Migrant Stories: Zapotec Transborder Migration and the Production of a Narrated Community by Elizabeth Anne Falconi A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Anthropology) in The University of Michigan 2011 Doctoral Committee Professor Judith T. Irvine, Chair Professor Bruce Mannheim Professor Barbra A. Meek Professor Silvia Pedraza Copyright Elizabeth Anne Falconi All Rights Reserved 2011 This dissertation is dedicated to the members of the Guelavian community in Oaxaca and Los Angeles, for their incredible hospitality, generosity, and patience, without which none of this would have been possible. The openness with which I was welcomed into individual’s homes to share meals, milestones, conversations and companionship provided was truly astounding, and deeply humbling. ii Acknowledgements This dissertation is the result of a long process of academic training, research and analysis, and the list of those who have helped this project come to fruition is equally long. I want to especially thank the members of my doctoral committee who have guided me through the process of writing since I returned from the field: Judy Irvine for her incisive editing, and her continual encouragement to find and foreground my own intellectual voice, Bruce Mannheim especially for helping me begin the bewildering and overwhelming writing process, and creating a coherent structure to work from, Barb Meek for her generous and thorough reading of drafts, and her positive reinforcement, and to Silvia Pedraza for her advice on how to bring my work into dialogue with a broader range of scholarship and to make it accessible to a larger audience. This dissertation was also greatly improved by the feedback of Robin Conley and Kathryn Graber. My graduate colleagues at the University of Michigan have provided companionship, support, feedback and a general source of solidarity for the last seven years. For their advice and expertise on Zapotec linguistic matters I would like to thank Felipe Lopez and Pamela Munro, and Ted Jones, who also provided me with invaluable perspectives from his many decades of work with the Guelavian community. I would like to thank Marjorie Goodwin for encouraging me to delve deeper into the concept of second stories. Pieces of this dissertation were presented to the Michigan linguistic laboratory, the UCLA discourse lab, the UCSD linguistic anthropology workshop, Swarthmore College Sociology and Anthropology Department, and a joint session of the iii AAA Meetings in 2010 (The Tales We and They Tell) and I am indebted to all participants and audience members for their time, attention and feedback. I would particularly like to thank Barbara Black for her remarkably thorough editing work on this dissertation. I want to thank Laurie Marx for helping me throughout my entire graduate career to navigate the many steps of the process that have brought me to this point, and for helping me to secure financial support along the way. To that end I would like to thank the Rackham School of Graduate Studies, and the Department of Anthropology of the University of Michigan, as well as the Foreign Language and Area Studies program for their generous financial support of my graduate education, language training, dissertation research, and write-up. Throughout my fieldwork process I benefited immeasurably by the guidance of Anjali Browning, who pointed me to my field site, and helped introduce me to the Guelavian community. Rebecca Howes-Mischel was a stalwart companion in the field, a wonderful colleague and a great friend. A special thank you to my parents, José and Betsy Falconi, who have loved and supported throughout my life, and endowed me with the conviction to persevere with this project over many obstacles. I thank my husband, Steve Black, without whose constant encouragement, intellectual dialogue, and editing, this dissertation would never have materialized. Lastly I would like to thank the many members of the Guelavian community in Oaxaca and Los Angeles who welcomed me into their homes and who have taught me so much over the last several years, and to whom this dissertation is dedicated. I hope that I may begin to reciprocate their kindness in years to come. iv Table of Contents Dedication………………………………………………………………......................ii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………...iii List of Figures………………………………………………………………..............vii Notes on Transcription……………………………………………………………...vii Notes on Orthography………………………………………………………………..x Abstract………………………………………………………………….....................xi Chapter 1 – Migrant Stories I. Introduction………………………………………………………………...1 II. Narrated Community……………………………………………………… 8 III. Second stories of transborder life…………………………………..