all the children at an average of nine minutes, not much occurred. The parents cared for children. In her third SCG, for over ten minutes, the child was awoken, fed, bathed, dressed, taught at school, then came home and went to bed to repeat the series again, for almost a week. Interestingly, some children chose baby cut-outs and had them speaking, explaining, and roaming about. Ana chose the cut-out that represented
111 She did seem concerned about the fight between Trina and Melissa and my ability to resolve the issue. In one SCG, she mentioned a little girl that no one talked to and then the teacher talked to her so everyone wanted to talk to her. In her SCG, she confused the label “psychologist,” which most of the parents continued to refer to me as, with teacher. Here, everyone wanted to visit the teacher and became friends. 451 her own age (not the baby, toddler, nor adolescent cut-out), yet the child could not complete developmentally appropriate behaviors for their own age, like dress themselves.
Ana also seemed concerned about establishing her father as a caregiver. A good father takes care of them. She said that her father worries about her if she goes to the park, and that he is brave because he once threw out an uncle who was drunk and scared her. He is fair because he does what he has to do, good because he’s caring and nice, and smart because he knows everything and helps her. She used tenses as an accurate reflection of reality and real examples with no pauses, trouble, or thematic changes. This was not difficult for Ana because of her father’s frequent returns. She could freely mix past and present behaviors where her father still exhibited great concern for her care.
Her definitions of emotions were closely tied to the care she receives from her father as well. Ana said she feels sure/safe when her father is home and happy when her birthday approaches because he returns. She tied emotions to her relationship with her parents: Proud is how your parents feel when you get good grades; love is what you feel for your parents; and sad is what you feel when they fight. The connection of every emotion to family was more direct for Ana than for others. I do not think this indicated distress or concern for her family; her recordings, although long, are some of the easiest to listen to. She never mumbles, pauses, nor changes her mind about a slip of paper she has chosen. I think her defense is set. She is not seeking adjustment to fit in better.
Ana’s Social Approval:
Ana could have sought greater social approval if she acted older, but then she would become cognizant of her difficulties at home. Even though the other two girls in class were friends and many of the other children presented in Chapter 8 created a clique 452 amongst themselves, Ana was part. Granted, she did have fewer friends because she did not have similar interests, just like Micayela did not because she acted like they were too young for her. Ana did seem to depend on me more. I think she saw me as a substitute caregiver. She would sit on my lap and cuddle like a little child.112
Micayela’s Context:
Micayela’s mother migrated to New York two years ago and maintained contact.
Micayela had lived with her maternal aunt for awhile, but now lived with her father and paternal aunt. Her father said that the change was because of disagreements about religious studies. His ex-wife’s sister was overly religious, but also, according to the father’s sister, Micayela moved because the aunt did not want to have to raise Micayela permanently. Her father seemed more oriented to social life than family life. The living room had a pool table with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red when I arrived the first time.
Micayela’s parents married at eighteen, and eleven years later, her father was waiting for the divorce papers to arrive signed. Her mother returned to New York when the marriage did not work because her legal residence in the U.S. would expire if she did not return. Although her father agreed that her mother should go, he always thought that his estranged wife should bring their daughter and was upset that nothing was explained to Micayela. Her mother told Micayela that she was just going to New York to drop off her aunt. According to her father, Micayela was just left at her maternal aunt’s house.
Micayela’s Distress:
Micayela’s continued relationship with her mother was very similar to other children in Chapter 8. She was very accepted socially: Jimmy, and according to one of the
112 Her behavior always seemed excessive because sweaty, clingy children in the Equatorial sun are not fun. 453 teachers, everyone else, had a crush on her. She fit in well, even though she did not use the culturally constituted defense, but instead created an additional individual defense.
Micayela’s distress arose for a similar reason as Ana: her care situation was seen as transitional and temporary. Micayela could not present her situation of care as normal in the culturally constituted defense mechanism. Micayela’s father pointed out how rare it was for a father to take over the care of children when the mother migrates. Since her father did not think that it was appropriate for a girl to be separated from her mother, he told his daughter that as soon as she was old enough, she would join her mother in New
York. He emphasized the distance between mother and daughter when he announced his desire to resolve the distance. Also, her care was distributed to others. For this reason,
Micayela wanted to be a grown-up already. Older meant her lack of care was age appropriate and that she would be joining her mother.
Micayela’s Defense:
Micayela did exceptionally well imitating a much older girl. She was the only child who carried a purse full of make-up to apply during recess, rather than to show off to friends. She sent me cell phone text messages when she was bored to see what I was up to. While Ana could not understand her father’s motivations to migrate, Micayela could understand adult motivations very well. She did not like the system that her family had to approve my visits. She said that if we could find her father to ask, he would certainly say yes. Otherwise, she would be home alone or go to a neighbors’ house. Micayela was right. Her father and aunt welcomed me to the house whenever she asked.
In another instance, when the children advanced from fourth to fifth grade, the new teacher had approved less time for me to take the children out of class. Micayela 454 once again understood adult relationships beyond her age. The fourth grade teacher was proud of how many émigrés’ children she had in her class and saw my visits as a badge of honor. The fifth grade teacher had previously been teaching older children and did not know me. Frankly, her authoritarianism from working with older students intimidated me and made me hesitant to ask if I could take the students. When the six children asked about the fewer visits, I informed them that since they were older, class was harder and they needed to spend more time in class. Micayela laughed and told me that the teacher scared me just like the teacher scared her. She had read my behavior just as I read hers.
Micayela was quite successful in representing herself as an adult. There were no other children around her. She circumvented her one rule that meant she was a child: she could not prepare her own food by cooking. Interestingly, her father’s sister worked internationally as a model. Micayela had adopted her habit of not eating to maintain her weight. Even though her aunt would tell her she should eat, she never really enforced the rule because she resented the fact that her brother left her to care for Micayela. If her aunt did try, Micayela would respond with, “You don’t eat.” Micayela’s father referred to his sister as a “bone.” He preferred the Ecuadorian curves. Micayela knew she could get them into a sibling rivalry of cutting quips once they started insulting each other.
Micayela told me that they’re funny and she could do what she wanted when they argue.
Micayela established herself as an adult in her attachment and role interviews.
She specified all of her mother’s care as occurring “before, when I was little.” Now, her mother does not yell at her. She may tell her to behave herself, but that’s it. She was very general for most roles. Love made someone a good family member, and hitting or yelling at someone (perhaps, treating them like a child) makes someone a bad family member. 455
Since she treated me like a friend, she sometimes made fun of the games I had designed.
For the role interview, she laughed and said, “Why is child in here? Children don’t do anything.” However, she had no trouble describing what she did. She was not a child.
Micayela was not distressed in her short SCGs. She basically reiterated her being an adult. Her first SCG was about a girl taking care of a baby. The second was a girl telling other children not to open the door when a man approached with a ball. Her father once disciplined her in front of me for opening the door. She could not have been sure that it was me before she opened. Her eye-rolling implied that his reprimand was for my benefit, not hers. This story may show that she knew better and contradict one of the few instances when he treated her like a child. At almost a minute, the longest SCG was the third: she told about having a tooth pulled and not crying because the father says that big kids don’t cry. Just like with Ana’s SCG’s, there were no kidnappings, sicknesses, lessons, or demonstrations of how life should be. Perhaps she saw through the “games,” but more likely she was not experiencing distress beyond demonstrating her adult status.
Once Micayela most certainly did decide to manipulate her answers consciously to try for a certain result. During the ethnopsychology interview, she said that she worries when her father does not return at night. Sometimes she waits and waits, and he does not return. It happened yesterday. Her extensive discussion for the word “worried” with her normal brevity of answers to try to gossip surprised me. I paused and did not push her onto the next word to see where she was going. Then she smiled and said, “So don’t you think you should come over and play pool?” She knew I was concerned about her being alone, even though she did not care about it. She wanted more adults, beyond the high school girls who came by to hang out with her father, to play with. 456
Part of Micayela’s being an adult may have meant that her parents could be together. She knew her father wanted her to join her mother, and Micayela declared that she would not go to the U.S. without him. When she drew her family, she drew her mother, father, and herself, even though her parents were separated for years. She kept their wedding album next to her bed. It may seem that being an adult would not unite parents, but she says that people do not want to live with needy children. Her paternal aunt would hang out and do adult things with her, until Micayela acted like a child. Her case is unique because it is more urgent to her to claim that her parents are still together than that her mother is still her mother.
Her mother had left Micayela with her aunt and her misbehavior at her aunt’s house led her to be sent to her father’s house. Teachers commented on how much better
Micayela was doing now that she was not at her maternal aunt’s house. They believed that the father or someone helped her with the homework. The fourteen year old maid did for awhile, but she was fired for stealing. (The young maid was sent away for misbehavior as well.) Therefore, Micayela behaves well for her father so that her mother can come back and join them. It may seem that a child would fear abandonment when misbehavior leads to changes in homes, but Micayela knew what she did wrong and felt in control of the decision of where she lived. If she did not like it, she would misbehave.
If she did like it, she would not. Her defense was settled. She was of an age where she no longer needed care and her distant mother will be reunited with the whole family soon.
