UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
SANTA CRUZ
THE POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP:
MEXICAN MIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
in
ANTHROPOLOGY
by
Alejandra Castañeda Gómez del Campo
June 2003
The Dissertation of Alejandra Castañeda
Gómez del Campo is approved:
_______________________________
Professor Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Chair
_______________________________
Professor Jonathan Fox
_______________________________
Professor James Clifford
___________________________________
Frank Talamantes
Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies
1
Politics of Citizenship. Mexican Migrants in the United States
Alejandra Castañeda
Abstract
This dissertation aims at bridging the divide between a critique of a statecentered notion of citizenship and the recognition of Mexican migrants as
political actors, as well as subjects of the law. I underscore how migrants’ stories
and the transnational space they inhabit is always already political. Here,
struggles for belonging, for citizenship––whether legal or cultural or both––are
taking place in migrants’ everyday lives. Based on the data derived from my
multisited ethnographic research with politically active Mexican migrants, and in
the migrant community of Aguililla (México) and Redwood City (the United
States), I argue that for migrants, citizenship lies at the crossroads of legal
definitions of membership and senses of belonging.
I review three domains of citizenship––law, belonging, and politics––and
the culture of citizenship that their interaction produces. This dissertation can be
viewed as an ethnography of belonging, an ethnography of law, and/or an
ethnography of politics of citizenship. First, I describe the specific space of
Aguililla-Redwood City, and the culture of citizenship it produces to have a
perspective of how migrants’ situated cultural practices create a sense of
2
belonging. To approach the second culture of citizenship, I review several legal
changes that took place in the 1990’s to understand how México and the U.S.
as nation-states define and limit migrants’ membership. I focus on the 1996
Mexican non-loss of nationality law, the reform to article 36 of the Mexican
Constitution that opened the possibility for the vote abroad, the U.S. 1996
Immigration law, California’s Proposition 187, and the 1996 welfare reform
legislation. Finally, in the third culture of citizenship I address migrants’ practices
of citizenship in the formal political arena, practices that are also permeated by
senses of belonging.
A politics of citizenship can be understood as the different strategies and
practices that people and nation-states use to handle issues of inclusions and
exclusion, recognition, respect, and the struggle over rights. Mexican migrants
and the nation-states they inhabit, configure a politics of citizenship where
belonging to the nation, to the community, is a constant question.
3
Acknowledgments
Throughout this long process of becoming a PhD I received the financial
assistance of various institutions. I want to thank the Fulbright-García Robles
program, the Social Science Research Council Migration program, and the
Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología. For their invaluable support in the
last phase I am grateful to UC-MEXUS and to the University of California Santa
Cruz Chicano/ Latino Research Center. In particular I will always be deeply
thankful to the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California San
Diego, for accepting me as a fellow and a guest scholar and for providing me
with the opportunity of meeting an incredible group of scholars and friends.
I have been very fortunate in this process, as I have always received
support from my colleagues and friends. To all of them, mil gracias. While I am
deeply appreciative to all, I would especially like to mention Mika Court and Tim
Choy: I could not have finished the dissertation without their help and friendship.
I want to thank my grant-writing group in Santa Cruz––Afsaneh Kalahntary, Nina
Schnall, Amy Stamm, Lieba Faier, Ulrika Dahl. With them I learned that any
significant work is the result of many discussions and honest readings of each
other’s work. To Emiko Saldivar, Casey Walsh, Gabriela Soto-Laveaga,
4
Elizabeth Ferry, Cori Hayden, Andrés Villarreal, Elizabeth Kunz, I thank you for
your friendship, encouragement, and your help.
I sincerely thank my dissertation committee members, my advisor Olga NájeraRamírez, Jonathan Fox, and James Clifford, for their guidance and insight. I
would be at fault if I did not mention the institutional and academic support given
to me at different moments by Sergio Raúl Arroyo, Juan Molinar-Horcasitas, and
by Héctor Tejera-Gaona. Likewise, I am grateful to the help provided to me by
Francisco de la Peña, Miguel Moctezuma, Gaspar Rivera-Salgado, Jesús
Martínez, Raúl Ross, Nayamín Martínez and Rufino Domínguez.
To my family, I thank them for providing me with strength. This project––
me, the PhD, the dissertation––would not have been completed without the
moral support of my husband Jerry. For his patience and kindness, todo mi
cariño.
5
Table of Contents
List of Figures
Abstract
Acknowledgements
Chapter I
Introduction
Chapter II
Citizenship and Belonging in a Transnational
Social Space
Chapter III
Hard texts: Engaging with the Legal Realm
Chapter IV
Law as Practice: Experiencing the Law
Chapter V
Building Citizenship: Mexican Migrants’ Practices
of Nationhood and Belonging
Chapter VI
Conclusion
Bibliography
6
List of Figures
Picture of Aguililla and maps of the
transnational social space
P. 63
Map of Aguililla
P. 68
Annex 2. “Two Families locked in a deadly feud”
P. 86
Annex 3. “Chronicling a cross-border family feud”
P. 88
Annex 4: List of public offices and functions precluded
for dual nationals
P. 151
Table A. Initiatives
P. 165
Annex 5: Proposition 187
P. 312
7
Politics of Citizenship. Mexican Migrants in the United States
Chapter I: Introduction
Mexicans’ experiences of migration between México and the United
States connect them with several places within a transnational spatial
dimension. They encounter the legal frameworks of two different nation-states
and, therefore find themselves constantly facing the need to contest,
revindicate, and define the contours of their citizenship. This dissertation aims
to understand how migrants challenge notions of citizenship by examining the
dilemmas that surround the relation of migrants to nation-states. Based on the
ethnographic data derived from my research with politically active Mexican
migrants, and in the migrant community of Aguillia (México) and Redwood City
(the United States), I argue that for migrants, citizenship lies at the crossroads of
legal definitions of membership and senses of belonging.
Though it may appear as fairly obvious that legal and personal
frameworks are at work in the definition of citizenship, or membership to a
nation-state, in practice the obvious becomes slippery, highly contested, and
always a charged issue of language, politics, and position. Thus, a primary aim
8
of this dissertation is to explore the spaces of citizenship as contested and
performed by migrants between two sovereign nations, the United States and
México. And, more importantly, the dissertation explores these spaces through
the discourses, varying engagements and changing perspectives of people who
themselves either establish or cross-between and within the borders of identity,
body-politic and sovereignty.
Reflecting the lives of the migrants I studied, the research for the
dissertation was multi-sited. Traveling between communities in Aguillia, México
and Redwood City, California, one encounters worlds shaped by decades of
migration, through which transnational communities and families have
constructed and continue to construct unique social spaces. Migrants’ constant
and determined connection to their homeland, together with the work of those
who actively belong to sociopolitical movements, have created sites of struggle,
spaces where citizenship is contested, where a politics of citizenship is being
configured facing the nation-state. Within this context, citizenship becomes a
site of political and cultural struggle in everyday interactions as well as in the
relation between people and the state, or among nation-states.1
Migrants are people who live connected to two or more countries and who,
because of this fact, have to confront the question of where they belong and
where they place their primary allegiances. Whether nations, villages, or
See Renato Rosaldo and William Flores. 1997. “Identity Conflict, and Evolving Latino Communities: Cultural
Citizenship in San José, California.” In William Flores and Rina Benmayor. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship.
Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Beacon Press, Boston.
1
9
families, these spaces of community have a more fundamental role in defining
what citizenship is in practice.
From a state-down approach, citizenship becomes a question of rights and
duties. However, such a perspective elides the interconnection between
citizenship and identity that influences practices of citizenship and belonging
within communities. As powerful legal frameworks restrict or expand their rights,
senses of Belonging remain a more significant feature of citizenship as
manifested in migrants’ own narration of their membership to one nation-state,
town, or another. As the two nation-states of the United States and México
produce laws to deal with the uncomfortable existence of migrants, a conflictive
relation emerges. In the U.S., Mexican migrants are tacitly accepted as a labor
force while simultaneously many forces work to keep them out of the political
community. However, it is important to note that Mexican migrants interact with
this supra-entity through their everyday actions. Through their very existence
and practices, migrants engage in a tense relationship with the different agents
that form part of the state, and which appear to be constantly attempting to
exclude them from any entitlement and or sense of belonging. And, in the
process, they thereby redefine the terms and limits of their membership.
Thus, for the purposes of this dissertation, and for the lives of the migrants I
study, citizenship/ membership in a nation-state, is not a given. It is a contested
terrain into which migrants enter; and, it is a terrain in which in their movements
10
and practices they have power. Specifically, Mexican migrants who have been
historically disenfranchised and denied political existence are now calling upon
the Mexican state and insisting upon a rooted and grounded identity in order to
claim political agency, thus challenging constraining definitions of citizenship.
Migrants’ existence seems to be at a disadvantage facing either of the two
nation-states they cross, however they do have voices and practices to express
their own contestations and visions of the terrain. In fact, the very idea for this
dissertation lies upon the recognition that citizenship and nation-states are
changing and that the position of migrants has had much to do with these
changes.
In order to address Mexican migrants’ practices of citizenship, I explore
three domains inherent to the spaces they occupy, craft and attempt to inhabit:
community/belonging, the letter of the law, and formal political arenas.
In
contrast to the language present in all of these domains – legal and informal,
public and private – which foregrounds “essential” identities in the quest for
definitions of belonging and legitimacy, this dissertation recognizes (as do some
of the migrants I encountered) that notions, politics, and cultures of citizenship
are constantly performed, contested, and reformulated. Moreover, transnational
migration poses a challenge to the very discourses and myths of citizenship that
the nation-state would have be true, and inalienable.
Within transnational
migration, there are instances where nation-states and people converge,
11
opening spaces of confusion and conflict in which both people and laws at
different times and in different ways either endeavor to expand or restrict rights.
In the sections that follow, I turn to the theoretical discussions undergirding this
study, before presenting the Methodology of my Fieldwork and, finally, the
organization of the chapters that form the body of the dissertation.
Theoretical Discussion: Migratory Spectacles
In the first section, I presented an overview of Mexican migrants in relationship
to the nation-states of México and the United States. Studying the tensions and
dilemmas of this relationship, the following paradox becomes apparent:
citizenship, formed and protected by laws, lived and enacted by individuals, both
forbids and necessitates migrants. Conceptually and theoretically, any study of
migrants within nation-states leads to the following questions: What do migrants
do to citizenship? How do they practice citizenship and impact the nation-state?
The underlying question of this work is how migrants’ transnational practices
challenge and redefine state definitions and practices of citizenship. In other
words, rather than accepting migrants as marginal actors facing the nation-state,
12
this dissertation argues that citizenship is constructed both by nation-states and
by migrants’ transnational practices.2
An analysis of citizenship through the spectacles (both lenses and events) of
migration underlines how practices of belonging are inextricably related to
practices of citizenship as defined and policed by nation-states.
A level of
negotiation takes place among the legal and cultural dimensions: legal
frameworks are reformulated to deal with the existence of migrants and their
situated cultural practices, sometimes to include them in the polity, sometimes to
exclude them (often by criminalizing them) from the benefits of citizenship.
Thus, the politics of citizenship that migrants face represent a complex whole of
practices, and frameworks; which the migrants in turn reconfigure through their
own political practices and senses of belonging.
As already indicated, studying citizenship necessarily involves analyzing
texts in relationship to lives.
The present dissertation brings together four
bodies of literature, including studies in: citizenship theory, migration, political
culture, and legal anthropology. In every case, the literature is both a support
and a text to be analyzed for its intervention within larger discourses. Citizenship
theory, for example, is the central question of this dissertation, of the migrants I
2
Indeed, the lens may even be push further. As a result of the interdependent and complex relation between
México and the United States, the degree to which the nation-state depends on migration is certain. Is the nationstate also dependent on a flexible citizenship? Is the nation-state happy to produce illegitimate outsiders, upon
whom the system depends? This dissertation may point in the direction of these larger questions by exploring the
cultures of citizenship currently at work in the Mexican migrant transnational space.
13
study, of the nation-states who exist within territorial boundaries of self and
other, and thus it is the body of literature that runs throughout the dissertation.
The dissertation both foregrounds and contests conceptualizations and
discourses of citizenship: as theory and practice.
Next, I turn to Migration studies in order to foreground the particular
cultures and politics of the spaces and subjectivities migrants inhabit. To better
locate the scholarship on citizenship and migration, I review the literature on
political culture, in particular the one developed in México, because just as
citizenship works differently across and on either side of the border, so are
notions of political culture understood and practiced differently. Drawing on the
Mexican literature allows me to locate Mexican migrants within their own
contexts. Likewise, inasmuch as the dissertation delves on the relation between
migrants and nation-states, I engage literature, mostly anthropological, which
examines the relations and myths of nation and state. Finally, clarify the
connections between citizenship and migration, I review works in the field of
legal anthropology, which are essential to understanding how, as a discourse,
the legal realm articulates migrants’ identity, and their concomitant everyday
practices. The literature I engage positions my work within a larger theoretical
discourse which is multi-disciplinary, multi-vocal and concerned with the
practices of power, contestation and identity along sliding nodes and scales of
self, family, town, nation, and state.
14
The intervention of my dissertation within these bodies of literature lies in
the fact that I explore three cultural spaces of citizenship to understand how
migrants challenge notions and practices of citizenship.3
First, I review the
culture of citizenship practiced in the transnational social space constructed by
Mexican migrants within communities in the U.S. Second, I explore the culture
of citizenship created by the interventions between Mexican migrants and the
Mexican and U.S. legal frameworks that surround them. In themselves, these
legal frameworks represent an institutionalization and a conceptualization of
citizenship that is marked by cultural practices and understandings of
membership to an imagined community.
Third, I describe and analyze the
cultures of citizenship practiced by politically active migrants as they engage the
formal political system, in particular the Mexican one.4 Here, legal notions of
citizenship come together with practices of belonging. Though presented
separately, these cultures of citizenship constantly overlap, and together they
configure the politics of citizenship that takes place in the Mexican transnational
experience.
I use the term ‘cultural spaces of citizenship’ to refer to the arenas in which citizenship is negotiated, and constituted
by elements such as belonging, law, and politics.
4 Though not all migrants are politically active, I choose to highlight the language and interventions of those who are
politically active because they interpret and articulate connections between legal discourses, citizenship, the nation,
and the nation-state which impact all migrants – active or not.
3
15
Contested Belongings:
Cultures of Citizenship and Imagined Communities
In a first instance, citizenship is a legal status defined within the
framework of the nation-state.
But citizenship also refers to belonging to a
community, imagined or otherwise.
Scholars generally study citizenship by
emphasizing one dimension, either the legal or the cultural. Typically, legal
definitions of citizenship receive the most attention in that, officially, constitutions
figure as the founding and defining documents of nation-states. Within legal
frameworks that presume territory and location as a prerequisite to citizenship,
migrants represent an obvious challenge to nation-states’ enclosed notions of
citizenship. However, between legal proscription and daily practice lie other
elements––such as economic factors, especially flows of labor and capital––that
also impact the construction of citizenship.
If any traditional or essential politics of citizenship could ever be defined,
those terms themselves are undermined by the structural demands of today's
economic reality where the very terms of nation-states are being reconfigured by
the regime of flexible accumulation, which requires a mobile work force as well
as mobile capital. As I show in the case of Aguillia/Redwood City, this economic
conjuncture becomes particularly interesting when nation-states like México and
the United States begin to change their rules and practices because of citizens’
16
actions or, as is more often the case, of de facto non-citizens who, regardless of
or because of a status granted to them by the state, impact the very reality of
those nation-states.
Thus, while taking into account the economic contexts of migrants and nationstates, this dissertation focuses on legal definitions of citizenship and nationality
as cultural practice thus merging legal and cultural frames. The dissertation’s
lens follows the language and interests of nation-states and individuals, because
in the language of the state––via its laws––and of people––via their stories and
practices––citizenship, and definitions of belonging lie at the heart of the matter.
Citizenship and Inequality
The discussion of citizenship concentrates on understanding how
membership in a society is established. The notion of being a citizen is both
ideological and structural. Within European history, the notion of citizenship
became first and foremost a revindication of one’s equality before the law.
Cutting across differences in class and birth was a new political and universal
identification––Citoyen, Citoyenne––which made one equal before the law.
Mainly grounded in Western history, citizenship has thus been viewed as a
universal concept. This perspective is best reflected in the texts that constitute
modern nation-states.
However, in practice universals are never so pure, and
17
thus theorists of the concept of citizenship search to understand not only the
content, the spirit, and the form of the laws determining citizenship, but also the
social arrangements entangled in producing such rights.
At the heart of sociological discussions on citizenship lies Thomas
Marshall’s (1950) liberal theory. For him, citizenship is a question that pertains
to modernity and is “essentially the amalgam of three categories of rights: civic,
political, and social.”5 Together they constitute and define social membership.
Marshall defines citizenship “primarily in terms of the evolution of civil society
and the working out of the tensions between the sovereign subject and solidarity
in a nation-state.”6
At the center of Marshall’s account of citizenship “lies the
contradiction between the formal political equality… and the persistence of
extensive social and economic inequality”.
For Marshall, the persistence of
inequality is “ultimately rooted in the character of the capitalist market place and
the existence of private property.”7 Marshall proposed that the invention and
extension of citizenship came as the principal political means for resolving, or at
least containing, those contradictions. Citizenship is understood, therefore, as
the modality whereby benefits are distributed to different sectors of a society.8
According to Marshall, in the United States, civil rights developed first in
William Flores. 1997. “Citizen vs Citizenry: Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Cultural Citizenhip.” In
Benmayor, Rina and William Flores. Op. Cit. P. 257.
6 Aihwa Ong. 1996. “Cultural Citizenship as Subject -Making. Immigrants Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries
in the United States”. In Current Anthropology Vol. 37, No. 5, December. P. 737
7 Bryan S Turner. 1990. “Outline of a Theory of Citizenship”. Sociology 24 (May 1990) Vol. 2. P. 191.
5
Cf. Bryan S. Turner. 1993. “Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Citizenship”. In Turner, Bryan. Citizenship
and Social Theory. SAGE, London. P. 3
8
18
the eighteen-century when individual rights––such as freedom of speech, fair
trial, and equal access to the legal system––acquired legal status. In the
nineteenth-century, political rights appeared as part of working class struggle for
political equality in terms of greater access to the parliamentary process. 9 The
articulation of class interests required the development of a political citizenship,
that is, of electoral rights and wider access to political institutions. In this sense,
political citizenship––the right to vote, to associate freely with others, to
participate in the government––developed “with the evolution of modern
parliamentary democracy.”10 Finally, in the twentieth-century social rights made
their appearance and were institutionalized through the welfare state.
Bryan S. Turner further develops Marshall’s citizenship theory by
focusing on the inherent contradictions undergirding notions of citizenship. For
Turner, citizenship is bound up with the problem of unequal distribution of
societal resources, but it does not solve the problems of inequality. Rather,
citizenship appears as a contingent, and an arbitrary set of rights. 11 Where
Marshall foregrounds the equal entitlements promulgated under a welfare state,
Turner shows that by definition a state cannot be responsive to every member of
the polity in the same way. Turner understands the modern question of
citizenship as being structured by two central problems: 1) how to define social
9
Idem. P. 191
Bryan. S Turner. 1993. Op. Cit. p. 6
11 William Flores. 1997. Op. Cit. P. 257, quoting Bryan S. Turner. 1993. “Outline of a Theory of Human Rights.”
Sociology 27(3) P. 498.
10
19
membership in a highly differentiated society where the authority of the nationstate appears to be under question, and 2) how to allocate resources efficiently
and equally in a state of unequal allocation of resources, which continues to be
dominated by various forms of particularistic inequality. 12
In his conclusion,
Turner does not jump to a vision that sees citizenship as a force allowing for
equality. Rather, he concludes by defining citizenship as equal in name but not
in practice; as “a set of practices which define social membership in a society
which is highly differentiated both in its culture and social institutions, and where
social solidarity can only be based upon general and universalistic standards.”13
The distinctive and useful aspect of Turner’s perspective lies in the distinction he
draws between citizenship in theory (as ideology) and in practice. Moreover, he
presents citizenship as a changing category––equal in name but not in practice–
–whose content is constantly negotiated and modified through political
struggles.
Renato Rosaldo takes the work of Marshall and Turner still further by
arguing that the contradictions are not only inherent and constantly negotiated,
but that citizenship is by definition about difference. He argues that the way
liberal democracy has defined citizenship has always presupposed the
exclusion of certain groups from the category of citizenship, that is, of having
rights and equality. Moreover, he maintains that the sociological theories of
12
13
Cf. Bryan S. Turner, 1993. Op. Cit. P. 2
Idem P. 2
20
citizenship have not accounted for the different ways in which so-called equal
rights and entitlements are lived by people. In response, Rosaldo develops the
concept of cultural citizenship, which he defines as:
the right to be different and to belong in a participatory democratic
sense. It claims that, in a democracy, social justice calls for equity
among all citizens, even when such differences as race, religion,
class, gender, or sexual orientation potentially could be used to
make certain people less equal or inferior to others.14
By celebrating “the right to be different and to belong,” the notion of cultural
citizenship addresses directly the lack of a de facto meaningful citizenship,
where the principle of equality fails to be applied to all areas of social life.
Rosaldo, thus, reclaims the marker of difference to argue, together with William
Flores and Rina Benmayor, that the question of citizenship is centrally defined
by a sense of belonging and the right to be different within a nation-state.
Rosaldo, thus also reclaims equality in name (if not in practice) for
subjects of nation-states, arguing that citizenship should be
the right to be different (in terms of race, ethnicity or native
language) with respect to the norms of the dominant national
community, without compromising one’s right to belong, in the
sense of participating in the nation-state’s democratic processes.
14
Rosaldo, Renato. 1994. “Cultural Citizenship and Education Democracy”. In Cultural Anthropology 9(3). P.402
21
However, he recognizes that : “The enduring exclusions of the color line often
deny full citizenship to Latinos and other people of color.”15 Ever since the
ratification of the U.S. Constitution, Rosaldo points out that alongside the
struggle for first class citizenship, every excluded group has been fighting for
equality. These struggles give way to the emergence of new political subjects.16
These subjects expand the notion of citizenship as they create new rights and
claims.
Thus, for Rosaldo, citizenship is not only the possession of a paper, it
also implicates subjects taking action and claiming space in accordance with
their cultural practices. It is about being visible, being heard, and belonging. 17
Rosaldo sees how the practices of individuals within systems have an impact on
the systems themselves; thereby allowing for a theoretical lens which can
account for agency and power from below and from within systems. As Renato
Rosaldo explains, “citizenship is informed by culture…claims to citizenship are
reinforced or subverted by cultural assumptions and practices.”18
Like Rosaldo’s approach to citizenship, I argue that migrants’ citizenship
is built upon their tense and unavoidable relation to the state. However, whereas
Rosaldo, Renato in Aihwa Ong. 1996. “Cultural Citizenship as Subject- Making. Immigrants Negotiate Racial and
Cultural Boundaries in the United States”. In Current Anthropology Vol. 37, No. 5, December. p. 738
16 Renato Rosaldo 1997. Op. Cit. P. 96.
17 See Renato Rosaldo. 1997. Op. Cit. P.37
18 Renato Rosaldo. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship, inequality, and multiculturalism.” In Rina Benmayor, and William
Flores. 1997. Op. Cit. P. 35.
15
22
Rosaldo’s concept of cultural citizenship advocates different ways of being a
citizen of the United States, this dissertation turns the lens towards México and
different ways of being Mexican in México and in the U.S.
A study about
Mexican migrants who have to deal with two nation-states requires a recognition
of the interaction between legal realms, the ideas of citizenship they produce,
and the cultural practices that signify belonging to a particular political and
cultural community––a multi-sited interaction that Rosaldo does not prioritize. I
attempt to contribute to the understanding of citizenship, migrant political
subjectivity and the changing face of nation-states, through the study of the
three engagements of citizenship explored in this dissertation, where I illustrate
that the legal and the cultural realms are constantly redefined and interlaced
with each other.
Flexible Citizenship : the celebrations and punishments of mobility
In the contemporary phase of late and global capitalism, the economic
and political forces that were the context of theories developed by Marshall and
Turner are no longer so relevant.
Though many themes remain intact, a
difference appears not only in the engagements and preoccupations of theorists,
but also in the engagements and preoccupations of nation-states.
Furthering the debate examining relations between citizens and nation23
states, Aihwa Ong develops a theory of flexible citizenship. As we saw with
Rosaldo, later bodies of work on citizenship, foreground human agency in
relationship to the forces of capitalism and nation-states. Ong looks for human
agency, and how it produces and negotiates cultural meanings within late
capitalism.
In the tale she tells, mobility and flexibility become the new
discourse of both capital and citizenship.
In her attempt to understand the relation between citizens and nationstates in
late
capitalism,
Ong reviews
Michael Foucault’s notion of
governmentality, which maintains that “regimes of truth and power produce
disciplinary effects that condition our sense of self and our everyday
practices.”19
Following the regimes that surround everyday interactions and
transnational strategies of migrant-citizens, through their family, state, and
economic transactions, Ong observes “a form of cultural politics embedded in
specific power contexts.”
She looks at how systems of governmentality
condition, structure, and manage the movements of population and capital.20
Although Aihwa Ong explores the connection between flexibility and
citizenship, her account differs from the celebratory tone adopted by several
studies on globalization and transnationalism in one important respect. 21 Ong
views nations and states as entities that are still bound to each other, while also
19
Aihwa. Ong. 1999. Op. Cit. P. 6.
Idem.
21 For example Arjun Appadurai. 1996. Modernity at Large. Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of
Minnesota Press. Minneapolis/London. Also Ulf Hannerz. 1996. Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places.
Routledge, London/New York.
20
24
influencing citizens.
She then tries to understand how under a “condition of
transnationality a mix of regimes of power alternately discipline, regulate or
civilize subjects in place or on the move.”22 For Ong, then, traveling subjects
are never free of regulations defined by state power, processes of capital
accumulation, and kinship norms.
In fact, they face the regulations of more
than one state. For Ong, global capitalism is not necessarily threatening to a
nation-state’s control over its citizens. Rather, she wonders if the state is not
“merely fashioning a new relationship to capital mobility, and to the
manipulations by citizens and non-citizens alike.”23 Flexibility, then, is potentially
simultaneously fostered and punished by the nation-states and the capitalism
upon which they depend.
Specifically, Aihwa Ong develops a notion of flexible citizenship through
studying Hong Kong capitalists––Taipans––who are searching to accumulate
capital and social prestige in the global arena. These subjects “emphasize, and
are regulated by, practices favoring flexibility, mobility, and re-positioning in their
relations to markets, governments, and cultural regimes.”24 Taipans use nationstate regulations in their favor by having the right to make claims on the nationstates to which they ascribe themselves.
They hold in their hands several
passports that permit their various citizenships and multiple legal statuses.
22
Aihwa Ong. 1999. Op. Cit. P. 28
Aihwa Ong. 1999. “Introduction”. Flexible Citizenship. The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Duke University
Press, Durham-London. P. 3
24Aihwa Ong. 1999. Idem
23
25
However, Ong shows that the flexibility and power of these Taipans is also
produced by the state.
The specific terms and nodes of Ong’s definition of flexible citizenship are
worth quoting at length. Thus, for Ong, flexible citizenship:
refers to the cultural logics of capitalist accumulation, travel, and
displacement that induce subjects to respond fluidly and
opportunistically to changing political-economic conditions.25
As capitalist practices “induce” and favor displacement, subjects respond
“fluidly” to changing economic and political conditions. On the one hand,
citizenship encourages subjects to identify with a local arena. On the other
hand, these same subjects are encouraged to operate in global arenas.
In their quest to accumulate capital and social prestige in the
global arena, subjects emphasize and are regulated by practices
favoring flexibility, mobility, and repositioning in relation to markets,
governments, and political regimes.26
Those who have the capacity to be more flexible and mobile are the ones with
the possibility to accumulate more capital and social prestige. Membership to
equal and celebrated status within the society thus depends upon “flexibility”
25
26
Aihwa Ong. Op.Cit. P. 6
Aihwa Ong. Op. Cit. P. 6.
26
and “mobility”. These same subjects are “regulated” by “logics and practices …
produced within particular structures of meaning about family, gender,
nationality, class mobility, and social power.27
While the class positions of Aihwa Ong’s subjects of study and those
represented in this work are strikingly different, Ong’s approach provides
theoretical tools to understand how the nation-state works upon subjects, what
regimes of governmentality frame their existence; and also, how subjects’
situated cultural practices help them create spaces for agency. I share her
perspective that traveling subjects are never free of state regulations, processes
of capital accumulation, and cultural ties. The stories of Mexican transnational
migrants who, far from the Hong Kong Taipan, appear to be caught under
transnational capital flows where labor is just another economic variable,
provide a different angle to the theory of traveling subjects. However, rather
than contradict Ong’s perspective, the Mexican case makes it more complex
and enrichens her theoretical approach.
For Ong, the nation-state is flexible, it is always rearticulating itself and
negotiating its roles within a transnational arena. Nation-states redraw their
boundaries just as subjects reconfigure their own notions of space and place
through their displacements. Other accounts of displacement under “flexible
capitalism” can shed light on how the nation-state is far from being erased or
27
Idem.
27
subverted by a transnational capitalism that seems to come from nowhere, as
well as having a mysterious destiny. There are many ways in which Mexican
transnational migrants get around nation-states’ constraints, just as the Hong
Kong Taipans do. But the consequences for México and the U.S. as nationstates and their approaches to citizenship point to a different transnational
relationship. This dissertation addresses migrants’ agency by looking at their
everyday forms of resistance to state regulations.28 This approach allows for an
understanding of Mexican migrants’ particular genre of “flexible citizenship.” 29
Still further, taking the case of the Taipans in relation to Mexican
migrants, poses the question of the new forms of inequality that “citizenship” is
beginning to embody globally.
If nation-states are seen as sovereign and
separate entities based on static enclosed identities, then mobility and migration
would threaten the very terms and notions of its sovereignty. However, such is
clearly not the case. Rather, mobility and migration are both celebrated and
punished by nation-states in the negotiation of citizenship.
In Ong’s case, the
Taipans come close to being equal in name and practice as “flexible citizens”;
as for Mexican migrants to the United States they remain migrants (other/
James Scott defines everyday forms of resistance as the “ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups.” These
forms of resistance “require little or no coordination or planning; they make use of implicit understandings and
informal networks, they often represent a form of self-help, they typically avoid any direct, symbolic confrontation
with authority.” James C Scott. 1985. Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University
Press, New Haven/London. P. xvi.
29 C.f. Aihwa Ong. 1992. “Limits to Cultural Accumulation: Chinese Capitalists on the American Pacific Rim”. In
Nina Glick-Schiller, Linda Basch and Christina Blanc-Szanton (eds). Towards a Transnational Perspective on
Migration, Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences .Vol.
645.
28
28
unequal) in name, even as they endeavor to acquire equality in practice by living
out a form of “flexible belonging”.
On migration: reconceptualizing space and place beyond the nation-state
In the literature about transnational migration, the discussion begins with
words themselves.
Is the question migration or immigration, displacements,
diasporas, or travels? How are these terms entangled with each other and with
citizenship? One recent shift in the theoretical apparatus involves referring to
migrants instead of immigrants.
Whereas immigrant implies someone who
moves and permanently stays in the place of arrival, migrant refers to someone
who continues to move back and forth between two homes that may entail a
home-place, a nation, a community, or another place (maybe a mythical home,
an imaginary origin).
Both concepts are intertwined with the notion of
citizenship, since the latter attempts to categorize people with nation-states,
sometimes in a strict fashion, other times in a more flexible manner.
Although the literature on México-U.S. migration is vast, it focuses mostly
on demographics, labor flows, and economics.
Patterns of migration and
sending and receiving communities have tended to be the privileged models of
analysis of migration.30
30
However, recent works move beyond this frame,
Cornelius 1990; Dinerman 1982; Escobar Latapí 1993.
29
pondering the cultural and political components of migration.31
There has
recently been a significant shift from the study of migration to the analysis of
transnational processes in respect to México-U.S. relations as well as with other
regions of the world, providing a broader frame for understanding the
interconnected and transnational nature of migration. 32
The transnational migration model aims to understand migration as a
dynamic process of people constantly moving with corresponding movements of
cultural meanings, practices, and economic exchanges.
33
In this model,
communities are seen as expanded across the border, as multilocational. This
approach is informed by theories of transnational capitalist processes and the
ways in which they induce and/or presuppose displacements of people. An
important feature of this model lies in the fact that such studies aim to
understand the agency that migrant communities have instead of viewing them
as passive components of transnational capitalism.
Within this perspective,
migration is seen as a network, a connection, or a circuit.34 These perspectives
share a common understanding of migration as a lived spatial dimension
constructed through social relations at both the macro and micro levels.
Likewise, these approaches allow for an understanding of citizenship as central
31
González Gutiérrez 1995; Lowenthal and Burguess 1993; Dresser 1993; Pérez Godoy 1997; Zavella 1997; NájeraRamírez 1994; Rivera-Salgado 2000.
32 Ong 1992, 1999; Basch et al 1994; Wiltshire 1992; Glick Schiller et al 1992; Massey, Durand et al 1991; Goldring
1996; Rouse 1989; Rivera-Salgado 2000.
33 Portes 1996, Glick-Schiller 1992; Basch 1994; Rouse 1992; Goldring 1996; Wiltshire 1992; Kearney 1991,
Nagengast 1990; Guarnizo and Smith 1998.
34 See Rouse 1992; Goldring 1998, Rivera-Salgado 2000, Fitzgerald 2000, Smith and Guarnizo 1998.
30
to migrants’ lives, as well as to the nation-states they inhabit.
A revalorization of the spatial dimension brings the discussion around
migration to a different point.
Whereas in the push-pull model locality is seen
as a fixed place, which is always-already there, in the multilocational model the
local is revalued as a space in flux, where meanings, cultural forms and
practices are produced, transported, and reinscribed through the intensity of
migration. The local is not only the place where migrants come from. The local
is the space in which they live, which might also be connected to various places
in different countries. In some of this literature these spaces are referred to as
transnational social communities and/or transnational social fields.
The concept of transnationalism itself is open to different interpretive
frameworks. In cultural studies, transnationalism is understood in terms of flows
of meaning and material objects.35 Thus, some scholars have focused on the
dynamic exchanges and emerging cultural landscapes of transnational flows of
culture.36
On the other hand, in migration studies, transnationalism can be
understood as “systems of social relations that are wider than national borders.”
In any case, the focus is on movements of people, activities, networks,
relationships, and identities of transnational migrants.37 As defined by Alejandro
Portes, transnational communities are:
35
Appadurai 1996, Hannerz 1996, Clifford 1997.
e.g. Hannerz 1989; Appadurai 1996; García-Canclini, 1989.
37 R. Rouse, 1989; L. Goldring, 1992; M. Kearney and C. Nagengast, 1989; Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. Op. Cit. P. 10.
36
31
dense networks across political borders created by immigrants in
their quest for economic advancement and social recognition.
Through these networks, an increasing number of people are able
to lead dual lives. Participants are often bilingual, move easily
between different cultures, frequently maintain homes in two
countries, and pursue economic, political and cultural interests that
require their presence in both.38
Once understood as subjects operating within transnational spheres, migrants
become transmigrants, “part of a social system whose networks are based in
two or more nation-states and who maintain activities, identities and statuses in
several social locations.”39 Thus, transmigrants’ social relations span borders;
“their identities, decisions and social networks connect two or more societies
simultaneously.”40 When migrants are understood in a transnational context, it
is found that migrants retain their relationships to their home society, “not in
contradiction but in conjunction with their settlement with their host societies.”41
Furthering the perspective on migration as a transnational social space,
by focusing on migration’s connection to citizenship, this dissertation illustrates
how transnational migrant’s experiences articulate them in relationship to
several places within a transnational spatial dimension, thereby complicating
Alejandro Portes. 1997. “Immigration Theory for a New Century: Some Problems and Opportunities.” International
Migration Review, 31 (4):799-825. P. 812.
39 Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. “Transnationalism: a New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration”. In Nina
Glick-Schiller, Linda Barch and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1992. Op. Cit. P. 1
40 Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. Op. Cit.
41 Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. Op. cit. P.8
38
32
their sense of belonging and most likely their political allegiances. In this sense
the issue of citizenship directly impacts migrants’ lives each time their activity in
a particular nation-state is questioned, limited, or forbidden as a result of their
migrant practices.
In his work on postmodernity, David Harvey argues that a new global
space, produced by the use of new communication technologies, has
undermined an older sense of a “place-called-home,” leaving people placeless
and disoriented.42 Following this argument, migrants would be a fine example of
postmodern disorientation inasmuch as they seem to be unbounded and
displaced. If one understands migration as a process of leaving one place and
settling down in another, of being pushed out from a region and pulled in by
another, then, probably, migrants experience a lack of orientation, a loss of a
place they can call home. But if the gaze is moved away from the departing and
arriving poles, maybe one can see that “home” for a migrant is that connected
space, where the linkage lines get thicker the more they are traveled, walked,
lived, and filled with words, stories, and meanings.
Many readings of place as “home” imagine it as portraying the “security of
a (false) stability and apparently reassuring boundedness,” thus requiring places
to be identified as enclosures, and establishing “their identity through negative
42
In Doreen Massey. 1992. Op. Cit. P. 8
33
counterposition with the Other beyond the boundaries.”43
Doreen Massey
proposes an alternative conceptualization of place as formed out of social
interrelations. Most striking within her model, is the observation that a proportion
of the social interrelations stretch beyond that “place” itself.44
The problem
arises when one then tries to figure out why, for so many people––especially
migrants, particularly Mexican migrants in the U.S.––“home” figures and is
narrated as a stable, bounded place. Moreover, because of the intensity in
which this space is inhabited by people, it acquires qualities of permanence and
solidity. While migrants recognize that they left home because it was
economically insecure, because home excluded their own imagined futures, the
experience of displacement makes migrants narrate an idyllic “place called
home,” a place where they belong and of which they thus can be a part as
citizens.
Reconfiguring boundaries
The “displaced subjects” called migrants, together with a regime of
flexible accumulation and transnational processes, reconfigure the boundaries
of the different nations they cross––of México and the U.S. Ironically as the
border tries to establish their difference and, thereby exclude them, it is their
43
Cf. Doreen Massey. 1992. Op. Cit. P.13
Cf. Doreen Massey. 1994. “Double Articulation. A Place in the World”. In Angelica Bammer, Ed. 1994.
Displacements. University of Wisconsin Press, P.115
44
34
very shaky existence as citizens, their disputed membership to the nation, that
puts into question the notion of the border.
Histories of displacement can be histories of resistance, as well as
histories of shifting power relations among migrants and the places to which
they travel. When migrant populations are seen as immersed in the flows of
flexible capital, moving from one place to another according to the needs of the
labor market, traces of a unique identity seem to wither away. Nonetheless, as
unbounded as the “transnational” is understood to be, its presumed remove
from the local can be misleading.
As will be seen in the case of Mexican
migrants, there are levels of “locality” integral to the transnational. For when
displacement occurs in the transnational sphere, places are formed where a
particular set of social relations, identities, and meanings coalesce, where a
unique sense of home and citizenship emerges. As mentioned above, this
space can be called transnational social space where the local marks the
transnational sphere.45
Studies on transnational migration have shed light on the roles migrants
have been playing in the battle over the meaning of citizenship. The spaces
inhabited by Mexican transnational migrants provide an ethnographic example
of the multilocal practice and construction of transnational citizenship.
The
people who form part of this space negotiate their citizenship through their
45
Cf. Luin Goldring. 1996. "Blurring Borders: Constructing Transnational Community in the Process of México-U.S.
Migration.” In Research in Community Sociology, Vol. 6, Greenwich, Ct: JAI Press. Dan Chekki, Ed.
35
everyday and situated cultural practices, thus re-framing the contours of the
notion of citizenship. As Bryan S. Turner said, citizenship is construed through
practice, through social relations, and political struggles.
Mexican migrants,
especially those fighting for their political rights abroad, contest a notion of
citizenship that excludes them, just as Aguilillans in Redwood City practice a
cultural citizenship that will give them the strength to belong and establish
membership.
In his studies on Oaxacan migrant workers, Gaspar Rivera-Salgado
demonstrates that transnational migrants “construct and reproduce political,
economic, and social ties and identities in both sending and receiving
communities.”46 The history of constant migration within this region has created
a transnational social space known as Oaxacalifornia.47
This space of
Oaxacalifornia, and spaces like it, entail specific practices of citizenship. For
indigenous migrants from this region, their citizenship is primarily located and
defined at the local level. For Mixtecos, a citizen in good standing is the one who
performs the tasks, the cargo, that the community of origin requires of him even
if this means leaving or returning to the community.
The benefits of being
considered a member of the community can be very concrete, meaning, for
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 1999. “Mixtec activism in Oaxacalifornia. Transborder Grassroots Political Struggles.” In
American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 42, No. 9 June/July 1999, 1439-1458. P. 1455.
47 Michael Kearney and Carol Nagengast. 1989. Anthropological Perspectives on Transnational Communities in Rural
California. Davis, California Institute for Rural Studies.
46
36
example, that a person can continue holding ownership of his family’s land. 48
However, as the local becomes more complex in terms of place, acting the role
of a citizen also becomes more complex. Rivera-Salgado’s work provides an
insight into how citizenship is never a straightforward issue, and the origins of
the complexity are not necessarily connected to the nation-state, especially
when ethnicity and migration come into the picture.
A perspective that focuses more on the relationship between power and
citizenship stems from Evelina Dagnino’s review of Antonio Gramsci’s theory of
hegemony and its impact in Latin America. Dagnino finds that Gramsci’s theory
of hegemony brought to light that the
attribution of meanings takes place in a context characterized by
conflict and power relations. In this sense, the struggle over
meanings and who has the power to attribute them is not only a
political struggle in itself but is also inherent and constitutive of all
politics.49
For Dagnino, the possibility of a new political subject appears as power relations
shape subjectivities. This new subject and its situated cultural practices are
articulated within political struggles, thus creating a new citizenship, which
emerges from below and contests universalistic notions of citizenship.
See Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 2000. “Transnational Political Strategies:The Case of Mexican Indigenous Migrants.”
In Nancy Foner, Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, editors. Immigration Research for a New Century.
Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Russell Sage Foundation, New York. Pp. 145- 146.
49 Evelina Dagnino. 1998. “Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy: Changing Discourses and Practices of the Latin
American Left.” In Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, Eds. Cultures of Politics Politics of
Cultures. Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements. Westview Press, U.S.A. P. 43
48
37
Evelina Dagnino’s perspective intersects with a body of literature on
Political Culture. Political culture is defined in terms of the specific power
mechanisms, negotiations of interests, and ideologies within which a nationstate and the subjects who are part of it frame their relations to each other. 50
However, the concept of political culture is not inherently linked to those of
nation and state. Inasmuch as issues around authority, consensus building,
conflict management, power distribution, and resistance, among others, appear
in every culture, in every group of people, it is possible to speak about the
existence of a political culture without the prior existence of a nation.51
Political Culture Studies of México
Anthropology’s contribution to the analysis of the political––with its extensibility
toward an understanding of the nation and the state––lies in its comparative
perspective of different political systems. Likewise, anthropology has studied
politics by analyzing formal and informal structures of ruling, negotiations of
power, domination, control, or coercion. For anthropology, the study of politics
has been about comparing the different ways societies organize and structure
50
Anderson, 1990.
Interestingly, in many cases, the literature developed in this field plays in to and in turn influences practices of
citizenship.
51
38
their power relations.52 Departing from a quest to understand the origins of the
state, the transition from societies ruled through lineage (blood ties, status
societies) to societies with a centralized and specialized power structure, what
anthropologists brought into the analysis of the political realm was the study of
the cultural processes that sustained a particular formal structure of power. 53
Thus, in anthropological terms, understanding politics is always concerned with
understanding what is behind the scenes, the meanings, symbols, discourses,
ideologies, and the particular human interactions that allow and compel the
existence of specific structures of power.54
Thus, anthropologists have opened a field of research on the culture of politics,
which emphasizes the study of politics, state, nation, and understandings and
practices of citizenship.
Mexican anthropologists, in particular, have mostly
framed their works within the model developed in the 1960s by political
scientists Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in their now classic Civic Culture
study.55 However, even though Mexican anthropological works approach
political culture as a process that involves political socialization and its
integration into the symbolic universes that contribute to the stability of the
52
See E.E. Evans-Pritchard (The Nuer 1940), Edmund Leach (Political Systems of Highland Burma 1954), Henry
Claessen (The Early State 1978), Abner Cohen (Custom and Politics in Urban Africa: a study of Hausa migrants in a
Yoruba Town 1969), Richard Newbold Adams (La Red de la Expansión Humana 1978).
53 Of mayor influence are the works of Lewis H. Morgan (Ancient Society 1877), Henry Maine (Ancient Law 1887),
and Robert Lowie (The Origin of the State 1962).
54 For example, the works of Clifford Geertz (Negara 1980), Claudio Lomnitz-Adler (Las Salidas del Laberinto 1995),
Victor Turner (The Ritual Process 1969), Max Gluckman.(Politics, Law and Ritual in Tribal Society 1965).
55 Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. 1963. Civic Culture. Princenton University Press, Princenton.
39
Mexican political system, most of these studies remain trapped within the
framework set up by the political culture model.56
Despite this fact, these
studies have revitalized the discussion on political culture by emphasizing the
relation between politics and meaning.57 Focusing on candidates, electoral
processes, power webs, state, and nation, they approach politics through the
symbolic, mythic, and ritual aspects involved at the different levels of political
negotiation, as well as through the power structures shaped therein.
In political culture studies that focus on México, political discourse and
institutions are critiqued in order to understand the meanings and institutional
practices that underlie the political sphere. Likewise, the focus is on the study of
authoritarianism, which has been identified as one of the main features of
Mexican political culture.58
Anthropologist Eduardo Nivón, for example,
attempts to understand to what degree authoritarianism depends on a set of
structures manipulated by the dominant sectors, or whether it depends on a
cultural matrix emerging from below and demanding or easily accepting
authoritarian conditions.59
Even though most of these works have been
conceived in dialogue or debate with the work of Gabriel Almond and Sidney
Verba—and as such their responses, even when critical, remain within the
56
See Esteban Krotz, Coord. 1996. El Estudio de la Cultura Política en México. Pespectivas Disciplinarias y Actores
Políticos. CIESAS/CONACULTA, México. Roberto Varela. 1996. “Los estudios recientes sobre ‘cultura política’ en
la antropología social mexicana.” In Esteban Krotz1996. Op. Cit. Eduardo Nivón 1990; Roger Bartra 1987; Claudio
Lomnitz-Adler et al 1990; Héctor Tejera Gaona 1996.
57 For example see Alonso 1995; Lomnitz 1990; Krotz 1990, 1996; De la Peña 1986, 1990; Varela, 1996.
58 See Nivón, 1990; Segovia, 1975; Fromm and MacCoby, 1973.
59 Eduardo Nivón in Roberto Varela. Op. Cit. P. 9.
40
rather tight lens of Almond and Verba’s study—the elements studied by
anthropologists nevertheless represent a difference in that they move the focus
towards understanding the culture of politics in systematic and global terms.
Other research addresses political culture as a process that involves political
socialization and its integration into the symbolic universes that contribute to the
stability of the Mexican political system.60
Political culture in this kind of
anthropological literature usually means the set of signs and symbols that
impact power structures.61
Although this language tends to be structuralist,
especially when the study of politics is conceived as the typification of power
structures, the determination of actions that influence them and of the operative
units that produce them, this posture emphasizes the relation between symbolic
production and power structures, thus providing a starting point toward the
development of a frame for the study of politics as a cultural practice.62
What anthropologists contribute to the discussion of political culture is precisely
that they accentuate the subjective element that gets lost in political science
studies. In this light, Esteban Krotz considers that “a notion of political culture
involves the process of political socialization––which cannot be referred solely to
the formal structures of power.”63 For Krotz, rescuing the subjective factor adds
60
Esteban Krotz 1996; Guillermo De La Peña 1990; Adriana López Mojardín 1994.
See Roberto Varela. 1996. "Los Estudios Recientes sobre Cultura política en la Antropologia Social Mexicana". In
Esteban Krotz. 1996. Op. Cit.
62 Cf. in Roberto Varela. 1996. Op. Cit. P.16
63 Esteban Krotz in Roberto Varela. 1996. Op. Cit. P.4.
61
41
a “utopian” dimension—of imagined futures—to those proposed by Almond and
Verba (cognitive, affective, and evaluative).
This emphasis on the relation
between symbolic production and power structures provides the basis for a
notion of political culture. The symbolic element is always the least obvious and
the most difficult to reach nonetheless it is the matter that constitutes the social
imaginary, which is the foundation of any political culture. As participants in
transnational migration, migrants encounter different political contexts that they
have to interlace. In the transnational social space constructed by Mexican
migrants, social practices, power relations and contrasting cultural meanings
given to those relations and practices provide substance to this space.
Intersecting with anthropological works are the studies on Mexican national
culture or national character.64 These tend to produce an impression that there
exists one single possibility of Mexican political subject and subjectivity within
the Mexican context, without questioning possible fractures in this unitary
subject. “Mexicanity” is thus an essence of a mythic nature. With the assumption
of a unitary Mexican political subject, the notion of “Mexicanity” appears always
as an elusive referent because it is either left unquestioned or ignored. Because
this work has to do with Mexicans that leave México to go to another country,
the evidence becomes incontrovertible that one cannot assume that there is one
way of being Mexican and thus just one way of changing.
64
Bonfil 1987; Paz 1950; Fuentes 1994
42
The exceptions to such a univocal approach are Claudio Lomnitz and Roger
Bartra.65 Even though Bartra refers to a hegemonic political culture, he views it
as a set of imaginary webs of power that define socially accepted subjectivity.
These webs are usually accepted as the most elaborated expression of national
culture.66
For Bartra, a unique national historical subject—the Mexican—
produces a cohesive illusion and legitimates the Mexican state. The national
culture, the Mexican political culture, according to Bartra, appears as the
mediator in the class struggle by displacing the myths, institutions, customs,
traditions, and art, to the point that they lose their original and contradictory
attributes, transforming them into a simulacrum of national unity. 67
At this
conjucture, a coincidence between the structures of the Mexican state invented
by the national culture and the structures on which the sociopolitical system is
based takes place.68
For Claudio Lomnitz, in Mexican politics the facts are scarce while
interpretations proliferate. In the Mexican case, ceremonies and rituals—such
as the presidential campaign—constitute an integral part of the political
process.69 The conditions of political monopoly explain the fraud and corruption
65
Roger Bartra. 1981. Las Redes Imaginarias del Poder Político. Ed. ERA, México; Claudio Lomnitz-Adler. 1995.
Las Salidas del Laberinto. Cultura e Ideología en el Espacio Nacional Mexicano. Joaquín Mortiz/Planeta, México;
Roger Bartra. 1987. La jaula de la Melancolía. Grijalbo, México.
66 Cf. Roberto Varela. 1996. Op. Cit. P. 13. My translation.
67 Cf. Roger Bartra en Roberto Varela. 1996. Op. Cit. P.14. My translation.
68 Roberto Varela. 1996. P. 19
69 Larissa Adler-Lomnitz, Claudio Lomnitz and Illya Adler. 1990. “El Fondo de la Forma: la Campaña Presidencial
del PRI en México en 1988.” In Nueva Antropología No. 38, October, México.
43
subculture that permeates the Mexican political scenario. The Mexican political
system is based on the negotiations among groups that move above individual
rights and interests. The struggle of Mexican migrants for their political rights is
not exempt from these characteristics of the Mexican political system. Politically
active migrants demand the recognition of their rights as citizens but have to
negotiate them with interest groups. Likewise, their own political practices at
times reproduce the ritualistic and clientelistic style of the PRI, and the
fragmentary tendencies of the Mexican left.
