Mixtec Transnational Migration - History of Indigenous Migration

History of Indigenous Migration

The origin of indigenous migration is tied to the industrialization process in Mexico since the decade of the 1940s and to the rapid transformation of an agriculturally based economy to an urban industrialized economy. This change lowered the level of agricultural production in the indigenous areas that become even more marginal. Mixtec migration within Mexico, in particular has been tied to the commercialization of Mexican agriculture beginning after World War II. For the past two decades, liberalization of trade barriers between Mexico and United States has made it much easier for U.S. agricultural products to enter Mexico and for Mexican products to enter the United States. According to Melinda Burns the Mixtecs form part of a de facto border exchange, one in which the U.S. exports cheap corn to Mexico and imports Mexican corn farmers to labor in the fields of California. Nearly two decades of free trade have deepened the poverty and unemployment in Mexico’s countryside, studies show. Mexico’s three million peasants were simply outgunned by 75,000 farmers in Iowa who with the help of ample rain, state of the art technology, and millions of dollars in government subsides could produce twice as much corn at half the price. As a consequence many farmers began to leave the countryside.

In most Oaxacan communities underemployment is high during the slack months of the agricultural year. The situation in many communities became quite dire in the 1990s as subsides and credits for small farmers were significantly downsided. They had to compete with subsidized imported corn and other products that hit the Mexican market as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). According to Stephen (2005) indigenous migration became more significant with the recruitment of Oaxacan men by the U.S. bracero program during the World War II and after. The Bracero Program was a guestworker program between Mexico and the US, begun because of a perceived labor shortage in the agricultural and railroad industry. Braceros were to work under contracts that specified their transportation, wages, health care, housing, and food and the number of hours to be worked. The contracts were initially between the U.S. and Mexican governments but they were switched to private contractors who ignored the terms. It is estimated that over 4.5 million contracts were issued. The bracero program ended in 1964, many Oaxacans among them many Mixtecs continued to migrate

Temporary migration of indigenous peoples as agricultural workers to the United States was of great importance. When their participation in the internal migratory networks, which sometimes extend over thousands of miles, has become a significant complementary source of income of the indigenous economy in most regions of the country. The indigenous labor force is critical to the viability of the most important agro-industrial crops. The greatest concentrations of indigenous migrants are in the states of California and Oregon. Stephen (2007) states that we can no longer think of the cultural and historical entity we call Mexico as existing solely below the Rio Grande and the rest of the physical border, in the past they were part of Mexican territory.

The increasing presence of Mexicans in both California and Oregon and their links to Mexico are important parts of the histories of transborder communities. The arrival of Mixtecs first as a part of the bracero program and later as workers brought up by labor contractors is part and parcel of the history of active recruitment of Mexicans as farmworkers beginning in the early part of the twentieth century Oregon has more than 100,000 farm-workers, 98 percent of whom are Latino, primarily of Mexican origin. The most recent farmworkers, many of whom live permanently in Oregon and should be considered immigrants workers, are indigenous. The histories of Mexicans in California and Oregon according to Stephen (2007) are connected to the histories of places such as San Agustin, a Mixtec community in Oaxaca, through political, economic, and cultural connections. These connections have been physically carried in the bodies of people moving back and forth between these places, in the social remittances that the migration experience has brought to the residents of these transborder communities and through the transnational social fields of power linked to the commercial agriculture, U.S. immigration policy and the recruitment of workers. It is important to point out that not only males from Mixtec communities or Mexico migrate to the United States. Women have played a significant role as transnational migrants as well. Rees argues that the increase in number of female migrants to the United States is not longer a male strategy to reduce household expenses. “Migration is not solely a male strategy: in spite of low remittances, the number of migrants is positively related to consumer goods. Not all migrants cut themselves off from their families, not all operate solely as free agents or individuals, but remain tied to their household and communities through reciprocal relations”