IDENTIFYING INDIGENOUS MEXICAN AND CENTRAL AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS
IN SURVEY RESEARCH
Susan Gabbard 1,7
Ed Kissam2
James Glasnapp3
Jorge Nakamoto4
Russell Saltz5
Daniel Carroll6
1
Susan Gabbard, Ph.D., Aguirre Division, JBS International
Edward Kissam, Ph.D., Aguirre Division, JBS International
3
James Glasnapp, Ph.D., Palo Alto Research Center
4
Jorge Nakamoto, Ph.D. Aguirre Division, JBS International
5
Russell Saltz, B.A., Employment and Training Administration, Department of Labor
6
Daniel J. Carroll, B.S., Employment and Training Administration, Department of Labor
2
7
Correspondence
Susan Gabbard Ph.D.
Aguirre Divison, JBS International
555 Airport Boulevard, Suite 400
Burlingame CA 94010
650-373-4949 (voice)
650-745-1179 (fax)
email sgabbard@jbsinternational.com
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 1
ABSTRACT
To respond to the increased number of indigenous Mexicans and Central Americans
entering the United States, the National Agricultural Worker Survey enhanced its
questionnaire to address issues of unfamiliar categories, language and cultural factors
and fear of discrimination that affect indigenous identification. The results demonstrate,
that allowing respondents to specify their “other” race and asking about multiple
language fluencies better identified the population. Different combinations of traditional
and enhanced race and language questions identified four to eighteen percent of the
survey’s population as indigenous. Moreover, indigenous respondents’ answers to the
race question varied by Latin American sending region.
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 2
IDENTIFYING INDIGENOUS MEXICAN AND CENTRAL AMERICAN IMMIGRANTS
IN SURVEY RESEARCH
Introduction
Recently, a shift has occurred in Latin American immigration to the United States. For
the past two decades, the demographic characteristics of the U.S. population have
steadily changed as a growing number of immigrants from Latin America enter the
United States.1 Currently, one out of eight persons living in the U.S. is Hispanic and
about 40% of the Hispanics in the U.S. are immigrants (Pew Hispanic Center, 2008).
Almost two-thirds (64%) of the Hispanic population is of Mexican origin.
In the last ten years, the number of immigrants from Mexico and Central America who
are of indigenous origin has steadily increased (Runsten and Reimer, 2005; Huizar
Murillo and Cerda, 2004). Mexico and Central America’s indigenous populations are
descendents of pre-Columbian populations and have distinct histories, customs, beliefs,
and languages that contribute to their identification as members of indigenous
communities (Holmes, 2006; Kearney, 1995; Kearney, 2000; Monaghan, 1995; Vogt,
1997). Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía e Informática (INEGI,
2004) identifies up to 90 distinct languages that are spoken by members of indigenous
communities. As these groups enter the U.S., they experience cultural and linguistic
challenges in areas of employment, accessing social services, and social and civic
integration. Correctly identifying and counting indigenous Mexican and Central
Americans within the U.S. Hispanic population is important for policy development and
program planning as well as for adequate evaluation of existing programs and policies.
The necessity of accurate ethnic background information highlights the need for
improved methods in research on immigrants. Typically, surveys of immigrants utilize
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 3
language-based questions to identify linguistic groups, and place of origin questions or
ethnic self-identification questions to delineate ethnic groups. One problem with using
this approach for indigenous populations is that, due to discrimination in their home
countries, some respondents are reluctant to identify as being indigenous. A second
problem is that some individuals, who are ethnically indigenous, are actually Spanishlanguage-dominant, leading them to categorize themselves as non-indigenous. A third
factor is that immigrants’ grown children may identify as ethnically indigenous based on
their affiliation with their parents’ village/migration network, without speaking the
language or being from an indigenous home area.
The National Agricultural Workers Survey (NAWS) provides a good vantage point for
examining concepts of ethnicity within the indigenous immigrant population because the
rate of migration from rural Mexico and Guatemala to rural agricultural areas of the U.S.
has been increasing, thereby resulting in more rapid transformation of rural communities
compared to urban areas. Bump, Lowell, and Peterson (2005) identify 20 rural states as
new immigrant settlement areas because their immigrant populations, consisting mostly
of Mexican and Central Americans, grew by more than 100% from 1990-2000. Because
the farm labor force includes both sojourners and settlers, there now emerges a need
and an opportunity to consider how newcomers’ sense of ethnicity changes over time in
the U.S.