The Nation
Studies of political culture are embedded in theories and conceptions of nation
and state.
The debates on the nation concentrate mostly on whether it is an
invented tradition (Hobsbawn and Ranger, 1983), an imagined community
(Anderson, 1983), the result of the industrial revolution (Gellner, 1983), or a
construct built on primordial roots such as ethnic origins (Smith, A., 1986). All of
these theoretical frameworks share a common goal, which is to present what
represents itself as “natural,” “primordial,” or necessary as in fact “invented,”
“imagined,” or “constructed.” Unlike nationalist language and claims, studies in
political culture understand the nation as something mythic, invented, contested
and dreamed rather than as a primordial force or entity.
44
For Benedict Anderson, nations are imagined “because the members of even
the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or
even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their
communion.”70
Nations are imagined as limited entities, with boundaries.
Likewise, they are imagined as sovereign, free.
Finally, nations are “imagined
as a community, because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation
that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal
comradeship.”71 Anderson does not share the view of nationalism as a political
ideology but rather as a more complex set of cultural interactions––including but
not limited to the political––that allow for the imagining of the nation, namely
language or the origin narratives of a particular nation—which usually place it in
opposition to some other entity. For Anderson, industrialism is not a necessary
condition for the rise of nationalism, although he does acknowledge that the
pressures of industrial economy played a role in the formation of nations.
Specifically, Anderson finds print capitalism doing the task of building a sense of
a community that can be collectively imagined by the members of the nation.
From Eric Hobsbawn’s and Terence Ranger’s perspective, although they do not
focus on defining the nation, the invention of tradition becomes the principle of a
community’s identity. This theoretical approach to identity construction can and
has been applied toward thinking about the nation. When the nation is viewed
70
71
Benedict Anderson. 1983. Imagined Communities. Verso, London/New York. p.6.
Benedict Anderson. Op. Cit. P.7
45
as an invented tradition, it entails the use of various sorts of materials that have
been accumulated throughout the history of a society, which then elaborates a
narrative of its origins, exacerbating those traits that will appear as its heart and
soul. “Inventing traditions... is essentially a process of formalization and
ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing
repetition.”72 The existence of the nation is reified as a supraentity that seems
to have always been there, or at least to embody the destiny of a society
through the use of symbols such as the flag, images, or the national anthem,
which appear and are learned as the representation of the essence of the
nation. In their everyday practices Mexican migrants experience a reinvention of
their Mexicanity and of their traditions. The migration process, with time,
memory and distance in the middle, makes Mexican migrants more nationalists,
more rooted in a notion of home that acquires different characteristics
depending on the circumstances.
In contrast to the previous approaches, for Anthony Smith ethnicity is the
concrete feature that enabled the appearance of nations and nationalism.
Modern nation-states simply extended and deepened the ways in which the
members of an ethnie associated and communicated. The notion of an ethnie
emphasizes
Invented traditions is taken to mean “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and
of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which
automatically implies continuity with the past... they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic
past”. P. 1. Eric Hobsbawn. 1983. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions”. In Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger. 1983.
The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press. P. 4.
72
46
cultural differences with the sense of a historical community. It is
this sense of history and the perception of cultural uniqueness and
individuality which differentiates populations from each other and
which endows a given population with a definite identity, both in
their own eyes and those of outsiders.73
Here the ethnie functions as the axis that allows for the existence of a broader,
perhaps more abstract, sense of belonging to a community such as a nation. In
contrast to Anderson’s position, and Ernest Gellner’s, who stress the novelty
and modernity of nationalism—especially its correlation with the needs of
industrialization—Smith recognizes the existence of a “continuity between ethnic
identities and loyalties on the one hand, and nationhood and nationalism on the
other hand”.74 In this sense, for Smith ethnic identities and nationalisms go hand
in hand. Here ethnicity appears as the element that sustains any experience of
nationhood and nationalism.
According to Ernest Gellner, nationalism and the nation-state are not
necessarily based on ethnicity. For him, ethnicity is not a given; moreover it is a
construct of the state itself. The rise of nationalism, should be explained in
relation to the development of industrial society. Gellner’s theory rests on the
idea that industrial economic growth requires particular forms of polity and
culture. According to Gellner, it was mass education that provided a common
73
74
Anthony D. Smith. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Blackwell, Oxford U.K. P. 22.
James G. Kellas. 1993. The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity. MacMillan, Hong Kong. P.48.
47
enough culture which then allowed the community a nationalistic perspective.
Thus, Gellner places the educational system as the core provider of the
narrative of a shared community, of an identity beyond kinship.
Deconstructing a nation’s own ideological presentation of itself and its
communities allows one to see how imagined communities and senses of
belonging are lived as real. Earlier, I argued that transnational migration
produces a trans-national social space that transcends territorial boundaries. In
the chapters that follow, I will show how a sense of belonging to a common
bond, rooted in history, in places, in language is integral to the experiences of
Mexican migrants. From this sense of belonging, they incidentally construct a
social space through their everyday practices.
The notion of imagined communities is relevant to how Mexican migrants
understand themselves as they act and interact everyday.
The dissertation
takes into consideration the imaginary dimension, entailed in the idea of a
México that exists beyond its geopolitical boundaries, by asking: What practices
and memories do Mexican migrants in the U.S. share? In what ways is México
an imagined community? How do legal and political frameworks intersect with
conceptions of identity, ethnicity, and place to create migrant communities,
whether imagined or real? However one frames the questions, migrant
imaginations, inventions and/or constructions contest and re-define the lines and
limits of national hegemonies. In other words, the rich work done by theorists of
48
nation and state, can be usefully applied to understanding the traditions,
inventions and practices of migrants as they craft identities on, over, beyond,
and between nation-states.
The State
The debate on the nation intersects with the discussion of the state.
Usually, anthropologists have viewed the state as an invasive presence in local
life. Classical political anthropology looked at the formal organization of power
relations—mostly at the local level—or at the processes that intervened in
political struggles, or concentrated in the description of the individual strategies
to obtain and maintain power. Later works have studied the state primarily as a
cultural formation. An important aspect to highlight about ethnographies that
focus on the state is that they study politics as practices of production of
meaning and power differences while keeping the connection to the broader
power structures.75 Politics in these works is seen as a cultural practice, a
position I share.
In order to further connections between nation, state and identity, I turn to
Michael Herzfeld’s study of the Greek state. In his book Cultural Intimacy,
Herzfeld studies the political culture of Greece by looking at the way in which
social actors interact with the nation-state, specifically with its rhetoric. He
75
Herzfeld 1996; Anderson 1990; Anagnost 1997; Pemberton 1994; Ivy 1995.
49
analyses how peoples’ daily actions and speech around the state “validate the
nation-state as the central legitimating authority in their lives.” 76 For Herzfeld,
while the state is reified as an entity whose authority is beyond individual
control, at the same time it can be and is subverted through the reformulation
and recasting of official idioms in people’s daily interactions and imaginings of
the state.
The study of the state and its political culture according to Herzfeld must
be grounded in the details of daily life—“symbolism, commensality, family, and
friendship—that would make it convincing for each specific case or that might
call for the recognition of the cultural specificity of each nationalism.” 77 Herzfeld
argues against what he understands as top-down explanations of the nationstate, e.g., Anderson’s, Gellner’s and Hobsbawn’s. According to Herzfeld,
Anderson and Gellner assume that
nationalisms are fundamentally alike in their debt to a common
(European) origin and that they represent the imposition of an elite
perspective on local cultural worlds; to the extent that local idioms
have been used, they have often been recycled beyond
recognition.78
76
Michael Herzfeld. 1996. Cultural Intimacy. The Social Poetics in the Nation-State. Routledge, New York/London.
P.2.
77 Michael Herzfeld. 1996. Op. cit. P. 4-5
78 Michael Herzfeld. 1996. Op. Cit. P. 6
50
Such a position suggests that ordinary people have no impact on the form their
local nationalism takes, an assumption that is problematic for Herzfeld since it
excludes the role that particular cultural formations play in the configuration of
specific nation-states and their political culture. These accounts do not
acknowledge how a sense of cultural intimacy is fundamental in the rethinking of
multiple pasts, which at the same time are constructed out of intimacy, “and
intimacy can also recompose its geopolitical claims.”79
For Herzfeld, an
anthropological study of national political culture requires an understanding of
how citizens—including bureaucrats—engage in shaping the meaning of the
national identity, whether they reflect or contravene official ideology. Inasmuch
as the meaning of the nation is debatable—openly or not—the state cannot be
understood as a monolithic, autonomous agent.
Mexican migrants tend to express their relationship to the nation-states
they inhabit as a connection with monolithic entities.
However, their own
practices and interpretations of the legal and social frameworks they encounter
contribute to the constant reconfiguration of the legal, economic and political
boundaries of México and the U.S.
Herzfeld defines cultural intimacy as “the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a
source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with the assurance of common sociality, the
familiarity with the bases of power that may at one moment assure the disenfranchised a degree of creative irreverence
and at the next moment reinforce the effectiveness of intimidation”. Michael Herzfeld. 1996. Op. cit. P.3/P.13
79
51
Spectacle and Performance
Undergirding Herzfeld’s work lies earlier work in Anthropology that emphasizes
the discursive and performative processes involved in the formation of nationstates. Cliffford Geertz’s and Nicholas Dirks’s account of the state foreground
the cultural aspect of politics, whether it is seen as a spectacle or as the result of
discursive practices. The dissertation reviews how the spectacle and discursive
dimensions become conspicuous and engulf Mexican migrants’ transnational
political and everyday practices.
In Negara, Clifford Geertz studies the Balinese state, which he describes as the
“theater state.” In his analysis of this particular state formation, Geertz focuses
on the cultural elements that allow for the existence of a determinate political
organization. Studying Bali’s nineteenth century ethno-history, he finds an
expressive state that based its structure “primarily on ceremony and prestige,”
becoming “more fragile and tenuous in actual political dominance and
subordination the higher up the pyramid one went.”80 According to Geertz’s
reading, the Balinese state had a strong expressive component, which
outweighed other elements that are usually attached to the configuration of the
state, such as concentration of power and the exercise of government. The
80
Clifford Geertz. 1980. Negara. The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princenton University
Press,Princenton, P. 16
52
Balinese state pointed toward “spectacle, toward ceremony, toward the public
dramatization of the ruling obsessions of Balinese culture: social inequality and
status pride”.81 These dramatizations were rooted in a particular mythic story
that legitimized the existence of the existing political structure.
Whereas for Geertz the study of the state requires a spectacular approach to
culture, that is to say, to look at culture as an elaborate performance, in contrast
Nicholas Dirks in The Hollow Crown focuses on the ephemeral and transitory
discursivity involved in the making and the operation of the state. The elements
that Dirks highlights in order to understand the Indian state in eighteenth century
Southern India are: conceptions of sovereignty, transactions in gifts and kinship,
the structure and form of hegemony and what he calls the textualized
discourse—such as genealogies, ballads, chronicles—which he approaches as
cultural discourse. The Hollow Crown shows that “the shared sovereignty of
overlords, king, chief, and headman was enacted and displayed through gifts
and offerings: through privileges, honors, emblems, ‘material’ resources,
women, service, and kinship.”82 Dirks argues against an essentialist
interpretation of the Indian state. Where a culture based on caste presents itself
as an unchangeable social structure resting on the assumption of a predetermined order established by notions of purity and pollution, Dirks argues
81
Clifford Geertz. 1980. Op. Cit. P. 13.
82
Nicholas Dirks. 1987. The Hollow Crown. Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, Great
Britain. P. 404.
53
that what is really at work is a system of “royal authority and honor, and
associated notions of power, dominance, and order.”
83
In other words, within
the Indian state he analyzes, he shows that power relations are sublimated in
terms of pollution and purity.
In his analysis, Nicholas Dirks insists upon relations of power and dominance as
explanatory frameworks to the reified social order—the caste system—that
otherwise appeared determined by structures of thought. For Dirks, the social
relations that produced Indian society, “far from being ‘essentialist’ structures,
were permeated by ‘political’ inflections, meanings, and imperatives”. 84 Geertz’
and Dirks’ works on the state provide analytical tools to understand how the
Mexican and U.S. nation-states perform their own hegemony in relation to
migrants. Understanding the performative and discursive dimension also allows
an understanding of how migrants interpret and respond to discourses and
spectacles of power thereby reshaping the contours of the nations, states, and
nationalisms they inhabit.
Theories of nation and state point to questions of membership and
democracy, issues that are at the forefront of this dissertation. Underlying the
discussion around democracy are prior assumptions about who is defined as a
member of the national imagined community and who is excluded from it.
83
84
Nicholas Dirks. 1987. Op. Cit. P.7
Nicholas Dirks. 1987. Op. Cit. P. 404.
54
Apparently, to define itself, every nation needs to establish itself in opposition to
some other (Barth, 1969). There is a need to exclude in order to contain the
community. In some cases the conception of national citizenship is ethnically
based. As Aristide Zolberg explains, other nations––most democracies––hold a
political conception of citizenship, although many combine this “apparently
open-door membership with a more or less manifest ethnic identity as well.” 85
Nationhood thus continues to include an ethnic dimension, which tend to be
“activated if and when cultural ‘others’ turn up as potential or actual immigrants
and tends to generate efforts to exclude or at least restrict the flow.”86
Democracies all over the world are posed with an essential challenge:
how to solve the exclusion principle intrinsic to the definition of citizenship?
Modern democracies situated within transnational economies based on traveling
labor and commodities have to face an even bigger task: how to include citizens
that live beyond the territorial boundaries of the nation-state? As México and the
United States enter a phase in which they have to respond to these challenges,
this dissertation shows how legal changes have taken place to address these
citizens on the move while at the same time reactionary forces pull back in order
to sustain an idea of an enclosed nation.
Cf. Aristide R. Zolberg. 2000. “The Politics of Immigration Policy: an Externalist Perspective.” In Nancy Foner,
Rubén G. Rambaut and Steven Gould, Eds. 2000, Op. Cit. P. 62.
86 Aristide R. Zolberg. Idem.
85
55
Anthropology and Law
Anthropology and the study of law have gone hand in hand since the
early times of the armchair anthropologists of the nineteenth century. The
approaches have gone from studying the evolution of the state and society in
general, to models of coercion/cohesion as the strategies that hold a society
together, or to more contemporary approaches, such as the studies led by Laura
Nader that center on the subject of the law, the actors, and their role in the legal
process.87
In her studies on the Mexican debate on legal anthropology, María
Teresa Sierra explains that anthropologists’ interest in law, in contrast to the
judicial perspective, does not aim to contain models of general application
abstracted from social contexts, but rather it aims to give an account of the way
in which judicial systems are immersed in culture and power relations.88
According to Esteban Krotz, anthropology’s approach to the sociocultural
phenomenon of law is an approach from “outside”, that is, anthropology views
the judicial sphere always as an aspect of social reality.89
87
For example, Sir Henry Maine in Ancient Law (1861) or Henry Morgan in Ancient Society (1877) argued that
primitive societies did not live in anarchy, that they also had a set of rules and forms of organization, namely
established through kinship. Cf. Ted C Lewellen. 1985. Introducción a la Antropología Política. Ed. Balterra, España.
P. 2.
Also see Laura Nader. 2002. The Life of the Law. Anthropological Projects. University of California Press,
Berkeley/Los Angeles.
88 Cf. María Teresa Sierra. 1999. “Autonomía y pluralismo jurídico: el debate mexicano.” América Indígena, LVIII
(enero-junio) 1-2. Pp.21-48. Quoted in Esteban Krotz, Ed. 2002. Antropología Jurídica: perspectives socioculturales
en el estudio del derecho. Anthropos, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa. P. 24.
89 Cf. Esteban Krotz. 2002. Op. Cit.
56
In reviewing the history of the anthropology of law, Laura Nader explains
that anthropologists have brought the comparative method to the study of law. In
this sense, anthropologists have
looked at contemporary nation-states for legal phenomena
functionally equivalent to those found in small-scale societies…
Others looked for differences between traditional and modern
settings…(Collier 1973; Moore 1986). Still others compared the
management of economic grievances in face-to-faceless societies
with the management of the same in the small, intimate face-toface communities (Nader, No Access, 1980).”90
Likewise, in the period prior to the 1950’s, static models of indigenous peoples
were developed, and legal institutions were seen as independent of other
institutions in their societies. This approach was contested in the 1950’s when
the emphasis was put on process models, which explored the connections
between law and every aspect of society. Henceforth, the law was understood
not as an autonomous, or objective dimension, but rather as embedded and
dependent.
As a result, disputants were seen as active makers of law
employing their own strategies to steer the legal process. Not
surprisingly, power became the central issue in studies of law and
studies of the disputing process, and the issues raised by
90
Cf. Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 56-57.
57
complainants were seen as being about more than just disputing
per se.91
While there are distinctions between such an approach and that of my
dissertation, the basic understanding of the relation between law and people as
engaged in a dynamic, interested process also frames the present work.
Via her research, Laura Nader has developed different models for the
study of law. First, stemming from her research with the Zapotec Indians in
Oaxaca, she created the “harmony law model,” which centers on understanding
equilibrium in a society. From the beginning Nader began using an ethnographyof-law approach including ethnohistorical data and European colonial history to
develop a “more comprehensive theory of village law.” 92
This led to what
became the Berkeley Village Project. The resulting book The Disputing Process
(Nader and Todd, 1978) summarizes the different venues the researchers in the
project took and addresses “what people in different cultures do with their ‘legal’
problems in the context of nation-state law.” 93 It studies both the official legal
procedures available to litigants and the roads chosen by them.
As Laura Nader moved from studying face-to-face societies to face-tofaceless societies, she began to construct what she calls “a user theory of law.”
Nader and her group of researchers, under the umbrella of the Berkley
91
Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P.11
Cf. Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 28-29.
93 Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P.38-39.
92
58
Complaint Project, “focused on the interaction of different law actors or users of
law and the networks they spawned.”94 A user theory of law means the user of
the law is its driving force. Whether they be powerful entities who shape the law
based on their own interests thus turning the law into a hegemonic tool, or
powerless users who change the law through their everyday practices, subjects’
disputes over power, autonomy, and democracy, demonstrate that people are
the life of the law.
My dissertation shares the idea that “law comprises more than judicial or
legislative institutions; it also includes the social and cultural organization of
law.”95 Like other anthropological works, it focuses on specific laws, and how
people relate to them. However, the present work is not about the process of
dispute, about the litigant, or the plaintiff. It reviews the law as part of a wider
set of social relations to which it has to respond. It looks at people, Mexican
migrants, and how laws impact their daily lives. This work studies the history
and context in which the laws directly impacting the lives of Mexican migrants to
the U.S. came into existence. It is in this sense that this dissertation can be
considered an ethnography of law.
94
95
Laura Nader. Op.Cit. P.44
Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 49.
59
Methodology
Based on multi-sited ethnographic research, this dissertation addresses
the specificities of three domains of citizenship––belonging, law, and politics––
and the politics of citizenship produced by their articulation. In the study of each
cultural space of citizenship the use of a specific set of methods was required in
order to allow for an ethnography of engagements of citizenship.
To understand what a transnational social space is and how it functions, I
describe the specific space of Aguililla-Redwood City, and the particular culture
of citizenship it produces.
The purpose of this chapter is to provide an
ethnography of belonging. Therefore, in this first engagement of citizenship, I
aim to obtain a perspective of how migrants, through their situated cultural
practices, create a sense of belonging. Belonging is central to the notion of
citizenship, and it is here where membership to a community is negotiated at a
more horizontal level.
To capture migrants’ perspective, I engaged in
participant-observation, conducting open-ended interviews with people who had
been migrants themselves or had family members in the U.S., together with lifehistory narratives.
I traveled from Aguililla to Redwood City following this community’s
traditional migrant route. In Redwood City, Aguililla’s parallel town, I worked
60
with the Aguilillan migrant community, concentrating on questions surrounding
citizenship, legality, and the affective dimension entailed in migration. In
particular, I reviewed the process for obtaining U.S. citizenship. Likewise, I
participated as an instructor in local citizenship classes where Aguilillans were
applying for citizenship. I was thus able to establish connections with some of
those in the Mexican community who were already going through a process of
changing their formal political status, i.e., their citizenship. To understand how
migrants establish the terms of their belonging and allegiance to a given
community, I conducted open-ended interviews and recorded life-history
narratives, which afforded me an in-depth view of the emotional side entailed in
migration and helped me understand how connections to the hometown or the
country are maintained and imagined, as well as blurred.
To approach the second culture of citizenship presented in this study, I
review several legal changes that took place mostly between 1994 and 1996 to
understand how México and the U.S. as nation-states define and limit migrants’
membership. Namely, I focus on the Mexican non-loss of nationality law, the
reform to article 36 of the Mexican Constitution that opened the possibility for
the vote abroad, the U.S. 1996 Immigration law, California’s Proposition 187,
and some aspects of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Laws play a central
role in the constitution of the politics of citizenship of the Mexican transnational
experience. Therefore, the dissertation explores the selected group of laws in
61
three ways: a) as texts, reviewing their meaning, their impact, and the political
context in which they emerge; b) as they interact in migrants’ daily lives, and
impact their existence, and are interpreted and enacted by migrants; and c) as a
site where two nation-states converge and engage with each other and their
citizens.
In México City, I worked at the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) reviewing
their material on the legal changes that took place in 1996 regarding the
nationality law and the constitutional reform to article 36. This reform, which
opened the possibility for the vote abroad, included a clause stating that the IFE
had to organize an Experts Commission to study the possibility for implementing
the vote abroad. I reviewed the legal, bibliographical, and journalistic material
that the IFE gathered on the subject and followed the work of this Commission.
The main purpose for analyzing these laws, as well as the work of the
Commission, was to examine the ways in which México and the United States,
as nation-states, consider and address migrants' membership and thus
comprehend the specific space of citizenship produced. This analysis of the
institutions and structures entangled in migrants’ existence allows for an
understanding of how nation-states, via laws exclude migrants from the right of
membership in the state, as well as they constrain migrants’ possibilities for
exercising full membership. In this sense, the dissertation emphasizes the role
law plays in the construction of situated cultural practices of citizenship.
62
Finally, the third culture of citizenship I describe emerges as a result of
the open political activities of the Mexican migrants who have been lobbying for
the political rights of Mexicans living abroad. These migrants have organized
different political and academic events on the subject, as well as lobbying trips
to engage directly with the Mexican Congress and the political parties. To gain a
closer look at their perspectives and political attitudes, I participated in forums
related to the vote abroad both in México and in the U.S., as well as in various
electronic groups that focused on this subject. More specifically, I conducted indepth interviews with three migrants who represent a wide spectrum of the
political activities of Mexican migrants. In this sense, I address migrants’
practices of citizenship in the formal political arena, practices that are at the
same time, permeated by senses of belonging, and produce a particular culture
of citizenship.
The dissertation moves between everyday life and the formal political
sphere, covering different articulations of transnationality and citizenship.
Through the ethnographic material presented, I portray the cultural specificity of
the politics of citizenship enacted by Mexican transnational migrants as they
interact with two nation-states in ways that serve to reconfigure the very terms of
these entities. Likewise, by analyzing a group of laws, I examine how México
and the U.S. define the limits of their membership and categorize migrants in
ways that powerfully affect their ability to travel and function in their daily lives.
63
This two-way movement is what I understand as politics of citizenship, an
approach that frames the dissertation.
Organization of the dissertation
The dissertation is organized in four chapters that explore the three
engagements of citizenship that are addressed in the dissertation.
Chapter II, Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social
Space, addresses the culture of citizenship constructed in the transnational
social space of Aguililla-Redwood City, as an example of one of the dimensions
entailed in citizenship. The main purpose is to obtain an image of how migrants
build a sense of belonging when they inhabit a transnational social space. I
describe how Aguililla and Redwood City form this transnational social space,
and how the residents of this space live. Likewise, I look at transnational
migrants’ stories, Aguilillans in California, in order to understand how the
transnational sphere is lived and signified in very concrete and “local” ways.
Contiguous and almost metonymic relations between México and the U.S.
reinforce the social space that migrants have built around them. As part of these
transnational social spaces, communities undergo changes, which travel back
and forth between México and the U.S. This chapter attempts to describe this
migrant space and demonstrate the inseparable socio-cultural and economic
64
links established by a community that might be geographically separated but
that is tied to its history. The existence of such transnational social spaces
provides an arena for understanding how the meaning of citizenship is
negotiated in everyday life.
The next two chapters form a section where the dissertation focuses on
law, and the interactions between law and people. Chapter III, Hard Texts:
Engaging with the Legal Realm, is about understanding law as a language and
as praxis. In this chapter I present the legal context that frames the research. I
review the various articulations between the Mexican constitutional reform of
article 36 and the non-loss of nationality law, and the U.S. 1996 immigration law,
California’s Proposition 187, and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act as they pertain to
immigration policy. Although I recognize that laws are texts, I look at them as
political practices. While laws might seem formal and distant from everyday life,
I consider them as sites where state and people converge as well as powerful
tools for political change.
In chapter IV, Law as practice: Experiencing the law, I present the
interaction between migrants and laws to understand how laws play a role in the
construction of migrants’ citizenship. Through migrants’ experiences I show the
different relations they establish with the laws that cross their existence. In the
second part of the chapter I introduce the debate that has surrounded the
corpus of laws that I researched. Again, the perspective is on law as practice.
65
Following the discussions that surrounded the non-loss of nationality law, and
the reform to article 36 that opened the possibility for the vote-abroad, I look at
the different meanings that citizenship has both for migrants and for México as a
nation-state. Furthermore, the chapter focuses on the political campaign carried
out by the Mexicans living abroad to lobby for the vote for Mexican elections.
Migrants’ existence raises another set of problems around national
boundaries and sovereignty. In other words, Mexican migrants, because they
are a significant potential political and economic constituency in both México
and the U.S., have become the locus of a struggle for the reconfiguration of
national boundaries amongst these two distant neighbors. I want to argue that
migrants might in fact live in the margins, yet their space-in-between, while
being a potential place of resistance, also implies that their lives perform the
contradictions of nation-states in the making and in the blurring.
Moreover, the same legal discursive corpus that surrounds migrants––
immigration laws, nationality, and voting laws––also frames the notion of the
border, displacing it from its geographical dimension and moving it to a political
realm. Finally, migrants––who have been historically disenfranchised and
denied political voice––are insisting on their rooted and grounded identity in
order to claim political agency and thus challenge constraining definitions of
citizenship.
66
In chapter V, Building citizenship: Mexican migrants’ practices of
nationhood and belonging, the goal is to understand how the situated cultural
practices of Mexican migrants who are politically active impact a larger notion of
citizenship. The chapter presents the stories of three Mexican migrants, Andrés
Bermúdez––otherwise known as the Tomato King––Rufino Domínguez from the
Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional, and Raúl Ross, who through different
political venues are negotiating and building a notion of citizenship. I reflect
upon these stories in the face of citizenship theory, and address more closely
the question of citizenship and how it is contested by the existence of politically
active migrants.
The discussion of migration and citizenship necessarily leads to
questions of entitlements, rights, inclusions, exclusions, and evaluations of who
does and who does not count as a full member of a nation-state. Rather than
looking at the construction of citizenship within the exclusive boundaries of a
nation-state, I focus on how transnational migrants appear to threaten the
sovereignty of both the imagined community they leave and the one where they
arrive. This approach allows for an understanding of how citizenship is
constructed in the interaction between nation-states’ particular definitions, and
migrants’ transnational practices, claims, and senses of entitlement.
67
68
Chapter II
Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space
In 1987, México's left wing opposition candidate Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas
paid a visit to his Michoacano countrymen in order to personally ask for their
support for his 1988 presidential election candidacy. That Cárdenas wanted
Michoacano support was not surprising: the Mexican state of Michoacán has,
since the 1930’s, been known as the symbolic heart of Cardenismo, the
ideology conceived by Lázaro Cárdenas, former president of México in the late
1930s, who tried to incorporate into his government the social and agrarian
reforms demanded during the Mexican Revolution. What was unique about this
phase of Cárdenas' 1988 campaign, however, was that it unfolded not in the
state of Michoacán but rather several thousand miles away, in the area of
Silicon Valley, California. Located in this region is Redwood City ––otherwise
known (to Aguillians) as La Aguililla Chiquita due to the high number of migrants
that come from Aguililla, Michoacán. Cárdenas' campaign trip signaled a new
trend in the contemporary Mexican notion of political practice that actively
includes Mexican citizens living in the United States. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’
69
visits are an example of a moment when national politics transcends nationstate boundaries to address its own locals.96
Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Aguililla and Redwood City,
this chapter explores how citizenship is built in the transnational social space
formed by Aguililla and Redwood City. By recounting their stories, I show how
migrants create a social space that is framed by national and transnational
political processes but that is lived and conceived as Aguillian, as local, and
finally, as Mexican. The chapter begins by situating Aguilla and Redwood City
as a transnational social space. In order to understand the culture of citizenship
that is built in this transnational social space, the chapter elaborates on the
different practices of belonging engaged in by migrants, the features involved in
its construction, and how the inhabitants of this space live.
For Cardenismo in Silicon Valley see Jesús Martínez. 1993. “At the Periphery of Democracy: The Binational
Politics of Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley, California.” Dissertation, University of California Berkeley.
After Cárdenas, other politicians have gone to the U.S. to establish ties with the migrant community. Ricardo Monreal
campaigned with Zacatecan migrant organizations for the 1997 Zacatecas governor race. He received a substantive
support from the Zacatecan hometown associations in the U.S. Although the Casas de Guanajuato predated Vicente
Fox, he worked with Guanajuatan groups, first as a governor to promote investments in Guanajuato and later to
promote his presidential candidacy. In 1999, the formation of the organization Migrantes Mexicanos por el Cambio
was announced to support Vicente Fox. This organization purportedly represented 250 thousand immigrant families
(see MIMEXCA, Press release. 1999. El Universal, October 20.)
96
70
Aguililla
Aguililla is located in the region of the Valle de Apatzingán, better known
as Tierra Caliente at the southwestern end of the state of Michoacán. Aguililla
looks like any small Mexican town. Streets are made out of stone for the most
part, while houses have Spanish style roofs and sometimes adobe walls. At the
heart of the town is the plaza with a kiosk in the middle, the Palacio Municipal,
stores, and a “grand hotel”. The church is one block uphill, at the top of Aguililla.
There are five main population centers in the municipio of Aguililla: El Aguaje,
Dos Aguas, Naranjo de Chila, El Limón, and the county seat Aguililla.97 The rest
of the municipio consists of smaller hamlets of less than one hundred people.
The region is primarily agricultural, consisting of small family-owned ranches
and communal ejidos. The population centers are the hub of connection around
which the ranches circulate and flow.
The ranches and urban centers depend upon each other economically
and politically.
According to the 1998 Informe Solidaridad, the majority of
Aguilillans, 55.1%, worked in livestock and agriculture. In this sense, Aguililla
can be considered a livestock community as it produces 428 tons of livestock
per year, a third of which is for the consumption of the producers, and the rest
97
See map. Figure A.
71
for local and national markets.98 The private sector is the one that produces for
the markets whereas the ejido lands mostly rely on poultry, and occasionally on
livestock for the subsistence of the ejidatarios.99
On the other hand, the
reported destination of the agricultural production, mainly maize (7111 tons) and
beans (55 tons) appears to be more for the local and national market, although
the census does not specify how much is consumed at the local level and what
percentage leaves the community.100
98
This represents .99% of the total livestock produced in Michoacán. Cf. Informe Solidaridad, Michoacán. 1998.
Pp.12 and 22.
99 See Censo Agrícola Michoacán 1995. Tomo III, P.1474.
100 This represents .55%, and .23% of Michoacán’s production of maize and beans. Cf. pp. 602-603. Censo Agrícola
Michoacán Tomo I, 1995. Also see Informe Solidaridad, Michoacán, Op. Cit. P.11 and P. 22
72
Figure A. Map of Aguililla.
73
During my stay in Aguililla I lived with Yola and her family. On my journey
to Aguililla I met Yola’s sister, María. She suggested I stay at her comadre’s
home because it was not a good idea for a young single woman to be alone in
Aguililla. Yola and Don Tadeo, her husband, agreed. Of a working class family,
Yola is a housewife in her late thirties, mother of two teen-age daughters. The
house has two rooms, one for the two daughters who shared their bedroom with
me, and the master bedroom. There is a big kitchen with a dinning table, and a
small den for the T.V, which also serves as Yola’s candy store. In the middle of
the house is an open patio, with a water well––a pila––that warms up in the
middle of the day, just in time for people to take a shower. The girls go to school
and help their mom with the tiendita, the candy store. The afternoons are spent
watching telenovelas, Mexican soap operas, which are a significant topic of
conversation.
A retired migrant worker, Don Tadeo had lived in the United States for
several years, and has two daughters from his first marriage who live in
Redwood City and San Jose. While working in the United States, Don Tadeo
suffered a work injury that paralyzed his legs. Now in Aguililla, he receives a
retirement pension and a workers compensation check.
send him money regularly.
His daughters also
Yola and Don Tadeo’s house is located at the
entrance of Aguililla, close to the army fort; it is only half done, it is in “obra
negra”.
As many households in Aguililla, this family depends upon their
74
participation in the Aguilillan transnational migrant circuit for their economic
existence. However, because of Don Tadeo’s income from the U.S. they are
better off than other people in Aguililla.
Don Tadeo and Yola were born in El Limón, another population center of
Aguililla. They grew up there, and a part of their family still lives in this small
town. Don Tadeo took us on a day trip to El Limón. Dirt roads cross El Limón.
Adobe houses line the main street. Also, there is a school and some corner
stores. In the afternoons people sit outside their homes to see children play in
the streets and to talk to their neighbors. This town is the center of some
ranches. For the family, going to El Limón was like a picnic to the countryside.
We went to the river that runs by the side of the town, for many, its main
attraction. Other people were swimming and enjoying themselves, just like we
were. During our picnic Yola and Don Tadeo delighted the girls and I with
stories of their childhood, of other people that lived in El Limón, and of what it
was like to grow up in a rural community, where part of being a child includes
taking care of the pigs or helping in the family orchard.
However, unlike those from the towns, the people from the ranches are
less trusting of outsiders, like Yola’s older sister Asunción, who asked me
several questions about what kind of job I had, and what kind of work I was
doing in Aguililla and, most importantly, for whom. She told me about the time
students came to ask questions, I think it was the census, and not long after that
75
the soldiers and the police raided several ranches for marihuana production.
While one thing is not necessarily related to the other, in Asunción’s imaginary it
is; she, like many others in Aguililla, does not welcome outsiders.
In Aguililla, as in other towns in Michoacán, the culture of politics is best
articulated by the confrontations between Cardenistas and those who are not
Cardenistas. In general, when I was in Michoacán many were waiting for the
return of Lázaro Cárdenas.
The old men that hung out every afternoon in
Aguililla’s main plaza were among those waiting for the return of the General.
These men with white hair and strong features, with sad gazes and long
silences at first glance appear as if frozen in time. In actuality, these men are
living history, narrating past tales while actively partaking in the construction of
Aguililla’s contemporary history. The men from the plaza are for the most part
ejidatarios, owners of collective land given to them by General Lázaro
Cardenas’ government at the end of the 1930’s. During the 1990 municipal
election, political power shifted to the leftist Partido de la Revolución
Democrática (PRD) due mostly to the support of ejidatarios and small
landholders.
As one of the 113 municipios in Michoacán, Aguililla has been governed
by the PRD since 1990.
However, in the 1998 local elections, the Partido
Revolucionario Institucional (PRI)––supported by Aguililla’s elite––came close to
winning the municipal election. The PRD held the municipality with the support
76
of the small land-owners and the ejidatarios, the guarachudos as the middle
class PRIistas called them.101 In this state, it can be said that Lázaro Cárdenas’
specter and legacy are ever-present.
After the Michoacán November 2001
elections, when his grandson PRD candidate Lázaro Cárdenas Batel was
elected as governor, the wait and hope for Cárdenas’ return was fulfilled.
Michoacán is a state where the diversity of México's contemporary
political landscape expresses itself clearly. This political vitality travels with
Michoacano migrants.
Michoacán is a state where, after 1988, political
opposition to the then ruling party, the PRI, made a significant advance. In this
state all three main political parties are strongly represented. The PRD has
alternated majority status with the PRI, and the Partido de Acción Nacional
(PAN) has also had significant rising support. Moreover, as the stronghold of
Cardenismo, Michoacán––the home of former president Lázaro Cárdenas––
represents the historic force that originally gave political strength to the
opposition left wing party, the PRD. Even more, the Cardenista spirit present in
Michoacán’s political landscape also manifests itself in the Michoacano migrant
community.
It would seem that, strictly speaking, there are no major problems in
Aguililla.
The land produces enough for local consumption and external
markets, there is an internal market and the municipio is economically
101
Guarachudo derives from huarache which means sandal, which campesinos wear everyday. As it was used it was
meant as a derogatory classist comment.
77
connected to the rest of the region, providing for a variety of options for the
people of Aguililla. Likewise the political landscape appears to have evened out
with the change of party, a fact that at the same time has brought more
accountability as the PRD governments have been under constant scrutiny by
the PRI opposition. So, why is Aguililla a town with a long history of migration?
Roots: Aguililla’s origin stories
The stories of Aguililla unfold one after another.
The lives of the
inhabitants of this town get entangled with each other, from the church, from
Yolanda’s roof, inside Carlota’s candle-lit home, and from the mountains that
surround this Michoacán town, thus contributing to the recreation of its history,
and also its identity within the nation, the state, and within transnational
contexts.
If you speak to Aguilillans, even the name of their town points to mythic
origins of their particular historical identity as a town.
As the story goes, when
Aguililla was founded by colonial settlers back in 1683, it received the name Los
Terreros, probably reflecting the territorial desires of the colonizing mind.
However, the town’s name was changed due to a special event, which took
place around 1723. One day when a small child––el indio Juan Pablo––was
playing, he was grabbed by an eagle, an aguila real.
He yelled and screamed
78
and some aguilillas, small eagles, that lived near his hut fought against the big
eagle until they were able to free the child and softly set him on a hay stack.
When the priest who visited these communities heard this story directly
from the indio Juan Pablo, he renamed the village and called it Aguililla.102
Perhaps, this mythic origin of Aguililla can serve as the metaphor to view the
social structure of Aguililla, and its inhabitants, to understand the quality of their
resistance, and their displacements and even their renowned belligerence, their
opposition to big eagles, to government ruling.
Furthering the symbolic spirit of Aguililla’s resistant history at the margins
of the nation-state, Aguilillans tell the Mamey Cave story.
This story is one of
the many manifestations of the relation between an enclosed Aguililla, with
secret codes that only belong to them, and an Aguililla unavoidably related with
the rest of the region and the nation. During our endless conversations Yola
told me many stories about Aguililla. As we sat at her dining table, or inside her
kitchen, Yola would pour some coffee into clay mugs and begin to narrate tales.
One day she started to tell the story of the Mamey Cave. This cave is one
among several caves in Aguililla, all of them guarding different aspects of
Aguililla’s history.
According to some townspeople, in the Mamey Cave or
Cueva del Mamey lies a hidden treasure from a bygone war. As Yola told me:
Apéndice No. 1 de la Monografía del “Escudo de Aguililla”. Conozca la historia del escudo, su descripción y
el reglamento para su uso como “símbolo representativo”. Document in process provided to me by the Municipio
(County) authorities in October. P.7
1021998.
79
The Mamey Cave opens only on Holy Thursday and Good Friday.
Many have attempted to go in because it is said that there lies a
hidden treasure that was left there after a war, the one called the
Cristero War, when the government stole huge amounts from the
people and concealed the money there [in the cave].
My dad
remembers that war. The cave is where the money from that time
remains, gold and silver coins, unlike today’s that when they fall
they don’t even make noise...There are treasures in that cave,
they’ve come to study it, from the United States and from other
parts because there are treasures. The cave is spellbinding. It is
known that there is gold because my dad and Don Cutberto were
there, they went during Holy Days. Only on these days the door
opens...That is why others that have tried to go have not found the
pots and the money. My Dad and Don Cutberto left palms to mark
their trail and had “ocote”––small wood torches––to light their path.
Then they found the pots but didn’t bring anything, only Don
Cutberto brought some dust from one of the pots in his pants’
pocket. They didn’t know there was money. My dad brought a
stone. Back in town, when they told Don Cutberto that the dust
was gold, and that in the stone there was gold, lots of people
wanted to go but they were unable to go in because the door was
closed. The Holy Days had passed.103
Conversation with Yola, Aguililla, October 1998. “La cueva del mamey se abre solamente en días santos, el jueves
y el viernes–– me dijo Yola–– muchos han querido entrar porque se dice que hay un tesoro escondido, que ahí lo
dejaron cuando hubo una guerra, esa que dicen la de los cristeros, que el gobierno robaba mucho a los pobladores y
ahí guardaba el dinero. Mi papá se acuerda de esa guerra. Ahí se quedó el dinero de esa época, monedas de oro y
plata, no como las de ahora que se te caen y ni ruido hacen..... En esa cueva hay tesoros, han venido a estudiarla de
Estados Unidos y otros lados porque hay tesoros. La cueva está encantada. Y sí se sabe que hay oro porque mi papá y
Don Cutberto estuvieron ahí, fueron en días santos. En días santos se abre la puerta, una puerta que si no son días
103
80
The Mamey Cave story is remarkable because it places Aguililla in relationship
with regional and national historical events like the Cristero War or Cristiada
referred to in the story as a time when the government stole from the people.
But the story also connects Aguililla to contemporary issues of political
representation and property rights.
The Cristiada, the war between the
anticlerical Plutarco E. Calles’ government and the Catholic church, took place
between 1926 and 1929, and related in particular to communal land use, a
particularly important topic for Aguililla because of its later connection to Lázaro
Cárdenas’ land reform.
For those who fought with the Catholic Church known as cristeros, the
soldiers of God, peasants most of them, the war was about defending their land
and their beliefs. While the Cristiada War was lived by Aguilillans, and by other
people from the region, as a war to defend their religious beliefs, it was also a
war against an abusive central government that was failing to fulfill the promises
of the 1910 Revolution against Porfirio Diaz’ regime.104 Yola’s version of the
Mamey Cave story emphasizes that the treasure in the cave was the people’s
santos se cierra. Por eso otros que han tratado de ir no han podido hallar las ollas y el dinero. Mi papá y Don
Cutberto iban dejando palmas para marcar el camino y llevaban ocote para aluzar. Luego encontraron las ollas pero
no se trajeron nada, sólo Don Cutberto se trajo un montoncito del polvo de una olla en una de las bolsas del
pantalón. Ellos no sabían que había dinero. Mi apá se trajo una piedra. Cuando en el pueblo le dijeron a Don
Cutberto que el polvito era oro y que en la piedra había oro, mucha gente quizo ir pero no pudieron entrar porque la
puerta estaba cerrada. Ya habían pasado los días santos.”
104 Porfirio Díaz was in power for thirty four years (1876- 1910) before he was ousted in 1910.
81
money taken away by the central government. In this sense, the big eagle was
once more making its presence felt in Aguililla’s history.
According to Roger Rouse, during the nineteenth century, Aguililla closed
itself off from the rest of the region. This separation––or marginalization––on
the part of Aguilillans was derived in part from two opposite perspectives that
existed in Aguililla during the nineteenth century. 105 One group of Aguililla’s elite
favored the presence of outsiders and investors in order to do commerce with
them. The people who were based outside the town center, in the ranches, on
the other hand, had an antagonistic attitude towards the presence of outsiders in
Aguililla.106 Moreover, whereas during the Porfiriato the authority of the state
was reinforced, in Aguililla it continued to be weak.107 Thus, as Roger Rouse
shows, Aguililla became a safe-haven for people who were escaping from the
police, from a personal fight, or from a dreaded central government.
Paradoxically, Aguililla’s initial political isolation was the factor that drew outside
people to the area.
Nonetheless, the socio-political events that took place throughout the first
half of the twentieth century in México such as the Mexican Revolution, the
Cristiada War, and Lázaro Cárdenas’ agrarian reform deeply impacted Aguililla’s
Roger Rouse. 1988. “Migración al Suroeste de Michoacán durante el Porfiriato: el Caso de Aguililla.” InThomas
Calvo and Gustavo López, Eds. Movimientos de Población en el Occidente de México. CEMCA/ Colegio de
Michoacán, México. P. 242.
106Cf. Roger Rouse. 1989. Mexican Migration to the United States: Family Relations in the Development of a
Transnational Migrant Circuit. Dissertation, Anthropology Department, Standford University. P. 15
107 Cf. Roger Rouse. 1988. Op. Cit. Note: Porfiriato refers to Porfirio Díaz’ regime. P.242.
105
82
social structure, providing a space for the expression of local tensions.108 As
Aguilillas’ elites struggled against the threats posed by the outside they also had
their own internal social conflicts to overcome in order to exercise local
hegemony.109
Today, Aguililla has gone from an enclosed community, which made it
difficult for outsiders to migrate into the area and invest, to an open economy
where international transactions take place, together with a constant flow of
people and transnational connections.
Aside from the way that the Mamey
Cave story links Aguililla with a larger regional and national history, it also
expresses a desire in Aguililla to gain economic prosperity, to find the treasure,
by way of passing through a magical door. It could be said that today Aguilillans
have found two ways of passing through the magical door: migration and drug
trafficking, two practices embedded in the national economy of the United
States, of México, and in Aguililla’s contemporary transnational life.
Magical Doors: Family Feuds
In this section, I study one of the more negative and most publicized/
public understandings of Aguililla: Drug trafficking and family feuds.
108
109
As
Cf Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P. 15.
Cf. Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P.16.
83
Aguilillans grapple with the violence that surrounds them, they are also trapped
by the discourse produced by the media––newspapers and corridos (songs)––
which reinforce the image of Aguilillans as violent people. This kind of discourse
articulates perfectly with the negative images within the U.S. of the dangers of
migrants. However, while many of the negative portrayals represent grains of
truth, the aim of this dissertation is to complicate nationalist imaginings of
migrants to see how they experience, transform and contest their own perceived
marginality. Marginality is a distinctive characteristic of Aguililla and is
intrinsically entangled in the way Aguilillans engage with the nation-states of
México and the United States. Being on the margins of a larger order of some
kind is a position that Aguilillans both resist and re-affirm and project through
their transnational practices.
As Aguilillans search for magical doors to
express, live, and transform their marginality, drug trafficking indeed appears as
a strategic possibility within a limited range of options.
Aguilillans are famous in their region for being conflictive. Before going
there I was told to be careful and to rethink my research site. The engineer from
the municipio and Ana, one of the two daughters of the family I stayed with, told
me that the reputation comes from an event that took place in 1990. A family
was having a party in one of the rancherías when a squad of federales
otherwise known as judiciales––police––shot at them.
People ran, hid and
returned fire to the judiciales but they were not able to hit any of them. Later the
84
federales were ambushed and killed by the people that had been attacked by
them before. Only one of the federales escaped alive. He managed to make it
to the army post, told the soldiers what happened and died. The judiciales
responded immediately, went back, and killed all those named Valencia, and
raped the women. The municipal president, Salomón Mendoza from the PRD,
was accused of being a narco and was taken to Almoloya, México’s maximumsecurity jail. Afterwards, he was set free through the intercession of the Human
Rights Commission. “La fama viene de ahí, pero aquí es tranquilo” was the
engineer’s comment.110
Though, as the engineer affirms, life may be tranquil in Aguililla, some
people are forced to leave the county because of a wide variety of personal
problems, animosities, and tensions. Many find themselves embedded in longstanding controversies that one way or another keep them from having free
mobility within Aguililla, usually cuentas pendientes, pending affairs. Contrary to
what the engineer said, Yola and Don Tadeo told me about a family member
that had to leave town and move to Apatzingán because of a quarrel he had
with another man:
He had to leave, just like that, only because of a man’s bravado,
someone that thought too much of himself. A kid came and broke
Goyo’s light bulb. Goyo punished the kid and the next day the kid
110
“The fame comes from that time, but Aguililla is peaceful”. Conversation, Aguililla, October 1998.
85
did the same thing. Goyo was ready to hit him when the father
came out and told Goyo: ‘if you have a problem with him you’ll
have to deal with me’. Goyo asked why the kid kept breaking his
light bulb and the father said because he ordered him to do so.
Then Goyo was grabbed, and at gun-point they made him eat
potato chips and soda. People started gathering to defend Goyo,
and they had guns but the man still had Goyo at gunpoint and
managed to escape. His godfather took Goyo to Apatzingán in his
truck and this is why he sold his home and moved to Apatzingán.
They say that the other man has already been killed. I think that is
the case because Goyo is buying again here [in Aguililla] because
he did not like Apatzingán very much.111
This detailed story portrays one dynamic of interpersonal relations in Aguililla,
which in many occasions end up in conflicts that are played out and sometime
temporarily resolved through violence.
Statistics show Aguililla as decidedly
more violent than most surrounding polities. In 1990, the homicide rate per
every 100,000 inhabitants in the municipio of Aguililla was of 258.3 deaths, in
contrast to Michoacán’s overall 33 deaths per every 100,000. By 1999 the
homicide rate was down to 60.5 deaths but still remained significantly higher
111Tuvo
que irse. Nomás así por braveta de un señor que se creía el mandamás. Es que vino el niño y le quebró la luz
a Goyo. Goyo le pegó al niño y al otro día hizo el niño lo mismo. Ya Goyo le iba a pegar cuando sale el papá y que le
dice: lo que quieras con él, conmigo. Goyo le dijo que porque le rompía la luz y el señor le dijo que porque él se lo
había ordenado. Y ahí se agarraron a Goyo y a punta de pistola lo hicieron tragar papa y refresco hasta que empezó
a juntarse gente para defender a Goyo y traian pistola pero el señor tenía encañonado a Goyo y así escapó. Luego el
padrino se llevó a Goyo a Apatzingán en su camioneta y por eso vendió su casa y se fue pa’ Apatzingán. Dicen que ya
mataron a ese señor, yo creo que si porque Goyo ya va a comprar otra vez acá, que porque Apatzingán no le gusta
mucho.” Conversation, Aguililla, November 1998.
86
than adjacent municipios and the state rate.112
For example, in 1999, Aguililla
doubled its adjacent municipio Apatzingán in homicide rates, while the state
percentage was 16.1 deaths, and only the municipio of Tepalcatepec had a
significantly higher rate of homicides than Aguililla.113
Countervailing the presence of violence as a mode of social reckoning
are the raucous parties that fill the town particularly when there is a good
harvest of tomates––as marihuana is familiarly called.
At such times, Aguililla
turns into a party town. Many private parties take place, bullets are fired in the
air; the streets are filed with new cars and a lot of drunk people that come down
from the mountains. Many of the revelers are not natives of Aguililla, but rather
outsiders that come to work in the ranches for the harvest.
A striking case that exemplifies the complexities of this transnational
social space relates to a family feud that started in Aguililla and traveled to
Redwood City. Mateo, Doña Carmen, Ana, Yola, Lalo, and other people I met,
as well as newspapers from Redwood City and San José provided me with
various narratives of this feud.
The feud is a good example of how a
transnational social space can operate through social relations over and beyond
state sanctioned controls. The socio-cultural and economical links established
112
See map, Figure 1 for reference. I thank Andrés Villarreal for the information he provided to me from his crime
data base.
113 Villarreal, Andrés. 2000 Crime Data Base.
87
provide density to a community that might be geographically separated but is
tied in its history.114
According to some testimonies the feud between the Mendoza family and
the Ramos family—in other narratives it is the Gil family—began when a
member of the Mendoza family “se robó una muchacha” (stole a young girl)
from the Ramos family. This provoked retaliation, which then caused another
violent response, thereby escalating the violence, scope, and complexity of the
feud, which ended up crossing the border.