Micayela’s Social Approval:
Rather than receiving social approval, Micayela determined social approval. A couple girls said that she was stuck-up, but others said that she is just quiet. The boys 457 had crushes on her and the other girls admired her. Micayela did have fewer close friends than other girls in her grade because she often spent recess with the high school girls who she knew because they came to her house to fawn over her father. Like Ana, she depended on me more. However, not to sit on my lap with me as a substitute caregiver, but as a friend to chat with about boys, school, television, clothes, and her father.113
Ana and Micayela did not have a problem with a person like Jimmy and Ramon, or with ideologies of family like with Sebastian and Wilson, but the two girls’ difficulty was that certain cultural values could lead to interpersonal problems, and interpersonal concerns could lead to problems meshing with certain cultural values. Therefore they both altered slightly through their own activity in fantasy.
These sets of defenses demonstrate both a range of efficacy and a range of social support. An individual defense may get significant social support if it properly fits into the overall context. The defense cannot deny too much of reality, or, if it does, should deny it in a culturally intelligible manner. It is more likely that a culturally constituted defense will get support, but as we see with the Micayela and Ana, support is possible with individual defenses. However, as with Jimmy and Ramon, when children get glimpses of social approval, they are motivated to fit in and move toward those values that are accepted. Children progress through possible defenses as they age. Children did seem more accepting of alterations of home life, since they did not have direct access to most of the other children’s home-lives, than they were willing to let others change
113 It was actually fun to dive with her for coins in her pool or discuss the latest episode of a soap opera. 458 cultural values. The children were still rule bound, but when the contextual focus shifted, sometimes the other children were unsure as to when or how to apply the rules when there were not flagrant, overt contradictions. The children in this chapter sought social approval when there were difficulties at home, as with Jimmy and Ramon. Perhaps those who had trouble finding resolution at home expressed themselves at school and vice versa, as with Sebastian and Wilson. Francis and Beatriz did not seek social approval because they had sufficient care at home. Ana’s and Micayela’s great approval, in comparison to the other children with individual defense mechanisms, may be why they did not seek to change their home environment. They merely adapted to it.
The different factors involved in the child deciding how much of an effort to make to suit their individual defense more in with others is determined by the risk it would mean to have the defense less individually suited. Is the microsystem too good to think about immersing into an exosystem, as with Francis and Beatriz? Is the microsystem so bad that you seek to immerse into an exosystem, as with Jimmy and Ramon? Are the two just so different you need to practically split your personalities, as with Sebastian and
Wilson? Or are the two just so similar that it fits both easily, as with Ana and Micayela?
The diverse cultural ideologies in the macrosystem and distinct experiences in the microsystem led to different ways to fit into the exosystem. In the Conclusion, I address how the dynamism of the individual defense mechanisms that I present in this chapter, the culturally constituted defense mechanisms in Chapter 8, and the cultural learning in
Chapter 7 fit together in a typology for understanding children’s psychological adaptation and social adjustment to parental emigration, and for understanding the mental operations that occur when intrapsychic conflict occurs overall. Conclusion
Ecuadorian migration is the content of this ethnography but not the sole focus. I focus the child’s situation to understand responses to parental emigration based on cultural context, home environment, and social approval to demonstrate a typology of psychological adaptation and social adjustment that comments on child development theory. This typology should further our understanding of psychodynamic processes beyond the context of parental emigration to other contexts where children are attempting to reconcile their life experiences with their developmental niche. For this reason, I offer concluding remarks on attachment theory, urban anthropology, cultures in change, psychoanalytic and cognitive theories, and this typology to indicate the importance of context.
ATTACHMENT THEORY
While I do not intend to discount attachment theory and other child development theories, I hope to encourage researchers to consider more greatly the child’s
459 460 developmental niche. I summarize attachment theory and present an example of its use in context. In the case of parental emigration, the role of material care is divided from physical care, which permits an opportunity to investigate the psychological effects of physical separation without the empirical confusion of a diminishment in economic status, which frequently co-occurs with the physical separation of a mother or father.
Separation experiences vary widely: for instance, the children of called-to-duty military face separation in a context with a lack of parental control, euphemisms or secrecy for parental activities, and variable levels of contact possibilities. We cannot study this kind of variance in the experiences of parental separation and understand the factors that influence adaptation with the strange situation. By beginning to understand which characteristics influence children’s ability to adapt to parental separation, we can use a similar rubric to understand other situations of separation. In certain cultural contexts, physical separation may not indicate emotional detachment and a need to re-attach to another attachment figure. The fact that parental separation may not occur necessarily in certain cases of physical separation indicates the need to incorporate cultural values into the study of attachment. While here I addressed children, this construction of expectations on an individual basis may occur even with pre-linguistic children based on their formation of parental appraisals from previous experiences.
The fact that descriptive characteristics did not suffice to characterize children’s distress at parental emigration indicate the importance of the construction of appraisals.
Children with similarities in age and class, parent who emigrated, location of emigration, and person who took over care had different adaptations. The holding environment, or cultural ideologies and care behaviors, matter more than descriptive characteristics. The 461 situation of separation in parental emigration allows a focused investigation of the possibilities of children to adjust.
In Chapter 7, I showed the importance of cultural values in considering the psychological effects of parental separation rather than creating assumptions from generalizations on mainstream, Western society. When cultural learning interprets parental separation as a positive, acceptable, and normal experience, the children in
Cañaridel did not experience psychological distress when their parents emigrated.
I continued to comment on socialization theories’ depiction of unified contexts. I suggested the theories of an ecosystem and a child’s developmental niche to provide a rubric for assessing variability. In Chapter 8, I discussed how children in Guayaquil create culturally constituted defense mechanisms based on the diversity of cultural ideologies available. This indicates that socialization theory, including attachment theory, should not depict children as experiencing one unified set of cultural values as began originally in culture and personality theory. This tendency has continued in anthropology and in psychology when assumptions are drawn from objective indicators such as class, ethnicity, and gender. Tendencies do exist, but these tendencies cannot become implications. While frequently the numerous sources of values that children experience overlap as redundant controls, we must have a manner to observe possible sources of variation. Children can actually experience a wide array of representations of values from divergent sources in their ecosystem.
Lastly, in Chapter 9, I showed that children are not merely receptacles for cultural values, but are active negotiators in creating individual defense mechanisms that are symbiotic with their environment. The children were not passively absorbing the values 462 that parents presented. There were a number of agents and sources of cultural values, and, even with great redundancy, children actively chose which values to appropriate.
As a whole, Part III indicates that child development theory should acknowledge the role of cultural values, the diversity of developmental niches, and the agency of children in enculturation. None of this contradicts existing theory. It merely indicates the need to address context and not fall prey to a set of assumptions created from
Western tendencies. For this reason, the children’s developmental niche is imperative for understanding the formation of attachment bonds and the effect of parental behaviors on children based on the formation of their internal working models of a parent. These suggestions can help to create culturally sensitive therapeutic techniques.
I do not yet have long term data that would indicate significant lifelong adaptations to parental separation nor do I have extensive psychological data on children without émigré parents. However, what this research does indicate is the fact that certain children will, at least for a temporary period of time, respond to parental emigration differently than in different cultural contexts and that, even in the same cultural context, some children will be able to adapt to parental emigration to find social approval while others will not. In other words, even though we do not know the long terms effects or how these children compare to other children, we do know that amongst these children, psychological adaptation and social adjustment to potentially stressful situations can vary based on home environment, social approval, and cultural values.
URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY
I began this ethnography discussing the city of Guayaquil as a whole. Because of the importance of considering contextual factors for understanding child development, I 463 hoped to create an example for conducting urban anthropology. Rather than creating a village-level unit of analysis in the city or addressing solely macro-social factors, I have conducted person-centered research of a city, not just in a city. A city is not merely the locale, but a defining factor for my research. I could not represent the dynamic and changing lives of my respondents without addressing their conceptions of the rest of the city: what do they think of individuals they never meet? How does the diversity of the city affect their self-conceptions? This is important not just for understanding identity, but, in turn, is also important for understanding the construction of expectations and goals. Since conflict can result from a discrepancy between cultural prohibitions and one’s own ideas and individuals who never interact with each other can still influence each others’ views, urban anthropology requires a synthesis of relevant informant data into respondent research to accurately represent an individual’s cultural context.
Understanding an individual’s context in entirety is imperative for being able to depict the choices and the effect of those choices on the individual. We cannot imagine people as rational decision makers when they choose to emigrate, but people who act and interact in a social context. They are not simply attempting to maximize their income; emotional connections and personal preferences are involved in all decisions. As such, context complicates choices.
CULTURES IN CHANGE
The context of this ethnography is a context of change. This leads to separate comments on anthropological research than the urban location alone. Rather than guessing at what was stability beforehand (as with ethnographies that conclude with the changes due to colonialism or modernity) or avoiding cultures in change (because it is 464 outside the natural behaviors of a group), we should seek out such situations of change.
Change does not mean that there is no culture. While culture implies a systematic set of values of significance to individuals, significance does not require stability over time.
Cultures in change do not represent anomie. Understanding how change occurs should be a topic of anthropological investigation to understand human nature better. Socialized values are not static; understanding value change is part of understanding culture.
As shown in Part III, change requires adaptation and adjustment. To understand how people adapt and adjust, we should look at change—this ethnography addresses change with children, but we should also do this with adults. Observing how different perspectives gain force, come to reconcile with other perspectives, and are resisted can help us to understand how enculturation works. Learning cultural values is not just something for children to do, but a lifelong process. The focus on power and subaltern agency often simplifies and reifies sets of cultural values into oppositional frameworks, when in reality individuals may create alternative sets of values based on the efficacy and redundancy of certain values in the system. Rather than viewing “enculturation” as what happens with children to become cultural initiates and “acculturation” as what occurs when adults must become initiated into another culture, there must be something in between. Changes in the context of cultural values do not just occur with dislocations. and is not a momentary alteration from a past stable state to a present state bereft of all previous meanings. Change is a dynamic, continuous process of small gradations, contestations, and heterogeneity between existing and new, covert and spoken values.