Using data from the National Agricultural Worker Survey (NAWS), this paper presents
findings regarding alternative ways of asking language and race questions and the
relative merits of language, race and place-of-origin questions in reliably identifying
indigenous populations. Then, the consequences of using these question alternatives is
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 4
used to examine the changing proportions of indigenous Mexican and Guatemalan
migrants in the farm labor force.
The Survey Research Challenges
The collection of accurate race and ethnicity data is important for U.S. government
agencies and social service organizations (U.S. Census Bureau.), as well as for the
achievement of public health goals to minimize health disparities (Sondik et al., 2000). If
indigenous populations arriving from Mexico and Central America are not accurately
accounted for, Hispanic populations may be misrepresented. Further, health-related
information will not be accurately broken down by ethnic origins, and potential disparities
between indigenous populations and their Latino counterparts will not be apparent or
identifiable.
In practical terms, policy makers, as well as health, education, and social service
providers, need to adequately understand racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in order to
effectively respond to educational and social service needs and to plan public health
programs. For example, in order to understand any type of special needs within these
diverse populations (e.g., culturally appropriate, understandable pesticide safety
information or culturally relevant mental health interventions), one must first accurately
estimate the numbers or proportions of indigenous immigrants. Only by doing so can
one design relevant programs to ensure that these populations remain healthy and
receive effective health services while in the United States. Another example is that the
local court systems, in order to meet even the most basic standards of legal equity, can
benefit from understanding how often they will be called upon to provide interpretation
services and, ideally, for which languages. The U.S. Department of Health and Human
Services guidelines regarding community clinics, for example, suggest recruitment of
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 5
language-minority staff to facilitate access by language minority groups in clinics’ local
service area (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services., 2003).
Information on indigenous Mexicans and Central Americans relies on surveys and
administrative data sets. The accuracy of this information is affected by difficulties in
correctly identifying this population. These challenges fall into two main areas. First,
there are inherent problems in creating definitions of indigenous identity. Second, there
is the concern about reliably eliciting accurate responses from surveyed individuals
concerning their indigenous identity.
The Definitional Problem—What Does It Mean to Be “Indigenous”?
The racially and ethnically-based categorizations used in U.S. legal and policy contexts
are social constructs that simplify the multi-dimensional issues of personal and group
identification. An example of some of the complexities inherent in such categorizations
can be seen in the International Labor Organization and United Nation’s legal
framework, which makes reference not only to “lineage” (being descendants of a distinct
cultural/social group prior to European colonization), but also to linguistic, cultural, and
“organizational” (social organization) characteristics. This definitional framework further
utilizes self-identification, which is considered a fundamental criterion of indigenous
ethnicity (Deruyttere, 1997). In addition, self-identification can be fluid varying not only
with social context, but also over time.
Although each of these components of the definition of “indigenous ethnicity” is justified
from a technical perspective, these considerations play out somewhat problematically in
practical terms for applied research and statistical policy. For example, in the
Guatemalan census, the criterion for indigenous status was historically self-perception,
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 6
while in Mexico in the 1980’s and 1990’s, the decisive factor was language spoken.
Eventually, in its 2000 decennial census, Mexico included questions about both
language and self-perception. Researchers at Mexico’s El Consejo Nacional de
Población (CONAPO) report tabulations based on both variables, as well as analyses
based on the sociocultural identity of a census respondent’s village of residence
(Fernández, García and Ávila, 2002).
Moreover, in the context of transnational life, the definitional issues become still further
convoluted since, within the indigenous conceptual framework, “community” is defined
with reference to social networks which are imperfectly correlated with geographic
communities in several ways (Stephen, 2007). For example, a Mixtec informant in
Farmersville, California asserted her identity as part of her Oaxacan community of origin
based on her lineage and on her involvement in the village’s migration network – even
though she spoke no Mixtec and had never left the U.S. Further complications arise as
indigenous communities expand their definition of geographic origin. For example,
Mixtec migrants from San Juan Mixtepec, a major sending village, now have satellite
communities in colonias (unincorporated settlements) of Baja California and in at least
17 U.S. states that are migrant destinations for villagers (Kissam and Garcia, 2006).
One of the most problematic issues is that these primary definitional criteria (e.g.
language, self-perceived identity, community residence or affiliation) compete within the
context of contemporary, indigenous cultures in Mexico and give rise to substantial
differences in estimation of indigenous population size. For example, one can arrive at a
17% difference in indigenous population size depending on whether one uses a criterion
of language only or dual criteria of language and self-identification (Fernández, García
and Ávila, 2002).