In other versions the feud began because the family’s cows were
invading someone else’s land. As Lalo told me:
The mother told her sons to go kill the cows, the husband told her
not to encourage them because they would be killed; ‘they are
going to kill them’––he told her––then the sons went and killed the
cows. Later one by one the sons were murdered.115
A conflict that started in terms of women and cows grew more complicated and
violent when drug trafficking––with its concomitant risks, larger profits and
inherent violence—became an element of Aguililla’s economic terrain. Aside
114
See Figures B and C.
“La mamá les dijo a los hijos que fueran a matar a las vacas, el marido le decía que no anduviera asuzándolos
porque se los iban a matar–te los van a matar, le decía–, luego fueron los hijos y se echaron a las vacas; después le
fueron matando a los hijos uno por uno.” Interview, Redwood City, May 1999.
115
88
from the production of livestock, Aguililla’s main economic activity has become
the production of marihuana, which in turn is mainly sold in the United States.
As a town with a long history of migration that can be dated back to the 1940’s,
Aguililla’s participation in drug trafficking became linked with its migration
component most likely in the 1980’s. The family feud between the Mendoza and
the Ramos traveled to the U.S. in 1988 and by 1991 it was still taking place as
reported by local newspapers.
trafficking.
By then it was already entangled with drug
As violence escalated, regional newspapers like The San Jose
Mercury News, made an extensive coverage of the cross-border vendetta.116
See Figure B and C. Bank, David. “Bad Blood. Two families’ vendetta has killed at least 34 in México and Bay
Area.“ San José Mercury News. Sunday, July 28, 1991. Page 1A.
116
89
Figure B
“Two Families Locked in a Deadly Feud”
Copyright © 1991 San Jose Mercury News.
All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.
90
91
Figure C. Chronicling a cross-border family feud
Copyright © 1991 San Jose Mercury News.
All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.
92
93
This case, aside from its shocking content of violence, serves to shed
light on the mechanisms that constitute a transnational social space such as the
one formed by Aguililla-Redwood City.
The story shows that transnational
migrants are part of kinship and economic networks that move with them as they
travel. When migrants cross the border the past is not left behind. Values,
resentments, attachments, antipathies, ties, they all migrate with people’s
displacements. Thus, every time they travel, migrants interlace a social web
that, although circumscribed by transnational relations, acquires solidity for
those who live in it. Likewise, in this multilocational history, migrants sustain
shifting statuses and identities.117
Migrants remain members of a family; their kinship ties structure part of
their lives and define their immediate identity. Likewise, they are part of a town,
its practices, and its history. Migrants continue to belong to their hometown
because of these networks, because of their economic interest, and mostly
because of their emotional investment. The diagram of kinship killings’ and the
chronicle of the feud show how belonging to any of these families signified an
entanglement in violence and drug trafficking, an uncommon form of belonging
but belonging nonetheless.
Moreover, as in the Mamey Cave story, drug
trafficking appears not only as an alternate economy but also as part of the
Cf. Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. “Transnationalism: a New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration.” In
Nina Glick-Schiller, Linda Barch and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1992. Towards a Transnational Perspective on
Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered. N.Y, The New York Academy of Science Annals,
vol. 645. P. 1
117
94
opposition to the big central eagle––or, the federales or the judiciales on both
sides of the border.
Magical doors: understanding Aguilillan migration
As Aguilillans engage the dynamic of their own history, migration
becomes a second magical door. Even though drug trafficking appears as such
a salient aspect of Aguililla’s transnational social space, it certainly does not
account for the full spectrum of relationships that take place in this transnational
social space. In their everyday lives, Aguilillans demonstrate that they can and
do exist beyond the culture and economy of violence produced by drug
trafficking. Through migration Aguilillans put in to play all their situated cultural
practices to face the two nation-states with which they are connected. Migration
in Aguililla can be traced to the 1940’s.118 According to Roger Rouse, changes
in the region like the construction of new health facilities stimulated population
growth, creating pressure on the local economy. Likewise, schools were built,
quickly changing a traditionally illiterate population into a municipio that could
not satisfy the interests of its increasingly better educated population. Also,
improvements in communications and transportation made it easier for people,
goods and capital to move in and out of the community.
118
All these factors
Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P. 27.
95
created a need for cash that the local economy could not provide.119 Thus,
migration to other population centers became the answer. As the influence of
the bracero program spread throughout Michoacán, migration to the U.S. also
became an option for Aguilillans.120
While Roger Rouse’s arguments are relevant, there are other elements
that play (and have played) an important role in the construction of migration as
one of the main features of Aguililla’s contemporary life. Different circumstances
could be pointed out such as the distribution of resources, in particular land
distribution. A key aspect of Aguililla’s political economy is its land tenure: 21%
is ejidal land (collectively owned) and 79% is privately owned. 121
Private
ownership of land in Aguililla is highly concentrated in the hands of a few while
only a fraction of Aguililla’s land belongs to small landowners.122
The
consequences of this fact explain in part the social structure in Aguililla.
Although the ejidatarios own 21% of the land this does not necessarily mean
that they and their families can afford to live off what they produce.
Data on education is also an important indicator of the social
circumstances of the municipio. The municipio of Aguililla has 64 elementary
schools that provide service to 4714 students; four junior high schools that serve
119
Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. Idem.
The bracero program was a labor agreement between México and the United States that started during World War
II (1942) and ended in 1964.
121 Cf. Informe Solidaridad, Michoacán, 1998.
122 Idem.
120
96
642 students, one high school with 124 students, and one work- training center
with 15 trainees.123 Clearly there are not enough junior high schools to meet the
demand. However, with the existence now of a high school in the main town,
young people do not have to leave Aguililla to the bigger town Apatzingán to
continue with their studies. For young women, who are extremely protected in
Aguililla, this has meant a diversification of their life options. They can continue
studying and perhaps not marry too early in their lives, as well as learn a skill
and work. On the other hand, according to local beliefs and oral accounts,
schooling is not among the most valued qualities for an Aguileño man. Young
men are pressured by their families to enter the job market as soon as possible
to produce income for the household. In this context, migration appears as the
main path to follow.
Likewise, according to data from 1995, the population pyramid of Aguililla
is also an indicator of living conditions in Aguililla. Population growth in the
municipio in 1995 was negative, with an annual of -2.57%. In this year, there
was a significant drop in population among men in the 15-19 age group (which
represents 12.06% of the total of Aguilillans) and the 20-24 age group (which
represents 7.75% of the total). The amount of men between 25-29 is even
lower, representing only 5.85% of the total of the Aguililla’s population. For
women, the 1995 data was similar although the percentages are one point
123
Informe Solidaridad Michoacán. 1998. P.18, Table III.
97
higher for the age groups 20-24, and 25-29. One of the possible readings of
these data is that the high population drop strongly indicates a high percentage
of migration, especially from the groups that represent the core of the working
force. In this sense Aguililla is a nursery town, where people get educated and
nourished to feed the U.S. labor market.124
In the municipio, the engineer in charge of the Programa de Solidaridad–
–México’s government program for social policy established in the early 1990’s–
– probably has the most informed perspective on the facts concerning Aguililla.
According to his analysis, an important aspect in Aguililla’s economy is the
remittances migrants send to their families. Together with the revenue that
comes from drug trafficking, they represent the biggest percentage of Aguililla’s
income. According to the engineer, Aguilillan migrants go either to the South or
the North. The people that migrate to the South are the ones most likely to be
connected to drug trafficking. The people that go North have a wider set of
reasons as they follow a tradition of migration, including familial ties, and
economic reasons which for some also includes participating in the drug
trafficking business. In the Aguilillan transnational social space migration and
drug trafficking appear inextricably interconnected, they are the two magical
doors Aguilillans beckon to better their lives.
124
Informe Solidaridad Michoacán, 1998. P.17.
98
For Aguilillans today migration is happening under very distinct economic
and social conditions such as the impact that drug trafficking or migration itself
have had in the region. In this sense, the formation of a tradition of going to el
otro lado as Rafael, a young man from Aguilila explained, has become a
relevant factor of the socioeconomic context. People from Aguililla have had
access to external goods to which they have become accustomed. In turn,
Aguililla’s local economy has opened to market some of these new
commodities. Furthermore, the cash that allows for this exchange usually comes
from remittances. Thus Aguilillans expect more than what can be accomplished
if they lived all their lives in Aguililla, thereby migration appears as an answer to
their heightened expectations. Moreover, running the risk of being tautological,
it can be said that today in Aguililla migration is the reason for migration.
While in 1995 there were 20,640 people living in Aguililla, among
Aguilillans there is a general perception that a high percentage of Aguilillans live
in the U.S.125 In this sense, Aguililla is considered one of the municipios in
Michoacán with intense migration.126
Although there is no exact estimation of
the migrant population, it is safe to say that practically everyone in Aguililla
knows someone that has experienced migration.
As Rafael says, “once
someone grows up they have to go to the United States, if not, one is not happy,
Informe Solidaridad. 1998. P. 17. In the 1980’s, 7000 of 26,000 Aguilillans lived in Redwood City (Roger Rouse
1992).
126 Subcomisión Demográfica. 1998. “La geografía de la migración mexicana a los Estados Unidos.” IFE. Informe de
la Comisión de Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto de los mexicanos residentes en el extranjero. 12 de
noviembre de 1998, México. Anexo II, P.3.
125
99
it’s the tradition, the tradition of going there cannot be lost.”127 That migration is
part of the culture of Aguilllan young men is not surprising, it echoes trends of
many other regions of México.
Pierrete Hondagneau-Sotelo explains that
“popular folklore defines a journey northward as a rite of passage”, one that is
“sustained by vibrant transnational social networks and by the glories of return
migrants.”128
In Aguililla, in order to be considered a part of the community,
there is expectation to participate in the migrant circuit. It is a tradition, as Rafael
says. “Es de a fuerza,” it is a must. Therefore to tell the history of Aguililla also
means to engage in a story of the formation of a transnational migrant circuit.
Aguililla and Redwood City are two towns that while located in two
different countries, form an extended social space. Economic variables alone
cannot capture the full spectrum of the aspects implicated in the migration trend
that started in the 1940’s and continues today.129 Although Aguililla includes
several rancherías, the town has been growing in a significant way, as Don
Tadeo and his compadre Juan told me. Migrants who are building houses and
contributing to the development of the town, in part have influenced this
transformation from a rural haven to an urbanized one. For example, a relative
of Yola did not want to return to Aguililla unless a toilet and a whole bathroom
127“Todo
el que va creciendo de a fuerza tiene que ir a conocer Estados Unidos sino no está a gusto... ya va la
tradición, no se tiene que perder la tradición de irse uno para allá”. Rafael Peña, 24 años. Interview, Aguililla,
November, 1998.
128 See Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 1994. Gendered Transitions. Mexican Experiences of Immigration. University of
California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles. P.191.
129 See Rouse, Roger. 1989. Op. Cit.
100
were set up. Apparently he was afraid of being bitten by a scorpion due to the
lack of sanitary installations. As a consequence of their experiences abroad,
many migrants share the expectation of improving the urban facilities in Aguililla,
and allowing the social “well-being” they have in the U.S.
Migrants compare
differences in lifestyles, and constantly assess what they prefer from their life in
the United States and what they appreciate from their life in México. Citizenship
in this transnational social space is built upon the foundation of desires for a
better life, maintaining family ties, and participating in the sociopolitical scenario
that is constructed by Mexican transnational migrants.
“La Aguililla chiquita”: the formation of a transnational social space
For Aguilillans, Redwood City is “La Aguililla chiquita”. As Mateo, a young
man from this town, told me when we met back in Aguililla, “wherever you go [in
Redwood City] there are only people from here,” that is, from Aguililla. 130 In
1995, an estimated 10,000 Aguilillans lived in Redwood City and neighboring
community of North Fair Oaks.131
Different aspects of Aguilillans’ lives and
situated cultural practices go back and forth between the two towns. The main
street in Redwood City, “la Middlefield”, is full of restaurants with food from the
“Por donde quiera que vaya [in Redwood City] hay pura persona de aquí” Interview, Aguililla, November 1998.
Edwin García. 1995. “Living in Two Worlds. The Migration began in the 1940s.” San José Mercury News.
Wednesday, December 27. Page 1A.
130
131
101
region; furniture stores like the Mueblería Uruapan sell the same kind of
furniture one can find in Aguililla.
A landmark on Middlefield Avenue is El
Mercado Aguililla owned by Alvaro and Martha Arias, “purchased in the 1970’s
from a native of Aguililla who decided to return to his homeland.”132
The
Mercado Aguililla sells food imported from México and particularly from
Michoacán, such as the traditional sweet pastries known as morelianas. The
clientele of the Aguililla Market are loyal to it, especially to its Michoacán style
carnitas.133 Of course, the baptism, quinceañera and bridal store could not be
absent, selling core commodities that contribute to the reproduction of Mexican
socio-cultural life.
These events and commodities represent the material
reproduction of Michoacán, of home, of a displaced familiarity, of the
materialization of memory.
In Redwood City, Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church is a place where many
Mexicans living in the area gather every Sunday for mass, and for other church
activities.
Located in “la Middlefield” it is surrounded by a Mexican
neighborhood. The Church is a central point in Aguilillans’ social life. It is where
children are baptized or make their first communion, and godparents,
compadres and comadres, enter the kinship system contributing to the
expansion and solidification of Mexican migrants’ web of social relations. The
different religious events express migrants’ situated cultural practices and
132
133
Susan Ferris. “One town, two worlds”. The San Francisco Examiner.
Cf. Susan Ferris. Op.Cit.
102
contribute to a larger understanding of belonging to a Mexican/Aguilillan
community.
The jobs that Aguilillans in Redwood City do are mostly geared to the
service area. Most of their positions are acquired through kinship and personal
connections.
Some Aguilillans own their own small businesses like beauty
parlors, barbershops, markets, restaurants, clothing stores, furniture stores, and
photography services, to name a few. Other Aguilillans are typically employed
as janitors or maids. Some are gardeners or work in restaurant jobs, or in
hotels. Overall, a shift has occurred from an initial trend of working in the fields,
as Aguilillans enter the blue-collar sector of Silicon Valley and other industries in
the area.
As Aguilillans migrate between Aguililla and Redwood City, one sees the
continuity and reinforcement of situated cultural practices.
The constant
movement of people, goods, remittances, rituals, old and new traditions, political
discussions, family feuds, history lessons, all articulate in the construction of a
transnational social space. As an example of what Luin Goldring, Robert Smith,
Roger Rouse and other scholars refer to as transnational social space, Aguililla
and Redwood City shape a circuit where migration stands as the central route
for the exchanges that take place. Migrants build their transnational social space
following different strategies. Memories and family ties are also articulated
through the exchange of commodities. For example, the Panadería Michoacán
103
in La Middlefield, with its smells and traditional Mexican pastries, evokes
memories of a place called Aguililla, a place called home.
This place, as
Doreen Massey explains, derives its identity “from the fact that it had always in
one way or another been open; constructed out of movement, communication,
social relations which always stretch beyond it.”134 In this sense, Aguilillans’
commodity exchange appears as a practice that engulfs a myriad of social
relations and contributes to the existence of a place called home characterized
by its transnational linkages. Through their exchanges migrants create a place
for belonging, a place to establish citizenship.
As a businessman, a comerciante, José trades commodities but through
his trades he enacts more than an economic exchange. José is a married man
in his early thirties who now lives in San José after moving from Redwood City.
When we met, José had been living in the U.S. for 10 years. He was born in
Aguililla, worked there while he was very young, and studied only until first
grade. When he moved to the U.S., he took one year of English. His wife
Mercedes was born in Durango; they met in Redwood City and got married.
José and Mercedes own a clothing store located in a Mexican neighborhood in
San José. Initially, it was a jewelry store, like the one his brother Mateo––a
municipal clerk in Aguililla––has back in Aguililla.
Mateo and José used to
exchange jewelry and selling-techniques but eventually José chose to focus on
134
Doreen Massey. 1992. “A Place Called Home.” In New Formations, No. 17 Summer. P.14.
104
clothing. At the store things appear to be somewhat overcrowded, however they
are well organized. It looks like a tienda de pueblo, just like those that exist in
Aguililla. They sell clothes and accessories for the whole family, baptism, first
communion, and wedding dresses, as well as music, and household items.
Particularly hot items are cowboy boots, together with belts, buckles, and
sombreros that are favored by most of the Mexican men in the area.
To be in the store, to be there, is like being in México; by way of the
power of the objects a sort of transportation “back home” takes place. The
objects, the commodities that are exchanged in the store signal various aspects
of the life of Mexican migrants. They are markers of difference, as José has
observed throughout his years as comerciante: “Mexican businesses only work
because of our own race. The gringos don’t buy here; they go to other stores.
They come in and leave. They don’t like it. We sell clothes that the Mexicans
like. It’s another style.”135 Indeed what he sells at his store reflects an aesthetic.
The store sells clothes that are in fashion among the Mexican community, a
fashion that is dictated mostly by the “gruperos”, the norteño music groups.136
Just as the objects sold at José’s store are markers of difference, of style, of a
racialized style, by the same token they are markers of commonality. The store
turns into a place––a locale––where nostalgia is as much of a commodity as a
“Los negocios de los Mexicanos salen sólo por la raza de uno. Los gringos aquí no compran, van a otras tiendas,
entran y se van. No les gusta. Nosotros vendemos ropa que les gusta a los Mexicanos. Es otro estilo.” Interview,
Redwood City, April 1999.
136 Norteño or grupero music is very popular among Mexican migrants and in the communities they come from.
135
105
builder of identity. A place for reunion, for economic and social exchanges, the
store creates and recreates familiar images, material memory practices through
which a sense of belonging to a community, of citizenship, is also constructed.
Jose’s store is a place where raza––the raza––acquires a connotation of
solidarity. Race is as much about difference as it is about sharedness. For
example, according to José, Chinese and Indians go to his store because they
know they can bargain; in contrast, the gringos do not like the commodities sold
at his store. José’s testimony points to the relevance of race and how it is
already a part of his language, and of the way he conceives of himself in relation
to “others”. José talks about “one’s race”––la raza de uno––in contrast to the
Chinese––los chinos––or the Indians––los hindues––or los Gringos, all of whom
he views as races.
José’s experience and understanding of race has more of an ethnic
undertone, as he equates race with nationalities.
His story shows how ethnic
enclaves are produced and reproduced in very material ways.
As John
Comaroff explains, the making of a concrete ethnic identity occurs in everyday
practice.137 However, while José came to the U.S. with a notion of who he was
as a Mexican and a Michoacano, this social construction, this identity changed
as different conditions and social relations were established as a consequence
John Comaroff. 1996. “The Politics of Difference in a World of Power.” In Edwin Wilmsen and Patrick
McAllister, eds. The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Preferences in a World of Power. Univ. of Chicago Press. P. 166.
137
106
of his migrant experience. As Comaroff explains the changes are embedded in
relations of power: “ethnicity has its origins in relations of inequality.” 138
In this
sense, as Mexicans cross the border they are bound to face conditions of
inequality that place them in the position of contestation. One of the forms that
this contestation takes is the construction of an identity vis-a-vis the others; and
identity that draws force from the nation, from the town, from tradition, from
nostalgia, from memory, from place.
Routes: Gender and changing spaces of identity
While some goods, flavors, smells, rituals and people go to Redwood
City, others travel to Aguililla.
The linkages established between these two
towns create a connected community, a transnational migrant circuit. 139 During
my stay in Aguililla, approximately fifteen years after Roger Rouse conducted
his research, I spoke to several Aguilillans that had already made their trip back
home, some only once, others several times; some took a long time to return,
others were planning on returning to the U.S., some had come back to retire.
Through their movements and stories, I began to see that migrants’ movements
138
139
John Comaroff. 1996. Idem.
Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P.2
107
build an ongoing circuit of exchanges, which include money, commodities,
trends, knowledge, kinship ties, compromises, and experiences.
Regardless of the particular nature of their activities, all migrants are
immersed in the process of cultural and commodity exchange. And, as we saw
with José, as migrants engage the network of exchanges, and travel between
various social conditions and relationships, the ways in which they identify
themselves also change. In this section, I concentrate on the position of women
as they enter the routes and spaces of identity opened within the transnational
social space of Aguililla- Redwood City.
For many years, María would take merchandise from Aguililla to
Redwood City to sell it to the Mexicans living in the area; she would sell clothes,
blankets, covers, and other household goods through an abonos system––a
layaway plan, involving small payments every week or two. The profit María
made was marginal considering the risks she would take to move the
merchandise.
During my fieldwork, María was based in Aguililla trying to
regulate her status in the U.S. As a result, she did not travel to Redwood City
but she continued to sell in Aguililla, by bringing in products from Guadalajara.
In Aguililla, I followed María on some of her business trips and saw that
every exchange María makes allows for a consolidation and reproduction of her
social transnational network. As anthropologist Pat Zavella explains, women
use their own networks to migrate, mainly by appealing to their comadres. The
108
network of comadres, of women, is also used strategically for economic
survival.140 María’s house-to-house trail to sell commodities and collect money
involves a whole complex of relationships and dimensions inherent to life in
Aguililla. The exchange of commodities is not limited to goods and money; it
includes valuable information about the people in the community. During her
visits
to
different
households,
chismes––gossip,
rumors––are
shared,
reproduced, and most surely exaggerated and twisted. “They say...I heard...I
was told.” María’s trade routes show how women participate in the construction
of Aguililla’s transnational social space, whether it is through the remittances
earned and sent to them by family members in the U.S., or by developing their
own networks of support, socialization, and exchange.
A woman in her early thirties, María is one of seven daughters from a
poor Aguilillan family. She has been part of the migrant circuit since she was
eighteen years old, and through her multiple trips she has constructed a social
network that extends from Aguililla to Redwood City. During that time, she gave
birth to and raised three daughters and one son, all of them born in the U.S. All
the trips María has made in her life have given her the opportunity to develop
commercial skills that otherwise might have remained only as a latent potential.
See Pat Zavella. 1996. “Teníamos que sufrirle a la pasada’: Mexicana Transnational Migrants in Santa Cruz
County.” Manuscript. Presented at the Seventh International Conference on Latino Cultures in the United States. P. 6.
Also see Peggy Levitt. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles.
140
109
The movement of people and goods gets intertwined with social relations,
personal vending skills, and a financial logic, which implies a good knowledge of
the local market and, significantly, of its personalities. María takes advantage of
her web of social relations to conduct her merchant activity.
The two are
indistinguishable, and mutually interdependent, activites. An incident in María’s
travels illustrates the strategic aspects of social relations.
Early in the day,
María went to a house where a woman asked her for a blanket, she said she
would pay cash, and advised her daughter, who was about to get married, to
buy several things from María. In another house María told this story; she was
happy because the bride to be meant good business. The lady of the house, la
Señora Jiménez, told her not to trust the woman because she did not pay,
although the daughter was different, she was a better client.
The two also
discussed another woman, Ana, who resells at a profit what María sells her
through the abonos system. To them this did not seem a fair practice.
Continuing on María’s business trip we came to the house of an older
woman with a beautiful patio full of plants. There, María bought bullets that the
woman makes from what seemed to be used shells. The transaction was made
in a secretive manner surely because it is illegal. María wanted the bullets for
her husband, who is known to like to get drunk and shoot his gun in the air, but
also as someone who feels the need to be protected by a gun mainly because
he constantly gets himself in trouble.
110
Constructed along lines of social relations and economic necessity, the
position of migrants within their transnational social space is often an ambivalent
one. As migrant women enter the workforce gender relations shift. In her work
on the transnational village of Dominicans in Boston, Peggy Levitt explains that
among migrant couples dramatic changes in household structures and decision
making occur. Though María, like many migrants, considers the U.S. to be an
ideal place to live because of the variety of working opportunities and the
possibility of eventually having access to them, she nonetheless appreciates
other qualities in her life in Aguililla.
María would rather live in the United States than in México because, as
she puts it, “the poorest person from over there––the U.S.––will always be richer
than the poorest person from here––México.” Notwithstanding the positive
outlook of the U.S. that María has, she and her husband decided a year ago to
return to Aguililla, their hometown, with their two younger children Faviola and
Hilario. In her own words, María points to a significant gendered aspect of
migrating within a transnational social space, “My husband would rather live in
México, he doesn’t want to go back [to the US]. Here he doesn’t do anything, he
doesn’t work; we live off the houses we rent.”141 Because her husband does not
(choose to?) have a job, María has become a comerciante to supplement their
income. She now brings goods from Guadalajara, which she then places in
“Mi marido prefiere vivir aquí en México, él no se quiere regresar. Aquí no hace nada, no trabaja, vivimos de
casas que rentamos.” Interview, Aguililla, December, 1998.
141
111
Aguililla through an abonos system. She has to work hard or else, as I
overheard in a conversation, her husband would get upset and probably would
beat her. Coinciding with James Clifford’s understanding of diaspora women, as
transnational subjects, María is caught between “patriarchies, ambiguous pasts
and futures.”142 As Clifford explains, diaspora women “connect and disconnect,
forget and remember in complex, strategic ways.”143 For these women,
“community can be a site both of support and oppression.”144 For María, her life
as a transnational migrant has exacerbated one aspect of patriarchal relations––
as she becomes the breadwinner in her family, tensions arise. Paradoxically,
she still wants to stay with her husband even if this means being exposed to
domestic violence.
The issue of living in the U.S. brings up two contrasting gendered
desires. For María the U.S. signifies the opportunity for a better life where, for
example, “no kid spends Christmas without a gift.” Moreover, in the U.S., her
husband works outside of the home and she has a stronger position in the
household. Alternatively, for her husband, life in the U.S. meant a loss of power
in the family. According to Pierrrette Hondagneau-Sotelo, a household that is
immersed in migration is a “highly charged political arena where husbands and
wives and parents and children may simultaneously express and pursue
James Clifford. “Diasporas.” 1994. In Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 9(3). American Anthropological Association.
P. 314.
143 Idem.
144 James Clifford. 1994. Idem.
142
112
divergent interests and competing agendas.”145 Whereas migrant men tend to
think and talk more about returning home, women want to settle down in the
place where they and their family find more comfort. Luin Goldring, in her
studies on transmigrant citizenship practices, argues that women tend to receive
limited benefits from their relationship with Mexican political authorities and
membership in the Mexican nation. “Instead, they are more likely to participate
in issues and in locations that bear a more direct relationship to their identities
as women, mothers, workers, and so forth.”146 As women tend to be excluded
from active citizenship in the political arena, they, as Goldring says, practice
substantive social citizenship in the United States, and, as other studies have
shown, in their hometowns in México.147
For Lucha – who I met in Redwood City––living in the U.S. has made her
a different social subject where she can exercise newfound agency and
authority in her family. Lucha was born in Aguililla to a poor family and migrated
for the first time when she was twenty; she was 34 years old when we met.
According to Lucha, had she stayed in Aguililla, she would have been expected
to be a housewife and respect her husband’s authority. In Redwood City, in
contrast, she works outside of the home and has her own authority. In her eyes,
her new position gives her security and a new sense of who she is as a woman.
145
Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 94-95.
Luin Goldring. 2001. The Gender and Geography of Citizenship in México-U.S. Transnational Spaces.” In
Identities, Vol. 7(4), P. 504.
147 Cf. Luin Goldring. 2001. Op. Cit. P. 501. Also see Pat Zavella. 1996. Op. Cit.
146
113
I can support myself, this is what I like, because if I go to México I
am going to starve to death because I did not study over there, I
only studied until the 5th grade…. In México, I went there last year
and I did not see anything of interest, no…As for me, I would only
go to a place where I can be responsible for me and my children,
where I will be able to pay for where I live.148
Lucha’s life is embedded with many of the contradictions migrants inhabit. She
migrated following her husband, but migration has made her a very independent
woman. At first, she and her husband labored in the fields. Once they settled in
Redwood City she worked in electronics, at a hotel, and at a factory. Working
made her realize that she could have some control and voice in her family’s
decision-making. Likewise, she has learned that education is a path for better
working opportunities and for an improved lifestyle, something that she has tried
to instill in her children because, as she says, “we [she and her husband] were a
couple of burros, I don’t want my children to be like that. If they are nothing in
life, let it not be because we didn’t push them”.149
However, despite the fact that migrant women acquire more prominence
in their families, many of them still want their men to feel as if they are the ones
“…Yo me puedo mantener sola, eso es lo que me gusta porque si yo me voy a México yo me voy a morir de hambre
porque yo no estudié allá. Yo estudié nomas hasta 5to…En México yo fui el año pasado, yo no miré nada de
provecho, no…Por lo que a mi atiende, yo me iría a un lugar donde yo me pueda hacer responsible con mis hijos, con
que yo pueda pagar donde yo vivo.” Interview, Redwood City, May 1999.
149 “ya que nosotros fuimos unos burros, no quiero que mis hijos sean así. Y si ellos no son nada en la vida que no sea
porque nosotros no los puchamos.” Interview, Redwood City, May 1999.
148
114
in command.150 While Lucha has experienced a transformation in gender
relations in her family, she does not necessarily fit the mold of wanting to keep
her husband around. While she continues to be married, she does not hold her
husband in high esteem, and through her migrant experience she insists that
she has become a different kind of woman:
I have been able to ‘salir adelante’, to make it. If my husband is
around or not, I am able to make it…As a woman from Aguililla, it
is better to be here. The Aguilillan man is no good; my husband is
very lazy…As a woman, one can deal very easily; as a woman you
can work, move forward…151
Lucha’s story is a fine example of a process of subject making. Pierrette
Hondagneu-Sotelo views such processes as gendered transitions, which she
understands as a “change in women’s and men’s relative positions of power and
status in the larger social structure of power.”152 These transitions are an
intrinsic part of a transnational migrant experience where identities and
categories shift usually in paradoxical ways.153 Through her jobs Lucha has
been able to “salir adelante,” and go from depending on her husband and follow
him, to fending for herself and her children. Because her husband is not very
150
Peggy Levitt. 2001. Op. Cit. P.101.
“He podido salir adelante; yo si mi esposo está o no está salgo adelante. Como mujer de Aguililla es major estar
aquí. El hombre de Aguililla no sirve para nada, mi esposo es muy flojo…Se la lleva bien uno aquí como mujer. Como
mujer trabaja, sigue adelante…” Interview, Redwood City, May 1999.
152 See Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 195.
153 On patriarchal gender relations and migration. See Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 1994. Op. Cit. P.193
151
115
reliable, is a big spender, and is not home very often, Lucha is now the decision
maker in her family, which allows for a revalorization of herself.
Nevertheless, the issue of gender relations and gendered desires is not
unambiguous. As migration empowers some women, others feel inadequate or
isolated precisely because of the experience of migration. Equally, it is important
to look at how masculinity is changing as part of the migrant experience and
gender transformations.154 María, for example, is now a comerciante who has
constructed a female network to conduct business. She does not contest the
authority of her husband because she wants to have him by her side. In this
case the male figure is still the central authority of the family but the female
figure has acquired more responsibilities.
Family life in a transnational social space
As regions get involved in transnational migration, family life goes
through changes at the level of gender and parental relations. The involvement
of families in migration involves decisions on child-rearing practices, as well as
issues of authority between parents and children, and between wives and
husbands.
Likewise, family ties and family feuds set in motion the social
See Jennifer S Hirsch. 2000. “En el Norte la Mujer Manda: Gender, Generation, and Geography in a Mexican
Transnational Community.” In Nancy Foner, Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, eds. Immigration Research for a
New Century. Multidisciplinary Perspectives. 2000, Rusell Sage Foundation, New York. P. 385.
154
116
relations involved in migration. In the Aguililla-Redwood City case family ties and
feuds get intertwined creating a unique terrain of identity-formation and decisionmaking in this transnational social space.
Maria´s return to Aguililla was based on two primary reasons: a legal one
and a parental one. The legal reason that made María decide to come back to
México was based on her husband’s raucous behavior. Because María and her
husband were applying for U.S. residency, any difficulty with the law would
jeopardize their efforts to legalize their situation. María decided to play it safe
and came back to Aguililla.
More significantly perhaps, as parents, María and Ramón were worried
that their son Hilario would go down the wrong path. They decided to return to
Aguililla so that he would not go bad––“para que no se desperdiciara” (e.g.
become cholo, a gang member).
Their descriptions of differences between
family life in the U.S. and in Aguililla reveal the tensions that migrants constantly
face between public and private identities within the U.S.
Over there you cannot beat your children because they get upset
and call the police. You cannot raise your children like that. Once
he is done with high school then he can choose if he wants to go
back. The same goes for Faviola. She has to learn Spanish, not
cholo.155
155“Allá
no se les puede pegar porque se enojan y llaman a la policía. No se puede educar así. Ya después, cuando
termine la prepa, pues que escoja si quiere regresar. Lo mismo para la Faviola, que aprenda español y no cholo.
Interview, Aguililla, December, 1998.
117
María expresses the anxiety that she feels over the direct intervention that
different government institutions have in family life in the United States,
something that neither she nor most migrants can get used to. María and her
husband Ramón share this view; and, their concerns were significant enough
that they decided to return to México. For them it is about being able to control
the path their son Hilario takes. Likewise, María lays out another element that
migrant families have to deal with: language.
Interestingly enough the
opposition here is not with English but with cholo, which is a mix of Spanish and
English. In María’s view, proper use of Spanish is what she wants for her
children––or rather she does not want them speaking cholo. Set up in this
manner, the problem moves beyond the linguistic level and becomes a question
of cultural values and of staying away from cholo culture, which for most
Mexican migrant parents is the equivalent of gang culture.
Complaints about the interference of outsiders in family life and the
impossibility of controlling the immediate social context are common to most
Mexican migrants. José and Mercedes share María’s ambivalent relation to life
in the United States.
It is O.K. here, one can live better than in México but it’s not like
being in one’s own home. There are always problems. The
children, for example, it is a problem because they don’t allow us
parents to educate well, to spank them, because they send the
police. Once in Junior-High, the children don’t pay attention, and
they can’t be put to work. Then, they only learn to depend on us,
118
to demand, to do nothing, and they get into the gangs. We don’t
want our children growing up here.156
José and Mercedes repeat a heart felt sentiment that most migrant parents
share, as they observe the not-necessarily benevolent intrusions of U.S. law and
government institutions, such as the police and the school, in their private family
life. They feel that these institutions hamper the process of educación of their
children. These institutional practices of interference represent one of the many
instances in which migrants encounter the materiality of the state, when a legal
framework clashes with their situated cultural practices.
Migration not only evidences the differences in child-rearing practices but
also the conflicts entailed by them. Because the issue of authority and respect
towards parents is central in Mexican families, many migrant parents express
their discomfort in what they perceive as intrusive institutional practices in their
family lives, which in turn undermine their authority.
A sub-text to many migrant parents’ fear of the cholo is the degree to
which Mexican migrants are criminalized within the political imaginary of the
United States.
In the next section, I will engage the particular flows of identity
that the children born in the transnational space play upon and within. Here, I
“Aquí se se está bien, se vive major que en México pero no es como estar en la casa de uno. Siempre hay
problemas. Los hijos, por ejemplo, es un problema porque no dejan que los padres los eduquemos bien, así, de darles
una nalgada porque le mandan a la policía. En la Junior High los hijos ya no hacen caso, y no se les puede poner a
trabajar. Entonces nomás se atienen a pedir de uno, a no hacer nada,y se meten en pandillas. Nosotros no queremos
que nuestros hijos crezcan aquí.” Interview, San José, April 1999.
156
119
would like to draw attention to how, more globally, María’s concerns point to the
degree to which within the U.S. migrants effectively have no political recourse
that would protect their “privacy”.
As soon as Mexican migrants cross the
border, they are seen as carrying the nation with them. Marked as Mexican
within a racist U.S. political economy, individual migrants no longer possess any
individual or private persona that might be protected by the law.
Indeed, more
often than not, the law’s interventions in their lives signify a loss of power rather
than a protection or a benefit. Often, in order to reclaim their privacy, migrants
choose to return to México, or to travel the route of obtaining U.S. citizenship.
Through their critical judgments of differences between México and the United
States, Mexican migrants make strategic decisions that allow them to delineate,
and reclaim, their own cultural citizenship.
Within the imaginary that feeds their movements and decisions,
transnational migrants see themselves as belonging to a concrete, though
sometimes rather mythical place. For many Mexican migrants in the U.S.,
México remains an idyllic place:
where children respect their parents, where family always comes
first, and where people can have a party without worrying that the
neighbor will call the police because we all know that: today for
you, tomorrow for me.157
Testimony of Don Tomás, Mixtec migrant that has been living in the U.S. for 30 years. “donde los niños respetan
a sus padres, que la familia sea primero, donde la gente pueda tener una fiesta sin preocuparse que el vecino llame a
157
120
Perhaps these migrants engage in imagining an ideal life that never was,
evoking a sense of solidity and permanence to counter a context of constant
change, conflict, and contradictions. Nonetheless, as migrants express their
nostalgia for home and their aversion for a lack of privacy in the social space
they inhabit while in the United States, they demonstrate a keen critical
consciousness of the different political positions they occupy as subjects of a
deeply contested and culturally ambiguous transnational space.
Being a transnational subject
As a child, Faviola thinks of the United States as a better place to live
than México, even if mostly other Mexicans surround her there.
Faviola is
María’s seven year old. The youngest of four children, she recently went back
to México with her brother and her parents.
I like it more over there [Redwood City] because my sisters
take me to the stores and many other places.
Over there the
la policía porque todos sabemos que hoy por ti, mañana por mi .” Interview, Watsonville, CA, November 1995.
121
“ratón” [the mouse––tooth fairy] brought me two cuartar (quarters),
over here [Aguililla] nothing. I like Redwood City because it is a
several story “vecindad” [building] and there are a lot of
people...yes, they are all Mexicans...I like it because my friend Beri
is there.158
Over here and over there.
Faviola thinks of both places simultaneously. She
was born into a transnational social space.
Her short seven years are a
testimony of it. For example, as Faviola’s was talking about losing a tooth and
receiving cuartars or cuarars from the ratón, I found it hard to figure out what
she was referring to until it hit me that she was talking about quarters. Initially, I
could not understand Faviola because I had displaced her out of the
transnational social space she belongs to. I was listening to her from el otro
lado, and from that place, I could not understand her pronunciation of a word
with which, in English, I am, however, quite familiar.
My discussion with Faviola demonstrates the specificity of an identity and
a space that is connected to multiple places. Faviola’s world is lived in terms of
two highly contested places in terms of territory and boundaries. However, her
youthful recognition of these places is one un- crossed by notions of territory
and boundaries in a strict sense. Indeed, the meaning(fulness) of legal,
“Me gusta más allá porque mis hermanas me llevan a las tiendas y a otros lados. Porque me dan cosas, allá el
ratón me trajo dos cuartar––quarters––aquí no. Me gusta Redwood City porque es una vecindad de varios pisos y
hay mucha gente....si, todos son Mexicanos...me gusta porque está Beri mi amiga”. Interview, Aguililla, December
1998.
158
122
linguistic, and national borders is not very clear in the life of someone like
Faviola.
How does Faviola understands her membership to the U.S. and to
México as nation-states? So far in her seven years, Mexicans have dominated
Faviola’s social space. Indeed, Faviola told me that she had never met any
gringos, “I’ve never met a gringo.” “Never met a güerito (white person)?” I
asked. “No, she replied.”159 And, yet, Faviola went to kindergarden while in the
U.S. and English words are part of her language and thought.
That said,
according to her, “It was in Spanish…I went [to school] with Mexicans and–doubtful---others”, meaning not Mexican.160
Whatever the facts, Faviola’s
notions are telling statements as they deal with a central issue in a migrant’s life:
assimilation and integration within U.S. society.
Faviola’s transnational social life will make her face specific questions of
belonging that she would not have to confront otherwise. She is a transnational
subject that in her own way is now dealing with issues of belonging. At age
seven, her preoccupations translated as what she likes and what she does not
like from each place. As a child, she articulated her transnationality in terms of
commodities. For example, though in many ways she preferred life in the U.S.,
Faviola also preferred certain things about Aguililla, particularly her house there:
“I like my house (in Aguililla), I like it more than the one over there (U.S.). It has
159
160
“No, nunca he conocido un gringo.” ¿Nunca a un güerito? No.” Interview, Aguililla, December 1998.
“Fue en español...fui con Mexicanos y-doubting-unos de otros.” Idem.
123
two floors, and a yard. Yes I also like it here but I like it more over there. Over
there they give me presents.”161 Over here and over there appear in Faviola’s
narrative as she articulates what is significant in her life.
This constant
comparison by migrants is what Pat Zavella defines in her study of workers in el
Bajío and in Watsonville as peripheral vision.162 As Zavella shows, in regions of
intense migration, work and family life are always compared and imagined with
what is on the other side: significantly, this comparative perspective exists
regardless of whether someone has migrated or not.
Faviola’s words deeply reflect how life in a transnational social space is
experienced and translated. From wherever she stands in the transnational
continuum, she constantly imagines el otro lado. On the one hand, she benefits
from the commodities she can acquire in the U.S. such as toys, and clothes that
she gets from her sisters. Perhaps for her the U.S. signifies economic well
being. And yet, in México she lives in a house owned by her parents, in direct
contrast to their living situation in the U.S. where they rent an apartment.
Faviola’s story highlights the ideal many Mexican migrants pursue: a better life
in material terms and in keeping with Mexican social relations and cultural
values.
“Me gusta mi casa, me gusta más que la de allá. Es de dos pisos, y jardín. Sí, aquí también me gusta pero me
gusta más allá...Allá me dan regalos..” Interview, Aguililla 1998.
162 Pat Zavella. 1996. “Transnational Testimonios: Local/Global Narratives of Industrial Restructuring From
California to México.” Manuscript. Presented at the panel “Culture and Political Economy: Prospect and Retrospect.”
American Anthropological Association Meetings, November 24. P. 9.
161
124
Doña Carmen, whose voice reflects the experiences and nostalgia of
many other Mexican migrants, is a clear example of the pursuit of this ideal
cultural citizenship. Doña Cármen is a woman in her sixties of middle class
origins who came from Aguililla to the United States at the end of the 1960’s,
and now lives in Redwood City. Doña Carmen raised her children by herself.
Her husband left her before her youngest son was born. She was already living
in the U.S. at the time and received the support of her siblings who were also
living in the U.S. Her parents and one brother stayed in Aguililla. She went back
and forth between Aguililla and Redwood City for several years, and now she
goes back to México on holidays.
At some point in this history of travels, one of her brothers told her to
come to the U.S. to have her second son because that way it would be easier
for her to arrange her residency papers. As in other cases, Doña Carmen’s
migration story is an example of moments in which migrants use laws in their
favor, when law acquires life. This is a juncture where the state, through laws,
and people, meet. In their everyday encounters with regulations and restrictions,
people decipher and build a frame of possibilities and impossibilities through
which they maneuver. For Doña Carmen, obtaining residency meant more
mobility in the labor market, access to other benefits for her and her family, and
flexibility in her movements between Michoacán and California.
125
In the middle of a long conversation with her, I asked about the place of
birth of her children: “So, your two daughters were born here and your two sons
there?” She corrected me, “no, my two daughters were born in México and my
two sons here in the U.S.”163
I laughed; being in that house that felt so much
like a middle class Mexican home, and talking for so long about México,
Aguililla, and her stories, my mind had tricked me into thinking I was in México.
Was I in México? Had her words transported me? In response to the vertigo of
my questions and laughter, Doña Carmen said:
In reality we are in México. This is México only that they took it
away from us, I don’t know, in a war, as they do, but we have more
right to be here. We shouldn’t be asking for rights because we
have more right to be here.164
As our conversation reveals, the idea of space that permeates migrants’
existence (and in this case the researcher also) is not a rigid one even though it
might be perceived as such from some perspectives. Here is a category that for
Doña Carmen is up for contestation. México is here; it is the space migrants––in
her words, “we”––inhabit even when the geopolitical borders indicate differently.
Doña Carmen is a very articulate woman, with clear ideas and a sense of
163“No
mis dos hijas nacieron en México y mis dos hijos aquí en EU.“ Interview, Redwood City, June 1999.
“En realidad estamos en México—me dijo Doña Cármen—ésto es México nomás que ellos nos los quitaron, no
sé, como en una guerra, así como son ellos, pero nosotros tenemos más derecho de estar aquí. No debíamos de estar
pidiendo derechos porque tenemos más derecho de estar aquí.” Interview, Redwood City, June 1999.
164
126
belonging strongly informed by history, the place she comes from, and her own
ideas of what constitutes México.
Doña Carmen’s personal history, and her migrant life crossed by two
nation-states drive her beyond the simple repetition of a school history lesson.
When she says “this is México only that they took it away from us…we have
more right to be here…” she is indeed referring to a lesson taught in school in
México. However, for her it is a lesson learned beyond this institution; it is a
lesson she has lived every single day of her thirty years as a trans-national
migrant both permitted and punished by the nation-states between which she
moves. As Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea indicate in their study of
transnationalism and the politics of belonging in Latin America, “nations and
national stories construct national time, the time of heroes and special events,
this form of national time stays with people when they leave one nation-state
and move to another as part of the migratory process.” 165 For Doña Carmen,
the official version of Mexican history about the loss of half of the territory is very
real, and becomes a potent source to understand her notion of here in her life
and her identity. National stories help explain how “belonging is not fixed despite
the level of ideological investments made by the nation-state.”
166
Rather, as
with Doña Carmen, “the sense of being a part of the nation is contingent upon
165
Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Trans-nationalism and the Politics of Belonging. Routledge,
London/New York. P.6
166 Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Op. Cit. P.11.
127
specific moments which tie the individual biography and national history
together.”167
In this sense, for many migrants the particular piece of Mexican history
narrated by Doña Carmen plays the same role in the construction of an identity,
a belonging, that is cemented upon an opposition to the U.S. and the need to reaffirm their Mexicanness vis-a-vis México.
Doña Carmen and many other
Mexican migrants participate in such a narrative of the nation in order to
establish a strategic sense of entitlement, by making claims of belonging and
citizenship in accordance with the sociopolitical contexts they encounter.
Migrants’ practices of belonging are translated into identity formations,
and understandings of citizenship that relate to a larger, if not always immediate,
national community. In her studies on Rwandan refugees, Liisa Malkki shows
how identity is “always mobile and processual, partly self-construction, partly
categorization by others, partly a condition, a status, a label, a weapon, a shield,
a fund of memories, and so on.”168 While operating in a different socio-political
context than the one studied by Malkki, Mexican migrants also go through
processes of re-invention of their identity and their roots. Identity formation for
Mexican migrants like Doña Carmen rests upon the specific history of relations
between México and the U.S., the labeling they face in the social relations they
167
Idem.
Liisa H Malkki. 1997. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National
Identity Among Scholars and Refugees.” In Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson.1997. Culture, Power, Place.
Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P. 71.
168
128
encounter in the U.S., and their own situated cultural practices. In the process
of forming identity, migrants establish a sense of belonging to a community, a
sense of solidity, of place, of roots, in other words, of citizenship.
Migrants feed and substantiate their sense of entitlement by reaching to a
notion of place that in their words and feelings appears as solid as a rock.
According to Doreen Massey,
the way we characterize places is fundamentally political. The
politics lies not just in the particular characteristics assigned to
places (whether they include racist or sexist features…or social
class issues) but in the very way in which the image of place is
constructed.169
For Doña Carmen, her place is political because it is marked by the distinctions
of political history, ethnicity, race and class mentioned by Massey. Likewise the
transnational social space she inhabits is also fed by nostalgia and by memory
practices “that serve to illuminate and transform the present.”170
For example,
during our conversation, Doña Carmen showed me a picture of her, drinking
water from a special place in Aguililla. In a dreamy tone, she told me:
The water is incredible, it tastes delicious, and people go and wait for
hours to fill up their buckets. Not much water comes out, but it has a
Doreen Massey. 1994. “Double Articulation. A Place in the World.” In Angelica Bammer, Editor. Displacements.
University of Wisconsin Press. P. 114.
170 Cf. Doreen Massey.1994. Op. Cit. P. 119.
169
129
special flavor...at the end, at the other side of Aguililla...through this
street, after those rocks, that is where the water comes out as if
filtered, pure, the best flavor. 171
As Doña Carmen describes in detail the unique place where the sweet water
emanates she tries to evoke its taste one more time. For her, it represents the
flavor of Aguililla, her childhood, her family and the place occupied by the
connection Aguililla-Michoacán-México.
Doña Carmen’s testimony reveals a
phenomenological aspect of the sense of belonging migrants hold with respect
to their hometown in a first instance, and to México more generally. Moreover,
when Doña Carmen evokes her memories and senses, these are tightly related
to her notion of an aquí––a here––that become the reference points of her true
belonging and her true citizenship.
Rather than cutting the links with home, migrants’ displacement situates
their home-place within a larger context of interactions that help ground and
internalize their sense of belonging.
This is what Akhil Gupta and James
Ferguson refer to as structures of feeling. According to their definition,
The structures of feeling that enable meaningful relationships with
particular locales, constituted and experienced in a particular
manner, necessarily include the marking of ‘self’ and ‘other’
“El agua es increible, sabe delicioso, la gente va y se espera horas para llenar sus cubetas con esa agua. No sale
mucho, es poca, pero tiene un sabor especial....Al final, del otro lado de Aguililla...por esta calle, luego de las rocas,
por ahí sale el agua como filtrada, pura, el mejor sabor... Interview, Redwood City, June 1999. My translation.
171
130
through identification with larger collectivities. To be part of a
community is to be positioned as a particular kind of subject,
similar to others within the community in some crucial respects and
different from those who are excluded from it.172
Doña Carmen’s story is a fine example of such structures of feeling. Her life as a
migrant in the United States has made her establish an identity both in
opposition to the United States but also strongly in connection to México and
Aguililla, as well as to places and smells evoked by images.
Doña Carmen’s identity is influenced by the racial context she has faced
in the U.S. since her arrival. As a Mexican woman in California, Doña Carmen
encounters a process of racialization in her everyday life. She is aware of it
when she feels perceived as someone with less rights to be here. Michael Omi
and Howard Winnant argue that, “society is suffused with racial projects, large
and small, to which all are subjected. This racial ‘subjection’ is quintessentially
ideological.”173 Through different rules, and classification, people “are inserted
into a comprehensively racialized structure. Race becomes ‘common sense’––a
way of comprehending, explaining and acting in the world.”174 Living in a racially
tense state such as California where racial projects subject people to a structure
172
Akhil Gupta , and James Ferguson. 1998. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Duke
University Press, Durham/London. P.17.
173 Michael Omi and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States. From the 1960s to the 1990s.
Routledge, New York/London. p. 60. In the same tone, Pat Zavella explains “racialization” as “a process by which
social, economic, and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are
in turn shaped by racial meanings.” Pat Zavella. 1997. “The Tables are Turned.” In Juan F. Perea, Ed. Immigrants
Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States. New York University Press, New York
and London. p. 137.
174 Michael Omi and Howard Winant.1994. Op. Cit. p.60.
131
of inequality, of meanings, of labeling, of possibilities and impossibilities, Doña
Carmen’s response to this context is to affirm her identity and battle back. She
resists the new subjectivity she acquired when she crossed the border by
narrating her story as that of a Mexican who has a right to be here thus
displacing the field of discussion and the unequal balance of power relations
and senses of entitlement. Her response to the arguments which deny her
rights of belonging is to return to history and reveal other origin-stories, other
histories and structures of place. Through her knowledge of history and her
grounded sense of belonging, Doña Carmen is able to counter worlds that would
grant her illegitimacy and creates an identity where, in her own mind at least,
she is equally entitled to live where she lives.