This process can tell us more about the psychological operations involved in the internalization of values. How does an individual incorporate new values into their 465 existing schemas? Do people select parts of cultural ideologies to appropriate and others to deny, depending on previous experiences? This processual view of the assimilation of new values which results in the accommodation (or perhaps even partial denial) of existing values to create an equilibrium leads to my comments on psychoanalytic and cognitive theory.
PSYCHOANALYTIC & COGNITIVE THEORY
Similar to my comments on child development theory, my comments on psychoanalytic and cognitive theory do not necessarily contradict the theories themselves, but instead highlight the possible synthesis of these two theories for understanding the typology of responses to distress. From psychoanalytic theory, I present psychological adaptation to distress as a denial or alteration of reality. In psychoanalytic theory one can
“forget” certain facts, not express certain emotions as connected to certain events, or exhibit different behaviors to cope with certain drives amongst other defensive acts. A lack of reality testing indicates that when adapting in psychoanalytic theory, people are not matching their mental representations to the external world. However, to more accurately depict these children’s adaptations, I augmented some aspects from schema theory. Schema theory proposes the manner through which external realities are added into the internal world. An individual learns new sets of categories, connections, and prototypes to represent reality.
I hoped to present a balance between this defense against the external world and the incorporation of external facts into the internal world. The children were not sponges absorbing all aspects of the world equally nor denying all aspects of their parents emigration. There was an equilibrium in their adaptations. The children did both: add 466 and subtract new and old values. I felt that more importantly for successful adaptation than adding and subtracting which seems to imply presence or absence of certain values, to focus on the intensity of the beliefs in a process of emphasis and dilution of values.
For instance, in Chapter 8, children did not deny their parent’s emigration. Nor did they completely accept their substitute caregivers as new parents. Instead, they emphasized the continuing behaviors of their parents and diluted the uniqueness of parental behaviors to accept extended family care. Schema theory worked well for depicting the children in Chapter 7 and psychoanalytic theory seemed to suit those in Chapter 9, but
Chapter 8 as a bridge between the two indicates a synthesis to represent the possibilities of psychological adaptation and social adjustment to intrapsychic distress or to dissonance between cultural models.
Each of these children employ defensive thoughts to better represent their familial situation; the ability of these thoughts to ameliorate the distress from parental emigration varies. Through cultural learning, the children in Chapter 7 in Cañaridel seemed to experience no distress. Those in Chapter 8 seemed to experience some distress at separation but eventually manipulated values in the cultural system to adapt to parental emigration and did not seem distressed. However, the children in Chapter 9 varied from each other and some implemented defensive acts in addition to defensive thoughts, such as acting out or hypochondriasis. Some were not distressed, such as the two who preferred that the parent left to fulfill their Oedipal wishes or the two who found great social acceptance for age alterations that adapted their home life. Some experienced distress, such as the two pairs who found difficulty either at home or in finding social approval. 467
TYPOLOGY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL ADAPTATION & SOCIAL ADJUSTMENT
Altering child development theory, work in an urban locale, addressing cultures undergoing change, and combining aspects of both psychoanalytic and cognitive theory all lead to the typology in Part III. I hoped to show that even with the diversity in experiences and in responses to emigration, we can understand how some children can psychologically adapt and socially adjust to what would be expected to be stressful, whereas other children could not. Due to the extensive amount of examples presented, the framework of this typology of responses may not be clear. (See Figure 8).
Cultural Context Home Environment Social Approval Cultural learning Uncontested Emigration valued Extensive positive values of émigrés Culturally Diverse values of Emigration Peer group constituted émigrés normalized supported defense interpretations mechanisms Individual defense Diverse values of Small contradictions Approval varied mechanisms émigrés to positive cultural based on resulting values on émigrés defense
FIGURE 8: TYPOLOGY OF REACTIONS TO PARENTAL EMIGRATION
Cultural learning, culturally constituted defense mechanisms, and individual defense mechanisms are three responses to distress depending on cultural context, social approval, and home environment. Within a cultural context with historical, uncontested positive valuations of émigré parents and distributive care in a small Andean village in
Ecuador, children learned to accept parental emigration as positive and found social acceptance for these views. Children did not experience distress with cultural learning that valued their émigré parents. Other children in a cultural context of diverse values on parental émigrés in Guayaquil manipulated culturally constituted defense mechanisms. In 468 these culturally constituted defenses, children recodified the roles of family members, emphasized the importance of extended family, and focused on the distinctions in care a small child needs in comparison to an older child to minimize the impact of parental emigration. Like cultural learning, children based these responses on select cultural values. For this reason, they found social approval from peers with a similar background.
Alternatively, some children not only experienced a diverse set of values on parental émigrés in Guayaquil, but also experienced a home environment that prevented the manipulation of cultural values to form a culturally constituted defense. Under these circumstances, children formed individual defenses that varied in the social approval children received. Some children, such as the Oedipal ones, did not find social approval in their individual defenses to parental emigration. However, this did not trouble them because of the extreme amount of comfort and confirmation they found at home. In contrast, some children needed to decide between following the values present in their home or in their social environment because of the contradictions brought up in trying to synthesize the two. These children experienced distress because their substitute caregivers prevented the children from manipulating the culturally constituted defense because the substitute caregivers highlighted what the children would rather dilute—they emphasized that the parents were absent. Some other children focused more on becoming part of the mainstream and were working on adapting their individual defenses that were created in symbiosis with their home environment towards a culturally constituted defense that would be appropriated from the social environment. The social environment becomes more prominent in their lives as they age. While these children seem to be dynamically altering their defense mechanisms to fit in better, I do not claim 469 that individual defenses necessarily indicate a lack of social approval. In fact, the last two little girls described in Chapter 9 found approval for their unique adaptations.
I would suggest that the children who manipulated culturally constituted defenses may have begun like the children in Chapter 9 seeking individual defenses if not previously exposed to the set of ideas that unified the culturally constituted defense mechanisms for social approval. Cultural learning, culturally constituted defense mechanisms, and individual defense mechanism are points on a continuum of this typology of psychological adaptation and social adjustment. The distinctions between the points on the continuum represent the role of individuality and cultural values in creating the adaptation. Cultural learning is the extreme of the continuum where there is individual activity only in the psychological operation and internalization of cultural values; individual defenses represent the other end of the continuum where individuals employ their own psychological resources to construct a defense and cultural values are a lesser influence. In between these two ends of the continuum are the more difficult to define culturally constituted defenses, where the individual manipulates a set of cultural values as a resource for constructing a defense that, because of its embedded nature in the cultural context, would help the individual to fit into society overall. Both individual and cultural factors are significant for the construction of these responses.
Not only may the kinds of reactions that children choose vary, but also a particular reaction may become a different kind of reaction in the typology with discourse change—an individual defense may become a culturally constituted defense mechanism or cultural learning. Perhaps an individual defense will become a culturally constituted one because other children will learn the set of values through interaction with the 470 original child and appropriate it. Over time and widespread appropriation of this individual defense as a culturally constituted one, it could become an uncontested item of cultural learning. With an expansion of the negative discourse on émigrés, reactions in the typology can become less generalized as well. If the negative views on émigrés achieve acceptance in the Andean village, cultural learning may no longer suffice to normalize parental emigration. If strong enough to remain, the positive interpretations of
émigrés may be manipulated in a culturally constituted defense where certain individuals continue to select the values for their personal representations of reality. In addition, in
Guayaquil the children with culturally constituted defenses may have trouble establishing a seamless subculture of support for their interpretations of parental émigrés. Then, the children would have to resort to individual defenses that illuminate their case as unique.
The children may lie along any point depending on the characteristics of their personal experience, cultural context, and social approval, which may or may not coincide.
On this continuum of psychological adaptations and social adjustments, the children of émigrés may lie along any point depending on their unique context.
Therefore, we should not consider this focus on context an argument for the inability to create comparisons between individuals, but the creation of a method for actually comparing these individuals. Responses to stressful events implicate the individual’s personal experience, cultural context, and social regulations, which may or may not coincide. Epilogue
Migration research tends to see the topic as a separate topic of research. The exuberance in migration research for addressing broad, diverse points on the globe is heartening, but there has been a tendency to focus primarily on the push and pull factors that lead to migration and the description of the situational characteristics without focusing on the after-effects of migration on sending societies. This type of migration research helps us to understand the factors that affect modern societies undergoing tumultuous change in demography, economy, and socio-political structure with globalization. However, research often overlooks how the changing relationships and values have psychological ramifications on those who are involved in the migration journey. The relation of the émigrés’ strategies for their journeys to others’ cultural values in the collective—at an intimate and public level—merits analysis. Different actors within the migration scenes may blindly accept, partially share, or intensely contest all or part of the migrants’ cultural values. Such censure or confirmation from home affects the migrant in the diaspora. In turn, the changes in demography and the views of the
471 472 migrants alter home traditions such as those on childcare, which influence children’s personality, cognitive, and gender development.