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 7
Similar issues arise, even when focusing on one criterion, for example, membership in a
geographical community. In Mexico, both INEGI (2004) and CONAPO (Fernández,
García and Ávila, 2002) compare communities with large indigenous populations in
terms of whether the populations are in the majority. Due to differing cut-points,
however, the two groups’ tabulations result in divergent numbers. Using a cut-point of
70% or more indigenous households to identify a community as being indigenous, yields
a universe of 18% less “indigenous villages” than when a cut point of 40% or more
households is used. In such analytic scenarios, seemingly simple criteria can become
part of complex and self-cancelling equations.
This problem of competing definitional criteria appears to be most severe, in those
communities which have now established a pattern of Mexico-U.S. migration, precisely
because these communities are in a state of very rapid social change (Kearney, 1995;
Kearney, 2000; Stephen, 2007). The result is that, analytically, these criteria not only
compete but also conflict. For example, Santa Maria Tindu, a village in the Sierra
Mixteca of Oaxaca that is well-known for sending migrants north to the U.S., is
indubitably Mixtec (based on lineage, cultural orientation, and self-perception); however,
according to at least one key informant, the majority of the village residents, speak only
Spanish, rather than an indigenous language.2
Ultimately, there are sound sociological reasons for each of the definitional components
of indigenous identity. Language skills and use, even if imperfectly measured, are
clearly relevant factors affecting social relationships, workforce participation, and service
access. Self-identification with indigenous culture, despite its “subjective” nature, must
be understood to also be a valid indicator of indigenous ethnicity and a determinant of
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 8
various aspects of social and economic relations. Even the definitional component
which might seem to be most fragile, community residence, obviously plays a significant
role in social and economic relationships and, thus, designations of need for
individualized treatment in social policy or special services.
Eliciting Accurate Responses from Survey Respondents Regarding Indigenous
Ethnicity
The second challenge faced in surveying and identifying indigenous farmworker
populations lies in obtaining accurate survey responses. There are several reasons why
survey respondents may not respond accurately.
First, the global concept of indigenous is a meta-category that combines individuals’
multiple countries, histories and language families. Research has shown that over
arching categories such as Latino or Hispanic are not inherently understood by survey
respondents who belong to the sub groups within this composite group (Kissam, Herrera
and Nakamoto, 1993; Martin and Gerber, 2005; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 1974).
Similarly, indigenous language speakers may identify with their town and their language,
but not with the over-arching category of indigenous. The degree to which these
individuals identify may depend on use and knowledge of the concept indigenous in their
native countries as well as age, education, and other factors.
A second reason for under-reporting of native language use and self-identification of
indigenous ethnicity on surveys may be due to fear of discrimination. Research
documenting how individuals understand their own discrimination defines discrimination
in two ways: everyday and lifetime discrimination (Forman, Williams and Jackson, 1997).
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 9
Indigenous populations face each of these types of discrimination both in the U.S. and in
their home countries.
Indigenous populations face lifetime discrimination from institutional entities in their
home countries and in the U.S. in terms of both education and employment. In their
home countries, indigenous communities are marginalized. Several studies have
analyzed the labor market disparities for Latinos who are associated with indigenous
ethnicity (Hall and Patrinos, 2006; Patrinos, 2000; Patrinos, 2007). In the U.S.,
indigenous populations face a hierarchical labor market structure that relegates them to
less desirable jobs.
Everyday discrimination is felt by indigenous populations within Mexican and
Guatemalan home country populations because there is a hierarchy and, in order to
assimilate, there is a tendency among indigenous populations to identify as nonindigenous in order to avoid discrimination. There is extensive evidence that this homecountry cultural frame of reference carries over into Mexican immigrants’ lives in the
United States. Demeaning terms referring to indigenous identity are commonly used
pejoratively by non-indigenous Mexican immigrants. In addition, leading Spanishlanguage radio and television programs have incorporated racial jokes and pejorative
stereotypes of indigenous individuals (Morales, 2008).
Since indigenous Mexicans face discrimination, and since speaking an indigenous
language identifies one as a member of a discriminated group, indigenous Mexicans
who speak Spanish may be less likely to report that they are indigenous language
speakers, thus escaping identification as indigenous.
