Америка-Мексика арасындағы Мистектердің көші-қоны

Migration between Mexico and the US

Mixtec transnational migration is the phenomenon in which Mixtec people have migrated between Mexico and the United States for over three generations. The Mixtec people are an example of a social group in which migration had not led to a loss of cultural identity, but has rather generated territorial expansion and cultural reaffirmation. Mixtecs have migrated to various parts of both Mexico and United States. In recent years they, along with Zapotecs and Triqui, have emerged as one of the largest groups of migrants in the United States. Large Mixtec communities exist in the border cities of Tijuana and San Diego. According to statistics compiled by the National Geographic and Statistical Institute, out of the 241,080 indigenous people living in the border cities, 72,000 (30 percent) are migrants. as of 2011, an estimated 150,000 Mixteco people were living in California, and 25,000 to 30,000 in New York City. The migration of indigenous populations to various cities of the United States constitutes an important source of income for the Mixtec, who have a long tradition of migration and are the most numerous in the United States according to the Mixtec Integrated Development Program. The remittances sent between 1984 and 1988 amounted to $2,000 million pesos annually. Mixtec communities are generally described as transnational and transborder because of their ability to maintain and reaffirm social ties between their native homeland and diasporic community. For more than two decades, anthropologists have documented people who move from one country to another and who build transnational links.

Nina Glick Schiller defines transnational as "those persons who having migrated from one nation state to another live their lives across borders, participating simultaneously in social relations that embed them in more than one nation state". Lynn Stephen states that while the term transnational migration suggests a more or less permanent state of being between two or more locations, some people may spend a good part of their time in this state, others may live for longer periods of time in one place or another, and still others may leave their home communities only once or never. The national and the transnational part of migrant histories and experiences, particularly when it comes to the recognition or lack thereof of basic human and labor rights connected to their positions in the relation to the legal frameworks of the nations they are moving between Migrants Rights. When Mixtecs come into the United States, they cross a new set of regional borders that are often different from those in Mexico, but may also overlap with those of Mexico; for example, the racial/ethnic hierarchy of Mexico, which lives on in Mexican communities in the United States, including ethnic, cultural, and regional borders within the United States.

The use of ethnic labels has enabled migrant workers to distinguish themselves in local ethnic hierarchies and differentiate themselves from other Mexicans and Central Americans. According to Michael Kearny, the use of pan ethnic labels has also provided a way for so called illegal or alien Mixtec migrants to construct a new form of identity based on their transborder existence. Mixtec identity arises as an alternative to nationalist consciousness and as a medium to circumscribe not space, but collective identity precisely in those border areas where nationalist boundaries of territory and identity are most contested and ambiguous. However, according to Lynn Stephen, culturally Mixtecs and other indigenous migrants of Latin American origin are still not seen as part of the Mexican's state. According to Stephen, indigenous migration became more significant with the recruitment of Oaxacan men by the U. S. bracero program during World War II and after. The Bracero Program was a guestworker program between Mexico and the US that was started 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, food, and the number of hours to be worked. The contracts were initially between the US 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, and many Oaxacans among them many Mixtecs continued to migrate. The histories of Mexicans in California and Oregon, according to Stephen, are connected to the histories of places such as San Agustin, a Mixtec community in Oaxaca, through political, economic, and cultural connections.

Indigenous migrant and immigrant workers often try to remain invisible in the larger world to avoid detention and deportation by the U. S. Customs and Border Protection. According to Stephen, migrants are also objects of surveillance and invisibility on the US Mexico border, the agricultural fields and in produce processing plants. Racialized readings of Mexican indigenous immigrants and migrants as illegal, undocumented or not, result in surveillance from many people in the United States, from border guards to factory supervisors. Being an object of surveillance in the United States for one's legal status is a contradictory framework because of the encouragement of undocumented immigration through US immigration policy, as Stephen explains: "U. S. immigration policy in relation to Mexico and other countries has served primarily as labor policy, inviting workers in when they are needed and then showing them the door when it became politically expedient to 'defend' the border." and a close examination of the accelerated integration of the US and Mexican economies under economic neoliberalism and NAFTA—suggests that U. S. immigration policy toward Mexico has encouraged and facilitated increased immigration

According to the Department of Labor, about 53 percent of farmworkers in the United States are undocumented. In California, estimates are as high as 90 percent. The media has created an anti immigrant message in the United States that portrays Mexicans as illegal aliens who are invading this country and taking away many sources of employment. Especially after the September 11 attacks, the immigrant population has been a target of racism as Stephen asserts that what initially was a legal and cultural label (undocumented/illegal Mexican immigrant) became racialized as images of supposed illegal aliens that depicts the loss of control, invasion, danger, and war. Indigenous workers who are continuously seen as dark and illegal become subject to treatment that is justified by their appearance. Indigenous migrant workers have a strong sense of continually being seen as other and different in Oregon and California by non Mexicans as Mexican immigrants increase in numbers. The Frente Indigena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB) has expanded the dialogue on indigenous issues beyond national borders between Mexico and the US, as well as among Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize. According to Stephen, the FIOB publicly constructs its identity by linking local, regional, national, and transborder or binational dimensions of indigenous identity with a multi sited understanding of location. According to Stephen, through their digital productions invoking both the rootedness of place and place based histories, and transborder and transhistorical presences, indigenous activists in FIOB have constituted their own identities of contemporary indigenous Mexican identity. Mixtecs practice a gendered division of labor, in which women are in charge of the house and the children, and men are the breadwinners. However, due to the high cost of living, many Mixtec women in transnational communities are forced to join the labor force either next to the men, working as agricultural laborers in the fields or as domestic workers in the homes of middle and upper class American families. Despite women's progressively increased participation in salaried work, Mixtec communal tradition still dictates that domestic chores (cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, dishwashing, childcare, healthcare and religiosity) remain women's work. Mixtec female sacrality is reflected in everyday ordinary activities such as cleaning, food preparation, bathing, childcare, parenting and communal interaction, as well as in more formal rituals such as Day of the Dead, Temascalli (vapor) baths, the anniversaries of patron saints, and celebrations of births, baptisms, weddings, and funerals. For the Mixtec people, community is the highest expression of divinity.