I do not suggest this kind of research to further study migration journeys, but to use the study of migration journeys as a unique opportunity to find more out about human nature. Developmental research often analyzes the effects of childcare behaviors without focusing on the diverse, dynamic sets of influences children experience. I hope to incorporate the research on human movements and on human development to address the after-effects of migration on the ideology of the family.
In addition to expanding the perspective of migration research beyond the émigré alone to focusing on the process of value change at home and in the diaspora, migration research should seek a more representative depiction of migration. While presenting the worst case scenarios allows one to understand the gravity of the situation for international attention and funding, we also need to represent the diversity of experiences accurately.
Assuming inevitable negative results creates stigma for the families of migrants and is not only a misrepresentation of the facts, but an ethical disservice to those attempting to accept their life situations. I do not have longitudinal data that indicates that these children have completely adapted for the rest of their lives to their parents’ emigration.
However, my data does indicate that at least temporary acceptance is possible for many children and stigma can complicate this accomplishment. Further research is needed to expand this claim and understand the factors that will influence continued adaptations.
We should focus on the functions of the family to reproduce, to orient children, to provide economically for children, and to grant status (Murdock 1949; Queen et al. 1961). 473
As Spiro found in the Kibbutz (1954), societies can adapt different methods to fulfill these functions when there is a supporting cultural structure.
The focus on the ability of the family to function, regardless of those fulfilling the role, is a significant difference between my research and what I have read on the children of migrants. We need to study the values determining the ability to fulfill the functions separately from the objective truth of the ability to fulfill the functions. It is true that some children cannot psychologically adapt ad socially adjust to parental emigration with cultural learning, culturally constituted defense mechanisms, or individual defenses. One little girl reported that her mother died in a plane crash, rather than telling me that her mother had emigrated. The plane crash is telling in regards to understanding her response: her mother could have died in a car crash, from natural causes, or from the violence frequently depicted on the news. However, the mother’s flight to Spain became the problematic moment in her life, and as such a plane crash as the mother’s death was an apt lie. She would rather blatantly deny reality to herself than admit it to others.
However, rather than expanding her case as a picturesque and heart-wrenching representation of the effects of emigration on children, we need to understand why she could not adjust versus why other children could.
Even though some children do have trouble, focusing on migration only as a problem, with inevitable repercussions that indicate the return of migrants or immediate familial reunification (meaning a change in international migration law) as the only resolution is not only inaccurate, but it also neglects addressing the reasons that led to emigration in the first place. If we are to understand fully why some children have difficulty, we also need to understand why some children do not and other children have 474 difficulty for different reasons.114 Even though emigration journeys receive similar judgments, emigration is actually a heterogeneous experience—reasons to emigrate and locations may be homogenous on a macro-level, but the effects of these decisions vary individually. While it may be because of the Ecuadorian context allowing for some children to adapt, some other researchers have pointed out similar characteristics. One recent ethnography discusses the stigma that teacher’s assumptions create, yet returns to the doom and gloom predictions when discussing migrant rights. Unfortunately, the activist orientation of some research can leave disjunctures between the research and the conclusion. For instance, a well-read ethnography begins with a clear statement of migrants as agentive, decision makers in the introduction when they choose to migrate.
However, once abroad, these agentive individuals become “forced” and “powerless.” I view the concerns for helping migrants within the same framework as I conducted my research. Perhaps this leads to fewer conclusions for globalization and human rights, but
I aim to understand the individual psychodynamic processes in the globalized context.
The negative stigma towards émigrés continues in the political sphere, media, and non-governmental organization rhetoric. Yet, this is not because there is no longer a reason to emigrate. The economic situation in Ecuador has not improved for the disenfranchised precarious middle class. Dollarization has led to increasing relative deprivation and higher costs for daily expenses. This situation in Ecuador will affect familial reunification both in Ecuador and in the diaspora. The economic situation may
114 For an explanation of this logic for approaching cultural phenomenon, see Spiro’s (2001) “Cultural Determinism, Cultural Relativism, and the Comparative Study of Psychopathology.” He addresses this need to explain the intergroup diversity of mental illness with eating disorders: exposure to distorted female body images may explain why some women do become anorectic, but it neither explains why other women who are also exposed to distorted female body images do not become anorectic nor why others who are not exposed to distorted female body images in the same manner, like men, become anorectic. 475 delay returns because of the dwindling amount of savings from remittances with daily needs consuming larger proportions of the Euro’s sent back.
Not only the economic situation, but also the changes in social values could affect
émigrés who return. The altered and deprecatory representations may leave émigrés disappointed, or may even postpone the émigrés’ return. These negative representations may cause the émigré to feel guilty and limit contact with their family to minimize the arousal of this guilt. Ecuadorian émigrés will return to Guayaquil not as the diligent day- laborers of Mexico or the sainted sojourners of the Philippines. Ecuadorian émigrés will return as someone who left people behind—both their nation and their family. When the parent returns to Ecuador, they will find a drastically different set of values regarding their migration than the set they left. They may feel that both their country and kin do not acknowledge their sacrifices. Understanding the émigrés’ changes and society’s changes will help to reunify families in Ecuador.
Reunification in the diaspora will not be simple either. In addition to the pragmatic difficulties with reunification abroad discussed in Part II, emotional and social difficulties may occur as well. The children who have created symbiotic defenses to a particular developmental niche (which includes cultural values and caregivers) will experience a drastic change in context and therefore a threat to their adaptations. By understanding the children’s adaptations, we may better be able to help their adaptation to life abroad with their parents. How do children choose values? Which ones will be necessary to continue the acceptance of their family situation while still matching their personal identity? How have the parents changed without their children? Understanding the parent’s adaptation to new values is imperative in aiding familial reunification also. 476
Not only will understanding the process of value change involved in the dislocations and reunifications of migration help familial reunification, but so will the acceptance of a diversity of views. Accepting different views will allow for the unique symbiotic adaptations that children and their parents will find in their reconstituted family. If the true interest is preventing family disintegration, then our research should focus on why some children can adjust and others cannot. The short-term memory in
Guayaquil with the regenerated negative imagery of émigrés leaves no room for discussing these issues. The power of the state has led to acquiescence to determined styles of employment decisions, limiting the previous option of emigration for family advancement, and creating silence when individuals dissent from this interpretation. For this reason, I hope that I have provided a voice in this ethnography for the children who do adapt. Perhaps less heart-wrenching than images of children in great distress, this depiction of a number of possible effects on the children left behind will help to truly address their concerns. Appendix A: Informant Interview Schedules
CÓMO CRIAR LOS NIÑOS HOW TO RAISE CHILDREN ¿Cuál es el papel de la madre/el padre/los What is the role of the abuelos/tíos/hermanos? mother/father/grandparents/uncles & aunts/brothers & sisters?
¿Cómo debe que alimentar un niño en How should you feed a child at each age? cada edad? (lactar, ayuda) (lactation, help)
¿Cuándo y cómo debe que disciplinar un When and how should you discipline a niño? child?
¿Qué hay que enseñar un niño? (escuela, What do you have to teach a child? modales, religión, caminar, hablar) (school, manners, religion, walking, talking)
¿Cuánto ayuda y hasta que edad con las How much and until what age should you deberes? help with homework?
¿Qué debe hacer cuando un niño está What should you do when a child is llorando/enojado/relajazo? crying/mad/rowdy?
¿Cómo debe reaccionar cuando pide algo? How should you react when he/she asks ¿Cuándo complace o niega? for something? When should you concede or refuse?
¿Cómo debe ocupar su tiempo? (Tele, How should he/she occupy his/her time? amigos, lectura) (TV, friends, reading)
¿Cuáles responsabilidades debe tomar un What responsibilities should a child take niño a que edad? on at what age?
¿Debe recibir plata para gastos con Should he/she receive money for expenses amigos? with friends?
¿Cuándo deben que hablar de sexo, When should you talk about sex, menstruación? menstruation?
¿Qué pasa si no se los crían así? What happens if you don’t raise them like this?
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ETNO-PSICOLOGÍA ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY Sentimientos en General Emotions in General: ¿Todo la gente siente los sentimientos Do all people feel feelings the same? igualmente? ¿Todo la gente siente los sentimientos Do all people feel feelings for the same por el mismo motivo? reason? ¿Qué significa si alguien siente los What does it mean if someone feels sentimientos? feelings? ¿Cómo expresan estos sentimientos? How do they express those feelings? ¿Cómo otros perciben la gente que How do others perceive the people that sienten así? feel this way? ¿Qué hace la gente cuando sienten algo What do people do when they feel que no debe que sentir? something they shouldn’t feel?
Sentimientos en Particular Emotions in Particular 1. ¿Qué es sentir ______? 1. What is feeling ______? 2. ¿Por qué alguien sentiría 2. Why would someone feel ______? ______? 3. ¿Sentir ______afecta a la vida 3. Does feeling ______affect de uno? one’s life? 4. ¿ Cómo se porta alguien cuando 4. How does someone behave when sienten ______? they feel ______? 5. ¿Qué debe que hacer alguien cuando 5. What should someone do if they feel sienten ______? ______? 6. ¿Si se siente ______, quieren o 6. If one feels ______, do they or no quieren que otros saben? don’t they want others to know? 7. ¿Cómo se puede notar cuando otros 7. ¿How can you tell when someone sienten ______? else feels ______? 8. ¿Qué debe que hacer alguien si un 8. What should someone do if a friend amigo siente ______? feels ______? 9. ¿La gente sienten ______9. Do people feel ______frecuente? frequently? 10. ¿Cuales otros sentimientos van con 10. Which other feelings go with ______? ______?
