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Purhepechas in Tarecuato and Chicago: Shifts in Local Power Structures through Transnational Negotiations
Abstract
The organization of indigenous Purhépecha migrants from the northwestern Mexican state of Michoacán to Chicago has benefited from the ability they have developed to adapt to different political and cultural contexts in Mexico. The Purhépecha community of Tarecuato has managed to combine indigenous culture and the administrative structures imposed by the nation-state to confront the discrimination and assimilation strategies of the mestizo municipality of Santiago Tangamandapio. In Chicago, the migrants from Tarecuato have organized themselves into a hometown association, the Club Tarecuato, and this has made it possible for them to negotiate development projects in the home community with the mestizo municipal president when he visits them in Chicago. Thus the transnational engagement of these indigenous migrants has produced a shift in the political power structure, giving them a voice in local decision making and increasing their influence in the predominantly mestizo municipality.
La organización de migrantes purépechas originarios del estado de Michoacán, en el noroccidente de México, y ahora residentes en Chicago se ha beneficiado de su capacidad de adaptación a diferentes contextos políticos y culturales en México. La comunidad Purhépecha de Tarecuato ha logrado combinar la cultura indígena y las estructuras administrativas impuestas por el estado-nación para hacer frente a las estrategias de discriminación y asimilación del municipio mestizo de Santiago Tangamandapio. En Chicago, los migrantes de Tarecuato han creado un club de oriundos, el Club Tarecuato. Esto les ha permitido negociar proyectos de desarrollo en la comunidad de origen con el presidente municipal mestizo cuando les visita en Chicago. Es así que el compromiso de estos indígenas migrantes transnacionales ha producido un cambio en la estructura del poder político, otorgándoles participación en la toma de decisiones locales e incrementando su influencia un municipio predominantemente mestizo.
... As Weber (2008) shows, the Nahuas and Purhépechas migrated to the United States before the Mixtecs and Zapotecs did, before the Bracero Program . Nevertheless, they did not become as visible as the Mixtecs and the Zapotecs and did not achieve pan-ethnic and transnational organizational forms until 2000, as Schütze (2014) shows in her study of the transnational negotiations between Purhépechas in Chicago and the local power structures in Mexico. ...
... Diversity in political transnationalism has been documented among indigenous communities and indigenous migrant peoples. For example, the Purhépechas and the Hñähñús continue to forge a community identity linked to local places of origin, with few ethnic or pan-ethnic organizations (Schütze, 2014); in their transnationalism, the Triquis draw on a history of displacement linked to community violence in their places of origin (París 2014); similarly, the Coras (Otis, 2011) have linked their identity to their displacement to Colorado, where they experience invisibilization; and for the Nahuas of Veracruz (Rodriǵuez, 2011), many of whom work in Wisconsin stables, religion and locality are stronger than ethnic loyalties. ...
... According to Kearney (1994, 64), one of the most important effects of indigenous international migration is their reproduction of autonomy as indigenous peoples. Solís and Fortuny (2010, 130), comparing the processes of transnational organization within the international migrations of indigenous Hñahñús (Otomíes) from Hidalgo state to Immokalee, Florida, and of Mayas from Yucatán to Los Angeles, report that transnational indigenous organizations seek not only to better living conditions in their places of origin but also to gain autonomy vis-a-vis local governments, along the same lines as the Purhépechas in Chicago (Schütze, 2014). In a study of the Mezcala people of Mexico's Jalisco state, Durán (2021) shows the emergence of a transnational indigenous movement to defend natural resources such as water and land against the narratives of development and progress that sustain the exploitation and extraction of indigenous resources under global capitalism. ...