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It is clear that language itself can be the mechanism of acculturation, deculturation, and
alienation. Until recently, many indigenous Mexicans and Guatemalans have not been
willing to acknowledge that their native languages are real languages; in fact, the most
typical colloquial means of stating that one speaks an indigenous language is to state
“Hablo dialecto” (“I speak a dialect”). This issue of language characterization is changing
as the general consensus shifts toward a perspective that native languages carry the
contents of the long lives of the people who speak them and thus should be celebrated
rather than discarded (Hornberger, 1997). From the indigenous perspective, this shift
also reflects a counter-response to the experience of discrimination shared by a range of
indigenous ethnic/cultural groups based on cultural affirmation.
Identifying Indigenous Mexicans and Central American using the NAWS
To better understand the challenges of identifying indigenous populations in surveys, the
authors analyzed data from the NAWS. Since its inception, the NAWS has asked
questions about several components of indigenous identity, including place of origin,
race and primary language. Further, beginning in 2005, the NAWS purposely modified it
survey instrument to better identify this population. By collecting data on each of these
definitional components, it is possible to develop alternative analyses using variant
definitions of “indigenous ethnicity” and, where appropriate, to perform analyses on the
variations in population size and characteristics of each of the alternative definitions.
The National Agricultural Worker Survey (NAWS) was begun in 1988 by the U.S.
Department of Labor to provide a basis for guiding implementation of immigration
policies under IRCA (Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986) and was
subsequently expanded to address a range of service planning issues. The survey was
designed jointly by the Department of Labor and the Aguirre Division of JBS
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 11
International, which continues to carry out the survey. Detailed information on the
survey design, including sampling and weighting, can be found at
http://www.doleta.gov/agworker/statmethods.cfm. The analysis presented here draws
on data from 45,552 interviews with farmworkers completed during federal fiscal years
1990 to 2007. Using questions specifically aimed at identifying indigenous Mexicans
and Central Americans, the NAWS staff completed 5,257 interviews during federal fiscal
years 2005 through 2007.
Each year, the NAWS has conducted face-to-face interviews with a national probability
sample of field workers employed in crop agriculture.3 The NAWS uses multi-stage
sampling to account for seasonal and regional fluctuations in the level of farm
employment. To capture seasonal fluctuations in the agricultural work force, the NAWS
divides the year into three interviewing cycles. For each cycle, the NAWS uses four
levels of sample selection: region, county cluster, employer, and field worker. Every
cycle, in each region, the staff draws a random sample of county clusters from the
roster. The number of interviews allocated to each cluster is proportional to the amount
of crop activity in that cluster at that time of the year.
The penultimate sampling stage is to select a simple random sample of agricultural
employers from a list compiled from public agency records. Once the sample of
employers is drawn, NAWS interviewers contact the selected growers or contractors,
obtain access to the work site, and sample farmworkers. As a result, the sample
includes only workers actively employed in agriculture at the time of the interview.
Shifting Composition of the U.S. Farm Labor Force and NAWS Efforts to Improve
Identification of Indigenous Farmworkers
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NAWS data showed that for the past two decades, Spanish-speaking workers, primarily
from Mexico and Central America comprised an increasingly large majority of the U.S.
farm labor force. Three-fifths of the farm labor force (62%) spoke Spanish in 1990-1992,
but that increased to three-quarters (76%) in 2005-2007. While there was a small
component of U.S.-born Spanish speakers, most of the Spanish speakers were Latin
American immigrants. Mexicans and Central Americans formed half the farm labor force
(56%) in 1999-2002 and three-quarters (75%) from 2005-2007.
Due to political and economic factors affecting migration from Mexico and Central
America, the proportion of groups from these countries in the farm labor force has
fluctuated over the past two decades. To better understand the changes in workers
coming from Central America and Mexico, the remainder of this paper focuses on
changes in the relative composition of this stream of workers and not their total
contribution to the U.S. farm labor force. The proportions of Mexicans and Central
Americans were relatively stable, with Central Americans comprising five percent or less
of this migration flow.