Doña Carmen, of course, is not alone in this process; other Mexican
migrants are locked in this subject-making game.
Family ties
In contrast to the traditional view of migration, which travels from México
to the U.S., Gustavo moved from Redwood City back to Aguililla. He was born in
the United States in a middle class environment, and he decided to go and live
in Aguililla, his parents’ town. From Redwood City to Aguililla, Gustavo is an
unusual migrant because he does not migrate to the United States; instead, he
132
travels to México. Gustavo’s story reveals another layer of the transnational
social space that is constructed and lived by Mexican migrant communities.
Gustavo followed his father’s route back to his roots. All of Gustavo’s
siblings were born in the U.S. His father had initially crossed the border legally
with papers and continued to travel back and forth every two or three years.
While in the U.S., Gustavo’s father kept his residency status. He never wanted
to become a U.S. citizen. When Gustavo was three years old his family came to
live in Aguililla. Gustavo has good memories of that time. The family remained
in Aguililla for three years before returning to Redwood City. Later, at age 24,
three months before we met, Gustavo came to Aguililla with his father who had
been working as a foreman at Stanford Ranch and decided to return to “home”
after years of living in the U.S. Gustavo’s father is one of those migrants who
fulfilled the dream of returning. He is back in his hometown, his son is with him,
and together they manage their own ranch.
Now that he is in México, Gustavo enjoys living in Aguililla but he does
not have a negative view of life in the United States. According to Gustavo his
reasons for returning to Aguililla were as much experimental as nostalgic for a
connection with the past traditions of his family and people:
The other side is very different. I have lived in the U.S. all my life; I
want something new. Perhaps it is the best thing that can happen
133
to me, to be here, and well, I want to experiment, I want to know,
and I like my family very much.175
Gustavo’s words illustrate an aspect of why and how migration becomes a
tradition. In the case of young people going to “el otro lado”, the other side of the
border conveys newness, change, experiences, and expectations. Just as
Gustavo is excited to try something new, other young migrants share these
feelings with him; the difference being that their route is most often from their
towns to the U.S. and Gustavo’s route brought him back to México. Gustavo’s
travels for many reasons, the least of which is economic: he travels to find his
father’s memories, his stories, and his places.
Gustavo was born in the U.S. and thus he is a U.S. citizen. His parents
are Mexican, thus through blood ties they provide Gustavo with Mexican
nationality. How significant is this double-identity to Gustavo?
I went to school where there were only whites, only Americans, in
Palo Alto High, in a rich area…We [the Mexicans] pretended to be
strong…we were young and angry with everyone, even more so
with them…we had a lot of gabacho [white] friends, but the
“Es muy diferente un lado a otro. He vivido en Estados Unidos toda mi vida, quiero algo nuevo, quiero una vida
nueva, que fuera lo mejor. Tal vez es lo mejor que me pueda pasar estar aquí y pues quiero experimentar, quiero
conocer, y me gusta mucho mi familia.” Interview, Aguililla, October 1998.
175
134
majority did not like us.
We had fights, although they also
mistreated us, we did not think anything in partiular.176
Gustavo’s life was marked by the U.S. racial formation where a “us” versus
“them” mentality is present in everyday interactions and reinforced by the
meaning people give to these interactions. Class is also a factor, of which
Gustavo is aware. “They” are rich, and “us-we” are on the poor end, apparently
disenfranchised side of the story. This kind of discourse is clearly present in
someone that grows up in the U.S. as a minority, and it becomes a reality for
most Mexicans when they cross the border in to the U.S. regardless of their
social standing within México.177
Whereas Gustavo travels to Aguililla searching for memories, Mateo
stays in Aguililla where he builds memories for others, for the ones that live in ‘el
otro lado’. Mateo is the Christ during Easter, when he re-enacts the crucifixion.
He participates in the celebrations of the Virgin in the special dances that take
place when the Virgin travels to different neighborhoods, and he organizes the
annual Pastorela or nativity play. In turn, all these events are filmed and become
memories for the migrants. Not only do they enrich the transnational social
176
Fui a la escuela donde había puro blanco, puro Americano, en Palo Alto High, por un area rica.... Nosotros [los
mexicanos] nos hacíamos (los) fuertes, como se dice....estábamos chiquillos y enojados con todo el mundo y más con
ellos...teníamos muchos amigos que eran gabachos, pero la mayoría no nos quería. Nos peleabamos, aunque ellos
también nos maltrataban, no pensábamos nada. Interview, Aguililla, October, 1998.
177 With the exception of indigenous people who experience racism in México and in the U.S. Racial differentiation in
México is more of a silent practice than an open issue.
135
space of Aguililla-Redwood City, they turn into memories inasmuch as they are
lived by Aguilillans through a simultaneous sense of distance and proximity; they
are memories because they evoke an identity. Jonathan Boyarin argues that,
memory cannot be strictly individual, inasmuch as it is symbolic
and hence intersubjective. Nor can it be literally collective, since it
is not superorganic but embodied…What we are faced with––what
we are living––is the constitution of both group ‘membership’ and
‘individual’ identity out of a dynamically chosen selection of
memories,
and
the
constant
reshaping,
reinvention,
and
reinforcement of those memories as members contest and create
the boundaries and links among themselves.178
When Aguilillans in Aguililla perform these memory practices, and when
Aguilillans in Redwood City embody them, they imagine themselves as part of a
common space.
Through their rituals and community ties, they are indeed
enacting their identity, reinforcing their links, and affirming their membership.
Mateo, a young man in his mid-twenties, grew up in Aguililla with his
grandparents after the rest of his family left for the United States.
Also a
member of a middle class family, Mateo is married and has a job at the
municipality as an accountant. His siblings used to tell him that he was lazy
Jonathan Boyarin. 1994. “Space, Time, and the Politics of Memory.” In Jonathan Boyarin, Editor. Remapping
Memory. The Politics of Time Space. Minneapolis/London, Univ. of Minnesota Press. P.26.
178
136
because he only wanted to go to school; they opted instead to migrate. For
Mateo’s family to study was a waste of time and it only demonstrated Mateo’s
lack of work ethic. They valued work and education differently. Mateo now has
a good job in the municipality and he also owns a jewelry store. When his
grandmother died, his aunts and uncles insisted on moving his grandfather to
the United States. When he was about to leave, Mateo’s grandfather told him:
Look son, you have to promise me that you will come for me
before June, that you are not going to leave me over there, that
you will come for me. I don’t want to leave you here alone. I don’t
want to go. If you don’t come for me and I die, I’ll come back and
pull your legs at night…your grandmother already told me when
I’m going to die, I don’t want you to leave me over there.
Mateo promised to bring his grandfather back after school ended. Then,
in June, his grandfather got sick, and as Mateo tells the story:
I went in an emergency to Tijuana, I arrived in Freemont, at the
hospital as I soon as I could. He had been in a coma for two days.
I entered and told him: ‘grandpa’, look, I’m here, I’m here to take
you to Aguililla.’ He opened his eyes, he looked at me, and then
he died. He was just waiting for me. Later we brought him back to
Aguililla to bury him. 179
Mire m’hijo, me tiene que prometer que va a ir por mi antes de junio, que no me va a dejar allá. Me tiene que
prometer que no me va a dejar allá, que va por mi. No lo quiero dejar aquí solo. No me quiero ir. Si no va por mi y
179
137
Mateo kept the promise he made to his grandfather.
Whereas Mateo’s
grandfather wished to live and die in Aguililla––his home, his territory––his sons
and daughters wanted him with them, with his other grandchildren, the abuelo
being a cornerstone of the family.
Perhaps the abuelo signified home and
family; for them the abuelo symbolized their belonging and connection to
México.
When the abuelo became ill, Mateo crossed the border without
documents and rushed to the side of his grandfather. The abuelo was waiting
for Mateo to die in peace because he knew Mateo would take him back to
Aguililla, where he belonged. As Mateo fulfilled his promise he demonstrated
how migration is embedded with memories and linkages, with “here” and “there”
as powerful dimensions that frame migrants’ family ties. Death in a migrant
family reverberates throughout the web of social relations established through
years of migration, and also underscores the issue of membership. Death brings
to the forefront the relation between belonging, home, and territory, between
identity and roots.
me muero, allá vengo y le jalo las patas...su abuela ya me dijo cuando voy a morir, no quiero que me deje por allá––
Mateo promised to go and bring him back after school ended––Luego en junio se enfermó el abuelo, y me fui de
emergencia a Tijuana, llegué a Freemont, al hospital como pude. Tenía dos días en coma. Entré y le dije: ‘abuelo,
mire, ya estoy aquí, ya vine para llevármelo a Aguililla.’ Y ahí abrió los ojos, me miró, y luego ya se murió. Nomás
me estaba esperando. Luego nos lo trajimos a enterrar acá en Aguililla. Interview, Aguililla, October, 1998.
138
Spaces of belonging: a conclusion
This chapter has focused on the Aguililla-Redwood City transnational
social space, and it has addressed the issue of how a culture of citizenship is
shaped and practiced.
As a consequence of their displacement, migrants
engage in a process of re-invention of themselves that necessarily leads them to
reflect on the place they belong. The analysis of Mexican migrants’ transnational
practices allows for an understanding of how they build a unique sense of
belonging in the spaces they inhabit. Through the pages of this chapter, multiple
stories are threaded in order to show the different layers involved in the
construction of a sense and a space of belonging, and of a citizenship.
While migrants might experience, narrate and conceptualize belonging
and identity as fixed categories, migration destabilizes these categories.
Transnational migration brings a reflexive dimension into people’s lives where
categories like place, identity, and belonging lose sturdiness even though they
continue to appear solid.
Through migration people become involved in
processes of re-invention of themselves, their communities, and their sense of
home––whether it be their nation or their hometown. Nation and migration form
a loci of sentiments and emotions crucial to a sense of home.180 This process of
re-invention implicates politics, memory practices, commodity exchange, identity
180
Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Op. Cit. P. 11
139
formation, as well as social and economic remittances.181 Through these
practices migrant communities, like the one formed by Aguililla and Redwood
City, lay the ground to establish their sense of belonging, and their citizenship.
Mexican migrants living in the United States face multiple contradictions
and dilemmas. Being here and being there are two categories that constantly
intersect in their lives. Here is a category that expresses a location in spacetime. However, when it is considered in relation to Mexican migrants living in
the U.S. it not only expresses physical presence in a particular geographical
locale, it also includes a distant here fed by nostalgia, together with symbols and
signifiers of nation.
In the Aguililla-Redwood City transnational social space, belonging rests
upon understandings and experiences of place, home, family, identity, among
other elements.
This chapter explores the different facets entangled in
migration by underlying one central dimension: space and markers of space
such as here and there. In migrants’ discourse the spatial categories allí and
allá, or here and there, become essential in their understanding and articulation
of who they are, and their place in the web of sociopolitical relations that
surround them. Here and there are always present in speech, they are loaded
with meaning and provide clues for the comprehension of the transnational
181
For Peggy Levitt, social remittances refer to transactions among migrants. She identifies three kinds of social
remittances: normative structures (ideas, values and beliefs), systems of practices (households tasks, political and
religious participation), and social capital. Op. Cit. Pp 59-62.
140
social space constructed by Mexican migrants.
Here is a moving category.
Here as nation or as home is invoked and embodied by migrants through
memory practices, socio-economic exchanges, and processes of identity
formation.
Moreover, here makes evident the existence of a there, of a
distance. Here is a moving category. The presence of the dimensions of here
and there in migrants’ lives reflects the bifocality they enact.
For some migrants the way they inhabit their peripheral vision, the
simultaneous presence of here and there, is through memory practices. Doña
Carmen is full of memories that make her re-live her life in Aguililla, a place
where special pure water comes out from a stone. This is a here that even
contains taste and smell. This evocation is Doña Carmen’s strategy to articulate
her belonging to a place called home. As Doña Carmen remembers, she also
brings into play the dimension of history and the force it holds in the forging of a
sense of belonging.
When Doña Carmen refers to history, here turns into
territory; México is where she lives, where she belongs, she is here. Her here is
historically and symbolically charged.
A good example of other practices of belonging is María. She moves
commodities at the same time that she gathers stories––gossip––about others
and their ups and downs of their migrant lives. María is here and there through
these stories, through these memory practices, as well as with the economic
transactions she establishes everyday. Moreover, the saga of her own efforts to
141
secure U.S. residency, to evade problems with U.S. law, and to provide a good
education to her youngest children (as Mexicans in her terms) show how here
and there are very real and material spatial dimensions in María’s life.
As material and symbolic relations occur through the exchange of
commodities in transnational migration, other social processes get intertwined
profoundly affecting migrants’ identity formation. Through the exchanges that
take place in their store, José and Mercedes have become aware of racial
differences, and moments of identity. Race impacts migrants’ experience of
here and there. Gustavo experienced racialization while growing up in the U.S.
As Faviola recognizes the existence of others, or when Doña Carmen places
her identity in opposition to the U.S., they participate in a racialization process.
As in many other cases of transnational migration, kinship is one of the
main features that structures the lives of Mexican migrants. Family ties as well
as family feuds provide structure in migrants’ lives. On the one hand, kinship
ties establish routes of travel for migrants.
Migrants go where their kin is.
Kinship ties also form the web of support migrants require particularly when they
first arrive, and that will always be there for socializing. On the other hand, if
such is the case, kinship can also place some people as part of the chain of a
longstanding family feud.
While kinship certainly structures the lives of Aguilillan migrants, at least
their routes of displacement, family relations are in turn changed through the
142
migrant experience. The most notable transition takes place on the level of
gender. The migrant experience locates women in a position in which they have
to seek employment in order to make ends meet. This provides them with a
different position than the one they held in their hometown. Under the new
circumstances, their role in the household decision-making process changes,
sometimes they even become the main providers, as in the cases of María,
Doña Carmen or Lucha. María’s migrant experience has sparked a shift in her
family gender relations.
She is a different kind of a woman because of
migration. So is Lucha, who has definitively contested and transformed the
balance of household decisions, as well as her sense of who she is as a
woman. Lucha, for example, is proud of her economic independence from her
husband, of having her house under her name, and of making the main
decisions in her household.
Another change which migrant families experience has to do with the
relation between parents and children. An ongoing complaint often voiced by
Mexican migrant parents refers to the difficulties of raising (educar) their children
the way they were used. Interference from state agencies, as well as the fear of
having their children taken away, changes the authority Mexicans parents are
used to holding.
The general perception among migrants is that, here, the
children become more easily spoiled. Here, they talk back to their parents. For
some parents the most pressing question is how to deal with drug issues or with
143
gangs. Like María, Ramón, Mercedes, and José, they do not want their children
to become cholos. These issues do make parents consider very seriously the
possibility of going back to México. Nonetheless, in most cases, such as with
Faviola, families want the comfort and access to commodities they have found
in the U.S. along with the quality of Mexican life.
Aguililla’s economy is based strongly on drug trafficking. This commerce,
which travels across borders, plays a central role in the construction of this
particular transnational social space.
There are some Aguilillans who do
participate in this activity on both sides of the border and have made it a
significant aspect of this transnational social space’s economy and social
dynamics as portrayed by the family feud.
Citizenship in this transnational social space is built upon the foundation
of family ties, desires for a better life, and a particular sociopolitical scenario.
Michoacán is immersed both in intense political activity and migration, making
the interrelationship between the states of Michoacán and California, and
between the municipalities of Aguililla and Redwood City, a strong case of
transnational politics. For many migrants, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ presence in
the national political arena, and in the Silicon Valley region went beyond a
political interest; it also represented a larger connection with home and with
history.
It reminded people of their Michoacán and Mexican roots. In this
conjuncture, for many Michoacano migrants politics has turned into an issue of
144
belonging.
The opening
anecdote about Cárdenas’ visits allows for an
understanding of the simultaneity of the life migrants sustain where identity and
citizenship are elusive categories. Likewise, it could be read as one of the ways
in which people mediate their transnational condition, as they strategically
choose their membership.
As a final conclusion, it could be said that Mexicans living in a
transnational social space such as Aguililla-Redwood City are simultaneously
conscious of both sides of the border. There are different elements that cross
this lived space: spatial categories such as here and there; kinship as a key
social structure, and network that marks the routes migrants will take in their
travels.
These routes are intersected by a myriad cultural, political and
economic relations such as the ones described in this chapter.
Mexican
migrants’ routes and their thick practices of belonging build a social space that
exists within a transnational dimension.
The existence of these routes,
practices, and spaces has become a challenge for the nation-states that are
implicated.
How is membership to the nation-state established under such
circumstances? Migrants indeed contest the borders of the state as well as
notions of citizenship. The following chapter explores some of the strategies
that México and the U.S. have produced as a response to the challenges posed
by transnational migration.
145
Chapter III:
Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm
In Chapter II, I describe Redwood City, La Aguilillita Chiquita, at length in
an effort to show the complex cultural ties involved in making a transnational
space, which migrants live in as home. In this chapter, I present another aspect
of this transnational social space that impacts migrants’ citizenship: the network
of laws and institutions that affect migrants’ political situation and their everyday
lives. In contrast to how Aguilillans’ transnational practices shape their
citizenship as a form of belonging to a larger community, laws define citizenship
within the hegemonic framework of the nation-state. In order to explore another
domain of citizenship, this part of the dissertation opens a two-chapter section
that addresses in more detail the culture of citizenship emanated from the
relation between law and citizenship.
In Redwood City, a few blocks from the church on la Middlefield is the
Community Center. At the community center Aguililans have access to different
programs that offer them information about health and family services, legal aid,
English classes for adults, and other community building classes. One of the
most important programs the Center provides are the citizenship classes.
Through these classes and workshops, migrants learn about what is entailed in
the long process for applying for U.S. citizenship.
146
The migrants that approach the center are mostly adults that come to the
workshops after working hours. Going through the procedure of changing
citizenship produces anxiety in migrants. One of the reasons for this is
language. The citizenship test includes an interview, which is conducted in
English, and where migrants are expected to demonstrate a minimum
proficiency in this language. For Aguilillan migrants this is a drawback, as they
believe that they cannot communicate as well in English as they do in Spanish.
Moreover, the process of applying for citizenship epitomizes migrants’
encounters with U.S. law, a relation in which they occupy a position of
disadvantage. Applying for U.S. citizenship sets in motion a legal scenario that
many migrants would rather avoid, it is a process where the nation-state clearly
has a voice, a materiality, and through which law directly reaches in to migrants’
lives.
The laws I deal with in the dissertation come from two different state
formations, México and the United States, which form a conjuncture in migrants’
experiences.
In the chapter I first introduce the set of laws formed by the
Mexican non-loss of nationality law and the Constitutional reform of article 36
that opened the possibility for the vote-abroad. I also examine the 1996 U.S.
immigration law, the 1996 welfare reform legislation (in the aspects that pertain
to immigration), as well as California’s 1994 proposition 187. Together they form
147
a legal discursive corpus that frames the notion of the border, displacing it from
its geographical dimension and moving it to a political realm.
The main purpose of this chapter is to describe these laws and to
understand the consequences they entail for migrants. Likewise, the chapter
analyzes the broader political and cultural significance of the laws, at the same
time that it serves as a frame for the following chapter, which addresses more
concretely the idea of law as an embodied practice, experienced and contested
by people. In chapter four, I argue that migrants’ subjectivities are shaped by
the shifting connections the laws sustain as they intersect people’s lives. In this
sense, the section formed by chapter III and IV of the dissertation reviews the
ways in which the Mexican reform of article 36, the non-loss of nationality law,
and U.S. immigration laws articulate along national, transnational, and personal
dimensions of citizenship and migration.
This section draws from contemporary perspectives developed in legal
anthropology. For Laura Nader, one of the main purposes of legal anthropology
should be the questioning of legal and political categories and the assumptions
upon which they rest. In order to understand legal and political categories, she
argues that it is essential to recognize the significance of legal hegemonies,
otherwise “they become more powerful because they are assumed, quite
incorrectly, to be natural or benign.
Players in the disputing process are
commonly caught in these legal hegemonies, which include social and cultural
148
controls.”182
Anglo-Saxon
María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut, in their account of
anthropology
of
law,
identify
three
main
paradigms
in
anthropological understanding. While some theorists focus on structural––or
rule centered––frameworks, others study processual elements of systems in
play; and, still others further the lens by focusing on power and social change. 183
The latter paradigm, which emerges in the 1980’s, is the one more relevant for
the present work.
The power and change paradigm focuses on the dispute process––a
perspective mainly developed by Laura Nader––as a microcosm of larger
relations and systems of domination and, in countervailing perspective, this
paradigm allows for an understanding of the real play of individual agency,
which continually changes the process, the relations of power, and leads to
social change. The primary purpose is to understand how power inequalities
shape rules and legitimate certain models and cultural practices, as well as how
they influence conflicts, disputes, and rule manipulation.184
Studying issues
such as hegemony, power struggles, and resistance began in earnest in the
1990s and complements this third anthropological approach to the study of law.
According to Sierra and Chenaut, the axis in these works centers on the notion
182
Laura Nader. 2002. The Life of the Law. Anthropological Projects. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London, Univ. of
California Press. P. 10.
183 Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. “Los Debates Recientes y Actuales en la Antropología
Jurídica: las Corrientes Anglosajonas.” En Esteban Krotz, Ed. 2002. Antropología Jurídica: Perspectivas
Socioculturales en el Estudio del Derecho. España, Anthropos/Univ. Autónoma Metropolitana-Itztapalapa.
184 Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. P.138.
149
that while law might be an instrument of domination, at the same time it is a
space of resistance.185
In her latest work, Laura Nader searches to bring together a “user theory
of law and hegemony precisely because powerless users can become a
hegemonic force.”186
The analysis of the interstices of everyday life becomes
key to the understanding of how subordinate groups are able to appropriate the
dominant legality, change it to their own language, and use it to oppose it or
question it.187
The following pages explore the body of laws shaping citizenship in the
U.S. and México as texts in order to understand the meanings they entail, while
also reviewing the sociopolitical context that produced them. As Laura Nader
explains, law is not neutral, and while seemingly on the side of the powerful, law
is an evolving, dynamic phenomenon.188
This dissertation searches to
comprehend the hegemonic forces that lie beneath each of these legal texts, but
more importantly, it aims for an understanding of how the interaction between
laws allows for migrants’ agency.
The chapter is divided into two main sections. First, I recount the two
most significant changes in Mexican law concerning citizenship, which I follow
with an analysis of these legal changes and the political context in which they
185
Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. P.148.
Laura Nader,. 2002. P. 16.
187 Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. P. 149.
188 Cf. Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. Pp.11-12.
186
150
appeared. The second section focuses on U.S. immigration laws. It begins with
California’s Proposition 187, followed by a summary of the main features of the
1996 federal welfare reform, and the federal immigration law known as Illegal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, better identified as
IIRAIRA.
Opening the nation: who belongs here?
After the incident in Riverside, California on April 1 st, 1996, when a
Mexican woman was beaten by the border patrol under the presence of a TV
helicopter that filmed the abuse of force, pressure was put on the Mexican
government to take an active role in Mexican migrant issues.189 This event
provided a strategic opportunity to make a decision that had been hanging in the
air for a long time. What became an international incident also gave the state
party––the PRI––the final push to approve the constitutional reform allowing for
non-loss of nationality to Mexicans who take U.S. citizenship. On December
third of 1996, after a long process of consultation and debate, the Mexican
Congress passed the new nationality law.
See Rafael Fernández de Castro. 1997. “The Riverside Incident”. In Migration between México and the U.S.
Binational Study/Estudio Binacional. Vol. 3. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores/U.S. Commission on Immigration
Reform. Pp. 1235-1240.
189
151
The elaboration of a new nationality law meant a revision and a
modification of articles 30, 32, and 37 of the Mexican Constitution. It is important
to note that Mexican law and U.S. law have a fundamentally different formula for
determining and establishing citizenship.190 Whereas in the United States a
person born or naturalized within the boundaries of its territory and sovereignty
is considered a citizen with full rights, according to the Mexican constitution,
nationality and citizenship are two distinct attributes. A person is born a national
and becomes a citizen at 18 years old. A national that holds another nationality
cannot hold full citizenship rights. This means that certain rights, political rights
in particular, are constrained.
Regardless of the 1996 legal change to the
nationality law, the distinction between these two categories remained. This
difference is more meaningful when the debate turns to political rights.
Article 30 of México’s constitution deals with Mexican nationality and how
it is acquired.
According to the Constitution there are two ways in which
nationality may be obtained: by birth or by naturalization. Mexicans by birth are
those born in Mexican territory regardless of the nationality of their parent; those
born abroad whose parents––mother, father or both––are Mexican, and those
born on Mexican ships or airplanes. Mexicans by naturalization are those who
190
According to the Mexican Constitution, a citizen is an individual that holds Mexican nationality, is 18 years old,
and has an honest way of living. Mexican nationality is obtained by birth, when a child is born outside of the country
with at least one Mexican born parent, or through naturalization. While Mexican nationality establishes membership
to the nation, it mostly provides with economic rights. In contrast, the status of citizenship mainly refers to political
rights, such as voting and running for election. In the U.S. case, the Constitution establishes that citizens are all those
born in U.S. territory, those children of U.S. nationals––regardless of location of birth––or those naturalized, being
thus subject to U.S. jurisdiction. See Article 34, Constitución Política Mexicana. See XIV Amendment of the U.S.
Constitution.
152
request and obtain such attribute, and those who marry Mexicans, live in México
and request the nationality.
The main difference to point out with the new
version of the law is that before the reform, parents––regardless of their place of
birth––could transmit Mexican nationality to their children, as long as they had
not acquired another nationality. In the new version only the first generation of
children born abroad from at least one parent born in México are able to claim
Mexican nationality. They, in turn, are no longer able to pass onto their children
their Mexican nationality through the principle of jus sanguinis. In other words,
the possibility of transference of Mexican nationality to those born abroad ends
in the first generation in order to guarantee direct––perhaps local, and lived––
attachment to the nation.
Article 32 refers to the legal characteristics of Mexican nationals. The prereform version established that Mexicans should be preferred over foreigners for
any concession, commission, or employment that is not limited exclusively to
Mexicans. Also, the article restricted participation in the armed forces in
peacetime, including the police, only to Mexicans by birth. The new rendition of
Article 32 adds regulations to Mexicans that hold another nationality to avoid
dual nationality conflicts. Concretely the amendment states that:
The law will regulate the exercise of those rights that Mexican law
endows with to Mexicans who hold another nationality, and will
establish the norms and rules to avoid dual nationality conflicts.
The exercise of public office and functions for which this
Constitution requires the need to be Mexican by birth, is reserved
153
to those who hold such quality and do not acquire another
nationality. This reservation [limitation] is also applicable to cases
thus established by other Congressional laws.191
The consequences of these restrictions are far reaching as they forbid dual
nationals from participating in any elected office, along with a series of electoral
functions, and any functions related to national security and sovereignty. 192 The
modifications to this article, its restrictions for dual nationals, have been
acquiring more relevance as they clearly enter in conflict with citizenship rights,
especially with the issue of migrant political candidacies. Moreover, these
changes demonstrate that nationality is not a category with a simple definition,
and that laws valorize people’s membership to the nation differently thereby
creating unequal citizenship.
Annex 4. List of public positions and functions for which it is required to be
Mexican by birth without holding another nationality.193
My translation. “La ley regulará el ejercicio de los derechos que la ley mexicana otorga a los mexicanos que
posean otra nacionalidad y establecerá normas para evitar conflictos por doble nacionalidad. El ejercicio de los
cargos y funciones para los cuales, por disposición de la presente Constitución, requiera ser mexicano por
nacimiento, se reserva a quienes tengan esa calidad y no adquieran otra nacionalidad. Esta reserva también sera
aplicable a los casos que así lo señalen otras leyes del Congreso de la Unión.” Fragment Article 32, Constitución
Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. 2001, February. P. 33.
192 See Annex 4. List of public positions and functions for which it is required to be Mexican by birth without holding
another nationality.
193 Subcomisión Internacional. 1998. “Anexo I. Legislación Comparada.” In Reporte Final de la Comisión de
Expertos. IFE. Op. Cit. P. 73 anexo.
191
154
Finally, the main modification included in the 1996 decree, was made to
Article 37. This article deals with the how Mexican nationality and citizenship
can be lost. One case in particular is of concerns to migrants. Previously, the
Constitution stated that Mexican nationality would be lost when another
nationality was attained.194 The new version indicates that no Mexican by birth
can be deprived of his/her nationality. In other words, this modification to the
Constitution established the non-loss of nationality principle.
Article 37 also
refers to how naturalized Mexicans can lose their Mexican nationality.
It is
important to emphasize that this article has the particularity of dealing with two
attributes: nationality and citizenship, which, as mentioned before, are different
in Mexican legislation.195 Just as there are ways to lose Mexican nationality for
those who are naturalized as Mexican nationals, this article indicates that
Mexican citizenship can be lost by accepting foreign nobility titles, for voluntary
work for a foreign government without permission of Congress, for accepting or
wearing foreign insignias without permission of Congress, for admitting titles or
functions of a foreign country, for aiding a foreigner or a foreign government
against the nation.
194
Former version Article 37: A) Reasons for loss of Mexican nationality: First, for acquiring another nationality.
Second, for accepting or using nobility titles that imply submission to a foreign State. Third, when being Mexican by
naturalization, for residing in the country of origin for five years. And fourth, when Mexican by naturalization, for
pretending to be a foreigner by using a foreign passport. My translation.
195 At first there was some confusion in reference to this distinction. For example cf. Raúl Ross Pineda, 1998. “El
voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero”. La Jornada, México, February 13, 14 and 15.
155
Moreover, a transitionary provision was included in the new nationality law to
allow Mexicans who had previously renounced their Mexican nationality as they
acquired another––under the terms of the previous law––to recuperate their
Mexican nationality. An amnesty period of five years was established after the
publication of the reforms on March 20, 1997 for the recovery of Mexican
nationality. The deadline for this procedure expired on March 20, 2003. As a
testimony to how important the notion of retroactively recuperating nationality
status became to the state, a new initiative to remove any deadline period for
the recovery of Mexican nationality entered the Senate and Lower House on
March 2003.196
One of the purposes of the non-loss of nationality law was to allow
Mexicans to hold another nationality without losing any of their economic rights
as Mexican nationals. Likewise, this law was meant to enable Mexicans living
abroad––namely in the U.S.––to expand their options to defend their rights as
transnational subjects, on both sides of the border.
In keeping with the
sublimated language of nation-states which formulates power relations and
economic ties in language of identity and cultural ties, in its presentation of
motives, the presidential initiative underscored one of the main reasons for the
amendment as “the boundedness that Mexican migrants sustain with respect to
196
Comisiones Unidas de Puntos Constitucionales, Estudios Legislativos, y Población y Desarrollo. 2003. Press
release. Mexican Senate. March 19.
156
their roots, culture, values, and national traditions.”197
Certainly, for many
migrants their rootedness has been their symbolic daily bread, but it is a “bread”
that is sustained and recreated through their quotidian praxis and through their
interaction with the U.S. and Mexican nation-states.
In this sense, the law
recognizes an already existing practice––migrants’ attachment to their roots––
which would continue irregardless of the legal change.
The nationality law carried a strong symbolic value as it allowed the
recovery of the Mexican nationality––part of their identity, of their feeling of
belonging––to those who lost it when they acquired U.S. citizenship.
An
important aspect to underscore is that under the previous law people had to
send a formal letter of renunciation of Mexican nationality addressed to the
Mexican Foreign Ministry. This meant that a legal act, and act of authority, a
performative act, sanctioned the separation from the nation thereby establishing
migrants’ new political and cultural subjectivity. 198 When María Sánchez, a 47year-old home care provider from border town Tecate, Baja California, became
a U.S. citizen in 1985 she had mixed feelings. She was proud of her new
standing and, yet, at the same time experienced a sense of loss. “I did not feel
I was a traitor by becoming American, but I was leaving a part of my life.” 199
My translation. “Cabe destacar que es una característica del migrante mexicano mantener el apego a sus raices, su
cultura, sus valores y sus tradiciones nacionales. Además de la restricción constitucional vigente [en el momento de la
propuesta] de pérdida de la nacionalidad, aunque así lo aconsejen sus intereses, ya sean laborales, ciudadanos, de
bienestar familiar o de otra índole en el pais donde residen.” [sic] (Docto. 201/LIV/96 [I.P.O.] Año III, Dictámen H.
Cámara de Diputados 9 de Diciembre de 1996).
198 See J.L Austin. How to do things with words.1975, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts.
199 The Associated Press. 2003. “U.S. Mexicans gain dual citizenship.” New York Times, March 20.
197
157
For many Mexicans, renouncing their Mexican nationality was a hard decision, a
difficult, emotionally complex step.
Although the non-loss of nationality law is confusing in relation to political rights,
namely voting and/or standing for election, it has facilitated the decision of some
Mexican migrants to obtain U.S. citizenship. Mexicans historically have been
one of the groups of immigrants in the U.S. with a low ratio of acquisition of U.S.
citizenship.
Traditionally, only a small portion of eligible Mexican-born
immigrants becomes U.S. citizens. The INS has been tracking the
cohorts of legal immigrants admitted in 1977 and 1982 to
determine if and when they become naturalized citizens. Overall,
46% of 1977 cohort and 41% of the 1982 had naturalized as of
1995. For Mexicans, the comparable proportions are 22.2 and
14.4 respectively.200
Fifty-nine year-old Magdalena Flores González is a good example of the
reticence many Mexican migrants demonstrate when it comes to changing their
citizenship. She came to the United States 33 years ago, gave birth to and
reared four children here, and finally became a U.S. citizen in 1992. It took her
27 years to decide to give up Mexican nationality and take U.S. citizenship. With
the non-loss of nationality law Magdalena can have her original nationality back:
200
In Binational Study/Estudio Binacional. 1997. Op. cit. Also see in the same study Table on Immigrants admitted
and percent naturalized, annex 1.
158
“The new law made me feel that I could restore a piece of myself. We were
born in México...this is all about going back to a reality, the reality that we are
Mexicans.”201 María Sánchez shares Magdalena’s feelings, “I feel like I belong
there again.”202 In the case of Magdalena, as with many other Mexicans living in
the United States, in order to become a U.S. citizen––a legal status that does
not fulfill her identity––the previous Mexican nationality law constrained her
subjectivity by making her renounce to what is, in her own terms, her identity.
It is important to note that the Mexican non-loss of nationality law was perceived
by the general public, and by many organizations, as a dual nationality law
despite the fact that it is a law based on the principle that Mexican nationality
cannot be renounced. It is important to stress that the Mexican non-loss of
nationality law is not the same as a dual citizenship law. At first it seemed that
the new law established that if a person took another citizenship they would lose
their political rights although they would keep their rights as nationals of México,
related mostly to land tenure and business transactions.
The distinction
becomes significant when, as a result of this reform, dual nationality appears as
an obstacle for the exercise of full citizenship rights.
On June 5th 1998, then President Ernesto Zedillo presided in a ceremony in
Houston, Texas, where 100 Mexicans recovered their Mexican nationality.
Howe Verhovek, Sam. 1998. “Torn Between Nations, Mexican-Americans Can Have Both.” In The New York
Times, Tuesday, April 14. P. A12.
202 Associated Press. 2003. March 20. Op.Cit.
201
159
Mexicans, welcome to your homeland…I congratulate all of you
because these documents return, from a legal point of view,
something that each of you has kept intact in your heart, at times
for many years: the will to be Mexicans.203
Originally, the Mexican Embassy estimated that 3 million naturalized [U.S.
citizens] would reclaim Mexican nationality over the next few years.
However, the exact number of Mexicans who have requested their
nationality back is not clear.
According to the Foreign Affairs Ministry,
between March 20, 1998 and February 2002, 44300 people had recovered
their nationality.204
In December 17, 2002 the Partido Acción Nacional
published an announcement on dual nationality that reported 54000
applications.
The most recent information states that by the deadline of
March 20, 2003, 67000 people had applied for their nationality. 205 While the
numbers vary, and the accurate figure will not be available until all the
applications that the Mexicans Consulates received in the days before the
deadline are processed. What is evident is that the numbers of people who
responded to the effort made by the Mexican state in regards to the
nationality law does not correspond to the governments’ raised expectations.
Perhaps the expectations concerning the amount of people that would request
Althaus, Dudley. 1998. “Dual nationality now reality. Houstonian among a 100 celebrating Mexican law.”
Houston Chronicle, June 5th 1998.
204 I thank Jonathan Fox for this information. Original source: Dirección General de Asuntos Jurídicos de la
Cancillería Mexicana.
205 The Week in México. 2003. “The Senate passed a measure aimed at eliminating deadlines for Mexicans living
abroad to regain Mexican citizenship…” San Diego Union Tribune, Sunday, March 30. A-24.
203
160
the recovery of Mexican nationality were unrealistic, however for those who
decided to formally reclaim their Mexican nationality it was their cultural
citizenship that was at stake. Interestingly, this cultural aspect needed to be
sanctioned by a legal one to become significant. Indeed, citizenship involves
culture and law.
The new nationality law opens a space both for a sense of agency that
was not there before, and for a new kind of political subject. As if trapped in the
middle of a whirlwind, subjects respond and are interpelated by laws, thereby
reshaping the contours of their subjectivity. For those Mexicans who requested
the recovery of their Mexican nationality, it meant erasing a feeling of loss and
acquiring a new sense of belonging. For others, the legal change gave them the
symbolic permission to request U.S. citizenship. This might be one of the
reasons of recent shifts in naturalization by Mexicans. For example, in 1999
Mexicans had a 24.7 percent index of U.S. naturalizations, the highest for that
year.206
A citizen’s right
U.S. Department of Justice. 2000. P. 170. In Xóchitl Bada. “Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: Apuntes para el
Estudio de una Plena Ciudadanía Transnacional.” Paper presented at the Foro Internacional sobre Ciudadana
Migrante y Democracia, Universidad de Guanajuato, 8 y 9 de marzo, 2001. Manuscript. P. 7.
206
161
Changes are not gratuitous.
When the PRI dominated Congress
endorsed the non-loss of nationality law and the reform of article 36 to open the
possibility for the vote abroad, they apparently enabled Mexicans living abroad
to remain connected––rooted––to México. However, behind these new laws
lies a long struggle by Mexican migrants whose agenda has been to have these
rights recognized.
It can even be said that their voices were heard.
The
question here is how were their voices interpreted by the political and civil
society? How were their claims read, and how accepted is their membership to
the nation?
Mexican migrants’ belonging, their citizenship, is paradoxically
recognized and denied at the same time. Sometimes they are called upon,
remembered as silent heroes, other times they are seen as suspicious,
vulnerable, and less Mexican. The letter and the spirit of the nationality law
attest to the ambiguity that Mexicans living abroad carry with them.
In 1994 México underwent a national political reform; the product of it
came to be known as the Bucarelli Agreements.207 Among others, in these
agreements the issue of the vote abroad was brought up as part of the left wing
Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) agenda through its representative
Porfirio Muñoz Ledo, and was incorporated in the final agreements.208
207
See Raúl Ross Pineda. 1999. Los Mexicanos y el Voto sin Fronteras. Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y
Socialista, México. P. 134.
208 According to Porfirio Muñoz-Ledo, “the sides involved in the electoral reform negotiations agreed that steps would
be taken in order to enable the vote of Mexicans living abroad.” In Jesús Martínez. 2002. “La Lucha por el Voto
Migrante.” In Calderón Chelius, Leticia and Jesús Martínez Saldaña. 2002. La Dimensión Política de la Migración
162
According to Muñoz Ledo, the negotiations that started in 1994 aimed for a
reform as early as that year. However, political negotiations were postponed
until 1995, and by then included the presence of President Ernesto Zedillo. 209
They came to a final resolution in 1996.
As Muñoz Ledo recalls, the
agreements reached upon by the political parties and the President included the
migrant vote. Congress finally approved the initiative in August 1996.210
On August 22, 1996, under the LVI Legislature of the Mexican Congress,
a political reform was passed which included an amendment to article 36 that
opened the possibility for the vote abroad. The original article specifies as one
of five obligations of a citizen to “vote in popular elections [elecciones populares]
at the corresponding electoral district.”211 This meant that in order to exercise
their right to vote, citizens had to do it within the boundaries of their district.
However, some exceptions were in place for those who were traveling within the
Mexicana. México, Inst. Inv. Dr. Jose María Luis Mora, Colección Contemporánea Sociología. Pp. 290-291. My
translation.
209 Raúl Ross Pineda. 1999. Op. Cit. P.134.
210 Cf. Jesús Martínez. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 291.
211 The complete pre-reform version of Article 36 of the Mexican Constitution reads as follows (in reference to the
obligations of citizens): “Son obligaciones del ciudadano de la República:
I.- Inscribirse en el catastro municipal manifestando la propiedad que el mismo ciudadano tenga, la industria,
profesión o trabajo de que subsista; así como también inscribirse en los padrones electorales, en los términos que
determinen las leyes (register property in the municipality, the industry, profession or job the citizens depends on for
subsistence; as well as registering in the electoral poll as established by the specific laws).
II.- Alistarse en la guardia nacional (enlist in the national guard).
III.- Votar en elecciones populares en el distrito electoral que le corresponda (vote in the correspondent electoral
district).
IV.- Desempeñar los cargos de elección popular de le Federación o de los Estados, que en ningún caso serán
gratuitos. (to fill the popular election positions whether for the Federation or the State, which will always be
rewarded).
V.- Desempeñar los cargos concejiles del Municipio donde resida, las funciones electorales y las de jurado.
163
boundaries of México. They could cast their vote in special polling places but
only for presidential elections.
The presentation for the amendment of Article 36, established that the
reason for the “modification was precisely to grant the suffrage to those
Mexicans living abroad, thus providing an extension of the political membership
and, therefore, of their citizenship.”212 In its final version, the initiative “specifies
that the right to vote outside of the district, including the vote abroad, can be
exercised (for the year 2000) once Congress establishes the corresponding
legal reforms to make it effective.”213 The amendment indicated that Mexicans
have the right and the obligation to vote independently of the place they find
themselves on Election Day. Once the restriction to vote within the limits of a
particular electoral district was eliminated, the possibility for the vote abroad was
opened. In a first instance, what the possibility for the vote abroad means is a
shift in the legal notion of citizenship, of the limits of this category. Likewise, it is
a door through which politically active migrants perform their agency. For many
Mexican migrants, the opening of this door came as a result of their own political
efforts rather than as an initiative of the Mexican political system.
Nayamín Martínez. 2001. “El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero. Inconclusa extension de la ciudadanía.”
Paper presented at the Round Table Ciudadanías Excluidas/Excluded Citizenships. Indigenous and Migrants in
México. Center for US-Mexican Studies, February 16. P.4
213 Informe Final de la Comisión de Especialistas sobre las modalidades del voto de los Mexicanos residentes en el
extranjero). Op. Cit. P. 5. In Alejandra Castañeda. 2001. “Migrantes y Construcción de la Ciudadanía”..Paper
presented at the Round Table Ciudadanías Excluidas/Excluded Citizenships. Indigenous and Migrants in
Mexico.Center for US-Mexican Studies, February 16. P. 2. “En su versión modificada, establece que el derecho al
voto fuera de la circunscripción, incluyendo en el extranjero, se podrá ejercer (para el año 2000) una vez que el
Congreso establezca las reformas legales correspondientes para llevarlo a la práctica.”
212
164
Despite the fact that civilian organizations and opposition parties keenly
promoted the vote abroad, it was under a PRI run Congress–– following a
presidential initiative, and a negotiated proposal––that the legal changes to the
nationality law and the electoral reform took place. The concrete consequences
for the Mexican political scenario are beginning to take shape but remain
unclear. Whereas the 1996 electoral law was meant to allow Mexican citizens
living outside the country to vote in federal elections, for the moment it remains
as a political gesture rather than a fait accompli as it will not have an effect
before 2006, and even then it is still up for revision.214
Although the right to vote outside of the country is now guaranteed by the
Constitution and the electoral law, the particular norms and rules––secondary
laws––for its implementation have yet to be defined. Moreover, two legal prerequisites were established which prevented the immediate implementation of
the vote abroad. First, the new electoral law required the elaboration of a
Citizens National Registration (RENACI), in charge of the Secretaría de
Gobernación––the Interior Ministry––as the basis of the electoral process. This
was a problematic aspect of the reform because the Federal Electoral Institute
(IFE) became a citizen run body, independent of the executive branch, through
a long and tough political process. The IFE became the tool that provided
confidence in the electoral system; therefore, having the government back in the
165
electoral process through the use of RENACI’s data base instead of IFE’s did
not appear as a viable political option.
The second pre-requisite established the need to form an interdisciplinary
Commission of Specialists in order to study different modalities for the vote
abroad.215 The Specialists Commission delivered its final report to the IFE’s
General Council on November 12, 1998. In their concluding statements the
Commission found the vote abroad to be viable and they introduced several
options for its implementation. Likewise, and perhaps the most significant of
their conclusions, the Commission did not encounter any clause within the
nationality law that established the possession of another nationality as an
obstacle to lose Mexican citizenship. In other words, political rights had to be
respected. Moreover, the delivering of the report meant that one legal obstacle
was cleared. However, notwithstanding the political advances, the right to vote
for Mexicans living abroad is still pending, and depends on the real interest of
the political parties to pressure for its implementation.
215
Transitory article 8th of the electoral code (COFIPE).
166
Law and political disputes
The struggle for the vote abroad has surfaced in different instances of
Mexican history.
In his latest book, sociologist Arturo Santamaría identifies
various moments in which Mexicans living in the U.S. have expressed and acted
upon their interest for their homeland.216
Santamaría explains that there was
political activity by Mexicans in the U.S. that can be dated back, for example, to
1904 with the Magonistas and the Partido Liberal Mexicano who supported
Ricardo Flores Magón against Porfirio Diaz’ regime; or to 1922 with José
Vasconcelos’ presidential candidacy who took his campaign to the U.S. South
West, and New York, among other places, and was significantly supported by
Mexicans living in the U.S.217
More recently, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’
presidential campaign in 1988 revived the political participation of Mexicans
living in the U.S. leading to the emergence of the PRD in the U.S. and to a
political movement that advocates for the political rights of Mexicans living
abroad.218
216
For example, 1865, 1904, 1910, 1929, 1937, 1988, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000. Arturo Santamaría Gómez. 2001.
Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: la Nación, la Política y el Voto sin Fronteras. México, Universidad Autónoma de
Sinaloa/PRD. P. 23.
217 See Arturo Santamaría Gómez,. 1994. La Política entre México y Aztlán. Relaciones Chicano Mexicanas del 68 a
Chiapas 94. Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, México. Pp. 23-27.
218 See Arturo Santamaría,. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 104. Pp. 142,143.
167
The 1996 changes to the Mexican Constitution came as the result of
pressure from the Mexican community living in the U.S. as well as of the
opposition left-wing party PRD.
During Zedillo’s presidency the PAN
incorporated into its agenda migrants’ political demands. Now that the PRI is in
the opposition, many of its Congress representatives, and some governors, are
accepting the importance that Mexican migrants have for the nation, their states,
and for their own personal agendas. This has allowed for an improvement in the
communication lines between migrant organizations, political parties, Congress,
and the Presidency.
After the 1996 reform, there have been other initiatives that aim to modify
different legal inconsistencies or problems that came with the original 1996
initiative. The following table lists and describes these initiatives.
Table A.- Initiatives
Date
Aug.
22th
1996
Initiative
Reform
Article 36
Content
Removal of
requirement
of voting
only within
electoral
district limits
Proponent
Bucarelli
Agreements
May 15th
1995
Details
Status
Opened
Approved
possibility of
vote abroad
168
Date
Dec.
3th
1996
Initiative
Nationality
law,
amendment
articles 30,
32, 37
Content
Mexicans
by birth
cannot lose
their
nationality
Restriction
in jus
sanguini
principle to
first
generation
Proponent
Presidential
initiative
(Ernesto
Zedillo)
Details
Adds
restrictions
for dual
nationals:
cannot hold
public
office,
among
other
aspects
Status
Approved
April
30th
1998
Changes
electoral
law
(COFIPE)
Remove
transitory
article VIII
(electoral
law)
Lázaro
Cárdenas
Batel (PRD)
Eliminate
Pending
lock clauses
(RENACI)
Nov.
19th
1998
Amendment Allow vote
Article 35
Of
Mexicans
abroad
Rafael
Castilla
Peniche
Make right
to vote
abroad
explicit
Pending
169
Date
April
15th
1999
Initiative
Chapter
Ninth
initiative
Content
Modify
previous
version of
law
Add a
Chapter IX
to electoral
law
(COFIPE)
Include right
vote abroad
for
Mexicans
living
outside the
country
Proponent
Javier
Algara
Cossio,
Details
Creation of
voters’
registry
Rafael
Castilla
Peniche,
Allow IFE to
sign needed
international
agreements
Felipe
Urbiola
(PAN),
Lázaro
Cárdenas
Batel,
Carlos
Heredia
Zubieta,
José Luis
Gutiérrez
(PRD)
219
Status
No
progress
Allow
candidates
and Parties
to campaign
abroad
through the
IFE
Accept
absentee
ballot
Create
voting
centers
abroad.219
In Jesús Martínez. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 315.
170
Date
April
29th
1999,
and
July 1st
1999
Initiative
Political
reform,
included
approval of
vote abroad
(with the
needed
legal
changes)
Content
Modify
electoral
law
(COFIPE),
Constitution
al articles
6th, 49th.
Add three
transitory
articles to
regulate
vote abroad
for 2000.
Remove
RENACI
requirement
Oct. 4th Sixth
Creation of
2001
Circumscrip a new
tion (district) electoral
district with
proportional
representation
candidacies
of Mexicans
living
abroad, and
guarantee
the vote
abroad
220
Proponent
PAN, PRD,
PT
Introduced
by Gregorio
Urias
German
(PRD),
Authored by
MUSA
(Mexicans
in the USA)
Details
Included
Chapter IX
proposals.
Amendment
article 6th to
allow vote
of Mexicans
abroad.
Remove
restrictions
to Mexicans
abroad to
donate
money to
political
parties or
candidates.
Allow 2000
vote abroad
to those
who have
electoral Id
card.220
Status
Approved
by Lower
House
April 29th
1999.
Preempted
by PRI
majority
Senate,
July 1st
1999,
Rejected
July 8th
1999 by
Senate.
Pending
Martínez, Jesús. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 317.
171
Date
Initiative
Content
Jan. 9th Zacatecan
Recognize
2003
Migrant Law bi-national
residency.
Political
representation in local
Congress
through
plurinominal
candidacies
April
24-25,
2003
Vote abroad Add new
law
chapter to
proposal
COFIPE
and
corresponding
amendments to
Constitution
Proponent
Details
Status
Federación
Pending
de clubes
de
California,
Frente
Cívico
Zacatecano
Carlos Pinto
Núñez,
Miguel
Moctezuma
Longoria
CDPME221
Electoral id Pending
card
Temporary
credentiali
zation
campaign in
U.S. Vote
by phone or
mail. Allow
those
inscribed in
the electoral
registry to
contribute
to
campaigns.
Congressman Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, introduced a second bill on April
30th 1998, supported by other PRD legislators as well as from the Workers Party
(Partido del Trabajo, PT). The initiative proposed to modify the reform to article
36 in order to eliminate its transitory article VIII, which established two clauses
221
Coalición por los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero.