Between the 21st and 23rd of 2023, in the city of Tijuana, Mexico, the II International Conference "PROMOTING LIFE ON THE BORDERS: Civil Society's Impact on the Empowerment of Migrants and Refugees and Their Right to Have Rights" was held by the Centro Scalabriniano de Estudos Migratórios (CSEM) in partnership with the Ibero-American University of Tijuana, Instituto Madre Assunta of Tijuana, SMR, (Scalabrinianas Misión con Migrantes y Refugiados) of Mexico City, Scalabrinian Foundation of Rome and the Jesuit Service to Refugees, Mexico, with the support of Weltkirche, MISEREOR, and ADVENIAT. One of the main objectives of this event was to strengthen the capacity of civil society at the regional, national, and international levels in promoting the protagonism of migrants and refugees in defense of their rights, which is the guiding principle of CSEM's activities established by the institution's Core Guideline. In this sense, more than just providing ready-made answers, the II International Conference of CSEM sought to stimulate debate regarding the management of the challenges posed by the migratory phenomenon, especially in the South-South, Latin American, and Caribbean contexts. This book celebrates the encounters, debates, and exchanges held at the II International Conference of CSEM.
... As Weber (2008) shows, the Nahuas and Purhépechas migrated to the United States before the Mixtecs and Zapotecs did, before the Bracero Pro gr am . Nevertheless, they did not become as visible as the Mixtecs and the Z apotecs and did not achieve pan-ethnic and transnational orga n j_ zational forms until 2000, as Schütze (2014) shows in her study of the transnational negotiati on s between Purhépechas in Chicago and the local power structures in Me 1 co. ...
... Diversity in political transnation alis m has been documented among indigenous communities and indigenous rnigrant peoples. Fo r example, the Purhépechas and the Hñahñús continue to forge a community identity linked to local places of origin, with few ethnic or pan-ethnic organizations (Schütze, 2014); in their transnationalism, the Triquis draw on a history of displacement linked to community violenc e in their places of origin (París 2014); sirnilarly, the Coras (Otis, 2011) have linked their identity to their displacement to Colorado, where they experience invisibilization; and for the Nahu as ofVeracruz (Rodr:i guez, 2011), many ofwhom work in Wisconsin stables, religion and locality are stronger than ethnic loyalties. ...
... According to Kearney (1994, 64), one of the most important effects of indigenous internation al mi gr ation is their reproduction of autonomy as indigenous peoples. Solís and Fortuny (2010, 130), comparing the processes of transnational organization within the international rni gr ations of in digenous Hñahñús (Otornies) from Hidalgo state to Immokalee, Florida, and of Mayas from Yucatán to Los Angeles, report that transnational indigenous organizations seek not only to better living conditions in their places of origin but also to gain autonomy vis-a-vis local governments, along the same lines as the Purhépechas in Chicago (Schütze, 2014). In a study of the Mezcala people of Mexico's Jalisco state, Durán (2021) shows the emergence of a transnational indigenous movement to defend natural resources such as water and land against the narratives of development and pro gr ess that sustain the exploitation and extraction of indigenous resources under global capitalism. ...
In recognizing that the historicity of mobilities and migrations of indigenous peoples cannot be fully captured by focusing on the development of nation-states, this work coincides with Morales (2007: 13) about the importance of the neoliberal capitalism to understand the labor migrations and the forced displacements of indigenous peoples after the mid-twentieth century. This chapter will examine the findings of studies from various social science disciplines about modern-day indigenous migration and mobility in Latin America under state indigenous policies and global capitalism. The analysis of these findings focuses on the consequences of migrations and mobilities for community life and the identity and autonomy of indigenous peoples. This review distinguishes between indigenous people and the national territories from which they are displaced, with the caveat that generally these are multiethnic territories, as shown by Nolasco and Rubio (2011) in the case of Mexico. It also concentrates on studies produced over the last three decades in the historical context of colonial domination and Latin American modernity. This research field features distinct regions of indigenous mobility that transcend national borders from South America—principally in the regions of the Andes, Amazonia and Patagonia—to the mainland Caribbean and lower Central America, and finally to Mesoamerica and the Great Chichimeca (Zeledón, 2007; Torres and Carrasco, 2008; Velasco and París, 2014). Various disciplines have contributed to the field—ethnology, anthropology, sociology, and, most recently, demography.