Until the 1980’s, most Mexican migration to the U.S. came from states identified by
migration researchers as core-sending regions (e.g., Jalisco, Guanajuato, Durango,
Zacatecas) (Massey and Espana, 1987; Mines, 1981). Although some of the traditional
migrant-sending states, such as Michoacan, have substantial indigenous populations,
the largest number of U.S.-bound migrants were not indigenous. However, this pattern
has changed. The recent rapid increase in transnational migration among indigenous
Mexicans and Central Americans makes them an important emerging group within the
U.S. Latino population. In Mexico, approximately seven percent of the country’s
population is identified as indigenous based on language (INEGI, 2004). Some
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 13
estimates of Mexico’s national indigenous population are much higher, ranging from 10.3
to 12.4 million persons (Fox and Rivera-Salgado, 2004).4
Much less is known about Guatemalan migration to the United States. Although rural to
urban Guatemalan migration continues to Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area,
and Houston, the major flow of Guatemalan rural to rural migration is to Florida, a
leading migrant-receiving state where the overwhelming majority of Guatemalan
migrants are of Mayan origin (Burns, 1993). This pattern is not surprising, given that
48% of the Guatemalan population is of indigenous, predominantly Mayan, origin
(Deruyttere, 1997).
This change was also reflected in the NAWS data. Among Mexican immigrants, there
was a shift over time in the proportions of workers coming from various regions of
Mexico. While the core sending area of west-central Mexico remained dominant,
gradually, migration from areas in the north of Mexico declined as migration from states
in southern Mexico increased. The proportion of immigrants from southern Mexico grew
from nine percent of the Mexican-origin farm labor force in 1990-2002 to 27 percent in
2005-2007, a threefold increase (Figure 1). This region includes the Mexican states of
the Pacific south and Yucatan Peninsula with high indigenous populations, including
Chiapas, Yucatan, Oaxaca, and Guerrero where indigenous communities constitute
26%, 33%, 35%, and 17% of the overall population, respectively (INEGI, 2004).
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 14
Beginning in the early 1980s, larger-scale migration from indigenous areas of Oaxaca
and Guerrero in southern Mexico escalated in connection with Mexican domestic
migration to emerging labor-intensive agribusiness in the northern Mexican states of
Sinaloa, Sonora, and Baja California in the early 1980’s (see (Wright, 2005), and that
migration of Guatemalan Mayan burgeoned as refugees fled the civil war in the early
1980’s (Burns, 1993). By the end of the 1990s, indigenous farmworkers began to
appear in more regions and in higher numbers in several farmworker areas, notably the
San Joaquin Valley and Central Coast of California, South Florida, and the Willamette
Valley of Oregon. They then began to diffuse further along the Eastern Seaboard (e.g.
into North Carolina and the Delmarva Peninsula) and into the Coastal Washington
(Kissam et al., 2001; Kissam and Garcia, 2006; Stephen, 2007).
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 15
As farmworker service providers and advocates encountered more indigenous workers,
they turned to the NAWS to quantify this influx. When NAWS staff began to examine the
data on indigenous survey respondents, they found that the task of reliably identifying
this indigenous population was not easy. In the years following NAFTA, most of the
NAWS staff’s efforts at identifying indigenous populations focused on the state of origin
and the primary language questions. During this period, responses to these two
questions appeared to be at odds. Increased migration from southern Mexico did not
result in greater numbers of workers stating to interviewers that they spoke an
indigenous primary language. At most, four percent of respondents reported having an
indigenous language as their primary language.
Given the apparent failure of the primary language question, researchers turned to
geographic analysis. Both in the NAWS and elsewhere, researchers have used Mexican
state of origin as a proxy for tracking the rise in indigenous populations (Hernandez and
Gabbard, 2005; Huizar Murillo and Cerda, 2004). While these estimates appeared more
consistent with smaller ethnographic studies (Kissam et al., 2001; Zabin et al., 1993),
they were imperfect measures as the boundaries of Mexico’s indigenous areas were not
coterminous with Mexican states.
Information on Language Ability and Use as the Basis for Ascribing Indigenous
Ethnicity
Beginning in 2003, NAWS staff began working with researchers and indigenous
organizations to develop alternative ways to improve the identification of indigenous
farmworkers. The consensus was to expand the language question from solely asking
about primary language spoken to asking about both childhood home language
exposure and adult language ability. This recommendation was based on two
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 16
assumptions. First, some respondents who were indigenous might truly be more fluent in
Spanish. Second, respondents who were sensitive to identifying themselves as
indigenous might find it easier to admit that adults spoke indigenous languages to them
when they were children.