172
that effectively blocked the vote abroad for the 2000 elections. Specifically, the
proposal aimed at removing the Registro Nacional Ciudadano (RENACI)––
National Citizen’s Registry, a sort of social security number––as the electoral
registry. On November 19, 1998 a third bill in relation to the vote abroad entered
Congress. PAN’s Congressman Rafael Castilla Peniche introduced a proposal
to modify Article 35 of the Mexican Constitution to explicitly establish the right to
vote of Mexicans living abroad.222
In April 1999, a fourth initiative was presented to Congress. PAN
Congressmen Javier Algara Cosío, Rafael Castilla Peniche, Felipe Urbiola
(PAN), and PRD Congressmen Lázaro Cárdenas Batel, Carlos Heredia Zubieta,
and José Luis Gutiérrez offered a proposal to modify the previous version of the
law and add a Chapter IX (book nine) to the electoral legislation––Código
Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales (COFIPE). The main
objective was to allow for the vote outside of electoral districts and abroad
without the need of the RENACI and the required identity card, unlocking one of
the 1996 reform clauses, which for many was the main obstacle. Likewise, it
proposed the creation of a voters’ registry of Mexicans living abroad, to accept
absentee ballots, and to create voting centers abroad. Moreover it included
provisions to allow the Electoral Institute to sign needed international
222
See Raúl Ross. 1999. Op. Cit. P.138.
173
agreements, and to allow candidates and Parties to campaign outside of the
country through the IFE.223
Later, this proposal entered the House of Representatives as part of the
negotiations for a political reform in 1999. The opposition majority approved it
with some modifications on April 1999. This fifth initiative also proposed an
amendment to Article 6 to allow for the vote of Mexicans living abroad. Likewise,
they searched for an amendment of Article 49 to remove restrictions for
Mexicans abroad to donate money to political parties or candidates. It also
included three transitory provisions to regulate and facilitate the 2000 vote
abroad to those who had electoral identification card.224 This last proposal
included some of the suggestions already made by the Experts Commission.225
Yet, because it entered as a package for a broader political reform, which the
PRI opposed, this latter initiative got trapped in the political battles between the
Lower House and the PRI majority Senate, which rejected the reform on July
1999.
On October 4, 2001, a sixth initiative entered the discussion at the House
of Representatives through the PRD. This initiative proposed the formation of a
sixth electoral district that would include Mexicans living abroad.
The main
advocates of this initiative were migrants from an organization called Mexicans
223
Jesús Martínez,. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 315.
See Jesús Martínez,. 2002. Op. Cit. Pp. 316-317.
225 1996 electoral code Transitory Article VIII, or Código Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales.
1997. IFE, México. P.302.
224
174
in the USA (MUSA), along with other migrant organizations. The proposition
mainly focuses in modifications to csssonstitutional articles that refer to political
representation. The aim is open the option for proportional representation
candidacies for migrants. At the heart of this project lies the idea that political
representation is essential if México’s democracy is going to be complete, and
migrants’ interests accurately represented in Congress.
Finally, another initiative on the vote abroad has been developed by the
Coalición por los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero
(CDPME), a bi-national and an heterogeneous group of migrant activists,
journalists, political leaders and scholars. The proposal is in part a result of a
series of forums that took place on both sides of the border. These forums were
co-organized by various migrant organizations with some Governors––mainly
Oaxaca and Michoacán––and with the Senate, specifically by Senator Genaro
Borrego, president of the Commission for the Reform of the State, and the
Lower House. While asserting the importance of and need for migrants’ political
representation, this initiative is centered on first achieving the right to vote
abroad. The proposal includes technical suggestions for its implementation.
The central ideas are: voters should have an electoral identification card; the
Federal Electoral Institute should hold temporary credentialization campaigns
abroad; the vote would be made by phone or mail, and registered voters should
be allowed to contribute financially to political campaigns.
175
In sum, in relation to the vote abroad seven initiatives have been
presented to the Mexican Congress after the 1996 political reform, the majority
of which are waiting to be analyzed. None of these proposals were vindicated by
the PRI even though a PRI ran Congress approved the initial reform. In addition,
Zacatecas’ local Congress is discussing an initiative introduced on January 8,
2003. The key to this project lies in the recognition of bi-national residency to
allow for migrant political candidacies, and representation in the local Congress
through proportional representation candidacies.
Today, with a different scenario, some PRI legislators and governors are
being more outspoken about their support for the vote abroad. While still
dependent on México’s political context, the struggle for political rights for
Mexicans living abroad continues. The constant vacillation among the political
parties has contributed to a lack of clarity in the letter of the law, thus leaving
open legal loopholes that keep migrants still at the margins of the decisionmaking process of the nation.
176
Mixed messages and the life of law
With the approval of the two constitutional amendments in 1996, there
was a formal reevaluation of the importance that Mexican migrants hold for the
nation. These laws directly make reference to the issue of citizenship. They
establish who belongs to the nation, who can be considered a full citizen, that is,
an integral member of the political community, and who does not belong in the
national community. The non-loss of nationality law and the reform to article 36
of the Mexican Constitution which opened the possibility for the vote abroad are
two legal changes that have convergent histories although divergent
consequences.226 First, these changes have different ramifications in reference
to inclusion or exclusion of migrants as Mexican citizens. Both modifications
signaled a movement towards the integration of this significant sector of the
country’s population. However, the acknowledgment of the importance that
Mexican migrants have for the nation has not been smooth; the full recognition
of their rights has yet to take place.
When
the
1996
nationality
law
was
approved,
some
migrant
organizations and also some politicians understood it as a law that would hinder
the right to vote of Mexicans living abroad.
As stated previously, the
226The
basic reform was the appearance of the principle of indelible(non-loss) nationality law (popularized as dual
nationality law). Approved on December 1996, came into effect on March of 1998, a year after it was published in
the Diario Oficial de la Federación.
177
Commission of Experts appointed by Congress to study the vote abroad, in their
final report concluded that there were no clauses in articles 37 and 38 of the
Constitution that established the possession of another nationality as a reason
for losing Mexican citizenship.227 That is, people who had acquired another
nationality could still exercise most of their citizenship rights, in particular their
right to vote.228 However, in this same report, the Commission noted that while
the Mexican judicial framework had no references about the right to vote for
those nationals with dual nationality, it does contain explicit dispositions that
restrict Mexicans with dual nationality to occupy election offices and other public
functions reserved to Mexicans by birth, as specified in article 32 of the
Constitution.229
Despite its limitations, the acknowledgement of Mexicans abroad through
the new nationality law was a significant move for a country with strong
nationalist sentiments constructed specially vis-a-vis the proximity with the
United States. The passing of the law was not easy as it encountered strong
The Commission’s final report, in relation to the principle of non-loss of nationality and the exercise of the vote
abroad, came to six conclusions. Two of them stand out.
Point number four: “the Mexican legal system has no references in relation to the right to vote for those Mexican
nationals who hold another nationality. However, both the Constitution and the nationality law contain explicit
provisions that restrict Mexicans with another nationality from standing for election and other public functions. These
restrictions that mainly affect the organization of electoral polls, and the functioning of political parties, shall be
observed during the electoral process.”
Point number five: “The dispositions in Articles 37 and 38 of the Constitution do not consider the possession of
another nationality as a cause for losing or suspending citizenship. Therefore, the provisions related to the loss or
suspension of citizenship equally apply to Mexican citizens with one nationality, and to those with dual nationality
[sic].” See Reporte Final Comisión de Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto de los mexicanos residentes
en el extranjero. 1998. IFE, November 12, México. P. 110. My translation.
228 Idem.
229 Comisión de Especialistas, 1998. Op. Cit. P. 110.
227
178
resistance in certain political circles in México. Most of these negative opinions
referred to the fact that Mexicans living in the United States could represent a
threat to the sovereignty of the nation. The basis for this argument assumes that
when another nationality is acquired, the original one gets blurred because of
the territorial distance, and the lack of current information about México.230
According to this perspective, Mexicans living abroad are more vulnerable to be
manipulated by U.S. interests as they adopt foreign cultural values and
practices.231 Moreover, some voices even declared that it would be correct to
treat those naturalized Mexicans as foreigners, because when those individuals
who previously were Mexicans decided to associate their legal situation with a
country other than México, they could no longer be Mexican. Therefore, by this
logic, they were foreigners.232 The latter represents the point of view of a sector
of México’s political class, and also of the general population––cutting across
class, region, and Party affiliation––that conceives Mexican nationality as an
untouchable essence. Migrants, with all their ambiguities, trouble this category.
One of the characteristics of Mexican nationality refers to economic
attributes, that is, to the right to hold properties on all Mexican territory, to work,
and to invest without the restrictions foreigners have. By way of appealing to
migrants’ roots, the government was looking to entice Mexicans living abroad to
Carlos Arellano García. 1995. “Inconvenientes y peligros de la doble nacionalidad.” In Memoria del Coloquio La
Doble Nacionalidad. Palacio Legislativo, LVI Legislatura, Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión. June
8-9, México. Pp. 40-41.
231 See Jorge Carpizo. 2001. “El Peligro del Voto de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero.” Nexos, Julio. Pp. 11-12.
232Carlos Arellano García. 1995. Op. Cit. P. 50.
230
179
invest in their home states or hometowns. It comes as no surprise that the nonloss of nationality law already has secondary laws as well as mechanisms for its
implementation. For example, Consulates have the necessary information and
forms for the recovery of Mexican nationality to those who lost it when they
renounced to it under the terms of the old nationality law. It can be said that
when the non-loss of nationality law was approved it already came with the
necessary elements to be applied. Likewise, the fact that this law is now
implemented reflects its true intention: Mexicans abroad are useful to the nation
because they are an economic force that represents the third largest source of
income for the country.
Ex-president Ernesto Zedillo’s initiative has been continued by President
Vicente Fox’s administration. President Fox has personally championed with
migrant organizations to develop and participate in investments programs. This
follows Fox’s own policies as a governor of the state of Guanajuato when he
established a close relation with the migrant communities of his state through
the Casas de Guanajuato––hometown associations––although their strategies
of investments in their communities predated Fox’s administration.
As
President, Vicente Fox has made the migrant agenda a central point of his own.
In his first official event in Los Pinos, the presidential compound, Fox met with
Mexicans living in the United States and asked them to invest in their homeland,
especially in the impoverished communities.
In this meeting, President Fox
180
called on the migrant leaders “to invest in businesses and factories in their
ancestral villages and throughout rural México, saying his government planned
to match any such investment dollar for dollar.”233 Whereas the nationality law
appears as a benefit for migrants, as a door that has been opened, as a gesture
of reconciliation, it seems more that the intention behind its approval was, and
is, to literally capitalize on migrants’ economic attributes.
With the seeming validation of Mexican migrants through the changes to
the nationality law, a blurring of the lines between Mexicans abroad and
Mexicans living in México was inscribed in the letter of the law. However, the
contradictions contained in the nationality law clearly reflect the inadequacy and
lack of will of the Mexican political system to take the necessary steps towards
enfranchising Mexican migrants. This, in turn, underscored and reinforced
distinctions between different kinds of Mexicans.
Even though at first glance the changes made to article 36 of the
Constitution appeared to be friendly to Mexicans living abroad, they left
unfinished the political reform that would allow citizens outside of the country to
vote in the 2000 elections, or in posterior ones. Likewise, in spite of all of the
initiatives and their intention of positively affecting migrants’ lives and
addressing their political rights, none of them propose a change to article 32. As
the interest of many migrants grows in participating in local and national politics,
233
Cf. Dudley Althaus. 2000. “Fox extends a hand to Mexican migrants.” The Houston Chronicle, December 3th.
181
the clause in article 32, which restricts Mexicans who hold another nationality
from
the
possibility
of
holding
public
office––Senate,
Lower
House,
Governorships, Presidency, electoral duties, among others––and any job related
with national security and sovereignty, becomes more relevant. This section of
article 32 formally establishes a distinction between different kinds of Mexicans.
The law is placing Mexicans who hold another nationality as less Mexican. They
indeed are not full members of the national community. With the conflation of
categories and prejudices, migrants’ citizenship and loyalty to the nation
remains in question.
Despite the divergent paths taken by the non-loss of nationality law, and
the reform to article 36, which opened the space for the possibility for the vote
abroad, their mere existence make evident the fact that there are millions of
Mexicans living in the U.S. who are disenfranchised and excluded from
exercising a citizenship in any of the nation-states they inhabit. The non-loss of
nationality law opened one of the doors that had been closed. Even though this
positive step was taken, the issue of political rights remained trapped by political
obstacles, legal clauses, and by the lack of secondary laws to implement the
reform to article 36. Mexicans living abroad up to this day remain as de facto
second-class citizens with their political rights restricted.
The problems faced by the migrant campaign for the vote abroad, which
includes the reform of article 36, can only be read as a symptom of the
182
contradictory attitude the Mexican nation-state as a whole, not only the
government, has had toward Mexicans living abroad. Just as they are
recognized as valuable members of the nation, mainly for economic reasons,
they are rejected as active members of the political community; they have no
room in the national decision-making process. In spite of this, migrants continue
to consider themselves as members of their nation of origin, of México. As
Arturo Santamaría explains, Mexicans living abroad have not separated their
political identity from the economic and cultural ones.234
The significance of these two legal changes is far reaching. This body of
laws is pointing to México, a political space but also a source of identity and
situated cultural practices. To review these laws in detail allows for a better
understanding of who is considered a member of the nation-state, who is
excluded from this membership, and how this membership can be practiced.
Most importantly, the detail of the law, of these two laws in particular,
demonstrates the fragility of the space called México. Ironically, the laws attempt
to re-enforce the structure of the nation-state when they are being confronted by
the fact that nearly ten million Mexicans live in the U.S. The legal and the
political system respond to the challenge by reframing the membership to the
nation.
234
Arturo Santamaría Gómez. 2001. Op. Cit. P. 163.
183
The land of the free: U.S. immigration law
WE CAN STOP ILLEGAL ALIENS.
If the citizens and the taxpayers of our state wait for the politicians
in Washington and Sacramento to stop the incredible flow of
ILLEGAL ALIENS, California will be in economic and social
bankruptcy.
We have to act and ACT NOW! On our ballot, Proposition 187 will
be the first giant stride in ultimately ending the illegal alien
invasion….235
In 1994, 58.8% of California voters approved a ballot measure named
Proposition 187, which banned illegal aliens from the use of basic public
services.236
This initiative “emerged from the suburbs of Los Angeles and
Orange County in 1993 as the ‘Save Our State’ campaign”––S.O.S.––a
campaign aided by Republican Party funding, and strongly supported by then
Governor Pete Wilson who used it as part of his re-election agenda.237 It is
important to note that this initiative was born out of a group of citizens from
235
Arguments in favor of Proposition 187. California Legislature Record 1007. 1994. See Annex 5.
“Official title: Illegal Aliens, Ineligibility for Public Services and Reporting Initiative Statute. Summary: Makes
illegal aliens ineligible for public social services (unless emergency under federal law), and public school education at
elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. Requires various state and local agencies to report persons who are
suspected illegal aliens to the California Attorney General and the United States Immigration and Naturalization
Service. Mandates California Attorney General to transmit reports to INS and maintain records of such reports. Makes
it a felony to manufacture, distribute, sell or use false citizenship or residence documents.” California Legislature,
Ballots. Proposition 187. Summary. 1994.
236 Patrick McDonnell. 1999. “Davis won’t appeal Prop. 187 ruling, ending court battles.” Los Angeles Times, July
29.
237 Patrick McDonnell. 1999. Op. Cit. Also cf. California Legislature, Ballots. Proposition 187. Summary. 1994.
236
184
Orange County, lead by Ronald Prince and Republican political consultant
Robert Riley.
The relevance of this fact is that it was a citizen’s proposal,
supported by republicans, that set the stage for a major transformation in
immigration law in the United States.
As can be observed in the opening quote, Proposition 187, used tabloid
campaign style, to play upon xenophobic attitudes not only in California but also
in the U.S. in general, thereby galvanizing latent anti-immigrant feelings, in
particular against Mexicans. According to Alejandra Marchevsky, the success of
Proposition 187 rested on “its ability to closely link crime and immigration in the
public imagination”, thereby constructing anyone that came across the border
illegally––especially from the South––as an invader, a criminal, therefore
undeserving of basic human civil rights. 238
The arguments in favor of
Proposition 187 stated that “welfare, medical and educational benefits are the
magnets that draw these ILLEGAL ALIENS across our borders”.239
These
illegal aliens. Through its language, Proposition 187 successfully contributed to
an effect of estrangement, of othering, where migrants stopped being people
and turned into real aliens, creatures far from human dignity.
These illegal
aliens.
Alejandra Marchevsky. 1996. “The Empire Strikes Back:Globalization, Nationalism and California’s Proposition
187.” In Critical Sense. A Journal of Political and Cultural Theory. Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring. Cf. P.13.
239 Arguments in favor of Proposition 187. California Legislature Record 1007.
238
185
A closer revision of Proposition 187 allows for an understanding of the
institutional and performative power entailed in this legal text. Particularly in the
arguments in favor and against the initiative it is possible to capture how
migrants are imagined and portrayed, and the very material consequences of
such images. Among the main arguments in favor of the Proposition rested on
claims of how illegal immigration [sic] represented a cost of “an estimated five
billion dollars a year.”240 For those who were feeling the effects of reductions in
Medicaid or the strain in the educational system, the arguments presented by
promoters of Proposition 187 were compelling. Illegal aliens appeared then and
continue to appear now as the ideal scapegoats. Migrants are seen as a cost,
never as producers of value.
Interestingly enough, the arguments against Proposition 187 did not
escape the discourse of viewing immigration as a problem and immigrants as a
source of expenses covered by taxpayers’ money. Actually, those against the
Proposition advocated for a reinforcement of the border and focused on how
Proposition 187 would end up costing 10 billion dollars to the state of California
on account of the loss of federal funds. Moreover, those against the Proposition
presented their arguments in the ballot for the most part in legalistic terms.
Among other statements, the counter-position declared that the initiative was
“filled with provisions that collide with state and federal laws, state and U.S.
240
Idem
186
constitutional protections and with state and federal court rulings” did not appear
as a match to the more simple and compelling pro-187 arguments.241 It comes
as no surprise that with the lack of a strong counter-argument to the core ideas
of Proposition 187, with an argument based on how “poorly drafted” the initiative
was, at least at the level of the text the battle was won before it even went to the
voters. Moreover, in principle, arguments in favor and against Proposition 187
depart from a similar notion of immigrants: they are illegal, they are a problem,
and as alien to this country they cannot become a part of it.
As migration without papers is transformed into a criminal act, behind
laws like IIRAIRA or Proposition 187 lies the perception that the established
national ways are jeopardized by immigration in general. Even though these
laws appear in the phrasing as practical responses to the economic problems
raised by the presence of migrants, in fact they are mostly concerned with the
political and cultural impact migrants have in the overall dynamic of life in the
United States. In the U.S., objections to the presence of immigrants derive
mostly from objections to cultural attributes such as race, religion, language.
These objections often later translate into laws, as in the case of Proposition
187, or the English only initiatives that are moving through different states.242
241
Arguments against Proposition 187. California Legislature Record 1007.
“In the United States alone, just about every cultural attribute imaginable has been found objectionable at one time
or another, notably ‘race’––as constructed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, referring not only to
‘Asiatics’ and blacks but also mixed-breed Mexicans, different European nationalities, and Jews––religion (notably
Roman Catholics, from the eighteenth century until quite recently), and language (German speakers in the late
eighteenth century, Spanish speakers today).” Aristide R. Zolberg. 2000. “The Politics of Immigration Policy: an
242
187
The solutions immigration laws propose reflect an approach to migrants
as a negative aspect of U.S. life. It is about restricting, enforcing, deporting,
apprehending. The discourse produced by IIRAIRA, the welfare reform, and
Proposition 187 is nothing less than a portrait of the institutional power they
contain and project, and the fear of the unwanted but so needed ‘other’.
Of course the full explanation of why Proposition 187 was approved by
California voters cannot rest on a textual analysis. Issues of race and class
played a significant role in the final results. For example, the majority of the
registered electorate in California is white, while in relation to the population as a
whole it has lost its majority status at least since 2000, a trend that was already
noticed in the past decade. In 1994, 81% of the electorate was white. Out of
this group, according to a poll conducted by Los Angeles Times, 63% of the
white
electorate
voted
yes
for
Proposition
187.243
Latinos
voted
overwhelmingly––77%–– against it, however, they only represented a low 8% of
the electorate.244
Proposition 187 included provisions preventing illegal immigrants from
attending public schools, receiving social services, and subsidized health care.
Likewise it penalized the manufacture and use of false documents to conceal
illegal immigrant status. It also required that law enforcement authorities, school
Externalist Perspective.” In Nancy Foner, Ruben G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, Eds. Immigration Research for a
New Century. Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Rusell Sage Foundation, New York. P. 63
243 See Daniel W. Weintraub. 1994. “Crime, Immigration Issues Helped Wilson, Polls Find.” The Los Angeles
Times, 9 November. A1 and A22.
244 See Marchevsky, Alejandra. Op. Cit. P.12.
188
administrators and medical workers turn in suspected illegal immigrants to
federal and state authorities.
By bringing the enforcement of the law down to the level of public
workers such as teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, and employers, the
consequence would have been a policing social environment where the racial
other became the necessary object of suspicion. “Is it the way you speak? The
sound of your last name? The shade of your skin?” These were some of the
questions posed in the arguments against the Proposition, a proposal that
looked to use suspicion as a tool for the enactment of the law but failed to define
the basis for such suspicion.
Three and a half years after the controversial ballot was passed by
California voters, a federal judge in Los Angeles “issued a final order forbidding
implementation of the core provisions of Proposition 187, declaring that those
parts of the controversial 1994 ballot initiative targeting illegal immigrants’ use of
public benefits is unconstitutional.”245 By the time Gray Davis came into office
he had to decide whether California’s government should continue the appeal
against Los Angeles U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer’s ruling. Davis’
government inherited this appeal from Pete Wilson’s tenure. On July 1999,
attorneys for Governor Gray Davis and civil rights organizations that supported
Patrick McDonnell. 1998a. “Judge’s Final Order Kills Key Points of Prop. 187. Courts: a permanent injunction is
levied on the ‘94 measure targeting illegal immigrants’ use of public benefits.” Los Angeles Times, Thursday March
19.
245
189
proposition 187 reached an agreement to end litigation. The provisions at the
heart of Proposition 187 were put aside. It seemed that this dark moment was
behind. Was it really?
Domino effect: the legacy of Proposition 187
While the application of the policies proposed in Proposition 187 were
trapped in the courts and were never fully enacted, the ideology behind it, the
negative feelings, the proposed policies, started to make their way up to
Congress, which in 1996 made illegal immigrants ineligible for most nonemergency public aid. Likewise, in this year Congress passed a welfare reform
legislation that, among other things targeted aid to legal immigrants. In sum, in
1996 the United States Congress transformed immigration law. By August,
Congress
had
approved
the
welfare
reform
legislation––the
Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act––which imposed new restrictions on
immigrants.
Likewise, in September Congress passed the Illegal Immigration
and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 [IIRAIRA], signed by then President
190
Bill Clinton.246
Both laws can be seen as the legacy of California’s Proposition
187.
Furthermore, Proposition 187 can be read as the legacy of the 1986 the
Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). This amnesty inscribed the lives of
many Mexican migrants who applied for residency. How does this amnesty
coincide with later racist proclamations like Proposition 187, or the welfare
reform? As Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo explains, “while the media portrayed
IRCA as a liberal and generous law because of legalization provisions, the
primary impulse behind it was immigration restriction.”247 For example, one of
the main goals of IRCA was to sanction those who employed undocumented
immigrants thereby reducing migration’s pull factor. Likewise, IRCA sought to
increase the budget for apprehending undocumented migrants at the southern
border, to legalize agricultural workers and undocumented migrants already
settled in the U.S––before 1982.248
The welfare reform legislation of 1996 mainly took away food stamps,
funding for disability payments and Medicaid health coverage to both legal and
illegal immigrants. By 1997, some of these rights had been partially restored, in
particular eligibility for legal immigrants to receive disability payments and
See Stephen H. Legomsky. 1997. “Non-Citizens and the Rule of Law: the 1996 Immigration Reforms.” In
Research Perspectives on Migration, Vol. 1/ Number 4, May/June.
247 Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo.1994. Gendered Transitions. Mexican Experiences of Immigration. University of
California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles. P. xiv
248 Cf. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 207.
246
191
Medicaid health coverage.249
In 1998 Congress restored federal food stamp
eligibility to needy legal immigrants––namely children, the elderly and disabled–
–that had been dropped from the program. Despite this, a significant number of
adults between ages 18 and 64 remained uncovered because the new
provisions failed to include all the non-citizens residents that were covered
before.250
Another limitation of the reform lies in the fact that it only applies to
residents that settled before August 22, 1996, when the federal welfare overhaul
became law.
While most of these provisions were restituted, the effect this law and
Proposition 187 had on Mexican migrants’ understanding of their vulnerability in
the U.S. was permanent. This feeling of disadvantage in relation to U.S. laws
has led many migrants with residency to decide to obtain U.S. citizenship, as is
the case of many Aguilillans like Doña Carmen, or María.251 For migrants, the
distinction between the name of one law or another is not clear, whether it is a
state law or a federal one, the two levels are viewed as emerging from one
single entity: the U.S. government. Moreover, what is clear for most Mexicans
in the U.S. is the way laws impact their lives, and re-enforce exclusionary
perceptions of Mexicans in the U.S. where whether citizens or not they still face
discrimination. For Mexican migrants, the specter of Proposition 187 prevails.
See Patrick J McDonnell,. 1998b. “Food stamp eligibility to be restored for 250,000.” In Los Angeles Times,
Friday, June 5.
250 See Patrick McDonnell. 1998b. Idem
251 See chapter IV
249
192
Attack
the
enemy:
Illegal
Immigration
Reform
And
Immigrant
Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA)
While the Welfare reform legislation mostly restricted residents’ rights,
IIRAIRA’s main provisions deal with illegal immigration. As Stephen Legomsky
explains, “IIRAIRA seeks to attack illegal immigration on several fronts––at the
border, in the interior, in prosecutors’ offices, and elsewhere––and invests
additional law enforcement resources to ensure that assault stands a good
chance of success.”252 To summarize, IIRAIRA contains five sections, or Titles,
each of them addressing a specific area of the complex immigration agenda in
the United States.
As they appear in the law, the Titles are about: Border and interior
enforcement; Smuggling and document fraud enforcement; Apprehensions and
removal of deportable aliens; Restrictions against employment; Restrictions on
Benefits; and Miscellaneous provisions. Each of these titles include their own
set of policies which re-enforce prior ones or modify them. For example, in the
1990s the INS concentrated new enforcement resources to the border with such
actions as “Operation Hold the line” in El Paso, or “Operation Gatekeeper” in
San Diego. With IIRAIRA, Congress implicitly endorsed this particular INS
252Stephen
H. Legomsky. 1997. Op.Cit.
193
strategy.253
Critics of these policies argue that “these operations merely
diverted illegal entries to other crossing points or induced those who succeed in
achieving illegal entry to remain longer rather than go back and forth.” 254
Moreover, these militaristic style policies not only have failed to stop migrant
flow from the South, they have pushed the crossing of the border to harsher and
more dangerous conditions, where migrants put their lives at risk. It would seem
as if the INS is counting on migrants dying instead of having to deal with them
when they cross the border.
IIRAIRA brought more border patrol agents, and the construction of more
physical barriers. Among the more serious consequences are the provisions
that establish civil penalties for illegal entries, and the authorization to fingerprint
illegal aliens. When an entry with no visa takes place, the person is not deported
immediately. The migrant is arrested and sent to a detention center. A file is
opened and from that moment the arrested migrant has a police record thereby
hindering later possibilities to become a legal resident and/or citizen. These
particular IIRAIRA policies criminalize migration thereby imposing harsher
conditions on migrants’ lives. In this case migrants go from being workers,
fathers, mothers, to becoming criminals. Again, a line has been crossed for
them, and again migrants acquire a new subjectivity with far reaching
consequences for their daily lives.
253
254
Cf. Stephen H. Legomsky. 1997.
Stephen H. Legomsky. 1997. Op. Cit. P.13
194
IIRAIRA also restricts immigration judges’ discretion in deportation cases.
Before IIRAIRA, immigrants at risk of being deported had to prove continued
physical stay in the U.S. for at least seven years, good moral character during
that period, and demonstrate that deportation would cause extreme hardship to
the alien or to his family (whether citizens or residents). Under IIRAIRA, a
migrant is now required to have good moral character, continuous presence
was extended to ten years, and hardship to the alien himself is no longer basis
to allow a judge to stop a deportation.
Another aspect of IIRAIRA applies to legal residents. This particular
provision expands the notion of “aggravated felony” and “conviction,” which in
turn affect non-citizens who have some criminal record placing them in the
possibility of being deported regardless of circumstances. As Stephen
Legomsky explains, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 introduced the category of
aggravated felony. According to Legomsky this notion “has become one of the
most amended terms in the Immigration and Nationality Act.”255
Whereas
initially aggravated felony referred “to such crimes as murder, and firearms and
drug trafficking, the term’s meaning has been consistently broadened by
lawmakers keen to demonstrate that they are ‘tough on crime’.”256 The different
amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act have, in certain cases,
extended the term of aggravated felony “to such crimes as minor drug
255
256
Stephen Legomsky. 1997. Op.Cit. P.13.
Idem.
195
possession, turnstile-jumping and graffiti-making––even if these crimes occurred
years ago.”257
Furthermore, as Legomsky explains, the term “conviction has undergone
a similar metamorphosis, and now includes many state deferred adjudication or
diversion programs that previously had little or no immigration consequences.”
Likewise, IIRAIRA “sharply curtails the possibility of the immigrant receiving a
waiver of deportation based on mitigating circumstances.”258
The impact of
changes to the meaning of categories like ‘conviction’ and ‘aggravated felony’
have for non-citizens is very real, as it can have material consequences such as
deportation or a severe reduction of their options to defend themselves.
A key issue here is the retroactive nature of these criminalizing threats of
deportation. Whereas before residents were treated with the same eyes under
the law that ruled U.S. citizens, with the broadening of the meaning of these
categories migrants/immigrants/residents are placed in a position of increased
vulnerability. Words have power, and these kinds of words not only proliferate
in their meaning, they also threaten a migrants’ everyday life. They are
connected with immigration law as reminders that only citizens of the United
States are fully protected under its laws.
Every detail of the law, every word, can transform a person from a minor
offender into a major criminal thus performing a change in their political
257
258
Idem.
Stephen Legomsky. 1997. Op.Cit. P.13.
196
subjectivity. They would no longer be able to become U.S. citizens. The different
provisions established in IIRAIRA are another step toward the criminalization of
immigrants. An analysis of the language of the law reveals an ideology where
the nation-state appears to be under a threat, its integrity is menaced. “Protect
the border” is the resulting policy. Protect the border from the Southern invasion
is the ever more racialized policy.
As a consequence of immigration laws undocumented migrants get
physically separated from the rest of the population by a continual informal
judgment that pushes people to accept any kind of job situation. The
immigration law has now passed on to the civilian population the task of
continual surveillance, by, for example, requiring employers to check for the
legality of the papers presented by workers, or requiring teachers, doctors and
nurses to request papers of legal presence. This expectations and obligations
placed on the civil society provokes a naturalization of the categories of alien
immigrant, illegal worker or illegal immigrant.259 By limiting immigrant rights the
law is enabling the existence, the very construction of the category, which it
seeks to ban: the illegal alien. It is the law that produces difference.260 Those
immigrants who can respond to this surveillance and differentiation by taking
U.S. citizenship opt for what appears to be an assimilation move.
Cf. Susan Coutin. 1996. “Differences within Accounts of U.S. Immigration Law”. In Political and Legal
Anthropology Review Vol. 19, No. 1, May. P.16
260 Cf. Susan Coutin. 1996. Op. Cit.. P. 11
259
197
Conclusion:
Studying laws portrays the institutional dimension entailed in citizenship.
This chapter points to how legal texts are embedded with cultural meanings,
values, and social practices that provide life to the law. In short, this part of the
dissertation shows the explicit interaction between nation-states and people, a
relation that is inscribed through the legal texts.
When citizenship is defined in the legal realm, with its consequent
categorization of people, it already appears as a political space where power
struggles take place to determine inclusions and exclusions, but also where
spaces of resistance and contestation emerge. This chapter described the body
of laws composed of the Mexican non-loss of nationality law, the reform to
article 36 of the Mexican Constitution, California’s Proposition 187, the U.S.
1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act––welfare reform––in
those aspects that pertain to immigration, and the 1996 Illegal Immigration
Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. This discursive corpus shapes
Mexican migrants’ existence in the United States as will be seen in the following
chapter.
The structure produced by the interrelation of these laws can be
thought of as a web of possibilities and impossibilities through which migrants
move. It can be said that transnational migrants and the particular space they
198
inhabit––such as the one formed by the connection Aguililla-Redwood City––
find themselves being addressed and constituted as political subjects by two
different state formations.
In the tug of war in which México and the United States are engaged,
what is at stake is the definition of the nation, the redefinition of borders.
Although the non-loss of nationality law and the constitutional reform to article
36 in appearance only affect México, they in fact involve another nation-state,
the United States. Via its laws, the political enters the transnational sphere.
While economic barriers are being erased to allow for fluid commercial and
financial transactions, in contrast, geopolitical borders are being strengthened in
order to contain immigration. What happens between México and the U.S. is a
transposition of two nation-states, of two countries that at different levels erupt
into the “other’s” space. Nonetheless, in the unequal relation between México
and the U.S.—which is currently taking place under the shadow of NAFTA and
national security concerns—different ways of expressing a voice, of moving
beyond the geographical borders take shape. Governments are not the only
ones who speak for the nation. In this case, México speaks through each person
who decides to cross the border.
In the legal discursive battle established between these two nation-states
México performs a maneuver through which, by rendering flexible its notion of
nationality with the openness and apparent vulnerability this entails, it in fact
199
reaffirms Mexican nationality.
With these new laws the Mexican state
trespasses the boundaries that the United States would like to maintain as clear
and precise limits. With the constitutional reform to article 36 and the non-loss of
nationality law the Mexican nation-state follows its citizens in blurring its
boundaries.
The purpose is to extend itself beyond its territorial limits by
allowing its citizens to be recognized as Mexican nationals independently of
their acquisition of another citizenship. In so doing, México symbolically expands
its sovereignty while, at the same time, this same sovereignty is being
undermined by the implementation of NAFTA.
The body of laws described in this chapter becomes a discourse
inasmuch as it is produced from the institutional point of view, deriving its power
from the institutions themselves––judicial system, presidency, electoral
institutions.261
Nonetheless, as much as laws are hard texts they indeed
contain a dimension of proliferation of meaning that allows the people subjected
to them to avert their overwhelming institutional powers.
That said, the
materiality of the law, its performative effect, must be emphasized. Because
they appear as texts, sometimes laws seem to remain at that level. Mexican
migrants’ lives demonstrate the opposite. Laws become material, they become
real when migrants experience them. In their lives state institutions, legal
discourses are a constant, spectral and lively presence.
261
Michael Foucault. 1976. The Discourse of Language. In The Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colofon, New
York. P.216.
200
Beyond this theorization, laws have to be seen as moving texts and the
privileged ethnographical place where the nation-state can be seen at work. The
particular laws presented here describe the structural and discursive connection
that exists between Mexican migrants and the nation-states they inhabit. This is
a space with many restrictions, open or undisclosed labeling, a racialized space,
a space of commodification or objectification. Likewise, when these laws
interlock they indicate one of the ways in which México and the United States
are maneuvering as nation-states in a transnational era where people’s
migration shakes the definition of the boundaries of the nation-state itself.
In the elaboration of the laws introduced in this chapter the meaning and
value of the nation is always invoked. To have an understanding of the context
that produces this set of laws is key for a future consideration of a politics of
citizenship where membership to a community or to a nation-state, and the
battles behind the definition of the practice of this membership, is always at play.
In the coming pages migrant voices will make their entrance to show how
this legal structure does indeed appear as such, that is, as the words of the
state against which it is almost impossible to battle. However, migrants actions
and their reflections portray how the body of laws that frame their lives, this hard
structure, is not an insurmountable one. Migrants’ practices demonstrate how
despite the regime of govermentality that surrounds them there are cracks that
201
allow for alternative existence, like the ones Aguilillans have created through in
the transnational social space they have constructed.
202
Chapter IV
Law as practice: Experiencing the law
I arrived as a mojado––a wetback. I am a son of braceros, and
now I am the Mayor of Lynwood. I became a citizen in 1999. I want
to be an example to other Mexicans.262
As the statement above reveals, Fernando Pedroza’s life has been
crossed by laws (“I became a citizen in 1999.”) and international treaties (“I am a
son of braceros”) and marked by social labeling (“I arrived as a mojado”). This
statement relates the story of someone who since his childhood has been
immersed in the migration history between México and the United States. He is
the son of workers who came to the United States as a result of a treaty
established between these two nations during the period of 1942-1964.263
Mayor Pedroza’s narration of his arrival as a mojado who in time became a U.S.

Portions of this chapter were published in Alejandra Castañeda Gómez del Campo. 2001. “Ciudadanía y
Transnacionalismo: el Desafío de los Mexicanos en Estados Unidos.” In Arturo Santamaría Gómez. Mexicanos en
Estados Unidos: la Nación, la Política y el Voto sin Fronteras. Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa/PRD, México.
262 “Llegué como mojado, soy hijo de braceros, y ahora soy mayor de Lynwood. Me ciudadanicé en1999. Quiero ser
ejemplo para otros mexicanos.” Fernando Pedroza, Lynwood’s Mayor. Statement, Forum “El Derecho al Voto de los
Mexicanos en el Exterior.” Los Angeles, February 9, 2003.
263 Cf. Arturo Santamaría Gómez. 1994. La Política entre México y Aztlán. Relaciones Chicano Mexicanas del 68 a
Chiapas 94. Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, México. P. 51.
203
citizen is a tale of transit among legal and social categories. Fernando
Pedroza’s crossing of boundaries of nation, state, and class (from mojado to
Mayor) allow him to participate in local politics, in the political place where he
lives. His is one of the many stories of how Mexican migrants go through a
process in which they embody intersecting legal discourses as inseparable from
cultural and political practices of citizenship.
Whereas the previous chapter dealt in more detail with the corpus of laws
that affects migrants’ lives, this part of the dissertation turns the focus to the
people, to Mexican migrants in the U.S., who have to live with the
consequences of their transnational engagements. These pages explore how a
culture of citizenship is formed when it is explicitly related to law, as well as
when law becomes a part of migrants’ everyday practices.
The rationale that guides this chapter is based on the idea that laws
cannot be separated when people experience them or embody them, that is,
when laws come to life. The spaces of quotidian life are key for understanding
how subordinate groups manage to appropriate dominant legality, adapt it to
their own languages, and in some instances oppose it or question it.264 The
following pages portray some of the different forms in which migrants interact
and interpret laws as seemingly hard texts that bring them into confrontation the
Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. “Los Debates Recientes y Actuales en la Antropología
Jurídica: las Corrientes Anglosajonas.” In Esteban Krotz, 2002. Ed. Antropología Jurídica: Perspectivas
Socioculturales en el Estudio del Derecho. Anthropos/Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Itztapalapa, México.
P.149.
264
204
nation-states and their own senses of belonging and community. 265
To
understand this process, I present the connection between citizenship and
belonging
following
migrants’
testimonies
of
their
experiences
and
interpretations of the legal frameworks they encounter everyday. Likewise, I
look at citizenship as it is experienced and constructed by politically active
migrants who address the nation-state in the public sphere but also through the
articulation of their practices of belonging and political investment.
To recapitulate, this chapter is about experiencing the law. It is about
law, which appears as the language of the state, turned into practice, that is, an
embodied text. Although laws might seem formal and distant from everyday life,
I consider them as sites where state and people converge, as well as powerful
tools for political change.
In this sense, law is seen as a form of cultural
practice. As Laura Nader argues, the analysis of institutional practices such as
legal discourse contributes to “illuminate places where power is being
reconfigured and reconstituted, but one must first recognize power as something
to be reckoned with in building theories of everyday life activities.” 266
The
purpose of her work and of this dissertation is developing an understanding of
the power of law and the power in law.
265
Laura Nader. 2002. The Life of the Law. Anthropological Projects. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los
Angeles/London. P. 113.
266 Laura Nader. 2002. The Life of the Law. Anthropological Projects. University of California Press,
Berkeley/London/Los Angeles. P. 118.
205
The chapter begins with a revision of the cultural politics of citizenship
implicated in migrants’ situated cultural practices and perspectives on the laws
that affect their possibilities to be members of one or several communities.
Furthermore, I review the debate that took place as several migrant groups and
different political sectors in México pushed for the dual nationality law and a vote
abroad reform for the 2000 elections. Because the Mexican legal changes have
stopped short from enfranchising Mexicans living abroad, the debate over their
political rights has continued well past the 2000 elections. In particular, I
consider how the struggle for the vote abroad goes beyond the strictly political
sphere and moves into the cultural realm. To do so, I present moments in which
the Mexican political system has endeavored to engage directly and consistently
with the Mexican community in the United States.
The cultural politics of citizenship: migrant voices
I became a citizen so that I wouldn’t lose rights, as they say that
residents are losing more rights all the time, well in reality they are
forcing one to change citizenship, but I don’t feel less Mexican for
that, that doesn’t make me less Mexican, I am still in México.267
“Me hice ciudadana para no perder derechos, como dicen que cada vez se están perdiendo más derechos de los
residentes, pues en realidad lo están forzando a uno a ciudadanizarse, pero yo no me siento menos mexicana por eso,
eso no me hace menos mexicana, yo sigo en México.” Interview, Redwood City, 1999.
267
206
This testimony from Doña Carmen represents one of the forms in which
migrants engage with the issue of citizenship, that is, in terms of identity and
belonging, with the legal realm always lurking around. Her words point toward a
set of related issues: first there is the law, the question of rights––to become a
citizen in order to maintain rights. Second, the problem of identity––I don’t feel
less Mexican. Finally, the question of membership and sense of place––I am still
in México.
Here, Doña Carmen expresses in her own terms how U.S.
immigration laws affect her life, or rather, how they induce her to make a
decision that she might not otherwise have taken, “they are forcing one to
change citizenship.” She is conscious of the fact that there are U.S. laws that
directly impact her everyday life.
Although she does not mention them specifically, Doña Carmen is
referring to the 1996 immigration law (IIRAIRA), and the 1996 welfare reform
legislation both of which restricted residents’ rights, and perhaps equally to
Proposition 187 and all its propaganda against Mexicans in California.268 The
experience recounted by Doña Carmen is again an example of a juncture where
state, and migrants meet in the name of the law. With the passage of these
laws, and her experience of years of being between the two nation-states of
México and the U.S., Doña Carmen has learned that the only way to be fully
268
Although I recognize that state laws are distinct from Federal laws and they do not necessarily coincide, I approach
them as a unitary body of laws mainly because this is the way they are perceived by migrants as will be seen
throughout this chapter.
207
protected from their restricting effects is by taking U.S. citizenship, something
that she perceives as a forced but necessary move. Regardless of the setbacks
these laws have had in the court system, together they produced a general
sense of instability among migrants. The response for many is to become U.S.
citizens.
In Doña Carmen’s words the issue of belonging to a country, to an
imagined community, is clearly present. For her, to take another citizenship
does not mean to lose the original one, regardless of laws. I don’t feel less
Mexican, she states.
At play within the space of uncertainty that migrants
occupy are issues of membership, identity, and racialization. According to Nira
Yuval-Davis, “it is only when one’s safe and stable connections to the
collectivity, to homeland, the state, become threatened, that [belonging]
becomes articulated and reflexive.”269
At this point, “individual, collective, and
institutional narratives of belonging become politicized.”270 Mexicans in the U.S.
are grouped in a racial category, treated as a minority, and are attached with a
predetermined baggage of what it means to be Mexican in the U.S. 271 Some,
like Doña Carmen, do not conform to this situation. She embraces her own
Nira Yuval-Davis. 1997. “Gendered citizenship and the politics of belonging.” Keynote speaker at Santa Cruz
Conference on Gender and Cultural Citizenship. Manuscript.
269
270
Nira Yuval-Davis. 1997. Op. Cit.
Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s perspective on race is helpful to understand the racialization process that
migrants experience. For them, “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by
referring to different types of human bodies.” Their main concept is that of racial formation which they understand as
“a process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structures are represented and organized”
and ruled. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the United States. From the 1960’s to the 1990’s.
Pp. 54-55.
271
208
notion of Mexicanity even as Mexicanity is re-coded in the U.S. Becoming a U.S.
citizen appears as a kind of cultural politics that resists the production of
Mexicans as foreigners without simply moving towards assimilation into the
U.S.272
In this sense, a politicized language of belonging articulates the
disjunctures migrants’ confront in their everyday lives.
Aside from the powerful social context that surrounds Doña Carmen, her
words strongly express her sense of place, of where her nation is located. For
her, México is here, where she lives, here in California even though the 1848
Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo might try to indicate otherwise. Personally, and
perhaps now politically, Doña Carmen is a member of two nation-states, she
belongs to México regardless of the fact that she felt forced to take another
citizenship. Her words reflect a strong sense of belonging revealing the different
meanings citizenship holds, but also the contradictory socio-political space
inhabited by Mexican migrants. In her life, the legal realm almost acquires a life
of its own, a feeling that she clearly expresses when she states, “they are
forcing one to become a U.S. citizen.”
See Renato Rosaldo. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism.” In William Flores and Rina
Benmayor. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Beacon Press, Boston. P. 31
272
209
Living with the law, strategic decisions
María has a positive view of the U.S. She has experienced the benefits
she gets from coming and going between México and the U.S. Despite this, she
and her husband decided to return to Aguililla. An important reason that made
María and her husband Ramón return to Aguililla was the concern over getting
in trouble with the law, of being arrested in the U.S. This would jeopardize their
residency application, which they are conducting through their daughters who
are U.S. citizens. María, like many migrants, is well acquainted with immigration
law. A relationship of familiarity is established with these laws inasmuch as she
knows the ones that affect her more directly. This knowledge enables her to
maneuver through them. Together with the assistance of Hispanic lawyers––as
she stated––María and her family have realized the concrete impact immigration
laws have on their lives:
I know of several stories about friends, comadres, acquaintances
that won’t be able to arrange their papers because the migra––
border patrol–– caught them and that is a felony and with one
felony any possibility of papers is annulled, and things like that.
Like my comadre who was taken to a detention center from
Tijuana to Las Vegas for trying to cross with false papers. She was
210
isolated for a month and we didn’t know anything about her until
she was released.273
Even though María has first hand knowledge of the problems to which
she is exposed as a migrant in the U.S., María is not overly critical; indeed she
claims, “the gringos have a right to defend their country.”
This is a very
interesting and telling statement as it reflects the INS and U.S. media discourse
on migrants, which portrays them as aliens that need to be stopped. A brief
overview of the work the Border Patrol does, its policies such as “Operation
Gatekeeper” in California or “Operation Hold the Line” in Texas, demonstrate
the militaristic approach immigration policy has taken in the U.S. particularly in
relation to Mexicans. As María accepts the right the U.S. has to defend itself,
meaning, their border, she remains trapped in the warlike discourse that
portrays migrants as invaders and the border as a line that needs to be
safeguarded from them. Needless to say in the aftermath of the September 11
tragedy, this militaristic discourse has been reinforced.
María’s experience of U.S. immigration laws is mainly one of a strategic
nature. She wants to protect herself and her family, and seeks for the best way
to do so within the letters of the law. At the time of my field work, she wanted to
“Conozco varias historias de amigas, comadres, conocidos que ya no van a poder hacer su tramitación porque la
migra los agarró y eso es un delito, y con un delito se anula toda posibilidad de papeles y cosas por el estilo. Como a
mi comadre que llevaron a un Centro de detención desde Tijuana hasta Las Vegas por querer pasar con una mica
falsa. Ella estuvo un mes incomunicada y no sabíamos nada de ella hasta que la soltaron.” María, interview Aguililla,
November 1998.
273
211
acquire the residency by way of her oldest daughter who is a U.S. citizen. She
was familiar with this option, as possibly her only opportunity. Moreover, her
familiarity with the laws that impact her everyday life included the knowledge
that if the applicant has a criminal record, irregardless of the nature of the
charge, then the doors to a “legal” life are closed. This is one of IIRAIRA’s
provisions, which include a harsher section on deportation. As I showed in
Chapter III, the terms of what constitutes an aggravated felony and conviction
have expanded through the years making it more difficult for people who have
had minor problems with the law to arrange their legal situation, thus providing
grounds for deportation.
Immigration laws directly affect María and her ability to normalize her life
by, in this case, acquiring U.S. citizenship. Thus, she wants to be careful and
avoid any problems with the law. In this sense, her biggest worry is her husband
and his reckless behavior. María accepts the terms of immigration laws; she is
familiarized with them, and even agrees with the idea that migrant workers are
invaders.
In this sense, Maria’s embodiment of the law falls within the
institutional discourse that produces it; she cannot get out of it and have a
critical perspective. Nonetheless, what María has, which is very common among
migrants, is a strategic view about her needs and those of her family.
A harsher example of how laws impact migrants’ lives is that of when
Lucha crossed the border from México to the U.S.
212
My daughter was two years old, I held her close to my chest. We
swam to the ocean; it felt like the water was pulling us. It’s very
dangerous, like the time when a woman was yelling but we never
knew what happened [to her]. I think she died…My husband was
carrying the two boys, the others had their family. That time we
made it out …[sic], the bullets zoomed very close. We ran again
towards the island, into the ocean...we went back to Tijuana…We
tried again with the same coyote [someone who smuggles
migrants], that time we made it…We were hiding in the hills, and
the migra would pass by on horse very close. Of those that came
with us the migra caught like six. From the fifteen that left only nine
made it…. and from that time, because I saw that we suffered and
my children almost drowned, I said we are not returning.274
We are not returning: Lucha’s decisive words are a response of a concrete and
negative experience she and her family had when they last crossed the border
as ilegales. The tightening of the border in the past years has made it even
more difficult for the new wave of migrants. Lucha’s relation with immigration
laws derives from her very real experience of the materiality of the border
between México and the U.S. When Lucha’s family finally made it past the
“Mi hija tenía dos años. Me la apretaba al pecho. Nadamos hasta el mar, se siente que el agua lo jala, es bien
peligroso. Como esa vez que una señora gritaba pero nunca se supo nada. Yo creo que se murió….Mi esposo tenía a
los dos niños y los demás traían a su familia. Esa vez logramos salir. Afuera nos tiran balazos, nos pasaron las
balas zum, aquí cerquita. Otra vez pa’ dentro a correr a la isla ….Regresamos a Tijuana y volvimos a hacer la lucha
con el mismo coyote, pero esa vez si la hicimos…Estábamos escondidos en unos cerros pelados y pasaba la migra
así, bien cerquita. Y de los que veniamos agarró como a seis. De como quince salimos nomás nueve. Y ya de esa vez
como miré que sufrimos mucho y casi se me ahogaban mis hijos dije, ya no regresamos.” Interview, San Jose,CA,
March 1999.
274
213
border patrol, a different route for their life was opened. Contrary to many other
migrants’ experiences, a return to México was not an option from the beginning
of Lucha’s life as a migrant. This is one of the central ironies in immigration law
as it fails to hinder not only the influx but also the settlement of migrants in the
U.S., two of the purported central goals of immigration laws. Structurally, the
impact of this “failure” is that undocumented migrants who risk crossing the
border remain in the U.S. as unstable commodities, selling their labor at less
than value within a system of inequality that profits from them.
That said, Lucha is very content with how her life has turned out in the
U.S., with the broad opportunities she has as a woman in contrast to the ones
she would have had in Aguililla. In Aguililla, as she explains, her options as a
woman would have been circumscribed to household work and dependence on
her husband
Here is la tierra de nadie (no-mans’ land). From over there, [from]
my mom’s family only two people remain in Aguililla, living there.