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Sentimientos Feelings 1. Aburrida 1. Boring 2. Afectuoso 2. Affectionate 3. Amor 3. Love 4. Angustia 4. Anguish 5. Apreciado 5. Appreciated 6. Asustado 6. Afraid 7. Cariño 7. Caring 8. Celoso 8. Jealous 9. Confianza 9. Confident 10. Contento 10. Content 11. Coraje 11. Anger 12. Deprimida 12. Depressed 13. Desesperado 13. Desperate 14. Desilusionado 14. Disillusioned 15. Enfadado 15. Angry 16. Entusiasmada 16. Enthusiastic 17. Envidia 17. Envy 18. Feliz 18. Happy 19. Intranquilo 19. Agitated 20. Nervioso 20. Nervous 21. Odio 21. Hateful 22. Orgullo 22. Proud 23. Preocupado 23. Worried 24. Rabia 24. Enraged 25. Recelo 25. Suspicious 26. Rencor 26. Spiteful 27. Simpatía 27. Friendliness 28. Tranquilo 28. Tranquil 29. Triste 29. Sad 30. Vergüenza 30. Shameful
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ENTREVISTA DE ROLES ROLE INTERVIEW Preguntas Questions 1. ¿Que es un buen ______? 1. What is a good ______? 2. ¿Que hace un buen ______? 2. What does a good ______do? 3. ¿Cómo comporta un buen 3. How does a good ______? behave? 4. ¿Quien es un buen ______por 4. Who is an example of a good ejemplo? ______? 5. ¿Como alguien aprende a ser un 5. How does someone learn to be a buen ______? good ______? 6. ¿Es difícil ser un buen ______? 6. Is it difficult to be a good ______? 7. ¿Por qué motivo alguien sea un buen 7. Why would someone be a good ______? ______? 8. ¿Que es un mal ______? 8. What is a bad ______? 9. ¿Que hace un mal ______? 9. What does a bad ______do? 10. ¿Cómo comporta un mal 10. How does a bad ______? behave? 11. ¿Quien es un mal ______por 11. Who is an example of a bad ejemplo? ______? 12. ¿Como alguien aprende a ser un mal 12. How does someone learn to be a bad ______? ______? 13. ¿Es difícil ser un mal ______? 13. Is it hard to be a bad ______? 14. ¿Que pasa a alguien quien es un mal 14. What happens if someone is a bad ______? ______? 15. ¿La gente están en acuerdo más o 15. Are people in agreement more or menos acerca de quien es un buen less regarding who is a good ______y quien es un mal ______and who is a bad ______? ______? 16. ¿Alguien sabe si es un buen 16. Does someone know if they are a ______o un mal ______? good ______or a bad ______? 17. ¿De cual hay más, los buenos o los 17. Of which are there more, the good malos? or the bad ones?
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Roles Roles 1. Persona 1. Person 2. Esposo 2. Husband 3. Esposa 3. Wife 4. Madre 4. Mother 5. Father 5. Padre 6. Son 6. Hijo 7. Daughter 7. Hija 8. Brother 8. Hermano 9. Sister 9. Hermana 10. Aunt 10. Tía 11. Uncle 11. Tío 12. Grandfather 12. Abuelo 13. Grandmother 13. Abuela 14. Cousin (male) 14. Primo 15. Cousin (female) 15. Prima 16. Grandson 17. Granddaughter 16. Nieto 18. Nephew 17. Nieta 19. Niece 18. Sobrino 20. Family 19. Sobrina 21. Godfather 20. Familia 22. Godmother 21. Padrino 23. Co-father 22. Madrina 24. Co-mother 23. Compadre 25. Friend 24. Comadre 26. Fiancé 25. Amigo/a 27. Fiancée 26. Novio 28. Boyfriend
27. Novia 29. Girlfriend 30. Lover 28. Enamorado 31. Screw 29. Enamorada 32. Teacher 30. Amante 33. Worker 31. Vacilón 34. Employee 32. Maestro/a 35. Boss 33. Trabajador/a 36. Neighbor 34. Empleado/a 37. Sir or Madam 35. Jefe/a 38. Mister 36. Vecino/a 39. Mrs. 37. Don/a 40. Miss 38. Señor 39. Señora 40. Señorita 482
ENTREVISTA DE REDES DE SUPPORT NETWORK INTERVIEWS APOYO • ¿En quien se puede depender • In whom can you depend for emotional para apoyo emocional? support? • ¿En quien se puede depender • In whom can you depend for economic para apoyo económico? support? • ¿En quien se puede depender • In whom can you depend for support in para apoyo en otras cosas? other things? • ¿Cuáles tipos de apoyo se puede • What kinds of help can you expect from esperar de quien? whom? • ¿Hasta que tanto de apoyo se • Until how much support can you ask for puede pedir de quien? from whom? • ¿Cómo lograron vivir con la • How have you managed to live with the inflación de los precios? inflation in prices? • ¿Por cuales otros razones han • For what reasons have you had to ask for tenido que pedir apoyo? help? • ¿Se puede negar cuando alguien • Can you deny someone who asks for pide ayuda? ¿En cuales ocasiones? help? On which occasions? • ¿En quien no se debe que • On whom should you not depend? depender? • ¿Cómo se siente para pedir • How does it feel to ask for help? Do you apoyo? ¿Tienen vergüenza o envidia? feel shame or envy? • Cuéntame de una vez cuando • Tell me about a time when you had to tenía que pedir apoyo. ask for help. • Cuéntame de una vez cuando • Tell me about a time when someone alguien le pidió apoyo. asked you for help.
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ENTREVISTA DE EMIGRANTE INTERVIEW FOR POTENTIAL POTENCIAL EMIGRANT ¿Cómo hicieron la decisión de How did you make the decision to emigrate? emigrar? ¿Quien le ayudaba con la Who helped with the decision? decisión?
¿Cómo decidieron quien, adonde, How did you decide who, to where, when, cuando, y por cuanto tiempo se va? and for how much time to go?
¿Quién se va a quedar aquí y quien Who is going to stay here and who is already ya está allá? there?
¿Cuánto tiempo demoró para hacer How much time does it take to make the los planes? plans?
¿Cómo decidieron donde vivir How did they decide where to live after or después o quien cuidaría los niños? who would care for the children?
¿Cómo decidieron que sería la vida How did they decide what would be the life de la pareja? of the couple?
¿Todos eran de acuerdo? Was everyone in agreement?
¿Cómo informaba a la familia que va How did you inform the family that you a salir? were leaving?
¿Por cuánto tiempo piensa en For how long do you think in staying? quedarse?
¿Cómo cree que será la vida allá? How do you think that your life will be there?
¿Cómo cree que será la vida para los How do you think that life will be for those que se quedan aquí? that stay here?
¿Qué era la parte más difícil y la What was the most difficult part and the parte más fácil de su decisión? easiest part of your decision?
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ENTREVISTA DE RETORNADO RETURNEE INTERVIEW Antes Before 1. ¿Antes que emigrar, como era la 1. Before emigrating, how was the family vida de su familia? life? 2. Situación Política – Tradiciones 2. Political Situation – Tradition – Religion – Religión 3. ¿Que hacía en un día normal? 3. What did you do on a normal day? Experiencia de Emigración Emigration Experience 4. ¿Como decidió para emigrar? 4. How did you decide to emigrate? 5. ¿Quien salió primero y quien se 5. Who left first and who stayed? quedó? 6. ¿Cómo decidió a donde ir? 6. How did you decide where to go? Llegada Arrival 7. ¿Cómo era cuando recién llegó 7. How was it when you recently arrived allí? ¿En que trabajó al there? What did you work in at the comienzo? beginning? 8. ¿Cuales obstáculos enfrentabas? 8. What obstacles did you face? How did ¿Como salía adelante? you come out ahead? 9. ¿Que era lo más difícil 9. What was the most difficult to get used acostumbrarse? (Idioma, to? (Language, Food, Comida, Freedom/Limitations, Traditions) Libertad/Limitaciones, Tradiciones) Idioma/Educación Language/Education 10. ¿Ocupe su idioma/acento? ¿En 10. Did you use your language/accent? In cuales contextos? ¿Es difícil what contexts? Is it difficult to mantener? maintain? (Idioma casa — Los hijos — (Home language — The children — Radio/lectura — Situaciones Radio/reading — Social Situations) Sociales) 11. ¿Le ha capacitado más en el 11. Have you trained further in the destino? Estudios en Ecuador destination? Studies in Ecuador and y destino destination Lazos con Familia Family Ties 12. ¿Cómo seguía en contacto con 12. How will you stay in contact with your su familia? (Email, Llamadas, family? (Email, Calls, Goods) Bienes) 13. ¿Qué frecuente venía a visitar? 13. How frequently will you come to visit? ¿Por cuánto piensa en For how long do you think in quedarse? staying? 485
Relaciones Entre Grupos Inter-group Relationships 14. ¿Pasaba tiempo con gente que 14. Did you spend time with non- no Ecuatorianos? ¿Cómo Ecuadorian people? How did you llevaban? get along? 15. ¿Enfrentabas discriminación o 15. Did you face discrimination or racism? racismo? 16. ¿Cómo era la comunicación 16. How was the communication between entre recién llegados y otros? those who recently arrived and others? 17. ¿Cómo compara su experiencia 17. How do you compare your experience con los que llegan ahora y no with those that arrive now and non- Ecuatorianos? Ecuadorians? Integración Integration 18. ¿Participabas en grupos en su 18. Did you participate in groups in your comunidad? community? 19. ¿Ha cambiado su forma de vivir 19. Have you changed your lifestyle alter después de emigrar? emigrating? 20. ¿Se siente más Ecuatoriano o 20. Do you feel more Ecuadorian or Español/Italiano/etc.? Spanish/Italian/etc.?