Since its inception, the NAWS has asked respondents: “What is your first or primary
language?” Interviewers prompted confused respondents by asking “What language do
you speak at home?” Interviewers then marked pre-coded responses for the major
language groups. The questionnaire provided an “other” category for interviewers to
mark for languages not already pre-coded. Starting in 1999, the NAWS began asking
respondents to specify their primary language if it fell into the “other languages”
category.
In 2005, the NAWS began asking four additional language questions aimed at identifying
indigenous farmworkers: 1) What languages did adults speak at home during your
childhood? 2) What languages do you speak now as an adult? 3) How well do you speak
each language? and 4) How well do you write in each language? For each question,
interviewers have areas to note responses for seven pre-coded languages: English,
Spanish, Creole, Mixtec, Kanjobal, Zapotec and Other. When interviewers code
respondents’ answers using the “Other” category, they also note the name of the
language discussed.
After producing the 2007 data, NAWS staff reviewed the modified language questions to
see if they indeed better identified indigenous languages. Respondents reported at least
30 different indigenous languages, with the most common being Zapotec, Mixtec, and
Tzotzil.
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 17
Furthermore, the analysis showed that since 1999, almost all respondents born in
Mexico and Central America who said they spoke “Other” languages specified an
indigenous language. This finding allowed the NAWS staff to make a proxy for
indigenous identification back to 1990, by adding Mexican and Central American “other”
language speakers to those respondents identified by the pre-coded indigenous primary
language (e.g. Kanjobal speakers). This analysis showed a relatively constant
percentage of indigenous language respondents – from two to four percent since 19901992. While this finding improved the count of indigenous farmworkers in years before
1999, it made the discrepancy ever more puzzling; a flat trend line for primary language
contrasted with an increasing trend for workers from highly indigenous southern Mexican
states.
Asking about childhood language was a more successful way to identify indigenous
farmworkers. For the years 2005-2007, eight percent of farmworkers said that adults in
the home where they grew up spoke indigenous languages. Almost all workers with an
indigenous childhood language reported an adult indigenous language (8%). Of these,
about half (4%) said that their primary adult language was an indigenous language.
Among those with an indigenous childhood language, about 70 percent reported that
they were fluent in both languages as adults. The 30 percent who were more fluent in
one language chose that language as their primary language. Among the dually fluent,
60 percent chose Spanish and 40 percent an indigenous language. This is generally
consistent with INEGI 2004 data which shows 81-83% of Mexico’s indigenous population
speaks at least some Spanish.
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 18
Self-Described “Race” as an Indicator of Indigenous Ethnicity
The NAWS has another way to measure indigenous identity; using a race question that
parallels the U.S. Census race question. Latin American immigrants, unfamiliar with
U.S. racial categories often select the “Other” category, which translates to “none of the
above applies to me” (del Pinal et al., 2002; Kissam, Herrera and Nakamoto, 1993;
Martin, Demaio and Campanelli, 1990; Martin and Gerber, 2005; Martin, de la Puente
and Bennett, 2001). From 1990-2007, the NAWS showed that 54 percent of Mexican
and Central American respondents said that their race did not fit any of the following
racial categories- white, black/African American or Asian or Pacific Islander. Thus, these
workers fell into the “other” category.
On the surface, it might seem that there is some conceptual relationship between the
terms indigenous Latin American and the category “Native American/Alaska Native”,
however, in reality, these terms are not perceived this way. Further, the U.S. Census
version of the Native American category asks respondents to specify a tribe, something
that has no parallel for indigenous Mexicans and Central Americans. To overcome
some of the barriers found in this question, since federal fiscal year 1999, respondents
selecting the “other” race category are prompted to specify a category and interviewers
record their responses verbatim.
While these modifications were not meant specifically to identify indigenous
respondents, it turned out that in the last decade, increasing numbers of Mexicans and
Central Americans reported they were indígena/indigenous on the race question. The
number of indigenous Mexicans and Central Americans captured by the race question
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 19
rose from three percent in 1990-1992 to 13 percent in 2005-2007. This four-fold
increase appeared more consistent with the results of the state of origin question.
