U.S.-Mexico Policy Bulletin Issue 7 • July/August 2005 Building Civil Society Among Indigenous Migrants By Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado The past and future of the Mexican nation can Two decades ago, the government aban- be seen in the waves of the tens of thousands of doned its previously on-again/off-again com- indigenous people who each year set out on mitment to make family farming economically their voyages to the north, as well as the many viable. Since the 1980s, peasant agriculture others who have already settled in countless became a target of welfare policy rather than communities within the United States. To production support, a shift that weakened the understand indigenous Mexican migrants in economic base of indigenous communities. This essay was excerpted the United States today requires a binational According to the Mexican government, pover- with permission from the lens, taking into account basic changes in the ty worsened in 30% of the predominantly book Indigenous Mexican way Mexico is increasingly recognized as a indigenous municipalities between 1990 and Migrants in the United States, nation of migrants, a society whose fate is inti- 2002.The long-term crisis of the peasant econ- edited by Jonathan Fox and mately linked with the economy and culture of omy has been exacerbated in recent years by Gaspar Rivera-Salgado.The the United States. But the specific indigenous the persistent collapse of the international price book is published by the migrant experience also requires recognizing of coffee—the principal cash crop for many of Centers for U.S.-Mexican that Mexico is a multiethnic society where Mexico’s indigenous farmers. Studies and Comparative basic questions of indigenous rights have made Since implementation of the North Immigration Studies at it onto the national agenda but remain funda- American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the UCSD (2004) and available mentally unresolved. government’s rural development strategy has from Lynne Rienner Mexico’s national indigenous population is been based on the assumption that a large pro- Publishers, www.reinner.com. the largest in the hemisphere, with approxi- portion of the rural poor would move either to mately one-quarter of the Indians in the the cities or to the United States. Mexico City’s Americas as a whole. At least one-tenth of the urban Indian population is officially estimated Mexican population is of indigenous origin, at half a million in the Federal District and one according to the government’s relatively strict million in the greater metropolitan area. criterion of indigenous language use (though Both in the United States and in Mexico, the most recent national census allows for eth- indigenous migrants find themselves exclud- nic self-identification for the first time). Despite ed—economically, socially, and politically— five centuries of pressure to assimilate, at least both as migrants and as indigenous people.They one in ten Mexicans reported that they speak work in ethnically segmented labor markets that an indigenous language in their household. relegate them to the bottom rungs. In the social The future projected by Mexico’s dominant sphere, in addition to the well-known set of economic model has little place for indigenous obstacles that confront cross-border migrants, peoples other than joining the urban and agro- especially those without documentation, they export workforce. Because the majority of also face entrenched racist attitudes and discrim- Mexico’s indigenous population depends on ination from other Mexicans as well as from the agriculture, their livelihood prospects are high- dominant society in the United States. ly sensitive to governmental policies toward In the civic-political arena, most cross- Mexico Institute that sector. border migrants are excluded from full citizen- US-Mexico Policy Bulletin • Issue 7 ship rights in either country. On the one hand, the the Mexican countryside, Mayans from Yucatán and U.S. government resists proposals to regularize the Chiapas now leave to work in California and Texas, status of millions of workers. On the other hand, the Hñahñus and Nahuas from central Mexico are com- Mexican government has yet to comply either with ing to the Midwest and Texas, and Mixtecs from the 1996 constitutional reform that recognized Puebla are settling in the New York area, followed migrants’ right to vote or with the 1996 San Andrés more recently by Hñahñus from neighboring Accords on Indigenous Veracruz. Mixtecs and Nahuas are also coming to the Both in the United States and in Rights and Culture that United States from the state of Guerrero. Mexico, indigenous migrants find promised a modest form The Mexican migrant population is also becom- of indigenous autono- ing increasingly multiethnic. Some Mexican indige- themselves excluded—economically, my. In the dominant nous peoples such as the P’urépechas of Michoacán socially, and politically—both as national political cul- and Oaxaca’s Mixtecs and Zapotecs have many migrants and as indigenous people. ture, both indigenous decades of experience with migration to the United peoples and migrants States, dating back to the Bracero Program have long been seen, especially by Mexico City (1942–1964). Historically, however, most indigenous political elites, as less than full citizens—a powerful migrants went to large cities or agribusiness jobs historical inheritance that only began to change sub- within Mexico and until the 1980s their share of the stantially within Mexico by the mid-1990s. overall cross-border migrant population was relative- ly low. More recently, the indigenous proportion of Changing Patterns of Migration the Mexican migrant population has grown signifi- Historically, most Mexican migrants came primarily cantly, most notably in both urban and rural from rural communities in the central-western part California and increasingly in Texas, Florida, New of the country. Over the past two decades, however, York,and Oregon. the Mexican migrant population has diversified dra- Whereas in the past most indigenous migration to matically, both socially and geographically. Their the United States was temporary, today the increased regions of origin now include a more diverse range risk and cost of crossing the border without docu- of states as well as large cities. For example, the Los ments has led more of these immigrants to settle in Angeles area now has federations of hometown asso- the United States long term.This is possible in part ciations from at least thirteen different Mexican because their networks have matured over the past states, and eleven statewide federations are active in two decades, particularly in the case of Oaxacan Chicago. Regions of migrant settlement in the migrants. Before the bracero program, out-migration United States are becoming similarly diverse— from the area began in the 1930s, with major desti- researchers recently found license plates from thirty- nations being Oaxaca City, the sugarcane fields of seven different U.S. states just along the main road of Veracruz, and the outskirts of Mexico City. Later San Juan Mixtepec, Oaxaca. labor contractors supplying agribusinesses in the As the economic and social dynamics that northwestern state of Sinaloa began recruiting, espe- encourage migration spread more deeply throughout cially in the Mixtec region. These south-to-north Jonathan Fox is a professor in the department of Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center during 2004–2005. Gaspar Rivera-Salgado is Director of the Transnational Communities Program at the New Americans Immigration 2 Museum Learning Center. US-Mexico Policy Bulletin • Issue 7 flows later extended to the Valley of San Quintín in By the early 1990s, an estimated 45,000 to 55,000 northern Baja California. By the early 1980s, indige- Mixtecs worked in agriculture in California’s Central nous migrants reached further north, to California, Valley, and 50,000 to 60,000 Zapotecs had settled in Oregon, and Washington. Los Angeles, mainly in the central neighborhoods of Early transnational migrants were able to regular- Koreatown, Pico-Union, and South-Central. The ize their status and settle in the United States follow- proportion of predominantly indigenous migrants ing the 1986 immigration policy reform (the from southern Mexico in California farm labor Immigration Reform and Control Act, or IRCA). In almost doubled during the 1990s, from 6.1% California, Oaxacans have long-established commu- (1993–1996) to 10.9% (1997–2000), spurring nities in the San Joaquin Valley,the Los Angeles met- researcher Edward Kissam to project that indigenous ropolitan area, and northern San Diego County. migrants will represent more than 20% of Within a relatively short California’s farm workers by 2010. More recently, the indigenous pro- time, these indigenous The parallel process of long-term settlement and portion of the Mexican migrant migrants went from geographic concentration has led to the creation of a population has grown significantly, invisibility to outsiders “critical mass” of indigenous Oaxacans, especially in to attracting media California.This has permitted the emergence of dis- most notably in both urban and rural attention and becoming tinctive forms of social organization and cultural California and increasingly in Texas, a subject of both aca- expression, especially among Mixtecs and Zapotecs. Florida, New York, and Oregon. demic research and pro- Their collective