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VENDEDORES / TRABAJADORES SALESPEOPLE / WORKERS • ¿Que vendes? ¿Por Cuanto? / ¿En • What do you sell? For how much? / que trabajas? What do you work in? • ¿Vendes / Trabajas aquí frecuente? • Do you sell / work here frequently? ¿Por qué? ¿Trabaja en otros lados Why? Do you work in other places also? también? • ¿Es diferente vender / trabajar aquí • Is it different to sell / work here than in que en otros lados? ¿La gente es other places? Are the people different? Do diferente? ¿Ganan mas o menos? you make more or less? How much? ¿Cuánto? • ¿Qué opina usted de la gente que dice • What is your opinion of the people that “Emigro porque no puedo encontrar say, “I emigrate because I cannot find work” trabajo” mientras que usted gana la vida while you make a living through business por comercio aquí? here?
ORGANIZACIONES ORGANIZATIONS • ¿Podría explicarme su oficio por favor? • Could you explain your position please? ¿Qué conexión tiene su trabajo con los What connection does your work have with emigrantes y sus familias? emigrants and their families? • ¿Qué opina usted de la emigración? ¿Por • What do you think of emigration? Why do que van? ¿La razón que ellos dicen es people go? Is the reason that people say diferente que la que es? different from the actual reason? • ¿Quién va? ¿Hay diferencias entre los que • Who goes? Are there differences between van y los que se quedan? ¿Hay diferencias those that go and those that stay? Are there entre los que van a los EE.UU., a Italia, o a differences between those that go to the USA, to España? ¿Conoces algunos? Italy, or to Spain? Do you know anyone? • ¿Cómo se decide para ir? ¿Quién está • How do people decide to go? What is involucrado en la decisión? involved in the decision? • ¿Usted ha pensado en emigrar? ¿Por qué sí • Have you ever thought about emigrating? o no? ¿Y ahora? Why or why not? And now? • ¿Qué opina usted de los que van y parte de • What do you think of those that go and part la familia se queda? ¿Cuáles efectos ha tenido of the family stays? What effects has the la emigración sobre la sociedad, cultura, y emigration had on the society, culture, and familia? family? • ¿Cómo son diferentes los hijos de • How are the children of emigrants different emigrantes que los otros niños? ¿Reconocen than other children? Do the parents recognize los padres estos efectos? the effects? • ¿Cuáles son los obstáculos a la • What are the obstacles to family reagrupación familiar? ¿Cómo ha cambiado reunification? How has it changed after the visa después que el restringimiento del visado en restriction in last August? Augusto pasado? • ¿Cómo usted ve la ayuda y el apoyo que • How do you see the help and support that proviene el estado para los emigrantes y las the state provides for the emigrants and organizaciones que les ayuden? organizations that help them? • ¿Qué predeciría usted para el futuro? • What would you predict for the future? • ¿Tiene algún consejo para la gente que • Do you have advice for the people that are piensan en emigrar? thinking in emigrating? Appendix B: Respondent Interview Schedules
ENTREVISTA INICIAL INITIAL INTERVIEW 1. ¿Cuándo emigró? 1. When did he/she emigrate? 2. ¿Cómo te dijeron que se va? 2. How did they tell you that he/she was going? 3. ¿Cambiaste de casa? ¿Por qué? 3. Did you move to a different house? ¿Cuál prefieres? Why? Which do you prefer? 4. ¿Cambiaste de escuela? ¿Por 4. Did you change schools? Why? Which qué? ¿Cuál prefieres? do you prefer? 5. ¿Cómo se comunican? 5. How do you keep in touch? 6. ¿Te mandan cosas de allí? ¿Que? 6. Do they send you things from there? What? 7. ¿Ha regresado una vez? 7. Has he/she returned sometime? 8. ¿Le cuentan si te portas mal? 8. Do they tell him/her if you misbehave? ¿Quien te castiga? Who punishes you? 9. ¿En que trabajan tus padres? 9. In what do your parents work? 10. ¿En que quieres trabajar cuando 10. In what do you want to work when you creces? ¿Dónde? grow up? Where? 11. ¿Recuerdas como se parece? 11. Do you remember what he/she looks like? 12. ¿Tienes fotos? 12. Do you have photos? 13. ¿Qué opina tu familia acerca de 13. What is your family’s opinion about su emigración? his/her emigration? 14. ¿Qué opinas tu acerca de su 14. What is your opinion about his/her emigración? emigration? 15. ¿Cómo compara tu vida y hogar 15. How do you compare your life and con las de otros niños? home with those of other kids? 16. ¿Qué debe hacer cada persona 16. What should each person of a family do de una familia para hacer una to make a family? Which roles fall upon familia? ¿Cuales papeles le toca a does each one? cada uno? 17. ¿Sabes cuando regresar para 17. Do you know when he/she will return quedarse? to stay? 18. ¿Cómo es la mejor forma de 18. How is the best way to emigrate? emigrar? 19. ¿Qué hizo bien y qué hizo mal 19. What did he/she do well and did he/she en tu caso? do badly in your case? 20. ¿Qué opinas de tantos padres 20. What is your opinion about all the que salen de este país? parents that leave this country?
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STORYTELLING CARD GAME
Cards
1. Forest 2. Child’s neat bedroom 3. Library 4. Suburban Home 5. Child’s messy bedroom 6. Blank 7. Cemetery 8. Country home 9. Blank 10. Urban Home 11. Kitchen 12. Shopping Center 13. Fast Food Restaurant 14. Lake Home 15. Living Room 16. Doctor’s Office 17. Recreation Area 18. Classroom 19. Blank 20. Bathroom 21. Adult Bedroom 22. Auditorium 23. Blank 24. Farm Home
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APEGO EN NIÑOS CHILD ATTACHMENT Escoja cinco adjetivos que describe tu Choose five adjectives that describe your padre emigrado y dialogamos acerca de émigré father and let’s talk about why you porque los escogiste. chose them. abandonado, a gracioso, a abandoned funny aburrido, a honesto, a bored honest activo, a impuntual active unpunctual afectuoso, a insoportable affectionate unbearable agresivo, a inteligente aggressive intelligent alegre intranquilo, a joyful restless amable justo, a friendly just ambicioso, a listo, a ambitious smart arrogante malo, a arrogant bad atento, a miedoso, a attentive fearful avaro, a nervioso, a avaricious nervous bruto, a optimista brutish optimistic bueno, a perezoso, a good lazy cariñoso, a pesimista caring pessimistic celoso, a preocupado, a jealous worried cobarde prudente cowardly prudent confiado, a puntual trusting punctual contento, a realista content realistic cordial romántico cordial romantic correcto, a sabio, a correct wise cuidadoso, a sensible careful sensible culto, a serio, a refined serious decepcionado, a severo, a disappointed severe desesperado, a simpático, a despaired nice desordenado, a sincero, a disorganized sincere despistado, a sinvergüenza clueless shameless despreciado, a terco, a unappreciated stubborn educado, a tímido, a polite timid enérgico, a tonto, a energetic dumb enfadado, a torpe angry clumsy entusiasmado, a tranquilo, a enthusiastic tranquil envidioso, a triste envious sad espontáneo, a vago, a spontaneous unreliable fresco valiente cool brave furioso, a vengativo, a furious vengeful 490
ETNO-PSICOLOGÍA -- NIÑOS CHILD ETHNOPSYCHOLOGY 1. ¿Qué es sentir______? 1. What is feeling ______? 2. ¿Por qué alguien sentiría 2. Why would someone feel ______? ______? 3. Cuéntame de una vez que 3. Tell me about a time when someone you alguien que conoces ha sentido know has felt ______. ______.
SOMATIZACIÓN EN NIÑOS CHILD SOMATIZATION 1. ¿Cómo siente tu cuerpo cuando 1. How does your body feel when you feel sientes ______? ______? 2. ¿Qué debes hacer para que tu 2. What should you do in order that your cuerpo ya no siente así? body does not feel like that anymore? 3. ¿Cómo comporta alguien cuando 3. How does someone behave when they siente ______? feel ______?
Alegre Envidioso Cheerful Envious Asustado Feliz Afraid Happy Cariño Nervioso Caring Nervous Celoso Odio Jealous Hate Confianza Orgulloso Confident/Trusting Proud Contento Preocupado Content Worried Deprimido Seguro Depressed Safe/Sure Desesperado Tranquilo Desperate Tranquil Enamorado Triste In love Sad Enojo Vergüenza Anger Shame 491
ENTREVISTA DE ROLES--NIÑOS CHILD ROLE INTERVIEW
1. ¿Qué es un(a) buen(a) 1. What is a good ______? ______? ¿Qué What does he/she do? hace? 2. ¿Cómo se aprende a ser un(a) 2. How do you learn to be a good buen(a) ______? ______? 3. ¿Porqué alguien querría ser un(a) 3. Why would someone want to be a good buen(a) ______? ______? 4. ¿Qué es un(a) mal(a) ______? ¿Qué 4. What is a bad ______? hace? What does he/she do? 5. ¿Qué pasa a un(a) mal(a) 5. What happens to a bad ______? ¿Cómo ______? How do people reacciona la gente? react?