Constructing A Multi-Variable Indicator of Indigenous Ethnicity
Given the problems associated with each of the individual indicators of respondents’
ethnicity (i.e. community of origin, language ability and use, and self-identified
race/ethnicity) the NAWS research team constructed measures of indigenous identity
using multiple questions. Figure 2 shows the impact of using different definitions of
indigenous identity in estimating the proportion of the U.S. labor force consisting of
indigenous workers. Combining responses on the primary language and race questions
increased the count of indigenous farmworkers to 15 percent in 2005-2007. This was
two percentage points over an estimate based on race alone and 11 percentage points
above an estimate using primary language alone. Adding childhood indigenous
language to race increased the 2005-2007 count of indigenous farmworkers from 13
percent to 18 percent. Therefore, depending on the question(s) used to define
indigenous identity, estimates of the 2005-2007 indigenous farm worker population
ranged from a low of four percent using primary language alone to a high of 18 percent
using race and childhood home language.
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 20
After examining the results of the enhanced and augmented questions on the proportion
of farmworkers identified as indigenous, the next step was to look at the interaction
among race, language, and geography in indigenous self-identification. For this
analysis, indigenous was defined broadly as those who responded affirmatively to any of
the indigenous language questions, and/or those who stated that they were indigenous
on the race question. As the results in Figure 3 indicate, some respondents identified as
indigenous on more than one question, however, each question identified some
individuals not picked up with the other questions alone. That is, slightly more than half
of the indigenous farmworkers identified by these questions were identified solely by
their answers to the race questions, another quarter were identified solely by their
answers to the language questions and barely one quarter were identified by both their
race and language questions. Within that quarter of the population that was identified
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 21
only by language, a primary language question would have picked up one-third of this
group (8%) and two-thirds of this quarter was identified solely by childhood language
(15%).
Looking at both geography and indigenous identification, it became clear that region of
origin existed as an important factor in how the race and language questions worked. At
the same time, the analysis showed the limitations of imputing ethnicity based on state
(or region) of origin and provided an improved indicator of the proportion of the U.S. farm
labor force consisting of indigenous-origin workers.
Table 1 shows the proportions of indigenous farmworkers in the NAWS population by
region of origin, and the proportions identified as indigenous using all relevant variables.
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 22
Table 1. Percent Identified as Indigenous by Region and Question
Region of Origin
NAWS
Total*
Of those identified as indigenous through an
affirmative answer on any language question or the
race question.
Percent indigenous using all questions
Percent of respondents identified by:
Race Alone
Primary Language Alone
Race + Primary Language
Missed by Race + Primary Language but
Identified by Language Spoken Growing Up
Southern
Mexico
(n=553)
45%
West
Central
Mexico
(n=146)
7%
All ForeignBorn
(n=831)
18%
75%
27%
84%
92%
3%
95%
76%
21%
84%
16%
5%
16%
* Central America and North Mexico included in the total
Adding in geography as a factor showed that ethnic identification varied by region.
Again, using the broadest definition of “indigenous”, as respondents responding
affirmatively to any of the indigenous language questions, or stating they were
indigenous on the race question, seven percent of the NAWS respondents from westcentral Mexico could be considered indigenous. However, almost all (95%) of these
indigenous respondents from west-central Mexico could be identified by combining their
responses to the race and primary language questions, with 92 percent being identifiable
by reported “race” alone.
In contrast to the west-central Mexico results, 45 percent of the respondents from
Southern Mexico could only be accurately identified as being indigenous by using a
multi-pronged analytic approach. In Southern Mexico, 84 percent could be identified by
race and primary language questions. More specifically, race alone identified 75 percent,
while primary language by itself identified 27 percent of respondents as indigenous.
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 23
This analysis shows the value of the added language questions related to childhood
language use. These questions accounted for 16 percent of all respondents identified as
indigenous and had the greatest impact on identifying survey respondents from areas
with high concentrations of indigenous communities, such as southern Mexico.
Additionally, the question about languages spoken and used as an adult would have
worked almost, but not quite, as well as the childhood language question since almost all
adults with indigenous childhood languages then spoke indigenous languages as adults.
The relatively low share of the indigenous population that reported adult or childhood
indigenous languages reflects the increasing decline in indigenous languages in Mexico
and Central America. This decline stems from multiple factors: use of Spanish as a
common language for communication among indigenous communities speaking different
languages (e.g., in markets, while traveling by bus), in interactions with mainstream
institutions and the government, and increasing levels of schooling (since bilingual
education does not continue up through the higher grades and there are few indigenouslanguage reading materials).