She was never able to be here; my dad does not like to travel…I
am arranging him [papers]. I became a citizen to legalize him so
that he may enter whenever he wants to come here. But neither of
them wants to come. They are happy in México. They say that
here they feel like they were in jail, they feel like prisoners, they
can’t go wherever they want...I don’t know why they feel like
214
prisoners. I, when I didn’t have papers anything, I never felt like a
prisoner. I went out, took the BART, I got lost all day…275
Migration places migrants in the situation where they have to negotiate their
sense of cultural inadequacy, which springs from their mobility. For others, like
Lucha, the experience of migration becomes a challenge, and once they
become involved in this process, they begin to negotiate their situated cultural
practices, and their legal and cultural citizenship.
Between a rock and a hard place: contested meanings
Although the process of considering a change in citizenship might seem a
simple and practical decision, for some migrants it is a choice that implies an
analysis of their loyalties, their identity, as well as their practical needs, and the
position they hold in the United States. For example, José, a young man from
Jalisco who migrated in 1987, was considering applying for U.S. citizenship
back in 1997 when we spoke. For him, the different laws and the problematic
relation between México and the U.S. leave Mexicans, as he put it, “between a
My translation. “Aquí es la tierra de nadie. Ya de allá de la familia de mi mamá nomás hay dos personas en
Aguililla. Ella (la mamá) nunca pudo estar aquí. Mi papa no le gusta viajar. Yo le estoy arreglando. Me hice
ciudadana americana para arreglarle pero nomás para arreglarle para cuando él quiera veni,r entrar cuando él
quiera. Pero no les gusta venir a los dos. Ellos son felices en México. Ellos dicen que aquí se sienten como en una
cárcel, se sienten ellos aquí prisioneros, no pueden ir para donde ellos quieren….Yo no sé porque se sienten
prisioneros. Yo, cuando todavía no tenía nada, papeles ni nada, yo nunca me sentí prisionera, yo salía en el
Bart…duraba todo el día perdida.” Interview, San José, 1999.
275
215
rock and a hard place.” José had been reluctant to apply for U.S. citizenship for
a while, but he was giving it more serious thought as a result of the 1996
immigration laws, and the anti-immigrant climate in California. In considering this
change of legal status, José was going through an internal debate.
I am beginning to discover a new identity inside of me, now I am
questioning, do I really want to become a [US] citizen? Do I want
to be a part and play the role the U.S. is pressuring me to play?
O.K. I want to participate in what there is on both sides, if I want to
take advantage of what this country offers...then I might have to
become a citizen. But another part of me rebels and says NO! Why
should I have to make that change? Although [I know] it is mostly a
change of papers, not so much an ideological or psychological
one, but one to exploit what this country offers...276
As in the case of Doña Carmen, José’s story shows how migrants interact with
and give meaning to the legal realm they encounter everyday. José perceives
that an external agent, the United States, is making him act in a certain way,
and take U.S. citizenship. He resists. At the same time, he recognizes that he
can use for his benefit the legal realm, this “cambio de papeleo,” this “change of
papers.” In the case of José, laws are simultaneously perceived as hard texts,
“Estoy empezando a descubrir una nueva identidad dentro de mi, ahora estoy cuestionando realmente, ¿quiero
hacerme ciudadano?,¿quiero pasar a formar y a jugar el papel que me está presionando Estado Unidos a que yo
juegue? O.K. Si quiero participar dentro de lo que hay en las dos partes, si quiero aprovechar lo que ofrece este
pais… creo que voy tener que hacerme ciudadano. Otra parte de mi se revela y dice, ¡NO!, por qué voy a tener que
hacer ese cambio? Aunque es más que nada un cambio de papeleo no un tanto mental o ideolólogico, un tanto para
explotar lo que ofrece este país..” Interview, Santa Cruz, CA,1997.
276
216
but also as a discourse that can be contested and circumscribed. He feels that
he can choose to enter this discourse or to remain outside it. Teresa Sierra and
Victoria Chenaut explain that as the power of the law as an expression of the
state is recognized, there is also an assumption that a central part of the power
of the law rests on its dual character of domination and resistance.277 When
migration laws squeeze and limit the lives of migrants, some like José respond
accordingly and view their actions as a way “to exploit what this country has to
offer.” Laws are powerful tools of the state but as they cross migrants’ day-today existence, their meaning is contested.
“I have been here for eight years,” Daniel told me, “an eternity you could
say.” A young Mexican migrant from Jalisco, Daniel narrates his journey to the
U.S. as a “tourist travel, a temporary stay that ended up in a permanent
residence; I stayed here in part because of my age, in part because I found a
job.”278 Just like in Daniel’s story, other testimonies narrate their coming to the
U.S. as a journey. For José or Daniel, migration started as an adventure, the
possibility of feeling liberated from the family. Their rhetoric does not center on
economic hardships back home, instead it is conceived as an existential
necessity.
277
278
Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 151.
Interview, Santa Cruz, 1997.
217
“I needed the freedom that this country more or less offered me, the
freedom of not having my parents close by to tell me what to do.” As a member
of a very conservative Catholic family, José––who came to California when he
was 18 years old––describes himself as an exile from religion. Nonetheless, just
like other migrants, kinship ties enabled his travel and entrance to the U.S. and
marked his trajectory, however family ties are not the only line that structures
the journey of these travelers-migrants-exiles. An intricate interweaving of legal,
political and economic relations surrounds and marks their existence.
“When did you change your tourist visa to a resident status?” I asked
Daniel: “It happened with the amnesty, that is one of the reasons I stayed. The
amnesty took place around the time I came and I was able to arrange my
papers as a resident. That tied my stay.” Tied? It seems that the legislative
discourse projects itself onto Daniel thus allowing him to perform a particular
political subjectivity, a legal resident one. In taking residence papers, Daniel
exploited the law. He was not eligible for the amnesty because he did not fulfill
the residency requirements. But he benefited from the amnesty nonetheless.
Daniel’s story shows how individuals can sneak through the interstices of the
legal discourse thus maintaining a level of agency. By “fooling” the law and
obtaining a legal category to which he was not entitled under the terms of the
Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), Daniel performs his
political subjectivity in a concealed manner.
218
The way that José, Daniel, Miguel, and others, understand the nature of
their relation to the U.S.–– and their decision to take U.S. citizenship––is
articulated in pragmatic, and proud terms. They are, as Miguel, another young
migrant from Jalisco explains, reversing the terms of exploitation and power by
taking advantage of the U.S.: “it is about sucking some blood from Drácula.”279
Likewise, they feel that they are recognizing and accepting circumstances that
are already true, as when Daniel’s states, “I live and I pay taxes here.” The next
logical step is citizenship. Nonetheless, there is a point in which the decision to
become U.S. citizens trespasses the boundaries of individuals. State discourse
and the legal debate converge in subjects, as it pushes them to make decisions,
and perform their political subjectivity.
Yes, I know about the dual nationality law, this is one of the
reasons I decided to apply for U.S. citizenship. I resisted it.
Although it was not only that, it is also the fact that immigration
laws here in California limit one’s possibilities––explains Daniel.280
In Daniel’s case the interaction of the laws between México and the U.S. is very
clear. The nationality law and the immigration law enter in a conjuncture in
Daniel’s life. One law opens a door; the other restricts migrants’ lives. Daniel
responds to both. For the U.S. this is an irony in itself because an implied
purpose of stricter restrictive immigration laws is to avoid including in its project
279
280
Interview, Santa Cruz, 1997.
Idem.
219
as a nation the role that migrants play. The U.S. government idea of closing
borders and excluding legal residents from social benefits produces a countereffect in terms of what the original expectations were. Mexican migrants––
usually reluctant to change their citizenship––respond to the new immigration
laws by becoming U.S. citizens thus having to be recognized as members of the
nation-state.
Bearers of betrayal: migrants, political rights, and dual nationality
Entitlements
Another feature of citizenship from migrants’ perspective refers to voting
rights. Here, the position of a sector of Mexican migrants on the definition of
citizenship, namely, the claim for political rights, coincides in a first instance with
how nation-states define citizenship. Their approach is from the legal point of
view; the same criteria used by the nation-states with which Mexican migrants
interact.
In an additional fragment of José’s testimony, he meditates about his
existence as a political subject.
I want to go deep down into politics, mostly because of all the
movements and changes that are taking place in México...the
constant struggle that is taking place in México, inspires me and
220
lights a fire inside of me and makes me want to go there...I feel a
little bit tied because I am physically here and not there, I cannot
be active. But at the same time, here are many Mexicans and
Latinos that if we could raise their consciousness...I know it is a
dream...well, maybe I think that we could put a lot of pressure on
the Mexican government.281
Here and there. Here, José feels tied. There, is where he wants to act. Here, is
where he is physically. There, the place he wants to influence. José knows he
stands between a desire to participate in Mexican politics and a realization of a
physical impairment to fulfill this desire. Despite this, he looks beyond his
circumstances and imagines a possibility for having an active political
subjectivity. Other migrants follow his example. In the past twelve years Mexican
migrants have intensified their involvement in Mexican politics, which in 1996
contributed to the two constitutional amendments described in chapter III,
namely, the non-loss of nationality law and the constitutional reform of Article
36.282
281
Deseo meterme bastante a fondo en la política más que nada por los movimientos y los cambios que están pasando
en México...la lucha constante que está pasando en México, me inspira bastante y prende un fuego dentro de mi y me
hace sentir ir allá...me siento un tanto atado porque estoy físicamente aquí y no allá, no puedo actuar de lleno. Pero a
la vez aquí hay muchos mexicanos y Latinos que si de alguna manera lográramos concientizar a todas esas
personas...ya sé que es un sueño...entonces pienso que se podría poner bastante presión en el gobierno Mexicano.
Interview, Santa Cruz, 1997.
282 I followed the migrant campaign in favor of the vote abroad which took place (and is still happening) among
groups of Mexican citizens living in the U.S. with the Mexican electoral authorities, legislators, political parties, as
well as with other migrants living in the U.S.
221
The reform of article 36, which opened the possibility for the vote abroad,
brings together very clearly the legal and the sociocultural aspects of citizenship
that the dissertation highlights. These two shift as they interact in peoples’
practices as well as institutional actions. First, from a legal liberal perspective,
voting is a right of a political nature and indicates membership in a polity.
Second, and independently of a theoretical definition, for the migrants that have
been lobbying for the vote-abroad, the right to vote appears as an indicator of
different classes of citizenship, of membership in a community or exclusion from
it. The right to vote for many disenfranchised migrants establishes as first class
citizens those who are eligible for every right, versus second-class citizens who
have limited rights. In this sense, the vote is seen as a reflection of citizenship, a
notion that in migrants lives expands to the sociocultural realm.
For a long time, the Mexican government and the different political sectors
of the country remained deaf to Mexican migrants’ demand to allow the vote
outside of the country and for the non-loss of nationality law. With the initial
impetus sparked by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ presidential candidacy in 1988,
different migrant groups started to pressure for the migrant vote. Once the
approval of the reform to Article 36 in 1996 took place, many migrants and
migrant organizations formed a coalition to push for the effective implementation
of the vote abroad for the year 2000, the Coalición de Mexicanos en el
222
Extranjero Nuestro Voto 2000.283 Some of the organizations involved in this
struggle are, among many others, the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional,
Comité Pro-Voto 96-2000, Comité Pro-Uno, Casa Aztlán, Illinois; Consejo
Electoral Mexicano del Medio Oeste, Illinois, Confederación de Clubes y
Organizaciones Zacatecanos, Comité de Derechos Humanos del Este de Los
Angeles, Coalición Internacional de Mexicanos en el Extranjero, Migrantes
Mexicanos por el Cambio (Mimexca), Southwest Youth Collaborative, Illinois,
Comité de Derechos Humanos del Este de Los Angeles. Most of these
organizations come from four main states: California, Illinois, Iowa, and Texas.
Their constituency includes migrants with legal residency and undocumented
migrants who demand the right to be counted and valorized as significant and
full members of México.284
Abstracts from a letter sent to the Mexican Senate by a migrant who
participated in the campaign for the vote abroad demonstrates the meaning this
issue had for this group of Mexicans. In this letter, Felipe Delgado, a migrant
who lives in Los Angeles, makes a case for the right migrants have to vote in
Mexican electoral processes. At different points in the missive he responds to
comments or attacks that the right to vote abroad has received in the Mexican
political arena:
Martínez, Jesús. “Resistir en la Jaula de Oro. La identidad de los Migrantes.” La Jornada, Suplemento Masiosare.
Sunday May 9, 1999.
284 According to the report of the Comisión de Especialistas sobre el Voto en el Extranjero, the five states with the
largest concentration of Mexican population are California, Texas, Arizona, Illinois and New York.
283
223
You might think that we are not affected by politics in México. On
the contrary. That a political line divides us, in other words a border,
is not reason enough. We are not uprooted people-desarraigados as
you call us.285
To exclude migrants because they are desarraigados––uprooted––only
demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the multilayered connections migrants
sustain with México. For Felipe, Mexicans living in the U.S. are not uprooted, he
even calls upon the Senate to make Patria Juntos. This letter reveals how Patria
and nation are the sources that feed migrants’ roots, or the vision that unites
Mexicans on both sides of the border.286
For Felipe it is the source that
maintains his cultural connection, a cultural identity that is not necessarily
bounded by space. Moreover, hacer Patria implies situated cultural practices,
which he, along with most migrants, expresses also in economic terms.
Likewise, Mexican politics directly affect the lives of millions of Mexicans
impacted by migration. Decisions and policies take place at the local, regional
and national level and migrants have no formal way to speak to those
resolutions. To name a geo-political line, a border, as the reason to exclude
“Pensarán que a nosotros no nos afecta la política en México. Pues es todo lo contrario. Que nos divida una línea
política o en otras palabras una frontera no es razón suficiente. Nosotros no somos unos desarraigados como ustedes
nos califican .” Felipe Delgado. Letter to the Mexican Senate. December 1998.
286 In her work on the charreada, Olga Nájera-Ramírez exlores how charros hacen Patria, that is, how through their
cultural practices they engender nationalism. Olga Nájera-Ramírez, 2002. “Haciendo Patria: La Charreada and the
Formation of a Mexican Transnational Identity.” In Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez and Anna Sampaio, Eds. Transnational
Latina/o Communities. Politics, Processes, and Cultures. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc, USA.
285
224
migrants from the political processes of México appears as an arbitrary reason
for Felipe. If the right to vote is a universal right, why is it limited by a border?
In his search for the right to vote, to be considered a first class citizen,
Felipe Delgado echoes the voices of many migrants that live in the U.S. To
persuade the Senate he gives them facts:
We are Mexicans who have demonstrated to our México for a long
time with actions, like our economic contribution, this being one of
the more solid pillars of the Mexican economy, if not the strongest,
the one that is always there regardless of the circumstances.287
Through his letter to the Senate, Felipe stresses why he considers that migrants
are not unos desarraigados.
Seven billion dollars in remittances annually
confirm this. But not only that, their investment in México is constant, it has
always been there, no matter the circumstances; unlike, for example, the so
called capitales golondrinos, that come in and out of the country in search only
of profit and hardly ever trickle down to the local or regional level.288
“Somos mexicanos que por mucho tiempo hemos demostrado a nuestro México con hechos, como la derrama
económica que aportamos cada año por más de 7000 millones de dólares, siendo uno de los pilares de la economía
de México más solidos, si es que no posiblemente el más fuerte, el que nunca falta sin importar circunstancias.”
Felipe Delgado, 1998. Op. Cit.
288 Remaining fragments of the letter:
287
“Con respeto me dirijo a ustedes para informarles que un gran número de mexicanos en Estados Unidos y demás
paises estamos luchando para lograr nuestros más nobles y elementales derechos como mexicanos de primera clase,
y uno de nuestros objetivos es el voto. Varios de ustedes o quizá todos dirán que debemos de tener este derecho tan
elemental.
Mi mensaje es exhortarlos a que tomen parte positiva en este proceso de apoyo no solamente a nosotros los
mexicanos radicados en el extranjero, sino a ustedes mismos.
225
After the final outcome of the 1999 political battle established between
the House of Representatives and the Senate for an electoral reform, members
of the Coalition for the vote 2000 published a letter of protest addressed to the
Senate in the newspaper La Jornada. The political reform proposal included the
implementation of the vote-abroad, in accordance to the suggestions made by
the IFE’s Experts’ Commission that studied its viability.
We, the Mexicans who live abroad repudiate the Senate’s treason
by denying us the right we hold as Mexicans to vote abroad. We
understand this anti-democratic measure as an attack on the
democratization of our country. Experts from the Federal Electoral
Institute (IFE) have stated that the vote abroad is technically
viable, and that the Institute is capable of organizing the migrant
participation in the 2000 elections. It was Congress itself which
approved unanimously back in 1996, the reform that allows the
suffrage. Besides, Article 39 of the Constitution grants us the right
of changing or modifying our government….289
Senadores, hagamos patria juntos, sean parte de este proceso y no parte de un sistema que por muchos años ha
fallado. Tengan conciencia, valor cívico porque este es su deber. No se inclinen hacia los intereses de unos cuantos.
Fijen los ojos en el pueblo de México, los cambios se dan por su propio peso, es irreversible detenerlos. Que en la
historia se escriban sus nombres como servidores del pueblo y no como enemigos del mismo.
Atentamente,
Felipe Delgado,
Los Angeles, CA.”
(Send to the Senate in December 1998.)
My emphasis.
289 Fragment of a letter to the Senate and published in La Jornada. June 29, 1999. My translation. ‘Los mexicanos que
radicamos en el extranjero repudiamos la traición del Senado en negarnos nuestro derecho que tenemos como
mexicanos de votar desde el exterior. Esta medida anti-democratica la entendemos como un atentado a la
democratización de nuestra patria. Expertos del IFE han declarado que es técnicamente viable el voto de los
mexicanos en el extranjero y que el Instituto cuenta con la capacidad para organizar la participacion migrante en el
año 2000. El mismo Congreso de la Unión aprobó en 1996, y de manera unánime, la reforma que permite este
sufragio. Además, el artículo 39 de la Constitución mexicana nos confiere el pleno derecho de cambiar o modificar la
forma de gobierno…”
226
Also, the Group Migrantes Mexicanos por el Cambio (MIMEXCA), in an
interview with the newspaper El Universal made the following telling statement:
We support Vicente Fox because we consider him to be the best
man to make the difference, our right to vote was denied but they
cannot take away our Mexican blood from our veins, and we want
to participate in the change.290
Aside from the case migrants are making for their right to vote, in the statement
to La Jornada, the above letter as well as in Felipe’s missive, and in many
others that were circulated throughout this campaign, what stands out is their
emphasis on the vote and how they connect it to their citizenship and identity.
“We are not uprooted,” is Felipe’s version of the connection citizenship-identity.
“Our vote was denied but they can’t deny us our Mexican blood” is Mimexca’s
reading. As for the letter to La Jornada, most of the arguments in this fragment
revolve around legality.
Citizenship is built upon connectedness, and ties but mainly on the
possibility of exercising a set of rights, a definition that is framed in the same
terms set by the nation-state’s institutions. Citizenship is also framed in terms of
roots, which “involves intimate linkages between people and place.”291 These
MIMEXCA Press release. 1999. El Universal. “Group that organizes as a result of the Senate’s failure to pass the
modifications to the law for the vote abroad in 2000.” October 20. “Apoyamos a Vicente Fox porque consideramos
que es el mejor hombre para hacer la diferencia, se nos negó el voto pero no se nos puede sacar la sangre de
mexicanos de las venas y queremos participar por el cambio.” My translation.
291 Cf. Liisa H. Malkki,. 1997. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National
Identity among Scholars Refugees.” In Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in
Critical Anthropology. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P. 52.
290
227
linkages might be problematically reified in migrants’ memories, or in the nationstate narratives of la Patria or the Motherland. However, the importance of their
presence in migrants’ transnational political practices cannot be underestimated.
Realities
Not all migrants are interested in politics. Rafael, for example, tends to
have a low profile when it comes to participating in politics in the U.S. 292 As he
says, “ni frio ni calor. I don’t get into it. I am interested, but I don’t see why
because at the end they end up doing whatever they want anyway (sic).” 293 Not
even when it comes to defending his rights does Rafael consider participating in
politics:
To be honest, over there, there is no time for that. I work all the
time, I don’t rest not even in weekends. I work all the time, maybe I
rest one day during the week like Wednesday or Thursday…and
well many times on my day off I have other things to do, instead of
wasting my time.294
Rafael was in Aguililla for what he called vacations, “por que no tengo fines de volver al pueblo (no interest on
returning to town).” He had been in Aguililla since August 1998 and was planning on returning to Redwood City
between March or April 1999. Interview, Aguililla, 1998.
293 My translation. “Ni frio ni calor, yo no me meto. Si me interesa pero no veo caso porque al final de cuentas vienen
haciendo lo que ellos quieren anyway.” Interview Aguililla, November 1998.
294 My translation. “Allá, la verdad no hay tiempo de andar de eso, me la paso trabajando, no descanso ni el fin de
semana. Todo el tiempo trabajo. Quizás algún día entre semana descanso como miércoles o jueves…Y pues muchas
veces el día que descanso tengo otras cosas que hacer como para andar perdiendo el tiempo…” Interview Aguililla,
November 1998.
292
228
For Rafael politics is a waste of time and for that matter, of money, as it takes
away time for work and for other activities. Politics do not interest him because
he cannot see the connection between them and his immediate reality.
However, Rafael was familiar with the new nationality law, he knew that if he
became a U.S. citizen he did not have to give up his Mexican nationality. He
learned about it in Redwood City through the news, when it was approved.
There are people that don’t know of that law. I‘ve spoken with
people that don’t know. They say ‘I don’t become U.S. citizen
because I lose Mexican rights. These are lies, you can’t lose them
anymore.
Despite his disregard for politics, Rafael finds time to be aware of something
that, it seems, is more real for him. Nationality and citizenship understood as
having or not having rights, as having an easier life, especially in the U.S. For
Rafael these are practical matters. He is getting U.S. citizenship and he does
not conceive of himself as less Mexican.
Ambiguities
USBC (U.S. Border Control) notes: some observers fear
that dual citizenship may set the stage for the Mexican
229
government to exert tremendous influence in future American
elections. The recent immigrants from México are clearly divided
on their loyalties and may indeed vote in American elections for
what is best for México, not America.295
Mexican migrants are constantly portrayed as a threat to the interests of the
United States, as bearers of betrayal. What is important to point out is that this
same argument has been made in México when the non-loss of nationality law
was passed, as well as in the debate that surrounds the vote abroad initiative.
When the Mexican non-loss-of-nationality law came into effect, a debate around
its consequences started in the United States.
Dual nationality has an ambiguous status in the United States,
neither encouraged nor barred, officials said. The United States
requires immigrants seeking citizenship status to renounce other
allegiances, U.S. officials note, but cannot regulate whether
foreign countries recognize that renunciation.296
When the Mexican embassy estimated that three million Mexicans were eligible
for the recovery of their Mexican nationality, the mere possibility of such an
enormous amount of dual nationals in the U.S. opened the doors to antiMexican sentiments. Likewise, with the possibility that the new law could add
Patrick J McDonnell. 1997. “Dual Citizenship for Mexicans? México delays dual nationality plan one year.” Los
Angeles Times, March 6.
296 McDonnell, Patrick J. 1997. Op. Cit.
295
230
the largest number of dual nationals on U.S. soil, a debate started on how dual
nationality might undercut the meaning of citizenship in this country. 297
The legal action taken by the Mexican government in 1996, with the
approval of the non-loss of nationality law, opened the question in many circles
in the United States as to what nationality meant in this country. “Would dual
citizenship––or the stronger status of dual citizenship that might follow––corrode
American citizenship?”298 For many, the answer is affirmative. With the dual
nationality law, some consider that the allegiance and fidelity to the U.S. stated
in the oath naturalized citizens take, is undermined or never fully embodied.
Some anti-immigration groups began to react to the 1996 legal changes
that took place in México. The group “Voice of Citizens Together”, based in
Southern California, viewed the Mexican dual nationality law as “nothing less
than a large-scale movement by the Mexican government to reverse the results
of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” when México “gave up” much of what is
now the Southwest of the U.S. after a war over 150 years ago. 299
Moreover,
other opinions emphasize the fact that allowing naturalized citizens to hold dual
citizenship or nationality is against the law.300
“The time has come when
297
Cf. McDonnell, Patrick. Idem.
West, Woody. 1998. “The two faces of dual nationality. America should not accept México’s new law allowing
dual citizenship.” In Insight on the News v. 14, n. 22, June 15.
P. 48.
299 Patrick McDonenell. 1997. Op. Cit.
300 The oath naturalized citizens take reads as follows: “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance
and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject
or a citizen.” West, Woody. 1998. Op. Cit.
298
231
America needs to enforce the law.”301 What most of these arguments forget to
assess is that the majority of dual nationals are those children of Mexicans born
in the U.S., who by birthright are U.S. citizens and through blood ties are
Mexicans.
Furthermore, even though dual citizenship has been de facto
recognized in the U.S. for other nationalities, when it comes to Mexicans holding
dual nationality the flexibility disappears.
An important aspect to underscore here is how migrants also appear as a
threat to México because they have acquired attributes of the “other” culture,
thus they can no longer be loyal; they cannot be fully trusted.
A sector of
México’s political class has argued against the passing of the nationality law and
the vote abroad reform under the premise that these two legal changes are a
dangerous move that could affect Mexican sovereignty. The two central voices
representing this position have been Mexican lawyers’ Jorge Carpizo and Diego
Valadés. They consider that while the question is not about harming the rights
of those who live abroad, instead the focus should be on avoiding affecting the
rights of those who “live inside.”
The argument is based on the idea that,
considering the number of Mexicans living in the U.S., if migrants were enabled
to vote they could indeed decide the result of the elections. According to this
perspective, the problem is that when migrants settle in the U.S., they adopt
foreign customs and detach themselves from México.
301
As a consequence
James Jr. Edwards. “Dual Citizenship is Dangerous”. 1998. The Christian Science Monitor. April 29.
232
migrants are more susceptible to U.S. interests, thereby participating in Mexican
politics in accordance to those interests.302
Several revealing preconceptions stand out in this position.
First, an
underlying preconception the notion of a nation that is inside, that is enclosed in
some pure way, and which must be preserved from threats.
Second, the
different validation made between Mexicans living abroad and Mexicans living
inside México. This type of argument in fact establishes two kinds of citizens:
first and second class citizens, where the latter cannot hold full citizenship rights
because they can harm those of the citizens that have remained pure by always
living in México. Migrants constantly face the image of bearers of betrayal,
mistrusted here and there, in their town, in México, in the United States. They
are attached with an ambiguity, of heroes and traitors, invaders as well as
needed labor, which they negotiate every day.
Although the effects of the dual nationality law are far from what the
Mexican Embassy had originally expected, and while the operationalization of
the vote abroad might take some time, Mexican migrants hold a symbolic weight
for the nation inasmuch as they represent a part that has been rejected,
disenfranchised, while at the same time being a force that is sustaining a
significant portion of the feeble Mexican economy. In part, it is their
302
Cf. Jorge Carpizo. 1998. “El Peligro del Voto de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero.” Nexos, Julio. Pp 11-12.
233
perseverance, their stubborn remembering of home that has contributed to a
transformation of contemporary Mexican political practices.
The two legal changes—non loss of nationality law and the constitutional
reform to article 36 that opened the possibility for the vote abroad––modify the
meaning that politics has for the nation and for people at the same time that they
impact transnational migrants lives in a very concrete way. For José, a young
migrant, the different laws and the problematic relation between México and the
U.S. leaves them, as migrants, “between a rock and a hard place.”
The dual nationality law is not all we wanted because you can no
longer keep voting in México and that is something that would
affect me because I want to be able to vote in Mexican elections,
but I also want to be able to vote here...I am not clear about what
decision I should make.
It is necessary to understand this process not simply as a question of national
politics or binational relations. It is also about the existence of a transnational
social space that is integrated by the daily experiences of migrants and their
relations to the two nation-states they encounter.
An interesting intersection derives from the idea of Mexicans’ allegiances
when they live in the United States, especially when they hold U.S. citizenship.
It is at this point that it becomes clear that the notion of sovereignty is inhabited
234
by people and it moves with their displacements. When Mexican migrants’
loyalties are questioned what is put in doubt is their belonging to a national
community.
For Peggy Levitt, “the issue is not whether migrants should or
should not belong, in some way, to two polities but that, given that increasing
numbers live transnational lives, how their rights and representation can best be
guaranteed.”303 Politically active migrants constantly connect rights with
belonging and loyalty. Contrary to the PRIista official discourse of the two years
before the 2000 election, rather than viewing the vote abroad as a threat, what
migrant organizations have been stressing is that it re-enforces Mexico’s
sovereignty.
Politics, and the nation:
On November 1997, ten years after his first electoral visit, Cuauhtémoc
Cárdenas, then recently elected to be governor of the Federal District (México
City), returned to California. With a clear grasp of the political importance
Mexican migrants have both in México and in the United States, Cárdenas and
his party, the PRD, appreciate the role that migrants can play in presidential
elections.
As Cárdenas phrased it when he was interviewed at Stanford
303
Peggy Levitt. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. P.
206.
235
University: “We could see more than a million voters (going to the polls) in this
part of the country.”304 This statement sums up in a very pragmatic way the
question of where a nation-state can draw its boundaries: For the case of
México, the nation includes “this part of the country”––meaning México––where
there are one million potential voters. In other words, México includes California,
as long as there are a significant number of Mexican citizens in this area. It
could be said that every time Mexican politicians directly address migrants, they
are enacting the enlargement of México’s sovereignty. 305
Alongside the discussion on politics and sovereignty are attached
questions of the productions of subjects, of political subjects in the case of
Mexican migrants. With the reform to Article 36 and its implications in relation to
the vote abroad, a new kind of subjectivity was projected onto the migrant
population moving from an economic one, in which they were considered one
more variable––a worker––to a political one, in which they become, again, a
part of the polity––a citizen. Through the years many Mexican migrants have
expressed their interest in participating in Mexican political processes.
Echoing Felipe’s letter demanding the right to vote, different migrant
organizations have been returning to México as political lobbyists waving the
Michelle Levander. 1997. “Cárdenas visits Bay Area”. San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 21. My emphasis.
An interesting coincidence of Cárdenas standpoint on this issue can be seen in the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo
1994-2000 which stated: “La nación mexicana rebasa el territorio que contiene sus fronteras. Por eso, un elemento
esencial del programa Nación Mexicana será promover las reformas constitucionales y legales para que los
mexicanos preserven su nacionalidad, independientemente de la ciudadanía o residencia que hayan adoptado”. P.15.
In La Doble Nacionalidad. Memoria del Coloquio, Palacio Legislativo. 1995. LVI Legislatura, Cámara de Diputados.
México, June 8-9. P.5.
304
305
236
estimated seven billion they send to their relatives in México each year. For
many Mexicans living in the United States, this is an issue that goes beyond
voting rights. “It is about a process of reconciliation between Mexicans and their
homeland,” stated Jesús Martínez, a scholar and a member of the migrant
coalition that has been lobbying in México City. “They should let us vote
because we love México as much or even more after we leave,” declared Ted
Rodríguez, who heads an organization of natives of Cuautla in the state of
Washington.
“And we don’t leave México because we want to. We leave
because we have to.”306
Along the lines of these testimonies, many more
Mexican migrants want to actively participate in the political processes that are
taking place in México. These migrants are interested in being a part of the
transition towards a more participatory democracy, which has been taking place
in México in the past fifteen years.
Moreover, while for Mexicans living in the U.S. the non-loss of nationality
law means recognition of their identity as Mexicans, it also seems to speed up
the process of becoming U.S. citizens, thus opening a new constituency in the
U.S. political panorama.307
It is at this point where the non-loss of nationality
Alfredo Corchado, Claudia Fernandez and Alejandra Xanic. “México debates letting immigrants vote in U.S.
Despite financial ties, some balloting limits.” In The Dallas Morning News/ Publico/ El Universal, April 5 1998.
307 Starting in 1997 and due to the amnesty provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, about 1.7
million long-term unauthorized migrants and an additional 1.3 million unauthorized Special Agricultural Workers
applied for legalization. Of this group, a significant portion is applying or considering to apply for U.S. citizenship.
As reported in the Bi-national Study, “beginning in 1995 the number of Mexican immigrants becoming citizens
increased substantially at least in part because those legalizing their status under IRCA became eligible for
naturalization.” Cf. Estudio Bi-Nacional Mexico-Estados Unidos sobre Migracion. 1997. Secretaría de Relaciones
306
237
law intersects with the electoral reform.
The connection between the two
Mexican legal changes is very clear, particularly when people experience them
and, in doing so, their belonging is put in question.
Many are the changes that have taken place in the last decades that
have contributed to a reevaluation of Mexican migrants. According to Manuel
García y Griego, once Mexican migrants were given the right to keep their
nationality when acquiring another, a significant increment in naturalizations has
occurred, as well as broader political participation.308
When it comes to the vote-abroad of Mexican-Americans who can claim
dual nationality, the opinion is divided among the Mexican-American
organizations.
In a study of the opinions of Mexican-American leaders on the
vote-abroad, the findings report that the directors or presidents of these
organizations are the ones who mostly oppose the implementation of this law.309
According to the report among national organizations such as LULAC the
Council of La Raza, or the South West Voter Registration Project, there is a total
opposition to the vote of U.S. citizens who have opted for, or are able to opt for,
Mexican nationality by way of their Mexican born parents. Likewise, the vote of
Exteriores,.México. P. 1 and 3. Also see Table 8, Annex IV Doc. 3-3. Subcomisión Socio-Demográfica. Reporte Final
Comisión de Expertos. 1998. Op. Cit.
308 Participation in the Binational Forum “Los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Exterior.” March 9, 2003,
University of Texas, Arlington.
309 Fundación Solidaridad Mexico-Americana.1996. “Sondeo de Opinión a Líderes Mexicano-Americanos sobre el
Voto de los Mexicanos Residentes en Estados Unidos para Elecciones Presidenciales en México”. For the “Comisión
de Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto en el extranjero” established by the Instituto Federal Electoral
(IFE). México, July. P. 10.
238
Mexicans by birth that have already acquired U.S. citizenship is not accepted,
although here the opinion is divided especially when it comes down to regional
or state organizations.310 The reasons for this opposition concentrate on the
worry of being accused of lack of loyalty to the U.S. thus augmenting the antiMexican atmosphere.311 Also highlighted is a focus on promoting the vote within
U.S. electoral processes rather than dividing the efforts by turning to México.
Contrary to this idea, Manuel García y Griego considers that the value of
the extraterritorial vote lies in its potential to project migrants towards a broader
political and social participation both in México and in the United States.312 In
other words, Mexicans political activity has to be viewed as concomitant and as
bilateral effort.
“Today, Mexican immigrants are the object of interest of
democrats and republicans in the United States, and of [PRI] priistas, [PRD]
perredistas, and [PAN] panistas in México.”313 For García y Griego, the main
issue is to promote the development of migrants’ civic participation to defend
and claim for their rights on both sides of the border.
On January 9, 2003, the Consejo de Presidentes de Federaciones de
Clubes de Oriundos de Los Angeles (Federations of Hometown Associations)
organized an event to discuss the vote abroad as part of a series of Forums that
310
Reporte Final Comisión de Especialistas. 1998. P. 10
Cf. Fundación Solidaridad Mexicano-Americana. 1996. Op. Cit. Table 4.2. P. 11
312 Cf. Manuel García y Griego. 2003. Op. Cit. P.4.
313 Manuel García y Griego. 2003. “Del México de Afuera al México de Adentro.” Paper presented at the Foro
Binacional Los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Exterior. March 9, University of Texas, Arlington. P.5. My
translation.
311
239
were taking place on both sides of the border. More than 500 people were
present, many of who were not able to enter the auditorium. The L.A. Forum
was the largest of all. Migrants from other parts of the United States traveled to
be present in this political event. There were people from Chicago, Arizona,
Texas, Northern California, all of whom had been involved in the long struggle
towards the recognition of the political rights of Mexicans abroad.
Likewise, scholars and politicians came from Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Oaxaca–
–including the governor of the state––Michoacán, and México City. Of major
relevance was the presence of Senators from the different political parties at the
local and federal level, like Genaro Borrego (PRI)––head of the Commission of
Foreign Affairs––and Raymundo Cárdenas from the PRD. The Lower House
was also represented. There were twenty elected officials from the federal and
local level. These series of binational events are a sign that for the first time
there is a state vision towards Mexicans living in the U.S.
At the Los Angeles Binational Forum, Arnoldo Torres from UNIVISION
presented a panorama of how the extraterritorial vote for Mexicans living in the
U.S. is viewed by Latino organizations. For him, the majority of Latino groups
are against it although not publicly. According to these groups, the Latino project
and the Mexican project are at odds with each other; that is, the extraterritorial
vote damages the Latino political agenda, it is a distracting factor.
As a
strategy, Torres proposed to incorporate Latino organizations to the Coalition for
240
the vote abroad, as well as to take into account the arguments of those who are
not in favor. The purpose would be to develop educational campaigns for the
vote abroad, and neutralize those campaigns against it.
In an insightful commentary to Arnaldo Torres’ presentation on the
competing agendas between Latinos and Mexicans, a Mexican migrant in the
audience categorically stated: “Well, yes, but we cannot become U.S. citizens
and vote because we don’t have papers. At least we can vote in México.” For
this migrant, the whole discussion on whether or not Mexicans should organize
politically facing the Mexican nation-state or the U.S. is clear.
For many
Mexican migrants, the alarmist position that some of the Latino organizations
have in relation to the extraterritorial vote cannot be justified. The defense of
migrants’ rights on either side of the border, especially of those who are
undocumented, has to go through México.
For Manuel García y Griego, Mexican migrants’ current low level of
political participation, regardless of whether it is for issues related to the U.S. or
México, places the struggle for political mobilization beyond competing
agendas.314 When migrants address issues that affect them on both sides of
the border they are enacting their own transnational citizenship. This
transnational condition implies that as migrants become more politically aware
314
Cf. Manuel García y Griego. 2003. Op. Cit. P.2.
241
and active, they will necessarily have to perform their citizenship in the broadest
sense of the term. Migrants cannot be enclosed in a political box.
Debates not only take place in public events or meetings. One central
tool that politically active migrants have been using to discuss, organize, debate,
and develop their ideas has been electronic mail, mainly through electronic
groups and lists. In February and March of 2003, a debate over whether or not
the Constitution allowed migrant political candidacies ensued in two of these
lists. One argument, sustained by Raúl Ross, quoted Article 32 of the Mexican
Constitution, which states: “The exercise of public office and functions for which
under the terms of the present Constitution it is required to be Mexican by birth,
is reserved to those who hold this quality and do not acquire another
nationality.”
He then proceeded to quote Article 55 that states: “To be a
Congressman it is required: 1) to be Mexican by birth…” Raúl does not quote
the other articles that refer to Senators, President, and armed forces. Other
restricted positions are not named in the Constitution but derive from it, and are
listed in secondary regulations. What is important to emphasize is that Ross
understands that migrants with dual nationality cannot be political candidates in
Mexican elections. As he states, he is doing a literal reading of the law, not an
interpretation.315
315
Raúl Ross Pineda. March 17, 2003. E-group fundaciónmexico @yahoogroups.com. My translation.
242
Other members of the electronic group who are part of the struggle for
the vote abroad have challenged Raúl’s position. For some the nationality law
has judicial loopholes that make it ambiguous. Others, citing the Constitution,
consider that the legal text does not establish that a binational cannot be a
Congressman, and that there is still no law that regulates the rights of dual
nationals, a requirement stated in Article 32. Moreover, some consider that the
public posts for which dual nationals are barred need to be specified, and they
do not know of any such list. Ross answered with a transcription of Article 55 of
the Mexican Constitution. A list of these positions does exist; it is included in the
documents that were produced by the IFE Experts Commission for the study of
the vote abroad, a list that is based on the nationality law approved in 1996 by
the Senate.316 However, this is not widespread knowledge.
Some migrants consider that a strict reading of the law will exclude
possible candidates for Congress. For example, two migrant leaders, one with
legislative experience, were convinced that they could not register as candidates
because of holding dual nationality. More recently, migrant leaders Manuel de la
Cruz, Felipe Cabral and Luis de la Garza––the last two proposed by the
Comisión de Mexicanos en el Exterior––who were already included in the
proportional representation lists of the PRI, PAN, and PRD for the coming midterm elections, have been disqualified because of their dual nationality status.
316
This list names 65 jobs that are restricted to Mexicans by birth who have not acquired another nationality. See
Annex 4.
243
When it seemed that the movement of Mexicans in the United States had
already achieved a wider migrant presence in México’s political scenario, the
strict letter of the law comes back to hunt Mexicans living abroad.317
Since 1997, then Senator Adolfo Aguilar Zinser had already foreseen the
consequences that the judicial inconsistencies contained in the new nationality
law would provoke. Among others, he mentioned that following the terms of the
1996 law, dual nationality in México effectively becomes a second-class
nationality or citizenship, because it bars dual nationals from exercising public
office, and a series of functions considered relevant for the safekeeping of the
nation’s sovereignty.318
As if Mexican migrants were a threat to México’s
sovereignty, the content of Article 32, the rejection of migrant candidacies on
account of dual nationality status, expresses a state of affairs in which migrants
are seen as Mexicans but not quite. Likewise, it is a rejection that chooses to
ignore that as U.S. immigration laws become stricter, more Mexicans face the
need to apply for U.S. citizenship.
Cf. Rogelio Hernández. 2003. “Los candidates con doble nacionalidad impedidos.” Milenio. Nacional. Wednesday
April 9.
318 Adolfo Aguilar Zinser. 1997. “Nacionalidad Compartida.” Reforma, Editorial. Friday December 5.
317
244
Conclusion
To recapitulate, in this chapter different migrant experiences of
citizenship have been presented. These pages review the connections between
the legal realm developed by the United States and México to deal with Mexican
migrants and their interpretations and reactions to it.
Likewise, the chapter
portrays the hegemonic dimension of law; it shows how law is not impartial or
static, and that judicial changes condense power and social relations. 319
Through ethnographic data describing migrants’ experiences and encounters
with the legal frameworks that affect them, these pages have focused on the
viewpoint of migrants who define their membership to a nation-state through
their identity and sense of belonging, as well as in the strategic decisions they
make throughout their life.
The first part of the chapter depicts the connections between the legal
realm developed by the United States to deal with Mexican migrants and
migrants’ embodiment of it.
María and Lucha’s stories portray the more
pragmatic side of the relation between migrants and the laws that affect them. In
their lives laws have indeed been hard texts, material realities, which they
interpret and acknowledge. José, Daniel and Doña Carmen unravel stories of
citizenship as practices of signification where the connection between identity
319
Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 140.
245
and law acquires preeminence. As Doña Carmen’s testimony shows, some
Mexican migrants have a strong sense of territoriality, and of belonging to a
larger community, which exceeds the limits established by a nation-states’ laws.
Migrants’ constant back–and–forth complicate these limits. The interest in their
hometown and in México, the remittances they send, and the memories they
sustain through the years, that is, the intensity of their situated cultural practice,
represents one of the challenges posed by Mexican migrants to how citizenship
is understood today.
The second part of this chapter addresses migrants’ politics of citizenship
more directly. For Mexican migrants it is important to know that recovering their
full citizenship rights recognizes their role in the process of the making of the
nation. Because the dilemma of keeping strong connections with the homeland,
whether political, economic or emotional, is so present among many groups of
Mexican migrants, their lobbying efforts in México, their political activity abroad,
their every day remembering of their country, makes the Mexican migration case
one where a politics of citizenship is clearly performed and displayed.
Likewise, the legal struggle that is taking place also depicts how, by
pushing an agenda upon the national political scene, Mexican migrants are
becoming active political actors rather than mere symbols of heroism, or images
of the country’s failure to include everyone’s past, present and future. For many
migrants citizenship is indeed a legal status, and it is closely related to political
246
rights. However, through the recognition of the leverage laws have in their lives,
migrants move beyond their limitations, and as a response to them become, as I
mentioned before, active political actors. This new existence as actors that
impact the Mexican political arena turns into a feature of the new citizenship that
migrants are constructing and one that both México and the United States have
to deal with.
Though the legal discourse does structure the formal relation between
these two states, the México-U.S. relation does not begin or end with the laws
that each government promulgates. Each side in this binational relation carries
out divergent efforts to fortify its sovereignty. One state goes through elaborate
and expensive procedures to close its sovereignty by passing anti-immigration
laws most of which are practically if unofficially labeled as anti-Mexican. The
other state searches to extend its sovereignty by displacing traditional notions of
sovereignty from a territorial notion on to every Mexican who crosses the border.
In both nation-states internal resistance to these laws appear as people grapple
emotionally and conceptually with nationalist ideas of citizenship and belonging.
Individuals find themselves participating in this legal battle, which they in turn
end up inhabiting and performing.
The two legal frameworks migrants face can be seen as representing
contrasting national projects and cultures of politics, which migrants engage in
their everyday practices and, by the same token, which they transform. Migrants
247
construct a culture of citizenship where the legal discourse is translated into
political practices of belonging and membership. Moreover, because migrants
find themselves immersed in two, at least, interlocking legal worlds, they
develop counter-hegemonic responses through their situated cultural and
political practices. In doing so, they bring life to the law.
248
Chapter V
Building citizenship: Mexican migrants’ practices of nationhood and
belonging
The articulation of experiences of transnational migration such as the Aguilillan
migrant circuit, or of those who participate in an active civil society facing the
nation-state––like Mexican migrants lobbying for the implementation of the vote
abroad––provide a framework for understanding how a culture of citizenship is
shaped. This chapter explores politically active migrants’ practices of citizenship,
and how they engage in a battle for its meaning and limits, within a transnational
and trans-local setting. In this sense, nation, region, locality and ethnicity appear
as dimensions where migrants’ political practices take place. The stories
presented here center on practices of citizenship that are mainly connected to
the political sphere, but are also mediated by the language of identity, and by
migrants’ sense of belonging.
The present chapter aims for an understanding of the interaction between
citizenship and politics. Previously, I have discussed the cultural and legal
contexts that influence migrants’ construction of citizenship. This chapter
summarizes how migrants create a transnational citizenship, marked by translocal and/or transnational practices, through their political and cultural practices
249
within a scenario of contrasting political cultures.320 By trans-local I understand
the movement between two or more localities while sustaining a hometown or
regional connection. This connection allows for the development of a
transnational social space, which crosses the socio-political, economic, and
historical boundaries of two or more nations. I explore these issues by following
the stories of three Mexicans who have experienced migration and have
invested part of their lives in the political sphere.
Migrants articulate power and culture in different manners. Through their
political practices they address the nation-state within the language of the law,
as well as within the language of identity. In speaking of a culture of politics, of
meanings and practices entangled in power struggles, the actions of Mexican
migrants in the United States have indeed impacted México’s political scenario
culminating in the appearance of new laws and political campaigns that take
place in the United States such as those of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Vicente
Fox, and various candidates for governorships.321
Migrants’ lobbying, their
protests, and the debates they foster, have permeated the Mexican political
scenario, and have found echo in the letter of the law with the 1996
Constitutional changes, and subsequent initiatives introduced in Congress. In
320
My understanding of political culture follows that of Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar. In their
Introduction, they define political culture “as the particular social construction in every society of what counts as
political. In this way, political culture is the domain of practices and institutions, carved out of the totality of social
reality, that historically comes to be considered as properly political.” In Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo
Escobar, Eds. 1998. Cultures of Politics. Politics of Cultures. Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements.
Westview Press, USA. P. 8.
321 Cf. in Sonia Alvarez, et.al. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 7.
250
this sense, they are the life of the law, and their emergence as transnational
political actors has added a dimension to México’s culture of politics.
The chapter is divided into three sections. First, I examine some vying
perspectives on citizenship and its connection to culture and democracy.
Likewise, I review theoretical work on transnational political participation in order
to frame the case studies introduced here. Second, I present the stories of three
migrants who, through their political involvement, have impacted the
development of a culture of citizenship. The cases were chosen following three
criteria: a) they engage in politics on both sides of the border; b) they involve the
migrant experience, and c) they are cases of civic and political selfrepresentation on the part of migrants.
The first story is about a migrant from Zacatecas, Andrés Bermúdez––
The Tomato King––an agribusiness owner in Northern California who got
involved in the political arena of Jerez, Zacatecas, his hometown. The second
case is about Rufino Domínguez, a migrant indigenous leader from Oaxaca. In
these stories, the indigenous migrant appears as a political subject who
organizes transnationally, and forges a politics of citizenship where indigenous
migrants, their specific identities, and political needs are at the forefront. Finally,
I present the story of Raúl Ross, a Veracruzano migrant who lives in Chicago
and is immersed in a political campaign lobbying for the political rights of
Mexicans living abroad. While set within the frame of the rule of democracy, his
251
words and life history also provide elements to understand citizenship as a
cultural right. These three stories present different cultural practices of politics
as they engage with Mexican cultures of politics. Finally, the third part of the
chapter compares the stories, the particular political practices that they display,
and the cultures of citizenship they enact.
Understanding citizenship and migration
This section reviews different approaches to the issue of citizenship,
which provide a framework to understand what a politics of citizenship means.
Likewise, it intersects these perspectives with works on transnational migration
that emphasize issues of citizenship and/or political participation. The aim is to
explore how distinct practices of politics, and claims of membership in the
nation-state, are conceptualized in order to comprehend how the category of
citizenship changes within the context of migration.
As
stated
in
previous
chapters,
citizenship
has
been
mostly
conceptualized in legal terms, in terms of rights and duties specified by the
nation-state. However, citizenship goes beyond this realm. It involves cultural
practices at the same time that it is strongly related to democracy. Following
Evelina Dagnino’s perspective, while democracy is seemingly bound to the
political regime, it necessarily includes the cultural realm, where practices of
252
exclusion and inequality have marked social relations, relations that, for
example, social movements in Latin America have been trying to change. As a
consequence of the social movements that have emerged since the 1970’s,
there has been a shift in the notion of democracy.
This conception of
democracy “transcends the limits both of political institutions as traditionally
conceived and of actually existing democracy.’’322
It is a democracy that
changes in practice.
Because of its connection to democracy, the notion of citizenship has
also undergone a redefinition. For Dagnino, the core notion of rights comes
under scrutiny and change. Prevailing neoliberal versions of citizenship, attempt
to redefine “the political domain and its participants based on a minimalistic
conception of both the state and democracy.” 323 Under this perspective, the
effect of neoliberalism is to integrate citizenship to the needs of the market.
Likewise, there is a systematic elimination of consolidated rights in order to
shrink state responsibilities.324
Mexican migrants also expand the notion of rights to the right to have
rights. As Dagnino explains, a right is understood as the right to have rights
beyond previously defined and established rights, created in the practice from
Evelina Dagnino. 1998. “Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy: Changing Discourses and Practices of the Latin
American Left.” In Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, eds. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 49.
323 Evelina Dagnino. Idem.
324 See Evelina Dagnino. 1998. Op. Cit. P.49
322
253
specific struggles, and subject themselves to political struggle. 325 Moreover,
Dagnino argues that there has been a gradual understanding of the connection
between culture and politics, which has allowed social movements to articulate
their situation, and that of others, as the right to have rights. Once grounded in
this general notion of democracy––the right to have rights––citizenship becomes
central to the struggle towards democratization. This redefined notion of
citizenship operationalizes the “enlarged view of democracy” of the new social
movements, whether they be urban, rural, feminist, minority, or ecological. The
practice of each social actor provides more meaning and breadth to the notion
of citizenship. Each claim for equality, difference, and other rights opens the
meaning of citizenship. While here citizenship is seen as a cultural practice, it
also contains the idea that everyone is a bearer of rights.