……..13 IV. Methods and data………………………………………………………….24 V. Chapter overview………………………………………………………….29 VI. Conclusion………………………………………………………………...33 Chapter 2 – Narrating Local Labor Migration I. Introduction………………………………………………………………..35 II. Theorizing Migration……………………………………………...............39 III. Introduction to fieldsites i. SAN JUAN GUELAVÍA, OAXACA…………………………………...45 ii. WEST LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA………………………………...52 IV. Local histories of domestic migration…………………………………….56 V. El Norte……………………………………………………………………59 VI. Between here and there……………………………………………………71 VII. The morality of migration…………………………………………………78 VIII. Conclusion………………………………………………………………....86 Chapter 3 – Degrees of Differentiation in the Oaxacan Valley I. Introduction………………………………………………………………..91 II. The Zapotecan languages………………………………………………….94 III. Language contact………………………………………………………….95 IV. Zapotec indigeneity………………………………………………………102 V. The distribution of linguistic knowledge in Guelavía ……………………105 VI. The social geography of the Tlacolula Valley……………………………107 VII. Practicing diversity……………………………………………………….109 VIII. Degrees of difference in local language ideologies………………………115 IX. Temporality and intra-community differentiation ……………………….126 X. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..140 Chapter 4 – The Question of Portability v I. Introduction………………………………………………………………142 II. Shifting ground: Guelavian life in Los Angeles………………………….144 III. The sociolinguistic context of West Los Angeles………………………..149 IV. Migrant ideologies………………………………………………………..157 V. Working with English…………………………………………………….173 VI. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..177 Chapter 5 – The Ghosts of Language Planning Past, Present, and Future I. Introduction………………………………………………………………179 II. Language shift, an overview……………………………………………...181 III. Language planning and language shift…………………………………...186 IV. Incorporation and rural schooling………………………………………..192 V. Schooling in Guelavía……………………………………………………197 VI. The history of SIL presence in San Juan Guelavía……………………….205 VII. Local language revitalization efforts……………………………………..209 VIII. Protestant orthographies and Catholic politics…………………………...214 IX. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..226 Chapter 6 – Code Choice and Temporality in Zapotec Storytelling I. Introduction: Stories, codes and genres…………………………………..228 II. Regimentation in practice………………………………………………...231 III. “Carrying it hither” in story performances…………………………….....238 IV. The construction of discursive authority…………………………………241 V. Transborder stories………………………………………………….……248 VI. Revitalizing narratives…………………………………………………....252 VII. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..259 Chapter 7 – Transborder Circulation and Ritual Life I. Introduction………………………………………………………………262 II. Theorizing ritual practices………………………………………………..268 III. An overview of Guelavian ritual life……………………………………..270 IV. Ritual kinship, reciprocal obligation and ritual exchange………………..277 V. Ritual (re)production in Los Angeles…………………………………….288 VI. Circulation and secondary ritual participation…………………………...292 VII. Ritual return migration…………………………………………………...302 VIII. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..310 Chapter 8 – Conclusion: Narrated Community……………..…………………….312 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………....324 vi List of Figures FIGURE 2-1, Cantina “La Once” in San Juan Guelavía……………………………35 FIGURE 2-2, San Juan Guelavía, Oaxaca………………………………………......45 FIGURE 2-3, West Los Angeles, California……………………………………......52 FIGURE 5-1, Orthographic diversity in SJGZ……………………………………..225 FIGURE 7-1, Respect kin terms…………………………………………………....277 FIGURE 7-2, Products of ritual labor………………………………………….......284 vii Notes on Transcription Transcripts are selective representations of speech and interaction with political and social implications, as the details included can dramatically impact a readers’ interpretation of the speakers represented (see Bucholtz 2000). Must is lost in the processes of writing words down on a page, including prosody, bodily comportment, gesture, facial expressions, and the richness of the interactive context in which words were uttered. The choices I have made in representing talk throughout this dissertation were made thoughtfully, in conjunction with the analytic process (see Ochs 1979, Duranti 2006, and Bucholtz 2000 on “reflexive discourse analysis”). The level of detail I include in my transcripts corresponds to the analysis and theoretical argument I make using that piece of linguistic data. I use the following conventions throughout my transcripts (see Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson 1974): 1) Spanish: Spanish terms are marked by italics, e.g. ‘español’ 2) Zapotec: Zapotec terms are marked with underlining, e.g. ‘didxza’ 3) English translations: The English translation of Spanish and Zapotec