Esposo Abuelo Husband Grandfather Esposa Abuela Wife Grandmother Madre Primo Mother Male Cousin Padre Prima Father Female Cousin Hijo Nieto Son Grandson Hija Nieta Daughter Granddaughter Hermano Sobrino Brother Nephew Hermana Sobrina Sister Niece Hermanito Padrino Little Brother Godfather Hermanita Madrina Little Sister Godmother Tía Familia Aunt Family Tío Bebe Uncle Baby 492
ENTREVISTA FINAL FINAL INTERVIEW
1. ¿Con quien vives? 1. Who do you live with? 2. ¿Tienen empleados? 2. Do you have any servants? 3. ¿Has cumplido año? 3. Did you have your birthday yet this year? 4. ¿Cuáles edades tienen tus 4. What are the ages of your brothers and hermanos? sisters? 5. ¿Cómo te llevas con la gente con 5. How do you get along with the people quien vives? you live with? 6. ¿Tienes amigos en tu clase? 6. Do you have friends in your class? 7. ¿Hay alguien con quien no te 7. Is there anyone you do not get along llevas en tu clase? with in your class? 8. ¿Cómo va todo en tu clase? ¿Te 8. How is everything in your class? Do you gusta tu profesora? you’re your professor? 9. ¿A veces te falta de clases por 9. Do you miss class sometimes for being estar enfermo/a? sick? 10. ¿Pasas bastante tiempo triste? 10. Do you spend a lot of time sad? 11. ¿Lloras a vez en cuando? 11. Do you cry sometimes? 12. ¿Cuándo te pones feliz? 12. What makes you happy? 13. ¿Por qué uno no debe de hacer 13. Why shouldn’t someone do whatever cualquier cosa que le hace feliz… makes them happy… like rob whatever cómo robar lo que quieren? they want? 14. ¿Qué piensas de cómo están los 14. What do you think of how the other kids otros chicos que me visitan? who visit me are doing? 15. ¿Es diferente o la misma la vida 15. Is the life of the kids whose parents’ de los chicos cuando emigran sus emigrate different or the same? How so? padres? ¿Cómo?
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ENTREVISTA INICIAL – PADRES INITIAL PARENT INTERVIEW Demografía Demography 1. ¿Quién es usted para el niño/a? 1. Who are you to the child? 2. ¿Cuántos años tiene usted? 2. How old are you? 3. ¿En que se dedica? 3. In what do you work? 4. ¿Cuántos niños tienen? 4. How many children do you have? 5. ¿Cuáles son sus edades? 5. What are their ages? 6. ¿Con quien viven ustedes? 6. With whom do you live? Historia History 1. ¿Cómo se conocieron los padres? 1. How did the parents meet? 2. ¿Cómo funcionó la familia antes de 2. How did the family work before the la emigración? emigration? 3. ¿Cómo era la vida de los hijos? 3. How was the life of the children? Decisión de Emigrar Decision to Emigrate 1. ¿Cómo hicieron la decisión de 1. How did you all make the decision emigrar? to emigrate? 2. ¿Cómo decidieron quien, adonde, 2. How did you decide who, where, cuando, y por cuanto tiempo se va? when and for how long he/she would go? 3. ¿Cómo decidieron donde vivir 3. How did you decide where to live or después o quien cuidaría los niños? who would take care of the children? 4. ¿Cómo decidieron que sería la vida 4. How did you decide what would for de la pareja? the life of the couple? 5. ¿Todos eran de acuerdo? 5. Was everyone in agreement? 6. ¿Cuánto demoró para hacer los 6. How long did it take to plan? planes? 7. ¿Cómo informaban al niño/a que va 7. How did you inform the child that a salir su padre/madre? his mother/father was going to leave? 8. ¿Era un grande cambio para vivir 8. Was it a big change to live with you con usted y sin su madre/padre? and without his/her mother/father? 9. ¿Cómo reaccionó el niño/a? 9. How did the child react?
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Vida recién después Life recently after 1. ¿Cómo cambió la vida cuando 1. How did life change when he/she recién salio? recently left? 2. ¿Se mudaron o cambió de 2. Did he/she move or change schools? escuela? 3. ¿Era lo que todos esperaban? 3. Was it what everyone expected? 4. ¿Qué ha sido la parte más difícil? 4. What has been the most difficult part? 5. ¿Era fácil para que se 5. Was it easy to adjust to life there? acostumbre allá? 6. ¿Pudo comunicarse y apoyarles 6. Could he/she communicate and support cuando recién se llego? you when he/he recently arrived? 7. ¿Ustedes han estado 7. Have you been disappointed with the decepcionados con la ayuda de help from his/her father/mother? su padre/madre? 8. ¿Se notó algunos afectos en los 8. Did you notice effects to the child? niños? 9. ¿Cómo intentaron a ayudarlos? 9. How did you try to help them? 10. ¿Cómo se portó cuando llamó el 10. How did they react when the parent padre/madre de allá? called? Vida Ahora Life Now 1. ¿Ha cambiado la vida desde 1. Has life changed since when he/she cuando recién salió? recently left? 2. ¿Ustedes siguen con los mismos 2. Do you continue with the same acuerdos para la pareja? agreements as a couple? 3. ¿Cuánto comuniquen? 3. How often do you talk? 4. ¿Les apoya bastante? 4. Does he/she support you enough? 5. ¿Ha notado si se parece que el 5. Have you noticed if the child seems to niño va acostumbrándose? be getting accustomed? 6. ¿Cómo se porta el niño/a ahora 6. How does the child behave now with con el padre/madre? the father/mother? Futuro Future 1. ¿Qué son los planes para el 1. What are the plans for the future? futuro? 2. ¿Todos están de acuerdo? 2. Is everyone in agreement? 3. ¿Usted cree que se cumplirá? 3. Do you think they will be fulfilled? 4. ¿Informan al niño/a acerca de 4. Do you inform the child of your plans? sus planes? 5. ¿El niño/a ha dicho lo que 5. Has the child said what he/she wants? quiere? 6. ¿Han podido involucrar al 6. Have you been able to involve the child niño/a en sus decisiones? in your decisions? 495
Rehacerlo Doing it all again 1. ¿Si tuvieran la oportunidad para 1. If you had the opportunity to do it al hacerlo todo de nuevo, haría again, would you? usted lo mismo? 2. ¿Cuáles decisiones fueron 2. Which decisions were good and which buenos y cuáles malos? were bad? 3. ¿Qué aviso tienen para otras 3. What advice do you have for other familias que piensan en families that are thinking about separarse? separating? Sociedad Ecuatoriana Ecuadorian Society 1. ¿Cree usted que su caso es 1. Do you think that your case is different diferente que los tantos otros? from the majority of others? 2. ¿Qué opina usted de los efectos 2. What is your opinion of the effects of de la emigración sobre la the emigration on the society in general sociedad en general y las familias and the family in particular? en particular? 3. ¿Qué debe pasar para mejorar la 3. What should be done to improve the situación? situation?
ENTREVISTA INICIAL -- INITIAL INTERVIEW -- TEACHERS PROFESORES ¿Cómo es su comportamiento en How is his/her classroom behavior? clase? ¿Cómo se lleva con otros How does he/she get along with his/her compañeros? classmates? ¿Cómo es su rendimiento escolar? How is his/her scholastic achievement? ¿Participa en clase? Does he/she participate in class? ¿Ha notado cambios cuando el Have you noticed changes when the padre/ la madre emigró? father/mother emigrated? ¿Hay participación familiar en la Is there family participation in school? escuela? ¿Parece que tiene estabilidad en la Does it seem like there is stability in the casa? house? ¿Es diferente que los otros niños? Is he/she different than the other children?
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ENTREVISTA FINAL—PROFESORES [EN ESCRITO]
Encuesta Para Profesores
Estimados Profesores: Quisiera agradecerles por su apoyo con mis estudios el último año. He disfrutado trabajar con ustedes. Por la culminación de mi trabajo, quisiera pedir su opinión de sus alumnos. Muchos ya me han contado esta información el año pasado, pero querría preguntar de nuevo para averiguar si han sido cambios, por lo mejor o por lo peor. Por favor, indica desde uno, que significa nunca, a cinco, que significa siempre, para describir las siguientes características en el alumno nombrado. Si desean, por favor, aumenta cualquier detalle acerca de estas características o otra que le parece importante. Gracias por su colaboración, apoyo, y amistad.
Nombre: Grado:
1 2 3 4 5 Nunca Rara Vez Normal Frecuente Siempre
Tiene motivación. 1 2 3 4 5 Detalles:
…
Es agresivo/a. 1 2 3 4 5 Expresa ansiedad. 1 2 3 4 5 Tiene problemas de aprendizaje. 1 2 3 4 5 Se aísla de los otros estudiantes. 1 2 3 4 5 Es extrovertido/a. 1 2 3 4 5 Tiene bajo rendimiento. 1 2 3 4 5 Falta ayuda en la casa. 1 2 3 4 5 Tiene problemas de salud. 1 2 3 4 5 No siga las direcciones. 1 2 3 4 5 Tiene adecuada disciplina. 1 2 3 4 5 Se lleva bien con sus compañeros/as. 1 2 3 4 5 Capta rápido. 1 2 3 4 5 Parece contento/a. 1 2 3 4 5 Respeta a otros. 1 2 3 4 5 Alguien toma en cuenta las necesidades del niño. 1 2 3 4 5 497
FINAL INTERVIEW—TEACHERS [IN WRITING]
Teacher Poll
Esteemed Professors: I would like to thank you for your support with my studies the last year. I have enjoyed working with you. For the culmination of my work, I would like to ask your opinion of your students. Many already have told me this information last year, but I would like to ask again in order to find out if there have been changes, for the better or worse. Please, indicate from one, which means never, to five, which means always, in order to describe the following characteristics of the indicated student. If you would like, please, add any details about these characteristics or any other that you seems important to you. Thank you for your collaboration, support, and friendship.