From a perspective that focuses more on the migratory process, David
Fitzgerald’s work on Michoacano migrants and their practices of citizenship
introduces identity into the discussion of political rights. As he explains, there is
a connection between citizenship and an essentialized identity. This process of
essentialization “legitimates the claims for rights, ”and is especially present
among diasporas and transnational migrants.”326 Through their practices and
their relation to the nation-state, transnational migrants define the content of
325
Cf. Evelina Dagnino. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 50.
David Fitzgerald. 2000. Negotiating Extra-Territorial Citizenship.Mexican Migration and the Transnational
Politics of Community. Center for Comparative and Immigration Studies, University of California San Diego, La
Jolla, California. Monograph No. 2. P. 9
326
254
their citizenship. Mexican migrants do tend to have an essentialized
understanding of their identity, some engaging at the national level, while others
ground their identity at the state and community levels, as seen in the narratives
of Jose in his store, Doña Carmen in her house, and with most Mexicans
lobbying for their right to political voice.
In his study of a union in Southern California and its transnational political
practices, Fitzgerald questions the excesses in the use of the concept of
transnationalism in migration studies because they tend to conflate categories of
nation, state, culture, and geography.327 Fitzgerald proposes to set aside the
use of transnationalism, which he mostly presents as a trascendence of
nationalism, but to keep its analytical tools. Through the study of the union,
Fitzgerald advances a theoretical framework that attempts to disaggregate these
tools: Types of political borders, types of nationalisms, and levels of
identification.
He thus attempts to disentangle the transnational from the
translocal. Through the study of the political dynamics in the union, he finds out
that translocality appears to be more relevant than any transnational ‘workers of
the world’ discourse.328 Furthermore, he considers that while kinship, locality,
nation, class, and race, are levels that interrelate with each other in migration,
Cf. David Fitzgerald. 2002. “Rethinking the ‘Local’ and ‘Transnational’: Cross-Border Politics and Hometown
Networks in an Immigrant Union.” Manuscript. P.4.
328 See David Fitzgerald. 2002. Op. Cit. P.3.
327
255
transnationalism is not necessarily a concept that sheds light on these
interactions.329
Because the union is made up of a large migrant constituency––mostly
from two adjacent villages in Michoacán––Fitzgerald considers that the “internal
political structure of the union is bi-local in that it is based in two localities
separated by a state border and 1500 miles.”330 Kinship relations play a strong
role in union politics. However, Fitzgerald recognizes that the union’s dynamics
move beyond this bi-local setting.
He finds that the union constructs dual
nationalisms because national symbols of both countries are present (the flags,
pledge of allegiance, the Virgin of Guadalupe); the union sustains contacts with
the Mexican consulate, it lobbies for U.S. social rights as well as Mexican
political rights with Mexican authorities, and it conducts citizenship classes. In
sum, Fitzgerald is moving between similar although not quite synonymous
concepts such as transborder, bi-local, and translocal.
Fitzgerald agrees with Alejandro Portes’, Luis E. Guarnizo’s, and Patricia
Landlot’s perspective who consider that transnationalism is more useful when
applied to the economic domain. This is especially evident when, in the
conclusion, he refers to “how transborder ties can improve the economic
329
330
David Fitzgerald. 2002. Op. Cit. P.4.
Idem.
256
prospects of low skill workers and transnational entrepreneurs.”331
Such a
position is problematic because it allows for a qualification of entrepreneurs as
transnational, while workers are not given that same quality, as if workers were
not part of a larger set of economic relations that spanned beyond the local,
regional, or state levels.
In Fitzgerald’s precision of the use of the term transnationalism, by
addressing both bi-local or trans-local situations, and what he calls dual
nationalisms practiced by the union leaders and by the union in general, he is in
fact dealing with transnational issues. Contrary to his own claims, I consider
that Fitzgerald’s study demonstrates that the local may also be transnational
precisely because a multiplicity of levels are interacting, and because larger
economic and political processes frame the social relations that are taking
place.
Another approach that takes into consideration the cultural aspect of
citizenship is the one developed by Renato Rosaldo. According to him, new
social movements have
expanded the emphasis on citizens’ rights from questions of class
to issues of gender, race, sexuality, ecology, and age…new
331
David Fitzgerald. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 14. Also see Alejandro Portes, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landlot. 1999.
“The study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field.” Ethnic and Racial Studies
22(2):212-37.
257
citizens have come into being as new categories of persons who
make claims on both their fellow citizens and the state.332
Mexican migrants fuse class and race with questions of nation and community.
Indeed they make claims on their fellow citizens and the state, but for them
there is more than one state with which to deal. Indeed, more problematically,
their fellow citizens might not consider them as “fellows” at all. Thus, claims of
citizenship are not only expressed in the political arena; the signs of inclusion
and exclusion are perhaps more evident in migrants’ everyday lives, where
people are integrated into or marginalized from the community.
The histories and the stories of Mexican migrants in the U.S., illustrate
how citizenship can be viewed as a political strategy, a perspective that
emphasizes its character as a historical construct rather than a universal
essence as the liberal tradition has defined citizenship. For authors like William
Flores, Renato Rosaldo, or Evelina Dagnino, the new citizenship goes beyond a
central reference in the liberal concept, what Dagnino understands as
the claim to access, inclusion, membership, and belonging to an
already given system. What is at stake, in fact, is the right to
participate in the very definition of that system, to define what we
Renato Rosaldo. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism.” In Flores, William and Rina
Benmayor. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Beacon Press, Boston. P.30.
332
258
want to be members of, that is to say, the invention of a new
society.333
However, those Mexican migrants who struggle for the recognition of their
political rights are, at least in a first instance, demanding to be included in an
already given system. Yet, through their practices migrants are in fact taking
part in a re-invention of that system, the nation, which in turn, through people,
practices, and their imaginaries has to figure out legally and emotionally their
new role.
As shown throughout this dissertation, in the long-term migratory process
between México and the U.S., migrants have developed practices of citizenship,
which are manifested in various forms, both institutional and private/ personal.
In her studies on transnational migration, Luin Goldring argues that citizenship
includes two dimensions.
The first one refers to rights, and the second to
substantive citizenship practices.334
Goldring
defines
substantive
citizenship in terms of migrants’ connections to their communities of origin.
Many of them have structured their practices in hometown associations, thus
thickening their membership and practices of belonging. These bottom-up
associations or clubs, have become the basis for a more institutionalized
relation between the Mexican nation-state and migrants. However, for the
Evelina Dagnino. 1998. Op. Cit. P.51. See also Flores, William. “Citizen vs Citizenry: Undocumented Immigrants
and Latino Cultural Citizenship. Epilogue.” In William Flores and Rita Benmayor. 1997. Op. Cit. Pp.257, 258.
334 Cf. Luin Goldring. 2001. “The Gender and Geography of Citizenship in México-U.S. Transnational Spaces.”. In
Identities, Vol. 7(4) pp.501-537. P. 501.
333
259
Mexican government, these associations are only relevant inasmuch as they
can provide economic benefits to their communities of origin, as well as political
lobbying in the U.S. on behalf of the Mexican government.335
Mexican migrant clubs have existed since the 1920’s. The Federations––
a conglomerate of hometown associations––are a more recent appearance due
mostly to a change in Mexican policy toward migrants.336
The first federation
that emerged from below is the Federación de Clubes Zacatecanos. According
to Goldring, Zacatecans in the U.S. enact their membership to their localities of
origin by participating in and conducting hometown “community” projects, thus
“engaging in transnational substantive citizenship at the subnational level.” 337
These particular situated cultural practices of building community and
establishing citizenship in the form of institutions by migrant groups, or even
individuals, began to be seized upon by the state in the 1990’s. The purpose of
this action was to encourage investment projects in migrants’ communities with
matching funds from the government. This strategy by the Mexican government
was “built on well established patterns of bottom-up transnational practices and
organization.”338
Hometown clubs tend to organize to invest in works that
interest the community such as sidewalks, roads, schools, health services, a
335
See Luin Goldring.1998. "Power and Status in Transnational Social Fields". In Luis Eduardo Guarnizo and
Michael P. Smith (Eds). In Transnationalism from Below. Comparative Urban and Community Research, Vol. 6. P. 1.
336 Víctor Espinosa. 1999. La Federación de Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois: Construyendo Puentes entre Chicago y
Michoacán. Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights/ Chicago Community Trust/ Federación de
Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois. September. P.1
337 Luin Goldring. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 5.
338 Luin Goldring. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 2
260
kiosk, Churches. Most of these are what Luin Goldring understands as social
benefits. Migrants “expand the social citizenship ‘benefits’ available in their
communities of origin…They have taken off where the state left off…”339
However, the decision-making process of what is needed for the community and
how the collective remittances should be invested places the population in
conflict with each other. Determining which project should be chosen, what is
more relevant for the hometown or for the returning migrants sometimes leads
to conflicts of interests or to the choice of a seemingly less useful or productive
project.
Other transnational practices of citizenship that some Mexican migrants
develop are strongly connected to the political realm. Aside from the hometown
associations, and now the Federations, migrants have developed a myriad of
transnational practices that contribute to the construction of their citizenship.
For Jonathan Fox, an organized transnational social movement has a high
degree of density, of cohesion, where the social subject is present in more than
one country.340 As he explains, this description fits the “paradigmatic case of
the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Bi-nacional,” an organization of which Rufino
Domínguez is a member.341 Seen through the lens of Jonathan Fox’s approach,
Luin Goldring. 1999. “From market membership to transnational citizenship? The changing politization of
transnational social spaces.” Chicano-Latino Research Center Working Paper, UCSC, No.23, April. P. 3. See also
David Fitzgerald. Op. Cit.
340 Cf. Jonathan Fox. 2001. “Evaluación de las Coaliciones Binacionales de la Sociedad Civil a partir de la
Experiencia México-Estados Unidos.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, vol. 63,
num. 3, Julio-Septiembre, 2001, México. Pp. 207-264. P. 216.
341 Cf. Jonathan Fox. 2001. Idem.
339
261
it is in these organizations where practices of citizenship are at their highest
point, as they demand strong commitment from their members. According to
this definition, only a few transnational social organizations can be considered
dense and cohesive. However, some hometown associations do present such
characteristics.
Many migrants are political actors, different but equal as Rufino
Domínguez would phrase it in describing the situation of indigenous people.
Being bearers of rights in any case––regardless of the possession or not of
papers that establish legal residency, citizenship, and/or nationality––migrants
struggle to be recognized as full members of the nation, not only as market
citizens.342 Theirs is a “citizenship from below,” as defined by Evelina Dagnino,
where actors establish what they consider to be their rights and fight for them
based on their own situated cultural practices.343 Migrants’ practices of
belonging and of connectedness to the nation, the state, and their communities,
are their best arguments for their claims to citizenship.
342
343
Cf. Luin Goldring. 1999. Op. Cit.
Cf. Evelina Dagnino. 1998. Op. Cit. Pp. 50, 51
262
Andrés Bermúdez, el Rey del Tomate, and transnational politics.
PANTALÓN VAQUERO, BOTAS Y SOMBRERO,
VOTEN POR BERMÚDEZ QUE ES EL MERO MERO.344
Andrés Bermúdez was born in the town of El Cargadero, in Jerez,
Zacatecas. The story of this town is one that repeats itself throughout Zacatecas
and many other states in México. The population in El Cargadero is
approximately 700 inhabitants, in contrast to the 1,400 migrants from this town
who live in the U.S.345 The people of El Cargadero harvest peaches, but their
main source of income, as is the case for the rest of the region, comes from
remittances. In addition to this characteristic of El Cargadero’s demographics, is
the fact that the migrant population is composed mostly of young people, a
pattern that is repeated in Jerez and other regions of the country. Lack of
opportunities, tradition, adventure, or all of these factors combined contribute to
people’s decision to migrate.
Bermúdez began his life as a migrant when he was 23 years old, 29
years ago more or less. He left his town in 1973 and entered the U.S., by hiding
with his wife in the trunk of his compadre’s Buick. He received U.S. residency in
“Cowboy pants, boots, and hat, vote for Bermúdez who is the main man.” Political slogan used during Bermúdez
‘campaign for the Municipal Presidency of Jeréz, Zacatecas, 2001. My translation.
345 Cf. Arturo Cano. 2001. “Los migrantes regresan a votar…y ser votados.” La Jornada, México, Sunday June 24.
344
263
1982, and became a U.S. citizen in the early 1990’s.346 At the beginning, Andrés
worked in the fields as a laborer, and later as a tractor driver. Once he learned
English, “he became an intermediary between bosses and his jereziano
paisanos. Thus he started his own business.”347 Andrés’ handle on English gave
him an advantage, which he used to become a middleman.
For Andrés,
learning English and acting as a middleman was when he first started to
exercise management of people and power relations. Being a broker, a
middleman, provided him with an arena for developing himself as a leader.
Today, in his agro-business he mainly employs Mexicans, “90% Mexicans, 30%
Zacatecan” he states.348
Jerez was nearly forgotten in the national scene, even as it was present
in the close or far reality of Jerezianos, but the municipality recently jumped into
the national political scenario and became the center of a dispute over who
could and who could not participate in Mexican politics. On July 1 st 2001, local
elections were held in the states of Zacatecas, Durango, and Chihuahua.
During the campaign for local elections in Jerez, Zacatecas, the municipio went
through an unusual electoral process that reverberated nationally as well as in
certain areas of the U.S.
The uniqueness of this election for the municipal
presidency derived from the fact that two of the candidates were migrants. The
Cf. Kevin Sullivan. 2001. “México reverses triumphant return of Tomato King.” The Washington Post, September
11.
347 Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.
348 Interview, March 9, 2002. Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Forum “Migrantes Mexicanos y Ciudadanía: 1er.
Foro sobre el Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior,”organized by the Frente Cívico Zacatecano.
346
264
migrant candidates were Andrés Bermúdez, otherwise known as The Tomato
King, who represented the PRD––which in Zacatecas is composed mainly of exPRI militants––and Salvador Espinosa who was the candidate for the small
party Convergencia por la Democracia. It was The Tomato King’s candidacy
that stirred the most comments and, eventually, the most controversy.
On July 1st, 2001, Andrés Bermúdez won the elections and became one
of the first migrants to win elected office.
As the PRD candidate, Andrés
originally had the support of Zacatecas’ governor Ricardo Monreal Avila. As a
matter of fact, Monreal was the one who invited the Tomato King to participate
in Jerez’ elections.
He [the governor] had come to see the machine I invented to
transplant tomatoes and legumes, and to observe how the
production grew and work was easier…once here, he invited me to
be a candidate. I liked the idea, and thus I began, not without first
talking to some companies because I was interested in creating
jobs in my town, and bring a real proposal of what I was going to
do.349
According to the Tomato King, he did not want to participate in politics if he
could not offer something concrete like investment projects that could generate
Araceli Martínez Ortega. 2002. “Monreal no quería que ganará la alcaldía: Bermúdez.” El Universal, Tuesday
February 12. Estados, P.7
349
265
jobs. That was his vision of politics, and he was going to enable it because he
had the knowledge and connections that resulted from his migrant experience.
Before participating in these elections, according to Andrés Bermúdez, he
had not done anything political. “Nada….Nada,” he insists. “I helped the clubs
in San José. I helped them do projects, organize dances, do things…but me,
think about politics, no…I was a simple campesino, campesino because my
enterprises are agricultural––from el campo.”350 He had been more concretely
involved with the club of El Cargadero, his hometown. In El Cargadero, it is very
common to find plates on the side of public works stating “Donated by The El
Cargadero Social Club.”351 Although The Tomato King does not recognize his
participation in the clubs as political, he was part of the public social arena of
Zacatecanos, of Jerezianos to be more precise. However, it was his success in
the business world and the support he received from the Frente Cívico
Zacatecano in Northern California, that made Bermúdez an attractive candidate
for the governor of Zacatecas.352
Perhaps what was behind Monreal’s mind when he invited the Tomato
King, was a gesture towards Zacatecan migrants and the Frente Cívico
Zacatecano, to demonstrate that he was serious when he proposed to recognize
Interview, March 9, 2002. Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Forum “Migrantes Mexicanos y Ciudadanía: 1er.
Foro sobre el Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior,”organized by the Frente Cívico Zacatecano.
351 Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.
352 Cf. Jennifer Mena. 2001. “Once a Mexican illegal, now a U.S. citizen, Bermúdez wins election as mayor of Jerez,
Zacatecas, México.” Los Angeles Times, July 9.
350
266
migrants’ political rights during his campaign for Governor.353 However, behind
this gesture there was no true intention of seeing Andrés Bermúdez elected. 354
Monreal used the Tomato King, bragged about his success, but he was not
really interested in having Bermúdez enter directly into local politics. The local
PRD thought that he was not going to be able to defeat the opponents in the
general elections, so they were not interested in his candidacy either.355 But
nobody explained this to the Tomato King, who really believed he was the
candidate and that he could win. Bermúdez gained the support of Zacatecas
City PRD mayor, and allied himself with a sector of Jerez’ PRD. 356
With these
alliances, the money he brought to the campaign, and his own charisma, he
won.
During his campaign, Bermúdez used a lot of his own resources in
community projects, such as fixing 600 kilometers of roads, and installation of
streetlights and some sport facilities.357
For journalist Arturo Cano, “Andrés
Bermúdez, The Tomato King as he likes to be called, is one of the two
candidates that left as mojados and came back with his pockets filled with green
bills to conquer power.”358
This image does not precisely describe most
migrants. Even more, it is an image very close to the one portrayed by critics of
353
See Luin Goldring.1999. Op. Cit.
See Araceli Martínez Ortega. 2002. Op. Cit.
355 Cf. Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.
356 Idem.
357 Cf. Araceli Martínez Ortega. 2002. Op. Cit.
358 Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.
354
267
the vote abroad as they express suspicion towards migrants, because their
ways have become tainted by the U.S. Thus, the discourse in both its positive
and negative manifestations organizes itself around the same terms.
Contrary to the distrustful and negative perception of migrants persistent
in many Mexican political circles, I consider that Andrés Bermúdez conducted a
political campaign that very much reproduced old paternalistic ways. Through
his gifts, parties and constructions––which for him meant a way to show people
that he could bring investment and a better life to Jerez––the Tomato King was
indeed, indirectly, buying support. In doing so, he was reproducing a familiar
way of practicing politics in México.
With the triumph in his hands, Andrés Bermúdez began a celebration
tour, which took him, among other places, to California. As part of his activities,
Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante invited him to a fund-raiser in Silverado. He met Sen.
Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) and U.S. Rep. Loretta Sánchez (D-Garden Grove).359
The main goal of his tour was to meet with agribusiness leaders to develop
strategies of investment for Jerez.360 From the day of the election through early
September, the Tomato King was preparing to begin his work as a Municipal
President of Jerez, something that would start with the official ceremony on
September 15, 2001. His trans-local work and vision were part of his campaign
from the start.
359
360
See Jennifer Mena. 2001. Op. Cit.
Idem
268
After his victory of 9,641 votes, more than a thousand votes over his PRI
opponent, who had 6,602, and 2,896 that Salvador Espinosa received, the
Tomato King ousted the long ruling PRI.361 However, the PRI then proceeded to
protest Bermúdez’ election. Following Bermúdez’ success with the people of
Jerez and other parts of Zacatecas, and when the story began to be publicized
at the national level as a result of his electoral victory, the PRI questioned and
officially presented a legal complaint against the eligibility of Andrés Bermúdez
as a candidate for Jerez’ municipal presidency. “The Partido Revolucionario
Institucional (PRI) promoted a Constitutional review trial before the Federal
Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power (Tribunal Electoral Federal del Poder
Judicial de la Federación-TRIFE) over Bermúdez Viramontes’ eligibility to
occupy a popular election office (cargo de elección popular)…” 362
The
argument of the objection was based on the fact that Bermúdez was a U.S.
citizen; therefore he was not Mexican and could not run for election. According
to Carlos Alvarado Campa, PRI representative in the Zacatecan Electoral
Institute, “the election of the ex-bracero (sic), better known as The Tomato King,
is unconstitutional on account of having acquired U.S. citizenship since the
1980’s.”363 The PRI “ratified that The Tomato King had not renounced his U.S.
citizenship, because he had yet to present to the electoral institutions his
361
See Kevin Sullivan. 2001. Op. Cit.
Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001b. “Presenta el Rey del Tomate prueba de nacionalidad.” El Universal, México,
Thursday September 6.
363 Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001a. “Impugna PRI al Rey del Tomate.” El Universal, México, Wednesday September
5.
362
269
certificate of Mexican nationality, a document that had to be issued by the
Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”364
The PRI based their argument on the new
nationality law. For them, it was the fact that Bermúdez held dual nationality
that made him ineligible.365
Bermúdez presented evidence of his Mexican nationality by showing his
birth certificate, his electoral identification card––which requires proof of
residency to be issued, and is considered the most trusted document of
identification in México––along with a letter from the Mexican Consulate
acknowledging Bermúdez’ request to recover his nationality in accordance with
the new nationality law. Despite the evidence, according to the PRI he was not
a Mexican in the full sense of the term. Nationality was the contested terrain; it
was here where the battle of belonging was being fought.
The PRI’s particular reading of the nationality and electoral law illustrates
different aspects of the complicated relationship between migrants and their
nation, state, and hometown. The first aspect to analyze is how the Zacatecan
PRI was asking, almost demanding, that the Tomato King renounce his U.S.
citizenship. The Tomato King’s political incursion and his migrant life raised
questions of residency and citizenship, feeding a regional and national debate
on these issues. While the PRI’s main argument against his candidacy took a
legal venue, behind this rhetoric lay ruptures that stand between the people who
364
365
Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001b. Op. Cit.
Cf. Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001b. Op. Cit.
270
stay and those who leave. For many, mainly PRI, migrants are looked at with
suspicion, as somehow less Mexican because they have been touched by the
U.S.366 For others of course, they have proven their belonging to the nation,
they are symbols of endurance. Moreover, for the families that stay, migrants
are the much needed and missed absent.
On September 6, 2001, the Federal Electoral Tribunal overturned Andrés
Bermúdez’ triumph.367 The legal reason Bermúdez’ victory was overturned was
not based on whether he was or was not Mexican. Rather than support its
decision on nationality, the Federal Electoral Tribunal’s criterion for denial was
based on residency.368
As a matter of fact, the Federal Electoral Tribunal
stated, “the nationality of the Tomato King was not in question, he is Mexican,
they declared.”369
The problem was that in his application to recover his
Mexican nationality, Bermúdez indicated his California residence as his
permanent residency, thereby annulling his legal possibilities of being a
candidate, as he was not a permanent resident of Jerez.
By Zacatecan
electoral law, he was required to have twelve months of residency prior to the
election. He only had eleven months.
366
See for another example David Fitzgerald. 2000. Negotiating Extra-Territorial Citizenship.Mexican Migration and
the Transnational Politics of Community. Center for Comparative and Immigration Studies, University of California
La Jolla, California. Monograph No. 2.
367 See TRIFE. Juicio de Revisión Constitucional Electoral. Expediente: SUP-JRC-170/2001.
368 The Federal Electoral Tribunal or TRIFE, is the highest judicial electoral authority in the country where electoral
disputes are argued and solved. It is part of the federal government, and it is incorporated to the judicial branch. See
www.trife.gob.mx.
369 Jorge Octavio Ochoa and Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001. “Anulan el triunfo en Zacatecas del Rey del Tomate. El
aspirante perredista no pudo acreditar la residencia de un año que se requiere en contiendas electorales.” El Universal,
Friday, September 7, 2001.
271
The electoral controversy not only placed the Mexican political system in
a convoluted situation, the Tomato King’s participation in the elections also
provoked a debate on belonging, membership, and in the end, on citizenship––
again presence. To be there or to be absent, to be here and not there, appear
as the factors that determine a person’s belonging to a political community.
Regardless of the fact that migrants have over and over demonstrated their
interest and investment in México, they are still excluded from a full membership
in the imagined community, as was the case with Andrés Bermúdez.
“I said I jumped from the tractor to politics, and that is a big mistake,
which has to be paid, and I paid.”370 The Tomato King jumped into politics
thinking that he could change things the “American way.” Although he is not
explicit in what he understands by this, his perspective on what it means to
govern––to be a gobernante––is in many ways derived from his own success
story. The poor campesino who becomes a successful businessman, is a story
very close to the American dream. Bermúdez has a political perspective in
which politicians should work closely with entrepreneurs. “In politics, to be
successful, a politician has to combine both things, politics and business. We
need the politician to convince people to buy the produce, and we need the
entrepreneur to make the products.”371
This is Andrés Bermúdez’ very
pragmatic perspective on politics, what he means by change, and, perhaps,
370
371
Interview March 9, 2002. Los Angeles.
Idem.
272
what he is trying to express when he talks about the American way. However,
this can also be a part of his campesino-farmer ideas and practices.
Campesinos have a strong work ethic, and according to the Tomato King, “a
campesino does not lie, he does not deceive other people…”
Bermúdez
strongly believes in these ideas. He thinks that a campesino speaks straight
and plainly, and in his view he is a campesino.372
Thus, jumping from the
tractor––the world of straight talking––to politics––the world of twisted words
and hidden meanings––was a mistake.
Andrés Bermúdez had and still has big dreams. He was planning for a
government based on ideas from the United States.373
I was going to start change but they didn’t let me…I feel like I
could do something for my town…I’ve got connections.
I can
invest money in México. The Mexican people are hungry for the
truth. I was crying, everyone was crying.374
Bermúdez’ encounter with local and national politics showed that he views his
bi-local, or transnational position, as a strength. He believes that he should be
included in the destiny of the nation while paradoxically he views himself to be
372
When the Tomato King speaks of him as a campesino, he mostly refers to being a farmer, more precisely, to be
related to agricultural production. Bermúdez owns several agribusinesses. Some of these are nurseries located in
Watsonville.
373 Cf. Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.
374 Jessica Garrison. 2002. “Farmer gives up Mexican mayoralty.” L.A. Times, Monday, January 28.
273
more from the U.S. than from México.375
For Bermúdez this is not a
contradiction. As he declared at the Laborers International Union Local 652 in
Santa Ana, California, “I said I was a candidate of two nations, the Jerez that is
here and the Jerez that is there.”376 The story and the words of the Tomato King
problematize theoretical efforts to establish clear distinctions between concepts
like transnationalism, translocal, nation, state, or locality. 377 For one, his “nation”
here and there is Jerez, not precisely México but Jerez. Andrés Bermúdez
understands himself as belonging to two nations, he participates in local politics,
is immersed in a national controversy and, eventually, as “a candidate of two
nations,” poses larger questions to understandings and practices of citizenship.
While the need for and presence of migrants at the local level is evident,
it is also here that resentments are most visible. For some people in the local
government, the role of migrants in the development of the various communities
of Jerez is minor in comparison to that of the PRI governments. For the
Cargadero municipal delegate––an elected PRI official––Andrés Bermúdez is
not from there anymore. “He left and comes back forty years later…it is a
barbarity that he is killing cows and pigs, giving beer, all to be taking advantage
of the need of the people here.”378 Actually, except for the first twelve or so
years after he migrated, Andrés came back to Jerez on several occasions, like
375
Cf. Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.
Cf. Jennifer Mena. 2001. Op. Cit.
377 See David Fitzgerald. 2002. Op. Cit.
378 Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit. Quote from the Delegate Mario García. My translation.
376
274
other migrants do. Nonetheless, what is significant in the municipal delegate’s
perception is that someone who does not live in the community can have a say
in its issues. Others disagree with the delegate’s perspective on the role of
migrants, especially taking into consideration their participation in the economy.
Without migrants’ contribution to Zacatecas’ economy the situation in each town
would be worse. Perhaps what truly appears in the delegate’s words is the
resentment that some of the people who stay have toward migrants, especially
those who are successful.
Likewise, some people, in this case from Jerez, do challenge the idea
that Mexicans living in the U.S. have the right to participate in Mexican politics
because they lack the knowledge of the current problems that the municipio, the
town or the community face.379 The fact that slightly more than half of the
population voted for the PRI and Jerez’ resident candidate gives support to this
point of view. Under this kind of argument, the notion of right is not defined
through legal terms as is done by political parties and the state institutions.
Here, the right to be a citizen in order to participate in politics derives from the
possession of knowledge. For some Jerezianos, their migrant paisanos lack the
expert knowledge on the problems of Jerez.
Yet, for others, such as the half that voted for the migrant candidates, it is
evident that migrants do indeed have this knowledge, and the proof of it is their
379
Cf. Kevin Sullivan. 2001. Op. Cit.
275
decision to migrate.380 Likewise, migrants have knowledge of what is happening
in Jerez. They communicate with their families, their paisanos, and now they
can find out news about Jerez and the Jerezianos in the U.S. through the
internet, in Jerez’ web site (www.jerez.com). They continue investing in their
community through remittances and their investment in local projects, which are
usually organized through the hometown associations.
In this sense, their
knowledge and investment earns them the right to be considered as citizens.
The story of the Tomato King portrays the many ruptures migrants
experience in their life. One rupture would refer to how migrants are well
perceived as long as they send remittances and participate in investment
projects, what Luin Goldring calls market membership.381
However, their
membership does not extend to political participation. Another rupture relates to
how migrants, through their memory practices, create an image of their desired
homeland, which is distant from the socio-economic reality of the place they left.
Likewise, one more rupture emerges when migrants come to their hometown,
and they are welcomed at the same time that some are resented by their
success and new lifestyle. Indeed, migration brings ruptures.
A national, a citizen, a nation, a community are contested terrains where the
meaning of citizenship is put at play. As categories blur new distinctions
380
Kevin Sullivan. 2001. Op. Cit.
Luin Goldring. 1998b. “From Market Membership to Transnational Citizenship: the Changing Politization of
Transnational Social Spaces.” In L’Ordinaire Latino Americain, GRAL, University of Toulouse, France, N.173-174.
November-December.
381
276
appear to re-enforce meanings. The Tomato King despite the boots, jeans
and cowboy hat that marked his belonging to Jerez, was dethroned. His
residency in the U.S. and his U.S. citizenship appeared as stronger and
more relevant distinctions, which excluded Bermúdez from being considered
a member of the community. The PRI’s protest of Bermúdez’ candidacy
based on questioning his nationality––which they only put forth at the end of
the electoral process after they lost, instead of placing it at the beginning––
seemed to portray an image that Bermúdez not only did not belong in Jerez,
neither did he belong in México.
The Tomato King’s triumph turned into a bitter experience for him. In
Zacatecas he encountered political actors like Governor Ricardo Monreal who
promoted his candidacy while having in mind another local candidate. Likewise,
he found a PRD that jumped on the Tomato King’s victory bandwagon and later
abandoned him.
His candidacy and triumph provoked resentments, which
portrayed him as another example of corruption.382 In contrast, in the different
events and electronic groups where politically active migrants engage in the
exchange of ideas as to how to organize for the claim of their political rights, the
Tomato King’s story resonated and was interpreted as an affront to the rights of
all Mexicans abroad. In this sense, Bermúdez’ story can be read as symbolic of
382
Some accusations were made that the Tomato King owed money to the Municipio, money that was used for the
preparation of his inauguration on September 15, which never took place. See Emmanuel Salazar. 2001. “Deja
Deudas el Rey del Tomate a Jerez. Lo acusan de haber gastado casi 184 mil pesos en los preparativos para su fallida
toma de posesión como Alcalde.” Reforma, October 5.
277
the struggle for the political rights of Mexicans abroad, mainly because it is an
example of the multiple obstacles that Mexican migrants have to overcome if
they want to participate in Mexican politics. It is as if they are held to a higher
standard.
In March 2002, in the forum Migrantes Mexicanos y Ciudadanía
organized by the Frente Cívico Zacatecano in Los Angeles to discuss a
proposal to change the Zacatecan electoral law, The Tomato King’s presence
made the event. A popular figure at the moment, backed by Zacatecan migrant
organizations, he provided a concrete example to argue in favor of migrants’
political rights. Congressmen of Zacatecas’ local legislative body were invited to
attend.
The purpose was to present a draft for a reform to Zacatecas’
Constitution to allow for the full exercise of migrants’ political rights.
Even
though this was set up as a Zacatecan event, it ended up being a more inclusive
one, with the presence of other Federations, such as Michoacán and Jalisco
along with other migrant organizations of the area. Through the discussion,
there was a constant recognition of the impact the Tomato King’s saga has had
in the struggle for the political rights of Mexicans abroad.
The Frente Cívico Zacatecano––a self-proclaimed non-partisan migrant
organization––turned the elaboration of the initiative over to the scholar Miguel
Moctezuma, who specializes in the subject of the vote abroad, and
Congressman Carlos Pinto Núñez.
Almost a year after the initiative was
278
presented in Los Angeles, a revised version was finally introduced to the LVII
Zacatecan state Legislature on January 9, 2003. This initiative, called Ley
Migrante, has the specific purpose of creating two proportional representation
Congressional seats for the Zacatecan migrants who reside in the United
States. The specific legal modification proposes to reduce to one year the
residency requirement for political candidates, including the bi-national or
simultaneous residency as criteria to determine the one-year residency. The
importance of such a proposal cannot be underestimated as it seems that the
route for full political citizenship appears to be more achievable at the local level
rather than at the national one.
Regardless of the fact that migrants are already political actors who
impact México’s contemporary politics, it seems that they are still on the edges
of being considered full citizens. Their residency in the U.S., their acquisition of
U.S. citizenship––despite the new laws––makes them vulnerable to political
hesitancy. Notwithstanding the 1996 legal changes, conservative notions of
nation and citizenship continue to exist. Bermúdez’ ordeal is symbolic of this
kind of rejection. The arguments used against him could be used against
anyone, and continue to place migrants outside of the political community.
Bermúdez’ case is both trans-local and transnational. It is trans-local
because it refers to an enlarged Jerez––the Jerez from here and the Jerez from
there––to which Andrés was constantly appealing, both here and there. It
279
became significant at the national level, at least as it involved the formal
intervention of the Federal Electoral Tribunal. It is transnational precisely
because from the start it contained a bi-focal perspective of politics, by including
actors from both nations––like the entrepreneurs Bermúdez invited––and
especially because after the election he was already calling the attention of
Californian politicians.
The Tomato King’s story is not only about him, it reverberates at the
national and local level.
His story, along with other migrant political
organizations, has brought into the language of the law the recognition of
migrants’ bi-locality. What this means is that through their grounded practices of
citizenship, migrants push the language of the law to open up legal definitions of
citizenship.
Through their constant trans-local and trans-national political activism,
migrants attest to the fact that they are the life of the law. Their practices of
engagement with the formal political scenario, in this case of Zacatecas, have
permeated the Legislature through an initiative of reform that is almost sure to
take place. It is safe to say that the road taken by Zacatecan migrants is not
going to end there. It is already moving to other states that depend heavily on
migrant remittances and investment projects.383 Through their political actions,
migrants are building a citizenship that is carved out from the local, grounded in
At the Forum “El Derecho al Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior” held at the University of Southern California
on February 9th 2003, different participants informed the audience that aside from the Zacatecan proposal that was
already introduced to the local legislature, there were proposals in the making for Sinaloa, Oaxaca, and Michoacán.
383
280
their sense of identity, but that nonetheless continues to address the larger
question of the nation.
Rufino Domínguez, the story of an indigenous leader.
Today, Rufino Domínguez is part of the leadership of the Frente Indígena
Oaxaqueño Binacional (FIOB) a non-governmental bi-national organization
founded in 1991. Rufino’s story of political participation begins in San Miguel
Cuevas, Oaxaca, where he was born in 1965. In Oaxaca, Rufino, the fourth in a
family of six, attended a bilingual junior Catholic high school managed by the
Hermanos Maristas.384
It is here that Rufino finds the source of inspiration for
his later interest in social justice, in particular for indigenous people.
He
remembers how, with the Maristas, he and his classmates would read the Bible
with a social perspective. Liberation theology found in him a true and honest
believer and practitioner. Although Rufino does not name it in this manner, the
search for social liberation from exploitation and abuse was ingrained in him.
Rufino’s awakening to the struggle for social justice began when he
returned to his town at the age of fifteen. He saw the abuse that his people
were suffering at the hands of the cacique, the local boss. “There were many
The Hermanos Maristas (Maristas’ Brothers) are a religious semi-order in the sense that the Brothers are not
ordained priests.
384
281
killings and that was painful for me, thus I started with others to organize the
people and finish with the abuse of power.”
In the 1980’s, in Rufino’s
community, migrants were charged an enormous fee for being absent and
working elsewhere.385
Those migrants who resisted paying the fee were
threatened by the cacique with expulsion from the community, the burning of
their homes, or the rape of their women.
I was young and nobody was doing anything. I began to organize
the people, to have meetings at night in people’s houses. We
would go to the mountains to organize and put an end to the
injustices. A year went by until we were able to consolidate our
strength…We suffered, we lost another compañero, he was killed.
Others were put in jail. We had to face the cacique in front of an
Assembly and we won. I was tortured for four or five hours for
doing this. I was rescued by the community and my father…since
that moment until now I have never had a pause in my life.386
After his struggle in Oaxaca, and under death threats, Rufino left to go to
Sinaloa in 1984. Later in the year he went to Baja California Norte. During his
stay in Sinaloa Rufino organized with others the first indigenous organization in
the area to defend the rights of the indigenous workers.
The organization
named Organización del Pueblo Explotado y Oprimido, aimed to ending the
385
Indigenous land has traditionally been collectively owned, and indigenous communities have their own set of rules
to determine who governs the community and what the rules are for maintaining membership in the community.
386 Interview, March 2002.
282
exploitation of indigenous workers in this area. It was an organization based
mainly on ethnicity, and secondly on class. Likewise, in Baja California Norte he
formed another organization with the same purposes. For the indigenous from
Oaxaca, from the Mixteca to be more precise, conditions to create solidarity
among workers were complicated. As Carole Nagengast and Michael Kearney
explain, “within the Mixteca, individuals identify themselves as being from a
given village. The primary political opposition emerges between villages, and
ethnicity is only occasionally salient.”387
However, “Mixtecs from all over the
Mixteca have subsumed their difference to band together in northern locations,”
forming associations and joining labor unions, that is, moving beyond the
community- based identification.388 In this case, migration created the space for
ethnic identification.
The life of Rufino Domínguez is marked by his search for social justice, a
search that is rooted in the abuse of power experienced by him and the people
of San Miguel Cuevas, as well as from the teachings of the Hermanos Maristas.
From Oaxaca, to Sinaloa, to Baja California Norte, to California, Rufino came
and went bringing his experience and passion.
He formed organizations in
every place he has been in and continues to try to make people aware of
violations of human and political rights.
Carole Nagengast and Michael Keraney. 1990. “Mixtec ethnicity: Social Identity, Political Consciousness, and
Political Activism.” Latin American Research Review. V. 25, n.2 (Spring): 61. P.69
388 Carole Nagengast and Kearney, Michael. 1990. Op. Cit. P. 77.
387
283
When I arrived here in 1984, the same people that knew about
what happened [back in Oaxaca] requested to have a meeting so
that I would give them the information as to how the problem
happened back in our town. On the day I arrived here, I already
had a meeting for the next day. This was how the organization was
formed. It started in Sinaloa, extended to Baja California and was
formed here because the majority of the paisanos were very
grateful for the end of the injustice [the fee].389
During the meeting the people and Rufino ultimately decided that it was
important to have an organization in California because they also had problems
here. There were bosses that did not pay well, and migrants suffered from
discrimination even from other “Mexican brothers” as Rufino said. “I told them
we needed to consolidate the Organization here (the U.S.), and move forward.
This is more or less the story of how I became involved in politics.” 390
From a local story of opposition against power abuse, in Rufino’s route
lies a strong political component that never leaves him. More than being a
political subject within the framework of a political party, Rufino is politically
active in a broader space, engaging with the nation-state and its institutions
across borders, as well as with employers. With a social awareness derived
from his contact with the Maristas, and the injustices in his community, Rufino
and other indigenous people from Oaxaca have created a series of
389
390
Interview, March 2002.
Idem.
284
organizations that exist and connect across local, state, and national borders.
As stated in their official web site, the FIOB is a non-governmental association
focused on defending the rights of indigenous migrants that is formed by a
coalition of organizations, communities, and individuals of indigenous origin in
the Mixtec, Zapotec, and Triqui regions of the state of Oaxaca, in the northwest
border area (Baja California Norte), and in the State of California.
The FIOB started in California with the incorporation of five hometown
associations into a larger one, the Frente Mixteco-Zapoteco Binacional.391
Rivera-Salgado explains that “by 1994 the initial group had enlarged its
membership and became the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional.”392
Although it is primarily a Mixteco organization, it also includes Zapotecas and
Triquis from Oaxaca.393 According to Gaspar Rivera, the transnational work of
the FIOB is to “institutionalize political practices that allow for collective action in
all the different places where the Mixtec migratory network is located (i.e. the
transnationalized space sometimes called Oaxacalifornia).”394
Likewise, an
institution like the FIOB, through its practices of cultural and political exchange
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 2000. “Transnational Political Strategies: the Case of Mexican Indigenous Migrants.” P.
141. In Foner, Nancy, Rubén G. Rumbaut and Steven J. Gold, Eds. 2000. Immigration Research for a New Century.
Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Rusell Sage Foundation, New York. P. 142.
392 Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 2000. Op. Cit. P. 143.
393 See FIOB’s web site at www.laneta.apc.org/fiob/
394 Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 1999 . “Mixtec Activism in Oaxacalifornia. Transborder Grassroots Political Struggles.”
In American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 42 No. 9 June/July, (Pp.1439-1458). P. 1454.
391
285
at the community, state, and international levels, thickens and gives meaning to
“a political community that transcends many geographical borders.”395
The FIOB concentrates mostly on indigenous causes. However, the FIOB
does participate in other kinds of struggles such as the campaign for the right to
vote abroad that was principally ignited by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ candidacy
back in 1988. In March 1999, the FIOB also participated as one of the main
organizers in California of the Consulta Popular called by the Zapatistas. The
FIOB established four polling tables in California.
The non-governmental
referendum aimed at the recognition of the rights of indigenous people, and to
support the San Andrés agreements signed between the Ejército Zapatista de
Liberación Nacional (EZLN) and the Mexican government. In its U.S. version,
the referendum also included a fifth question on whether Mexican migrants
should have the right to vote abroad.396
The right to vote abroad is a right that we already have as
indigenous people, and we have made use of that right since the
1980s. We began to serve in our communities, many of those who
live here go there and function as Presidents. Many of us living
here continue to cooperate with money, we continue to give our
opinions on the life of our communities, of our towns, and there is
395
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 1999. Op. Cit. P. 1454.
See Jonathan Fox. 2001. ”Evaluación de las Coaliciones Binacionales de la Sociedad Civil a partir de la
Experiencia México-Estados Unidos.” 2001, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales. Revista Mexicana de Sociología,
vol. 63, n. 3, July-September. México D.F. P. 241.
396
286
no problem. On the contrary, everything gets consolidated; it helps
the economic growth of the communities.397
In their communities, Mixtecs and members of other indigenous groups, already
have this particular experience of practicing citizenship at the local level. As
citizens of their communities, that is, as members with rights and obligations,
they can participate in the decision-making processes of their communities.
Together with their rights come expectations to fulfill certain obligations––
cargos. In many cases these cargos require migrants living in the U.S. to return
to their communities if they still want to be considered members of them.
At the national level, Rufino views the enabling of full citizenship to
Mexican migrants as a way in which México can benefit from its citizens. For
him it is about giving content to citizenship, about sustaining an interconnected
space. However, the people from the Frente––FIOB––are skeptical about the
recent legal changes, and its leaders are more interested in “pressing to be able
to shape policy at the state and local levels because these are the political
institutions that affect indigenous communities the most.”398 Notwithstanding the
FIOB’s skepticism, this organization and its leaders have been moving toward
building alliances with other migrant organizations in support of the political
rights of Mexicans living abroad. Most recently, they were part of the
397
398
Interview, March 2002.
Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 1999. Op. Cit.
287
organization of the Foro Binacional: el Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior––
together with the Consejo de Presidentes de Federaciones Mexicanas en Los
Angeles––which took place in Los Angeles on February 9, 2003.
Moreover, with their deep commitment to defending the rights of
indigenous people, the FIOB has established conjunctural political alliances
such as those with the EZLN, or the National Indigenous Congress in México. 399
Rufino’s struggle is trans-local and transnational.
It is trans-local because it is
extended among several communities. It is transnational, as it crosses not only
the borders of two nations, but also through its connection with the fight for the
rights of indigenous people for autonomy, and for the rights entangled in a
global economy.
In contrast to the Tomato King, Rufino has been immersed in politics
since he was very young. He became a political being as a result of his life
experience where race is as much of a factor as class. These determinant
factors travel with Rufino everywhere he goes, whether it is Sinaloa, Baja
California, California, or Oaxaca. His sense of belonging to a community, an
ethnic group, and a class and his awareness of his indigeneity and situation of
exploitation, provides Rufino with a rooted notion of membership, of citizenship,
of entitlement, that travels with him.
As Gaspar Rivera-Salgado explains, “In early 1996, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation invited several
indigenous migrant organizations to participate in the first Indigenous National Congress, in San Cristobal de las
Casa, Chiapas.” The Frente was “appointed by the general assembly as the group’s official conduit between the
Indigenous National Congress and the indigenous migrant population in the U.S.” In Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 2000.
Op. Cit. P. 141.
399
288
Raúl Ross, el Rojo, the story of a political activist.400
Chicago. There were many jobs in the big city. Raúl Ross crossed the big
river in the 1970’s when he was roughly seventeen. Six months later he was
back in México because he did not like what he found––neither the job nor the
wage. Ross was born to a working class family in Pánuco, Veracruz on
December 24, 1956. He grew up in Tampico and Monterrey together with his
nine siblings. In 1986, Raúl went back to the United States where he stayed for
three years straight because he lacked the appropriate papers to travel across
the border. Eventually, he received his residency papers, and he is now able to
return to México and visit his family. In addition, lately he often goes as a
participant in the political activities with which he is entangled.
Once he arrived in Chicago where he now lives, Ross worked a series of
jobs. He worked in warehouses, in a print shop for eight to ten years, and with
the American Friends Service Committee helping to defend migrants’ rights.
These days he is dedicated to freelance journalism, writing articles, and doing
400
Based on an interview with Raúl Ross Pineda. March 2002.
289
translations. He has published two books on the issue of the vote abroad for
Mexicans, and many articles on the same topic.401
Raúl Ross traces his beginnings in politics to when he was sixteen years
old. He started a sporting association that included social activities. His
participation with the association led to further involvement with popular political
organizations, and during this time he took part in land take-over movements.
Through his life and social practice, Ross began to form a progressive, leftist
ideology, which led him to participate with political parties in México. Once he
migrated North, these ideas traveled with him––though they took a different
shape. Upon his arrival in the U.S., Raúl became a member of the Mid-West
Coalition in Defense of the Migrant (Coalición del Medio Oeste en Defensa del
Migrante). As he says, “For me, it is normal to defend the rights of the migrants,
of the people.” This interest has been instilled in him as part of his class origins
and his social practice with the popular movements in México.
Raúl Ross’ political work in the United States has focused mainly on Mexican
issues, though he is also interested in what is happening in his immediate
reality. “I do participate in the affairs from here, but I am not as focused as with
México. As a journalist I have written and somehow intervened in local
struggles…I know I live a reality here and I participate also for reasons of
solidarity.”
Despite recognizing the reality that he is a migrant, a foreigner in
401
Raúl Ross Pineda. 1999. Los Mexicanos y el Voto sin Fronteras. Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y
Socialista, México.
290
another country, Ross feels more connected to Mexican politics. He considers
himself a citizen of México and, as such, he is more compelled to have an
opinion on and participate in Mexican affairs. The main issue he is involved in is
the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., whether they be in connection to the Mexican
state or in relation to the U.S. state and its institutions.
In what for him is an almost natural interest in political matters, Raúl Ross
began to get involved in the struggle for the right to vote abroad back in 1988
with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ presidential candidacy. At that time he was not an
organizer, only a participant. This moment appears over and over in testimonies
and in relevant literature, as the turning point in migrants’ political
participation.402 In the aftermath of the election, many protests emerged, Los
Angeles being the site of one of the biggest one in the U.S.
For Mexican
migrants living in the U.S., their involvement led them to claim their right to vote
abroad.
Migrants’ 1988 political awakening and the support they gave to
Cárdenas’ candidacy provoked a reaction from the Mexican government that
realized it needed to change its policy towards Mexicans living abroad. 403 The
strategy of the newly elected PRI president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was to
develop a smoother relation between consulates and migrants. For many, what
402
See Mara S. Pérez-Godoy. 1998. Social Movements and International Migration: the Mexican Diaspora Seeks
Inclusion in México’s Political Affairs, 1968-1998. University of Chicago, PhD Dissertation.
Also see Jesús Martínez. 1998. In Search of Our Lost Citizenship: Mexican Immigrants, the Right to Vote, and the
Transition to Democracy in México. Chicano/Latino Research Center-U.C.S.C, Working Paper No. 20.
403 David Fitzgerald. 2000. Op. Cit. P. 22.
291
was developed was more or less “a strategy to co-opt migrants, undermine the
growth of opposition forces that had found support during and after the 1988
election, and promote the establishment of state-party [read PRI] committees
(Comités de Apoyo a Compatriotas) in the U.S.”404
A different politics of
citizenship between migrants and the Mexican state was beginning to take
shape.405
Within this context Ross became more active. For the 1994 presidential
elections, he participated as an organizer of symbolic elections, which took
place in Chicago on August 21, 1994. The Coalition of migrants that formed the
Consejo “drew the participation of 3,243 voters who were asked to show proof of
Mexican citizenship.”406
Even though this was a merely symbolic gesture, it
nonetheless challenged enclosed notions of citizenship. As Jesús Martínez
explains, these migrants were “assuming the role of transnational political
actors.”407
Since then, Ross has continued in the route of reminding the
Mexican nation-state that Mexicans living abroad are Mexicans, that is, that they
are full citizens who should be able to exercise all their rights as members of the
nation.
404
Jesús Martínez.1998. Op. Cit. P. 2
For example, the government created the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad in 1990. This office would
“coordinate efforts by different government agencies to tighten ties with people of Mexican ancestry living
abroad….to raise awareness that the ’Mexican Nation extends beyond the territory contained by its borders’ and to
implement international cooperation projects offered by México to benefit its diaspora.” Gonzáles Gutiérez, Carlos.
2001. “Fostering Identities with its Diaspora.” Journal of American History. September , Vol 88, No. 2. P.1. More
important were the hometown investment projects 2 x 1, and 3 x 1, where the hometown association invested two or
three parts of the project for one that the government would provide. See Luin Goldring. 1998. Op. Cit.
406 Jesús Martínez. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 7
407 Jesús Martínez. 1998. Idem.
405
292
With the approval in 1996 by Congress of the constitutional amendment
to article 36 and the nationality law––a partial victory that came as a result of the
lobbying of many Mexicans living abroad––the Coalición Nuestro Voto 2000 was
formed. This Coalition grouped many Mexican migrants and organizations, and
its goal was to push for the implementation of the Constitutional amendment of
article 36. As stated in Chapter III, this amendment contained certain legal
obstacles, such as the organization of a Commission of Experts to study the
viability of the vote abroad (already accomplished), and the creation of the
National Citizens Registry (RENACI) handled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs,
which goes against the priciple of an independent electoral system. Although
many initiatives have entered Congress since 1996 to implement the vote
abroad, this has yet to become a reality.
Notwithstanding a long campaign and lobbying efforts conducted in
México by Raúl Ross and other members of the Coalition, the Mexican political
system, which was still very much dominated by the PRI, proved to be stronger
than its foes, and blocked any possibility for migrants to vote in the year 2000.