Finally, the combined analysis shows the weakness of state-of-origin as a geographic
indicator. The heavily indigenous states of Southern Mexico were themselves only 45
percent indigenous using the combined measure. In addition, this region accounted for
only two-thirds (67%) of the indigenous farmworkers in the sample.
Conclusions
Indigenous identity is a complex, fluid and nuanced phenomenon that is not easily
captured by any single standard survey question—in part because respondents’
articulation of their ethnic identity is sensitive to social contexts, both in the U.S. and in
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 24
their community of origin. Therefore, a version of a standard race question has the
power to capture a majority of the indigenous population, but only when it is modified to
encourage indigenous self-identification. In addition, a language question can identify
another component of indigenous identity, as long as the question is framed so as not to
focus solely on the “primary” language, but also to capture specifics regarding language
experience (childhood languages) and current language use (adult languages spoken),
as well as current language ability (adult language ability). A multiple question
approach, such as that used in the NAWS design, has the greatest advantage in terms
of making it possible to explore cultural/ethnic identity in relation to varying definitional
frameworks, while at the same time, contributing to improved analytic quality due to
“triangulation” of respondents’ ethnic identity using multiple variables as indicators of
ethnicity.
While the NAWS adaptation of language and race questions shows great promise, the
NAWS state of origin question was not sufficient to contribute to indigenous ethnic
identification. That is, state of origin is a poor indicator of indigenous identity for several
reasons. First, Mexican state borders correlate poorly with borders of Mexicans in
indigenous areas. Second, indigenous immigrants identify with more localized
communities of origin, often expressed as specific towns. Mexican political jurisdictions
are states, distritos, municipios, and communities. While “community” might be
considered the ideal indicator of community affiliation, there are such serious practical
problems in disambiguating a multitude of duplicated place names for hamlets, and
towns, that municipio is preferred by Mexican researchers and administrative agencies.
There still remains the question of how to find an optimal way to reliably elicit geographic
identification from second and third generation immigrants.
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 25
In the immediate future, the strategy of pursuing several parallel strands of questions
regarding cultural/ethnic identity (i.e. language use, racial self-identification, community
of origin/ancestral community) has important practical consequences for program
planning and policy development. For example, improved data on language experience,
ability, and current language use can provide valuable guidance for U.S. public health
and education program design, and for administering social programs struggling to
respond to an increasingly diverse immigrant population. Further, as transnational
migration patterns shift and more indigenous farmworkers are entering the broader U.S.
workforce, understanding the ways these farmworkers define ethnicity is imperative,
especially in terms of community of origin.
Finally, as the U.S. becomes increasingly multi-ethnic and the proportion of our national
population consisting of immigrants increases, it is likely that overall concepts of ethnic
identity will, like those of Mexican and Guatemalan indigenous immigrants, become
increasingly nuanced. A next step would be to explore more carefully the ways in which
language, cultural perspective, and U.S. experience play out in defining ethnic identity
within farmworker households and U.S. settlement communities, especially since second
generation children and youth in this population are faced with the challenge of
navigating competing concepts of their identities. That is, they are participants in an
indigenous society where “community” is defined in non-geographic terms as a part of a
transnational village network; they are Mexicans or Guatemalans, Latinos, and
“hyphenated Americans”. Surveys can more closely monitor this shift by including
questions regarding household migration experiences, household languages, and
household members’ language abilities and language preferences. The responses to
these questions will provide valuable insights not only for improving service delivery and
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 26
quality, but also for proactive efforts to integrate this sub-group of immigrants in a
country that is increasingly pluralistic.
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 27
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Footnotes
Here, the term “immigrant” refers to any foreign-born person living in the U.S. – some of
whom may be settlers, some of whom may be sojourners, and some of whom may not
have decided where they will live permanently
1
2
Author’s field notes, 2001.
The NAWS uses the U.S. Department of Agriculture definition of “seasonal agricultural
services,” to define field workers. Crops include those activities listed under NAICS 111.
The NAWS does not interview H2A workers
3
In the INEGI analysis cited, language is only tabulated for persons over 5 years of age,
so this proportion is the ratio of persons speaking an indigenous language to the total
national population. The highest estimate of 12.7 million is from CONAPO (Consejo
Nacional de Poblacion) and is believed by CDI (Comision de Desarollo Indígena) to be
the most accurate.
4
INDIGENOUS IDENTIFICATION: Page 35