Name: Grade:
1 2 3 4 5 Never Sometimes Normal Frequently Always
He/She has motivation. 1 2 3 4 5 Details:
The following statements were presented in the same format as “He/She has motivation.” above. He/She is aggressive. He/She expresses anxiety. He/She has learning problems. He/She isolates him/herself from the other students. He/She is extroverted. He/She has low scholastic achievement. He/She lacks help at home. He/She has health problems. He/She does not follow instructions. He/She has adequate discipline. He/She gets along with his/her classmates. He/She picks up things quickly. He/She seems content. He/She respects others. Someone pays attention to the needs of the child. References
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346 — Armanza, J. C. 2004 “El Gobierno no se refirió a cifra récord de ecuatorianos en España.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=E4BBDECC784A4333A60F0AFE99664F92&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
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411 — Cárdenas, S. 2004 “Ecuatorianos en España pedirán ayuda a Gutiérrez para regresar al país.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core/626/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&ta b=1&contid=7A6F2B245EB24FB189D2407EA6DA0825&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
424 2004 “Plan ecuatoriano para que regresen 20.000 emigrantes.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core/626/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&ta b=1&contid=4EABA0692098481086F60E13EF2B3B9E. Guayaquil.
466 2004 “Zuquilanda dijo que la Cancillería no es agencia de empleos.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=CA6AF58F4F4D4A4D9FD94679AC8F7A96. Guayaquil.
485 2004 “Sin resolver 374.749 casos de inmigrantes.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=7F7EF33D1C9445CC9A6BAC9B4B03B8C6&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
510 2004 “Roldós: España debe pensar en retorno de inmigrantes.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core/626/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&ta b=1&contid=03C1E6791F2E4480B27269A563356F96&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
828 2003 “Sin designar subsecretario de Asuntos Migratorios.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=FC868A148DF34A29A96F8953F0131D90. Guayaquil. 834 — Ponce, J. 2003 “Atienza: Ley de Extranjería niega derechos en España.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=5C07422516104728AB0937E14F6512FE&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
857 2003 “Emigrantes olvidan a sus hijos, según encuesta.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=4CC2210FF72C4CE5973D4FAA4D3155EB&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
858 2003 “Inmigrantes viajan desde Nueva York a otros estados.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=635895C91E2543A59DAC0CA92F303FB0&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
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859 2003 “Niños impedidos de reunirse con su madre.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=229C962137DF4A18B47F3E6798355FAB&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
863 — Santacruz, S. 2003 “Ecuatorianos son buen negocio en Nueva York.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=5F4ED01AA84E45CCBA7FA294B5C32D65&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
864 — Pugo, C. 2003 “103.558 artesanos de Guayas han emigrado.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=A3EA43C242FD4174B8E2D503F81ABCB0&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
865 — Beltrán, B. 2003 “Ecuatorianos con bajo sueldo en España.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=8BCA9833DE2C4683BC4E494552B0BD7B&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
866 2003 “Afectados por frustrado vuelo a España exigen devolución de dinero.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=BF1F6BAB840345159555854A2751A950&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
869 2003 “Obras sociales para evitar la emigración.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=E39BB68E08FE4092BE113710C0151CBB&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil. 875 2003 “Lágrimas antes de la partida, unos en busca de hijos y otros de padres.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=EC5DF835E8AD4FFEB5160D8BA259DA53&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
876 2003 “Madres y niños en la soledad.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=185D1D8223C24F2B923E5A588305354B&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
904 — Rodríguez, T. 2003 “A juicio pareja acusada por muerte de hija.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=65681A1A89C24C15864CADE416FB2FB2&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil. 521
905 — Garcés Riera, V. 2003 “Incremento en llamadas afectará a los emigrantes.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=E197D3A8E8AC4F48ADBEB30D4BA391E5&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
906 — Ordóñez, I. 2003 “Iztapalapa, cárcel del emigrante ecuatoriano.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=AB05ECBC2289492683B18E3C080F733F&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
907 — Santacruz, S. 2003 “Fiesta en NY por desfile ecuatoriano.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=B9EEDE1E1B9542479E149C645A8A59E7&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
910 2003 “Llegaron restos de emigrante que se accidentó en Roma.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=A88188FF762C4D32AF66A82203917B85. Guayaquil.
911 — Beltrán, B. 2003 “Ecuatorianos celebran a la Virgen de El Cisne en España.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=9B4FBDE9AAF0427D8D78714CB47484A3&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
925 2003 “Corte asignó dos defensores públicos para ambos detenidos.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=4D9D6ADA121D4CDDA364A6E5B2C4E11E&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
928 2003 “Ecuatoriana se declaró inocente tras la muerte de su hija de 3 años.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=64299082FC8D4B9D903212798921A38C. Guayaquil.
931 2003 “Ecuatorianos apresados en decomiso récord de alijo de 4.000 kilos.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=9F7322C77A324B6DA2D1A889EFECE34B. Guayaquil.
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932 2003 “Menores liberados por tribunal de familia.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=3CF3E83564E6457B92018E8E4EC908EA. Guayaquil.
935 2003 “Cardenal pidió justicia para obreros en EE.UU.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=039DF38E23CA4212A26CA75BA41AE04D. Guayaquil.
936 2003 “Mafias convierten a inmigrantes en prostitutas.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=0919C0542A864BF192E68B0EF86C5076. Guayaquil.
937 2003 “Salida de menores, en espera por un recurso de casación.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=71ADE452C9144D63B691A24EA90DFE07&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
940 2003 “Menores inmigrantes explotados sexualmente.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=10BF0930C5E3439C8D5F3A8CE1D7AC9E. Guayaquil.
942 2003 “Ocho detenidos durante operativos de Migración.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=B6E7744A5D1F430CA400A6396F7D9308. Guayaquil.
945 2003 “Cañarense, con 6 meses de embarazo.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=1871F4B4CB8B416992DF6D1F918FBF15&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
951 2003 “Ecuatorianos, detenidos en Costa Rica.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=C8A553240C2A451D96747787812F5B54. Guayaquil.
953 2003 “Medio millón de compatriotas asistieron a parque de Flushing.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=6A359E153FB84E63AF874F0132A95EA0&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil. 523
954 2003 “Extranjeros constituirán el 9% y 12% de la población española en el 2010.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=8BA08BDC56C647B8864986604011C75D&EUID=. Guayaquil.
957 2003 “La migración es positiva para Estados Unidos afirma el canciller mexicano.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=72C1435BA6D5489493401B93B1008AC9. Guayaquil.
958 2003 “Ecuatoriana víctima de malos tratos por su compañero sale de hospital en España.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=C1AD6AAB44EE4648AE99AAEBADCF44A3. Guayaquil.
959 2003 “Buscan capacitación para viajar.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=C81FEDB73CB24B13B2AF69074E3257F1&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
960 2003 “Desmantelan 48 bandas de tráfico de inmigrantes.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=53656671E6C14818847D9CD82A46C38B. Guayaquil.
961 2003 “Ecuatoriano detenido en España tras tirar por la ventana a su novia.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=7F71F3D8D67F4B7FBA56444FE8E2ECE2. Guayaquil.
962 2003 “España busca solución para inmigrantes.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=F1606BF3A4AF4AFBA8C920A6C82D53D0. Guayaquil.
963 2003 “Construcción y servicio doméstico, también afectados.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=0CEF29807DB34FFB847FA362A774C9AE&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil. 524
965 2003 “Mercadeo enganchó a los compatriotas durante parada.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=3232E7095FD34E0688E33371F02E8117&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
972 2003 “Residentes esperaban a su hijo.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=731016FD045547DC9BC981704E60BB7D&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
974 2003 “Regresan a Quito 30 no admitidos.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=C5D43A6800FD413986BF8C0F45E2BD89. Guayaquil.
980 2003 “97 cadáveres de ecuatorianos repatriados entre enero y julio.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=AE49C35C1DB7465F80288BC0552E2407&EUID=‘‘. Guayaquil.
984 2003 “Cadáver no puede ser repatriado.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=3EE2249E0BA64A0E8513775064E1C6C8. Guayaquil.
985 2003 “Foro analizó secuelas de la emigración.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=6EC889C42884434687C0DC9A0C4F2C73. Guayaquil.
1004 2004 “Empleada mantiene protesta frente a la casa de diplomática ecuatoriana en Washington.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core4/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=626&tab=1 &contid=C16C7CD1390A4A2FA6733D760E2AAD61. Guayaquil.
1019 2003 “Del Ecuador al mundo.” El Universo. http://www.eluniverso.com/core/eluniverso.asp?page=noticia&id=1060&tab=1 &contid=8CAE3317B3A145E8B034FE01E44380CE. Guayaquil.
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