Despite the setback that, on July 1, 1999, the Senate gave to the initiative to
implement the vote abroad by pre-empting any discussion of it, Ross continues
the campaign for the political rights of Mexicans living abroad and today he is
one of the central actors in this struggle. He has divided his political activities
between organizing and promoting the political rights of Mexican migrants, as
293
well as writing about it and studying the laws involved. At this point Ross has a
clear grasp of what the laws allow for and what they preclude.
At the end of 1999, Ross reviewed the relevant electoral law and
concluded that it was possible to be a candidate while living outside of the
country as long as Mexican citizenship was held.
As a result of this, and
through his relations with Lázaro Cárdenas Batel––who at that time coordinated
the PRD Relations in the U.S.––Raúl went to the PRD Convention and was
chosen as an external candidate for a proportional representation candidacy.
This type of candidacy does not necessarily require residency. He represented
a multi-sited electoral district that, among other states, included the state of
Veracruz, where Raúl was born.408 He was the first Mexican living abroad to
become a political candidate. Later, before the registration of candidacies was
closed, another migrant candidate––José Jacques Medina––appeared in the
PRD list. Likewise, the PRI registered a candidate, Eddie Barón Levy, who was
living in Los Angeles and is a México City native. Because the candidacies
depended on the proportion of votes the political party received and the PRI
received more than the PRD, the first Mexican migrant to be elected was Eddie
Barón, who since then resides in México City although his family still lives in Los
Angeles. The PRD received a low percentage of votes in the election and
neither Raúl Ross nor José Jacques Medina became congressmen. However,
408
The PRD accepts and promotes candidacies from members of the civil society, that is, civilians that are politically
active but are not members of any other political party. These are called external candidacies. Also see Jonathan Fox.
2001. Op. Cit. P. 242.
294
the crucial step was taken. Migrants participated formally in Mexican elections–
–as candidates, if not as voters. It was possible, it should be possible.
Raúl Ross continues to work to make the political rights of Mexicans
living abroad a prominent part of the national political agenda, one that is always
present in the news, in the political debates, and in Congress. He constantly
finds new venues to keep the debate alive. In the past two years Raúl has
organized electronic groups to discuss the political rights of Mexicans living
abroad.
One of the early political results of the electronic groups was the
organization of a meeting in Zacatecas, at the Universidad Autónoma de
Zacatecas, in December 2001. As a consequence of the Zacatecan Forum, a
new Coalition was formed, the Coalición por los Derechos Políticos de los
Mexicanos en el Extranjero (CDPME).
The CDPME organized a visit to México City from March 13 th to the 16th
2002. The visit was baptized as the Migrantour, and its purpose was to meet
with different political sectors in México to address the issue of Mexican
migrants’ political rights.
According to organizers and participants, among
whom Raúl Ross was one of many, the delegation was very successful. They
met with the President of México Vicente Fox, the Minister of the Interior
Santiago Creel, and with Juan Hernández who then was in charge of the Office
of the Presidency for Migrants.
295
Likewise, the Migrantour met with the Junta de Coordinación Política de
la Cámara de Diputados, the Junta de Coordinación Política de la Cámara de
Senadores,
and
with
the
Federal
Electoral
Institute
President,
José
Woldenberg.409 Moreover, the Migrantour met with leaders of the three main
national political parties, PRI, PAN and PRD. They were able to convince some
congressmen to include the issue of political rights in the 2002 Congressional
agenda for the session that opened on March 15, and to approve a Commission
exclusively dedicated to develop the necessary legislative reforms to materialize
migrants’ electoral rights.
A second Migrantour held another series of activities from the 18th to the
22nd of March. This group, organized mainly by MUSA, Mexicanos in the United
States, structured its agenda around the PRD National Convention. In their
version of the Migrantour, they also met with members of Congress and
presented through PRD Congressman Ramón León Morales a new initiative
which proposed the formation of a sixth electoral circumscription. The fact that
two Migrantours with slightly different political agendas were organized,
undermined the impact of the tour, as it split the attention of politicians in México
opening the door for a diffuse response from Congress.
Another important point to underscore here is that members of both
Migrantours participated in the PRD Convention on March 17, 2002. Along with
409
Lower House Political Commission, Senate Political Commission.
296
them, many PRD members in California, Illinois, Texas, New York, Washington,
and Paris were also able to participate in the party electoral process that took
place.410 With this act, the PRD engaged in a more institutionalized form of
transnational politics, while at the same time it was reshaping its own
understanding of citizenship.
Some of the participants of the second Migrantour were founding
members of the CDPME, but left this group because of political and personal
differences, disagreements that continually appear in the various lobbying
efforts that have taken place. The main distinction between these two groups
rests upon the approach to how migrants’ political rights should be addressed.
For the CDPME the efforts are focused on the implementation of the vote
abroad, although political representation is also a relevant and significant factor
in this groups’ struggle. The second group focuses more on political
representation, and places less emphasis on the legal changes for the vote
abroad.
Raúl Ross sustains his connection to México. “I like Mexican politics more
than U.S. politics. I think I can bring in more of my experience.” As in Rufino’s
story, in Raúl’s life there has not been a pause in the way he views his
commitment to the causes of the marginalized. He has been involved in the
defense of migrants’ rights facing the U.S. state, immigration laws, and issues of
See Miguel Angel Vega. 2002. “Perredistas de L.A. votan en elecciones internas de su partido. Los afiliados del
PRD en varios estados participaron en la elección de un dirigente nacional y otros cargos.” La Opinión. March 18.
410
297
discrimination. Nonetheless, he considers of vital importance the defense of
migrants’ rights in relation to the Mexican nation-state. Even though he has
been living in Chicago for the past fifteen years, for him the main issues to
address relate to México, therefore his deep belief in the importance of being
able to have a concrete presence through the vote. The vote is a political right
but it is also the marker of belonging to the nation-state, in a way, of cultural
citizenship.
Raúl Ross, el Rojo, has inserted himself in a quest that confronts the
Mexican nation-state and challenges conservative and restrictive notions of
citizenship, of membership. Politically active migrants like Ross’ campaign in
México and in the U.S. to become visible, to be included in the reformulation of
the nation that is taking place. Mainly, these politically active migrants want to
be recognized, together with the rest of Mexican migrants, as the always already
present cultural and economic force that has never left the nation despite the
fact that the nation seems to have abandoned them.
298
Conclusion
Mexican migrants, who are interested in being considered a part of
México, and whose sense of belonging has turned them into political actors,
want to be recognized as legal, valuable citizens of México. Through their
political practices they are weaving a culture of citizenship that is continuously
demanding attention and responses from the two nation-states they inhabit. As
citizens, they establish their belonging and their right to have their voice heard.
The three stories introduced in this chapter refer to democracy and
identity, to belonging, to who can participate in the decision process of a
community, and to who is included or excluded from it. The stories also reflect
the dynamics of a culture of politics that takes place at different levels and
scenarios. Raúl and Rufino recognize the importance of their past experiences
as their basis for their own culture of politics, mainly derived from class in Raúl’s
case, and ethnicity and class in Rufino’s life. Despite the Tomato King’s selfidentification as a campesino, the introduction of the Tomato King to politics was
due more as a consequence of his present economic success, achieved through
his migrant experience, than to any constant participation in migrant civic
organizations. Class plays a role here, but not one that is recognized by the
Tomato King. However, his story sets off a politics of citizenship that very
concretely addresses the legal system.
299
In the Tomato King’s case, he practices a politics of citizenship where
belonging to the polity is negotiable, it is situational depending on whether one’s
gaze is aquí or is allá, and where migrants’ membership is as embraced as it is
rejected. The Tomato King feels more American than Mexican. However, he
also states “he acquired the foreign citizenship ‘por beneficio’––convenience––
but insists that he is Mexican by birth.”411 Likewise, he chooses to be, or better
yet, he becomes an active political subject in connection to issues that pertain to
México and Mexicans. “I said I was a candidate of two nations, the Jerez that is
here and the Jerez that is there.”412 The Jerez of the Tomato King is part of two
nations, it is here and it is there, and he, Andrés Bermúdez, belongs to both and
makes equal claims of citizenship. Aside from asserting this claim, he also acts
upon it by participating in formal politics and, in doing so he puts at play many of
the contradictions migrants’ experience. Andrés is a citizen from below, and
through his practice he is defining the content of the citizenship he embodies,
which includes participation in formal politics.
Andrés is also a citizen from
below inasmuch as the Jerezianos and other Zacatecans who granted him the
right to be there, supported him.
Despite this, questions about his citizenship
arouse, of his right to be there, in Jerez, although he is a part of the extended
Jerez. The objections come mainly from within the political class, but there are
411
412
Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001b. Op. Cit. September 6.
Jennifer Mena. 2001. Op. Cit.
300
also some Jerezianos who reject the right of the Tomato King to be there, in
Jerez.
In contrast to the Tomato King, Rufino Domínguez enters the political
sphere at an early age, as a result of the subjection of his community to the
constant abuse of power by authorities. He brings this experience with him in
his migratory route. Rufino’ Domínguez’ class-consciousness and racial
discrimination awareness sustain his desire to be a part of the political sphere.
The politics of citizenship that Rufino practices center on understanding the
place one lives and works as a connected one, as an extension of previous
social relations.
It is a space where unequal power relations take place,
inequalities that in Rufino’s eyes people have to contest and change. Rufino
practices a politics of citizenship that is embedded in the transnational sphere
where two cultures of politics––perhaps even more––conflict with each other.
Rufino practices a politics of citizenship where belonging is assumed, and the
struggle is for dignity, and respect. One could argue though, going beyond
Rufino’s words that there is indeed a search for being included, for being
considered a part of the nation, and a subject with rights.
Finally, Raúl Ross’ experience contains elements of both the Tomato
King and Rufino’s stories, although, in contrast to these two leaders, his
approach is transnational without being translocal. Ross’ practices a politics of
citizenship strongly based in the formal political sphere yet this interest
301
expresses a rooted practice of membership. México, the nation, is where Raúl
belongs; it is his community. His is a struggle framed in terms of democracy and
making the Mexican state expand its notion of rights. While his quest is for
political rights already included in the Constitution, an expansion of rights takes
place through the recognition of migrants as political actors to whom the nationstate also has to respond.
Through their claims, migrants like Raúl Ross, Rufino Domínguez, and
the Tomato King are participating in the definition of a different society that
includes them. Their practices engage the nation-state in a culture of citizenship
where rights and belonging have to go beyond uninational visions of citizenship.
Mexicans who live in different parts of the United States connect with each other
not only through practices of identity but also through political practices that
have called upon the Mexican nation-state to open its traditionally enclosed
notions of nation, nationality, and citizenship. Mexican migrants living in the
U.S. are bearers of rights and practitioners of a substantive citizenship that
acquires content through their daily practices, and their interactions to nationstate power structures.
Migrants’ practices of belonging–––like those of
Aguilillans in Redwood City––or their more openly political ones such as those
of the Tomato King, Rufino Domínguez, and Raúl Ross, contribute to a larger
re-definition of citizenship while at the same time are partaking of a traditional
notion
of
citizenship
as
bearers
of
political
rights.
302
Chapter VI
Conclusion
This dissertation aimed at bridging the divide between a critique of a
state-centered notion of citizenship and the recognition of Mexican migrants as
political actors, as well as subjects of the law.
Likewise, I underscore how
migrants’ stories and the transnational space they inhabit is always already
political. In this space, struggles for belonging, for citizenship––whether legal or
cultural or both––are taking place in migrants’ everyday lives. This work thus
maintains that citizenship is a site of political struggle, a struggle that takes
place in everyday interactions and in the relation between state and people.
I reviewed three domains of citizenship––law, belonging, and politics––
and the culture of citizenship that their interaction produces. In this sense, the
present dissertation can be viewed as an ethnography of belonging, an
ethnography of law, and/or an ethnography of politics of citizenship. Throughout
these pages I have shown how the three realms are inextricably related when
migrants become the agents that articulate them.
Likewise, I have argued that Mexican migrants inhabit a discursive
borderland framed by laws––which I understand as moving texts––thus defining
migrants’ status in México and in the U.S.
The dissertation presents the
303
sociopolitical context that gave way to the legal changes that occurred in the
1990’s. Moreover, I claim that these changes reshaped migrants’ relationship to
the nation-states they encounter. An important aspect to underscore is that the
dissertation pays close attention to migrants’ interpretation of these laws, to how
they affect their everyday lives, and to migrants’ responses to them.
Despite appearing as a top to bottom scenario, when the lenses are
turned to politically involved migrants, it is possible to see how their proactive
stands have played a significant role in the legal changes that have taken place
in México. As migrants embody these laws, as migrants act upon them and
attempt to change them, as they become the juncture where two nation-states
encounter each other, migrants are the life of the law.
Moreover, the stories presented in this work aimed at understanding what
a politics of citizenship is, and how it functions. A politics of citizenship can be
understood as the different strategies and practices that people and nationstates use to handle issues of inclusions and exclusion, of recognition, respect,
and the struggle over rights. Through their practices, Mexican migrants and the
nation-states they inhabit, configure a politics of citizenship where belonging to
the nation, to the community, is a constant question. Likewise, in this politics of
citizenship belonging is an everyday practice as migrants encounter a social
context that questions their situated cultural practices.
Thus, a politics of
citizenship has to be understood as a two-way movement between nation-states
304
and, in this case, migrants. Even more, it is the site where citizenship is being
contested, where membership, belonging, and the struggle for rights is taking
place.
These pages share the idea that law is connected to power relations and,
while being a hegemonic tool, within its field of influences, spaces for resistance
are opened. Migrants’ stories and testimonies show how their citizenship is
marked by institutional regulatory processes to which they are subjected, and
which tend to alienate them from the national community. The legal frameworks
developed by México and the U.S. include and exclude migrants as members of
the nation-state. Laws categorize people, a categorization that is materialized
through the institutions migrants face in their everyday practices. However,
migrants develop strategies to maneuver through the interstices of the law and
thus manifest their agency.
Different scenarios emerged throughout this work in an attempt to
understand how migration influences practices and definitions of citizenship,
how migration impacts state institutions and regulations in the definition of
citizenship, and in the policies that are applied to people which include or
exclude them from the polity. By reviewing specific laws––reform to Article 36,
non-loss of nationality law, 1996 U.S. Immigration laws, California’s Proposition
187, welfare reform legislation––it was possible to observe: a) how laws define
the contours of what citizenship is from the perspective of the nation-state; b)
305
how migration has become a point of contention and a source of debate over
the meaning of citizenship; and finally, c) how migrants make sense and interact
with the laws that affect their everyday lives.
In the interplay of the legal structures that surrounds migrants, they are
confronted with the question of what it means to be a citizen. A first response
derives from migrant’s own situated cultural practices of building and sustaining
a connected transnational social space, as in the case of Aguililla-Redwood
City.
A second answer stems from the legal field where citizenship and
nationality refer to the link between state and individuals that “translates into
certain reciprocal rights and responsibilities.”413
An example of migrants’ encounter with a structure of laws is Daniel and
his decision to apply for U.S. citizenship. His decision was strongly based on
the fact that the Mexican nationality law changed. The interaction of the two
sets of laws that come from two different state formations allowed Daniel to
acquire another citizenship without feeling that he was less Mexican. This is a
concrete site where a politics of citizenship can be observed, when two legal
structures encounter each other and in doing so begin to redefine their borders.
Another scenario that appears in the dissertation refers to the connection
among migration, citizenship, and race. Although this work does not focus on
the issue of race, many of the stories presented throughout the different
Manuel Becerra Ramírez. “Nationality in México.” In Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds. From
Migrants to Citizens. Membership in a Changing World. 2000, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
Washington D.C. P. 313.
413
306
chapters made evident the relevance of this dimension in migrants’ lives and
their possibilities of claiming citizenship. When citizenship is understood as a
site of struggle, race becomes a factor that gives substance to this point of
contention. Different experiences of race establish different strategies of relation
to the social context that surrounds migrants. In the case of the dissertation,
Rufino would be the clearest example of the connection race-migrationcitizenship. Rufino defines his citizenship mainly through his ethnic origins,
which for him are also closely connected to class. Migration enhances his
identity, his sense of belonging, which he roots in political practices.
In comparison, the mestizo migrant population faces race from a different
experience. Being more aware of class than race, when mestizo migrants cross
the border they are confronted with an immediate shift in their subjectivity,
culture is naturalized, and class and issues of economic marginalization are
translated into aspects intrinsic to Mexicans. Because the racial context has
been translated into discriminatory laws––such as proposition 187 or IIRAIRA––
migrants develop their own strategies to stop or circumvent the effects of these
laws. While some of these strategies are effective, the question of the racial
context and cultural citizenship is still pending in migrants’ lives in the U.S.
Cultural citizenship, according to William Flores, implies the definition of a
community, claims of space in society, and claims of rights. Cultural citizenship
is about the right to retain difference while attaining membership to the
307
society.414
As shown with the case of Aguililla-Redwood City, migrants are
creating a space that contains their situated cultural practices. However, their
citizenship is a pending question inasmuch as they are exposed to policies that
limit their rights, and to fellow citizens that do not fully accept them, as seen in
the support Proposition 187 received from the majority of California voters.
An analysis of citizenship through the lens of migration underlines the fact
that citizenship is a category that is being reformulated both in the legal field as
well as in the socio-cultural realm. The presence of millions of Mexican migrants
in the U.S. produces a strong response of rejection in many sectors of the U.S.
society. In part, it is a consequence of a long history of migration, and the
complex relationship these two countries have beginning with the large shared
border. The continuous presence of Mexican in the U.S. has produced different
changes in U.S. immigration laws. Some of these legal scenarios are explored
in this dissertation namely as a corpus of laws that in their interaction regiment
migrants’ mobility and possibilities of being included or excluded from the
society they are contributing to shape. Following Aihwa Ong, I look at modalities
of governmentality practiced upon migrants by the nation-state.415
Another scenario presented in the dissertation refers to the different
layers of interaction that can be seen in the Mexican migration case between the
Cf. William Flores. 1997, “Citizen vs Citizenry: Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Cultural Citizenship.” In
William Flores, Rina Benmayor, Eds. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Beacon
Press, Boston. P.262
415 Cf. Aihwa Ong. 1999. Flexible Citizenship. The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Duke University Press,
Durham/London. P. 113.
414
308
cultural, the economic, and political levels.
Through these pages I have
presented many moments of these interactions, such as when groups of
migrants campaign for the vote abroad basing their claims in legal rights, but
also using economic arguments––as the remittances they send––and their
sense of culturally belonging to México. Migrants stay connected to México, to
their states, and their hometowns. An example is Doña Carmen and her
memory practices. Through their transnational practices migrants construct a
social space and give content to their citizenship. Moreover, their migrant
experience provides migrants with a distinct quality: a simultaneous perspective
of their world, of their existence, as in the case of Faviola, or José, who are both
here and there. Because they constantly face their simultaneity, they are at the
same time building a dual citizenship, dual beyond legal definitions, dual as in
having two perspectives, and having to come to terms with both.
In analyzing transnational processes, legal frameworks that appear as
the voice of the nation-state, and people’s rooted practices of belonging, I have
attempted to show that an anthropology of transnational practices of citizenship
is still very much about the nation, at least in the case of Mexican migrants. The
nation is never far from view when doing a transnational anthropology, it is not a
transcended category, and it still holds profound meaning in migrants’ lives. A
very material example of this is the border, which is policed with the latest
technology, and is run under the premise that the U.S. is dealing with criminals.
309
The border is the line where migrants shift categories and become illegal,
therefore, criminals. The nation is meaningful because borders are visible.
Likewise, this dissertation argues that citizenship is not a given universal
right but rather it is a site of contestation, of who is included or excluded from
the community, and the nation. Because of their situated cultural practices,
migrants appear as a threat to enclosed notions of citizenship. Concrete
responses in the U.S. to migrants’ practices are seen in the approval of
Proposition 187, IIRAIRA, and the 1996 welfare reform act. Simultaneously,
these same situated cultural practices and the context migrants’ face in the U.S.
prompted other legal responses, this time, however, emerging from México. The
1996 non-loss of nationality law and the reform to Article 36 that opened the
discussion of migrants’ political rights, were a first step towards an acceptance
of migrants as part of the nation. Nevertheless, despite the fact that México’s
traditionally conservative notion of nationality was opened, voices can still be
heard arguing against the right of Mexicans abroad to be considered Mexican
and, as such, hold full citizenship rights. Migrants perform their rooted practices
of belonging with or without these laws, but they need certain legal frameworks
to be formally included in the polity. This is one of several scenarios where the
politics of citizenship produced by and because of migrants is enacted.
To be precise, the dissertation concentrates in two strategies of building
citizenship and of practicing a politics of citizenship. The first has to do with
310
migrants’ practices of belonging. Here, I explain how a transnational social
space is lived and constructed, as well as the different layers it contains. The
second, which is also a practice of belonging, is more connected to the formal
political sphere. I explain how some migrants have become active political
subjects that engage their citizenship as a struggle for the recognition of their
rights, and or, the redefinition of those rights. Many Mexican migrants,
individually or through their organizations, are participating in the effort for the
acknowledgment of their existence as political subjects, as citizens with rights.
Raúl, Rufino, and the Tomato King, and those who are part of the campaign for
the vote abroad are examples of this strategy of building citizenship.
When migrants configure a culture and a politics of citizenship, they deal
with spatial-temporal dimensions of here and there. Their practices provide
meaning to these dimensions. Here, there, spaces, places, and memories,
together they give content to migrants’ practices of belonging, and provide the
basis for their culture and politics of citizenship, one that departs, following Pat
Zavella,
from
transparent.416
a
peripheral
perspective
which
nonetheless
is
never
Moreover, the politics of citizenship migrants experience is
framed by a structure of institutions and laws from two different nation-states.
This structure, while it does regiments their lives, also provides for new routes.
Rather, it should be understood as a web of possibilities and impossibilities
Cf. Pat Zavella. 1996. “Transnational Testimonios: Local/Global Narratives of Industrial Restructuring From
California to México.” Manuscript. Presented at the panel “Culture and Political Economy: Prospect and Retrospect.”
American Anthropological Association Meetings, November 24.
416
311
through which migrants move. Finally, some migrants do produce a politics of
citizenship that addresses the state face to face, in the formal political arena, in
order to reshape the relation between the nation-state and its citizens.
In understanding the interaction between migrants and laws as a
privileged ethnographic site, the concrete relation between state and people can
be observed, that is, the way the state regiments peoples lives, but also the
manners in which people deal with state institutions and regulations by not
letting themselves be overwhelmed by their power. From the relation among
laws and migrants emerges a politics of citizenship, where citizenship becomes
the site of political struggle over rights, over belonging, but also over recognition,
and dignity.
312
Bibliography
Adler-Lomnitz, Larissa, Claudio Lomnitz and Illya Adler. 1990. “El Fondo de la
Forma: la Campaña Presidencial del PRI en México en 1988.” In Nueva
Antropología No. 38, October, México.
Aguilar Zinser, Adolfo. 1997. “Nacionalidad Compartida.” Reforma, Editorial.
Friday December 5.
Almond, Gabriel and Sidney Verba. 1963. Civic Culture. Princenton University
Press, Princenton.
Althaus, Dudley. 1998. “Dual nationality now reality. Houstonian among a 100
celebrating Mexican law.” Houston Chronicle, June, 5th.
Althaus, Dudley. 2000. “Fox extends a hand to Mexican migrants.” The Houston
Chronicle, December 3th.
Alonso, Jorge y Jaime Tamayo (coords.) 1995. Elecciones con Alternativas. La
Jornada Ediciones/ Centro de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en
Humanidades/UNAM.
Alvarez, Sonia, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, Eds. 1998. Cultures of
Politics Politics of Cultures. Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements.
Westview Press, U.S.A.
Amador Sánchez, Angel. 2001a. “Impugna PRI al Rey del Tomate.” El
Universal, Wednesday September 5.
Amador Sánchez, Angel. 2001b. “Presenta el Rey del Tomate prueba de
nacionalidad.” El Universal, México Thursday September 6.
Anagnost, Ann.1997. National Past-Times. Narrative, Representation and
Power in Modern China. Duke Univ. Press, Durham/London.
Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. Verso, London/New York.
Anderson, Benedict. 1990. Language and Power. Exploring Political Cultures in
Indonesia. Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca/London.
313
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at
Large. Cultural Dimensions of
Globalization. University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis/London.
Arellano García, Carlos. 1995. “Inconvenientes y peligros de la doble
nacionalidad.” In Memoria del Coloquio La Doble Nacionalidad. Palacio
Legislativo, June 8-9. LVI Legislatura, Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de
la Unión, México.
The Associated Press. 2003. “U.S. Mexicans gain dual citizenship.” New York
Times, March 20.
Austin, J.L. How to do things with words.1975, Harvard University Press,
Cambridge Massachusetts.
Apéndice No. 1 de la Monografía del “Escudo de Aguililla”. Conozca la historia
del escudo, su descripción y el reglamento para su uso como “símbolo
representativo”. 1998. Municipio Aguililla, Michoacán.
Angelica Bammer, Editor. 1994. Displacements. University of Wisconsin Press.
Bada, Xóchitl. 2001. “Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: Apuntes para el Estudio de
una Plena
Ciudadanía Transnacional.” Paper presented at the Foro
Internacional sobre Ciudadana Migrante y Democracia, Universidad de
Guanajuato, March 8 and 9.
Bank, David. 1991. “Bad Blood. Two families’ vendetta has killed at least 34 in
México and Bay Area.“ San José Mercury News. Sunday, July 28.
Bartra, Roger. 1981. Las Redes Imaginaries del Poder Político. Ed. ERA,
México.
Bartra, Roger. 1987. La jaula de la Melancolía. Grijalbo, México.
Basch, Linda, Nina Glick Schiller and Cristina Szanton Blanc. 1994. Nations
Unbound:
Transnational
Projects,
Postcolonial
Predicaments,
and
Deterritorialized Nation States. Amsterdam, Gordon and Breach.
Becerra Ramírez, Manuel. “Nationality in México.” In Alexander Aleinikoff and
Douglas Klusmeyer, eds. From Migrants to Citizens. Membership in a Changing
World. 2000, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington D.C.
Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo. 1987. México Profundo. SEP, México.
314
Boyarin, Jonathan. 1994. “Space, Time, and the Politics of Memory.” In Boyarin,
Jonathan, Editor. Remapping Memory. The Politics of Time Space.
Minneapolis/London, Univ. of Minnesota Press.
Calderón Chelius, Leticia and Jesús Martínez Saldaña. 2002. La dimensión
Política de la Migración Mexicana. Inst. Inv. Dr. Jose María Luis Mora,
Colección Contemporánea Sociología, México
Calvo,Thomas and Gustavo López, Eds. 1988. Movimientos de Población en el
Occidente de México. CEMCA/ Colegio de Michoacán, México.
Cano, Arturo. 2001. “Los migrantes regresan a votar…y ser votados.” La
Jornada, México, Sunday June 24.
Carpizo, Jorge. 2001. “El Peligro del Voto de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero.”
Nexos, July. Pp.11-12.
Castañeda, Alejandra. 2001a. “Migrantes y Construcción de la Ciudadanía.”
Paper presented at the Round Table Ciudadanías Excluidas/Excluded
Citizenships. Indigenous and Migrants in Mexico.Center for US-Mexican
Studies, UCSD-La Jolla, February 16.
Castañeda Gómez del Campo, Alejandra. 2001b. “Ciudadanía y
Transnacionalismo: el Desafío de los Mexicanos en Estados Unidos.” In Arturo
Santamaría Gómez. Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: la Nación, la Política y el
Voto sin Fronteras. Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa/PRD, México.
Censo Agrícola Michoacán. 1995. Tomo I, Tomo III.
Clifford, James. “Diasporas.” 1994. In Cultural Anthropology.
American Anthropological Association.
Vol. 9(3).
Clifford, James. 1997. Routes. Travel and Translation in the Late Twentienth
Century. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts/London,
England.
Código Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales.
México.
1997. IFE,
315
Comaroff, John. 1996. “The Politics of Difference in a World of Power.” In Edwin
Wilmsen and Patrick McAllister, Eds. The Politics of Difference: Ethnic
Preferences in a World of Power. University of Chicago Press.
Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. 2001. Porrúa, February.
Corchado, Alfredo, Claudia Fernandez and Alejandra Xanic. 1998. “México
debates letting immigrants vote in U.S. Despite financial ties, some balloting
limits.” In The Dallas Morning News/ Publico/ El Universal, April 5.
Cornelius, Wayne. 1990. Labor Migration to the United States: Developments,
Outcomes and Alternatives in Mexican Sending Communities. La Jolla, Univ. of
California San Diego/Center for U.S.- Mexican Studies.
Coutin, Susan. “Differences within Accounts of U.S. Immigration Law”. In
Political and Legal Anthropology Review Vol. 19, No. 1, May 1996.
Dagnino, Evelina. 1988. “Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy: Changing
Discourses and Practices of the Latin American Left.” In Alvarez, Sonia, Evelina
Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, Eds. 1998. Cultures of Politics Politics of
Cultures. Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements. Westview Press,
U.S.A.
De la Peña, Guillermo. 1986. "Poder Local, Poder Regional: Perspectivas
Socioantropológicas". In Padua and Vanneph.
De la Peña, Guillermo.1990. “La Cultura Politica entre los sectores populares de
Guadalajara”. In Nueva Antropologia, Vol. XI, No. 38, Mexico.
Dinerman, Ina. Migrants and Stay-at-Homes: a Comparative Study of Rural
Migration From Michoacán. México. San Diego, Center for U.S.- Mexican
Studies Univ. of California San Diego, 1982.
Dirks, Nicholas. 1987. The Hollow Crown. Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom.
Cambridge University Press, Great Britain.
La Doble Nacionalidad. Memoria del Coloquio. 1995. Palacio Legislativo, June
8-9, México.
316
Dresser, Denise. 1993. "Exporting Conflict.Transboundary Consequences of
Mexican Politics".In Lowenthal and Burgess.
Edwards, James Jr. “Dual Citizenship is Dangerous”. The Christian Science
Monitor. April 29, 1998.
Escobar Latapí, Agustín. 1993. “The Connection at its Source. Changing
Socioeconomic Conditions and Migration Patterns.” In Lowenthal, Abraham and
Katrina Burgess. 1993. The California-México Connection. Stanford, Stanford
Univ. Press.
Espinosa, Víctor.1999. La Federación de Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois:
Construyendo Puentes entre Chicago y Michoacán. Heartland Alliance for
Human Needs and Human Rights/ Chicago Community Trust/ Federación de
Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois. September.
Fernández de Castro, Rafael. 1998. “The Riverside Incident”. In Migration
between México and the U.S. Binational Study/Estudio Binacional. Vol. 3.
Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores/U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.
Ferris, Susan. “One town, two worlds”. The San Francisco Examiner. B1.
Fitzgerald, David. 2000. Negotiating extra-territorial citizenship.Mexican
transnational migration and the transnational politics of community. Monograph
2, Center for Comparative and Immigration Studies, University of California San
Diego, La Jolla.
Fitzgerald, David. 2002. “Rethinking the ‘Local’ and ‘Transnational’: CrossBorder Politics and Hometown Networks in an Immigrant Union.”. Manuscript.
Flores, William and Rina Benmayor. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Claiming
Identity, Space, and Rights. Beacon Press, Boston.
Flores, William. 1997. “Citizen vs Citizenry: Undocumented Immigrants and
Latino Cultural Citizenship.” In Benmayor, Rina and William Flores. Latino
Cultural Citizenship. Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. 1997, Beacon Press,
Boston.
Foner, Nancy, Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, Eds. Immigration
Research for a New Century. Multidisciplinary Perspectives. 2000, Rusell Sage
Foundation, New York.
317
Fox, Jonathan. 2001. “Evaluación de las Coaliciones Binacionales de la
Sociedad Civil a partir de la Experiencia México-Estados Unidos.” Revista
Mexicana de Sociología, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, vol. 63, num. 3,
Julio-Septiembre, 2001, México. Pp. 207-264.
Foucault, Michael. 1976. The Discourse of Language. In The Archaeology of
Knowledge. Harper Colofon, New York.
Fuentes, Carlos. 1994. El Espejo Enterrado. FCE, México.
Fundación Solidaridad México-Americana. 1996. “Sondeo de Opinión a Líderes
Mexicano-Americanos sobre el Voto de los Mexicanos Residentes en Estados
Unidos para Elecciones Presidenciales en México”. For the Comisión de
Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto en el extranjero. Instituto
Federal Electoral (IFE), July, México.
García, Edwin. 1995. “Living in Two Worlds.” San José Mercury News.
Wednesday December 27.
García-Canclini, Nestor. 1989. Culturas Híbridas. Grijalbo, México.
García y Griego, Manuel. 2003. “Del México de Afuera al México de Adentro.”
Paper presented at the Foro Binacional Los Derechos Políticos de los
Mexicanos en el Exterior. University of Texas, Arlington, March.
Garrison, Jessica. 2002. “Farmer gives up Mexican mayoralty.” L.A. Times,
Monday, January 28.
Geertz, Clifford. 1980. Negara. The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali.
Princenton Univ. Press, Princenton.
Gellner, Ernest. 1983. Nations and Nationalism. Basil Blackwell, Oxford.
Glick-Schiller, Nina. 1992. “Transnationalism: a New Analytic Framework for
Understanding Migration”. In Nina Glick-Schiller, Linda Barch and Cristina
Blanc-Szanton. 1992. Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race,
Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered. N.Y, The New York Academy of
Science Annals, vol. 645.
Glick-Schiller, Nina, Linda Barch and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1992. Towards a
Transnational Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism
Reconsidered. N.Y, The New York Academy of Science Annals, vol. 645.
318
Goldring, Luin. 1992. Diversity and Community in Transnational Migration: A
Comparative Study of Two Mexico- U.S. Migrant Circuits. PhD Dissertation,
Cornell University.
Goldring, Luin. 1996. "Blurring Borders: Constructing Transnational Community
in the Process of México-U.S. Migration”. In Research in Community Sociology,
Vol. 6, Greenwich, Ct.: JAI Press. Dan Chekki (Ed).
Goldring, Luin. 1998a. "Power and Status in Transnational Social Fields." In Luis
Eduardo Guarnizo and Michael P. Smith (Eds). In Transnationalism from Below.
Comparative Urban and Community Research, Vol. 6.
Goldring, Luin. 1998b. “From Market Membership to Transnational Citizenship:
the Changing Politization of Transnational Social Spaces.” In L’Ordinaire Latino
Americain, GRAL, University of Toulouse, France, N.173-174.
Goldring, Luin. 1999. “From market membership to transnational citizen? The
changing politization of transnational social spaces.” Chicano-Latino Research
Center Working Paper, UCSC, No. 23, April.
Goldring, Luin. 2001. The Gender and Geography of Citizenship in México-U.S.
Transnational Spaces.” In Identities, Vol. 7(4), Pp.501-537.
Gonzalez Gutiérrez, Carlos. 1995. "La Organización de los Inmigrantes
Mexicanos en Los Angeles: la Lealtad de los Oriundos". In Revista Mexicana de
Política Exterior. No. 46, Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores de México,
Primavera.
Gonzáles Gutiérez, Carlos. 2001. “Fostering Identities with its Diaspora.”
Journal of American History. September , Vol 88, No. 2.
Gupta, Akhil, and James Ferguson. 1998. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in
Critical Anthropology. Duke University Press, Durham/London.
Hannerz, Ulf. 1996. Transnational Connections. Culture, People, Places.
Routledge, London/New York.
319
Hernández, Rogelio. 2003. “Los candidatos con doble nacionalidad impedidos.”
Milenio. Nacional. Wednesday April 9.
Herzfeld, Michael. 1996. Cultural Intimacy. The Social Poetics in the NationState. Routledge, New York/London.
Hirsch, Jennifer S. 2000. “En el Norte la Mujer Manda: Gender, Generation, and
Geography in a Mexican Transnational Community.” In Nancy Foner, Rubén G.
Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, Eds. 2000. Immigration Research for a New
Century. Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Rusell Sage Foundation, New York.
Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 1994. Gendered Transitions. Mexican
Experiences of Immigration. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los
Angeles.
Hobsbawn, Eric and Terence Ranger. 1983. The Invention of Tradition.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Howe-Verhovek, Sam. 1998. “Torn Between Nations, Mexican-Americans Can
Have Both”. In The New York Times, Tuesday, April 14. P. A12.
Informe Solidaridad, Michoacán. 1998. INSOL, México.
Ivy, Marylin. 1995. Discourses of the Vanishing. Modernity, Phantasm, Japan.
Univ. of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Kearney, Michael and Carol Nagengast. 1989. Anthropological Perspectives on
Transnational Communities in Rural California. Davis, California Institute for
Rural Studies.
Kearney, Michael. 1991. “Borders and Boundaries of State and Self at the End
of the Empire”. Journal of Historical Sociology, Vol. 4, March.
Kellas, James G. 1993. The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity. MacMillan,
Hong Kong.
Krotz, Esteban. 1990. “Antropología, Elecciones y Cultura Política.” In Nueva
Antropología, No. 38, October, México.
Krotz, Esteban, Coord. 1996. El Estudio de la Cultura Política en México.
Perspectivas Disciplinarias y Actores Políticos. CIESAS/CONACULTA, México.
320
Krotz, Esteban, Ed. 2002. Antropología Jurídica: perspectives socioculturales en
el estudio del dereho. Anthropos, Universidad Autónoma MetropolitanaIztapalapa.
Legomsky, Stephen H. 1997. “Non-Citizens and the Rule of Law: the 1996
Immigration Reforms.” In Research Perspectives on Migration, Vol. 1/ Number
4, May/June.
Levander, Michelle. 1997. “ Cárdenas visits Bay Area”. San Jose Mercury News,
November 21.
Levitt , Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. University of California Press,
Berkeley/Los Angeles.
Lewellen, Ted C. 1985. Introducción a la Antropología Política. Ed. Balterra,
España.
Lomnitz-Adler, Claudio. 1995. Las Salidas del Laberinto. Cultura e Ideología en
el Espacio Nacional Mexicano. Joaquín Mortiz/Planeta, México.
Lomnitz, Larissa, Claudio Lomnitz-Adler e Ilya Adler. 1990. "El Fondo de la
Forma: Actos Públicos de la Campaña Presidencial del PRI, 1988". En Nueva
Antropología No. 38, México.
López-Mojardín, Adriana. 1994. “La Cultura de los Campesinos”. In Jorge
Alonso (coord.) Cultura Politica y Educacion Civica. CIIH-UNAM-Porrúa,
México.
Malkki, Liisa H. 1997. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the
Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees.” In Gupta,
Akhil and James Ferguson.1997. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical
Anthropology. Duke University Press, Durham/London.
Marchevsky, Alejandra. 1996. “The Empire Strikes Back:Globalization,
Nationalism and California’s Proposition 187”. In Critical Sense. A Journal of
Political and Cultural Theory. Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring.
Martínez, Nayamín. 2001. “El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero.
Inconclusa extension de la ciudadanía.” Paper presented at the Round Table
Ciudadanías Excluidas/Excluded Citizenships. Indigenous and Migrants in
Mexico. Center for US-Mexican Studies, UCSD-La Jolla, February 16.
321
Martínez Ortega, Araceli. 2002. “Monreal no quería que ganará la alcaldía:
Bermúdez.” El Universal, Tuesday February 12. Estados, P.7.
Jesús Martínez. 1993. “At the Periphery of Democracy: The Binational Politics of
Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley, California.” Dissertation, University of
California Berkeley.
Martínez, Jesús. 1998. In Search of Our Lost Citizenship: Mexican Immigrants,
the Right to Vote, and the Transition to Democracy in México. Chicano/Latino
Research Center-U.C.S.C, Working Paper No. 20.
Martínez, Jesús. 1999. “Resistir en la Jaula de Oro. La identidad de los
Migrantes.” La Jornada, Suplemento Masiosare. Sunday May 9.
Martínez, Jesús. 2002. “La Lucha por el Voto Migrante.” In Calderón Chelius,
Leticia and Jesús Martínez Saldaña. 2002. La dimension Política de la
Migración Mexicana. México, Inst. Inv. Dr. Jose María Luis Mora, Colección
Contemporánea Sociología.
Massey, Doreen. 1994. “Double Articulation. A Place in the World.” In Angelica
Bammer, Editor. 1994. Displacements. University of Wisconsin Press.
Massey, Doreen. 1992. “A Place Called Home.” In New Formations, No. 17
Summer.
McDonnell, Patrick. 1994. “Davis won’t appeal Prop. 187 ruling, ending court
battles.” Los Angeles Times, July 29. California Legislature, Ballots. Proposition
187. Summary.
McDonnell, Patrick J. 1997. “Dual Citizenship for Mexicans? México delays dual
nationality plan one year.” Los Angeles Times, March 6.
McDonnell, Patrick. 1998a. “Judge’s Final Order Kills Key Points of Prop. 187.
Courts: a permanent injunction is levied on the ‘94 measure targeting illegal
immigrants’ use of public benefits.” Los Angeles Times, Thursday March 19.
McDonnell, Patrick J.1998b. “Food stamp eligibility to be restored for 250,000.”
In Los Angeles Times, Friday, June 5.
McDonnell, Patrick. 1999. “Davis won’t appeal Prop. 187 ruling, ending court
battles.” Los Angeles Times, July 29.
322
Mena, Jennifer. 2001. “Once a Mexican illegal, now a U.S. citizen, Bermúdez
wins election as mayor of Jerez, Zacatecas, México.” Los Angeles Times, July
9.
MIMEXCA Press release. 1999. “Group that organizes as a result of the
Senate’s failure to pass the modifications to the law for the vote abroad in 2000.”
El Universal. October 20.
Apéndice No. 1 de la Monografía del “Escudo de Aguililla”. Conozca la historia
del escudo, su descripción y el reglamento para su uso como “símbolo
representativo”. 1998.
Nader, Laura. 2002. The Life of the Law. Anthropological Projects. University of
California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles.
Nagengast, Carole and Michael Kearney. 1990. “Mixtec ethnicity: Social Identity,
Political Consciousness, and Political Activism.” Latin American Research
Review. V. 25, n.2 (Spring): 61.
Nájera-Ramírez, Olga. 1994. “Engendering Nationalism: Identity Discourse and
the Mexican Charro.” Anthropological Quarterly, January Vol. 67, No. 1.
Nájera-Ramírez, Olga. 2002. “Haciendo Patria: La Charreada and the Formation
of a Mexican Transnational Identity.” In Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos and Anna
Sampaio, Eds. 2002. Transnational Latina/o Communities. Politics, Processes,
and Cultures. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc, USA.
Nivón, Eduardo. 1990. “Marginalidad Urbana y Cultura Política.” In Héctor
Rosales, Coord. Cultura Política e Investigación Urbana. México, UNAM-CRIM.
Ochoa, Jorge Octavio and Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001. “Anulan el triunfo en
Zacatecas del Rey del Tomate. El aspirante perredista no pudo acreditar la
residencia de una año que se requiere en contiendas electorales.” El Universal,
Friday, September 7.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States.
From the 1960’s to the 1990’s. Routledge, New York/London.
323
Ong, Aihwa. 1992. “Limits to Cultural Accumulation: Chinese Capitalists on the
American Pacific Rim”. In Glick-Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch and Christina BlancSzanton (Eds). Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration, Race, Class,
Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered. Annals of the New York Academy of
Sciences .Vol. 645.
Ong, Aihwa. 1996. “Cultural Citizenship as Subject-Making. Immigrants
Negotiate Racial and Cultural Boundaries in the United States”. In Current
Anthropology Vol. 37, No. 5, December.
Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship. The Cultural Logics of Transnationality.
Duke University Press, Durham-London.
Paz, Octavio. 1973 (1950). El Laberinto de la Soledad. F.C.E., México.
Pemberton, John. 1994. On the Subject of Java. Cornell Univ. Press, Ithaca
and London.
Perea, Juan F. Ed. 1997. Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the AntiImmigrant Impulse in the United States. New York University Press, New York
and London.
Pérez-Godoy, Mara S. 1998. “Social Movements and International Migration: the
Mexican Diaspora Seeks Inclusion in México’s Political Affairs, 1968-1998.”
Dissertation, University of Chicago, PhD.
Portes, Alejandro. 1997. “Immigration Theory for a New Century: Some
Problems and Opportunities.” International Migration Review, 31 (4):799-825.
Portes, Alejandro, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landlot. 1999. “The study of
transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field.” Ethnic and
Racial Studies 22(2):212-37.
Proposition 187. California Legislature Record 1007. 1994.
Rivera-Salgado, Gaspar. 2000. “Transnational Political Strategies: The Case of
Mexican Indigenous Migrants.” In Nancy Foner, Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Steven
J. Gold, editors. 2000. Immigration Research for a New Century.
Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Russell-Sage Foundation, New York.
324
Rivera-Salgado, Gaspar. 1999. “Mixtec activism in Oaxacalifornia. Transborder
Grassroots Political Struggles.” In American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 42, No. 9
June/July, 1439-1458.
Reporte Final Comisión de Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto
de los mexicanos residentes en el extranjero. 1998. IFE, November 12.
Rosaldo, Renato. 1994. “Cultural Citizenship and Education Democracy”. In
Cultural Anthropology 9(3). November-December.
Rosaldo, Renato. and William Flores. 1997. “Identity Conflict, and Evolving
Latino Communities: Cultural Citizenship in San José, California.” In Benmayor,
Rina and William Flores. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Claiming Identity,
Space, and Rights. Beacon Press, Boston.
Rosaldo, Renato.1997. “Cultural Citizenship, inequality, and multiculturalism.” In
Benmayor, Rita and William Flores. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Claiming
Identity, Space, and Rights. Beacon Press, Boston.
Ross Pineda, Rauú.1998. “El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero”. La
Jornada, February 13, 14 and 15, México.
Ross Pineda, Raúl. 1999. Los Mexicanos y el Voto sin Fronteras. Centro de
Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y Socialista, México.
ROUSE, Roger. 1992. "Making Sense of Settlement: Class Transformation,
Cultural Struggle and Transnationalism Among Mexican Migrants in the U.S." In
Glick- Schiller et al.
Rouse, Roger. 1988. “Migración al Suroeste de Michoacán durante el Porfiriato:
el Caso de Aguililla.” In Calvo,Thomas and Gustavo López, Eds. 1988.
Movimientos de Población en el Occidente de México. CEMCA/ Colegio de
Michoacán, México.
Rouse, Roger. 1989. Mexican Migration to the United States: Family Relations
in the Development of a Transnational Migrant Circuit. Dissertation,
Anthropology Department, Standford University.
Salazar, Emmanuel. 2001. “Deja Deudas el Rey del Tomate a Jerez. Lo acusan
de haber gastado casi 184 mil pesos en los preparativos para su fallida toma de
posesión como Alcalde.” Reforma, October 5.
325
San Diego Union Tribune. The Week in México. 2003. Sunday March 30. A-24.
Santamaría Gómez, Arturo. 1994. La Política entre México y Aztlán. Relaciones
Chicano Mexicanas del 68 a Chiapas 94. Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa,
México.
Santamaría Gómez, Arturo, Ed. 2001. Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: la Nación,
la Política y el Voto sin Fronteras. México, Universidad Autónoma de
Sinaloa/PRD.
Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores/U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform.
1997. Estudio Binacional. Migración entre México y Estados Unidos/Binational
Study. Migration Between México and the United States. SRE.
Sefovia, Rafael. 1975. La Politización del Niño Mexicano. Colegio de México,
México.
Sierra, María Teresa. 1999. “Autonomía y pluralismo jurídico: el debate
mexicano.” América Indígena, LVIII (enero-junio) 1-2. In Krotz, Esteban, Ed.
2002. Antropología Jurídica: perspectives socioculturales en el estudio del
derecho. Anthropos, Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana-Iztapalapa.
Sierra, María Teresa and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. “Los Debates Recientes y
Actuales en la Antropología Jurídica: las Corrientes Anglosajonas.” In Krotz,
Esteban, Ed.2002. Antropología Jurídica: Perspectivas Socioculturales en el
Estudio del Derecho. España, Anthropos/Univ. Autónoma MetropolitanaItztapalapa.
Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant
Resistance. Yale University Press, New Haven/London.
Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Blackwell, Oxford U.K.
Smith, Michael P. and Luis Guarnizo, Eds. 1998. Transnationalism from Below.
In Comparative Urban and Community Research, Vol. 6. Transactions
Publishers, New Brunswick.
Subcomisión Demográfica, Comisión de Especialistas. 1998. “La geografía de
la migración mexicana a los Estados Unidos.”. Informe de la Comisión de
Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto de los mexicanos residentes
en el extranjero. IFE, November 12, Mexico. Anexo II.
326
Sullivan, Kevin. 2001. “México reverses triumphant return of Tomato King.” The
Washington Post, September 11.
Tejera Gaona, Héctor. 1996. “Cultura Política: Democracia y Autoritarismo en
México.” In Nueva Antropología, Revista de Ciencias Sociales. Vol. XV, No.50,
October, México.
Tribuna Federal Electoral (TRIFE). Juicio de Revisión Constitucional Electoral
Expediente: SUP-JRC-170/2001.
Turner, Bryan S.1990. “Outline of a Theory of Citizenship”. Sociology 24 (May)
Vol. 2.
Turner, Bryan.1993. Citizenship and Social Theory. SAGE, London.
The Week in México. 2003. “The Senate passed a measure aimed at eliminating
deadlines for Mexicans living abroad to regain Mexican citizenship…” The San
Diego Union Tribune, Sunday, March 30, A-24.
Varela, Roberto. 1996. "Los Estudios Recientes sobre Cultura Política en la
Antropología Social Mexicana". In Krotz, Esteban. 1996.
Vega, Miguel Angel. 2002. “Perredistas de L.A. votan en elecciones internas de
su partido. Los afiliados del PRD en varios estados participaron en la elección
de un dirigente nacional y otros cargos.” La Opinión. March 18.
Vélez-Ibáñez, Carlos and Anna Sampaio, Eds. 2002. Transnational Latina/o
Communities. Politics, Processes, and Cultures. Rowman and Littlefield
Publishers, Inc, USA.
Villarreal, Andrés. 2000. Crime Data Base.
Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. “Gendered citizenship and the politics of belonging.”
Keynote speaker at Santa Cruz Conference on Gender and Cultural Citizenship.
Manuscript.
Weintraub, Daniel W. 1994. “Crime, Immigration Issues Helped Wilson, Polls
Find.” The Los Angeles Times, 9 November.
Westwood, Sallie and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Trans-nationalism and the
Politics of Belonging. Routledge, London/New York.
327
West, Woody. 1998. “The two faces of dual nationality. America should not
accept México’s new law allowing dual citizenship.” In Insight on the News v.
14, n. 22, June 15.
Wiltshire, Rosina. 1992. "Implications of Transnational Migration for Nationalism:
The Caribbean Example". In Glick Schiller et al.
Zavella, Pat. 1996a. “Teníamos que sufrirle a la pasada’: Mexicana
Transnational Migrants in Santa Cruz County.” Manuscript. Presented at the
Seventh International Conference on Latino Cultures in the United States.
Zavella, Pat. 1996b. “Transnational Testimonios: Local/Global Narratives of
Industrial Restructuring From California to México.” Manuscript. Presented at
the American Anthropological Association Meetings, November.
Zavella, Pat. 1997. “The Tables are Turned.” In Perea, Juan F. ed. 1997.
Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United
States. New York University Press, New York and London.
Zolberg, Aristide R. 2000. “The Politics of Immigration Policy: an Externalist
Perspective.” In Foner, Nancy, Ruben G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, eds.
Immigration Research for a New Century. Multidisciplinary Perspectives.
328