... En el contexto de la migración internacional, del mismo modo, se identifican purhépechas agrupados en comunidades en varios espacios dentro del territorio estadounidense. De las cuales destacan las conformadas por los originarios de Nurío, Aranza, Ahuirán, Ocumicho, Sevina y Tanaco en California; Cherán en Wendell y Burnsville, Carolina del Norte, Cornelia, Georgia y Burnsville; Cheranástico, Capácuaro, Cocucho, Corupo, Urapicho, Quinceo, Arantepacua, Turícuaro, San Felipe de los Herreros y Nurío en Portland Oregón; Quinceo en Seattle, Washington; Acahuén en California, Carolina del Norte, Tennessee, Florida, Arizona, Utah y Nebraska; Tarecuato en Chicago, Illinois; Cuanajo en Carpentersville, Illinois, Atlanta, Georgia y Solvang, California; y San Jerónimo Purhenchécuaro en Woodburn, Oregón (Leco, 2003(Leco, , 2008(Leco, , 2009(Leco, , 2012(Leco, , 2013(Leco, , 2014(Leco, , 2017Rodríguez y Silva, 2003;Rodríguez 2007;Schütze, 2014;Zavala, 2010;Farías, 2017Farías, , 2018Reyes, 2016). ...
... Dentro del mismo escenario de la migración internacional, destacan en Illinois el Club de migrantes de Cherán en Cobden, el Club de Tarecuato, el Club Nueva Visión de Cheranástico Binacional P'urhe Jimpanhe Eratsekua y P´urhepecheri Kungorhekua Migrantes Purépechas en Illinois. Estas figuras organizativas fueron creadas para mantener relaciones transfronterizas con los lugares de origen en Michoacán, a través del envío de remesas y la celebración de festivales culturales, para reivindicar la identidad purhépecha y reforzar la cohesión del grupo, pero, sobre todo, para negociar proyectos de desarrollo con las autoridades municipales y estatales (Leco, 2012;Schütze, 2014). ...
Los migrantes purhépechas no solo influyen de manera significativa en el
contexto de su lugar de origen, sino que se han organizado para influir en
los lugares de destino, específicamente, en Baja California. Es decir, se posicionan
como agentes que despliegan diversidad de estrategias para buscar la
adaptación, inclusión y el reconocimiento como sujetos de derecho dentro del
contexto bajacaliforniano. Buscando lograr el reconocimiento se organizan
con base en vínculos familiares y de paisanos con fuerte sentido de referencia
a la comunidad de origen o al grupo étnico de adscripción. El objetivo de
este artículo es evidenciar los procesos de organización de los purhépechas, en
Baja California, que han trascendido el agrupamiento comunal para dar paso
a la conformación de asociaciones civiles, así como su participación dentro
de redes, parlamentos y gubernaturas indígenas de carácter más formal y de
sustento legal y jurídico.
... In particular, migration scholars debate the role of transborder networks linking migrant communities in the USA with hometowns in Mexico. They note that these networks can channel investments to community activities and infrastructure and sometimes achieve significant influence over economic, political, and cultural issues in migrant-sending areas (Cohen 2005;Smith 2006;Schütze 2014). Such findings add credence to the views of international organizations, such as the World Bank, that migrants can act as ''vital agents of international development'' (Glick Schiller and Faist 2010). ...
... Scholars have noted remarkable instances where migrants have affected change in other indigenous communities, whether in the Purépecha region (Schütze 2014) or in other parts of Mexico (Waterbury 1999), including cases where migrant-led community investment leveraged a transfer of political power to migrants in transborder communities (Smith 2006). Some suggest that migrant resources could enable villages to persist and even flourish despite the depopulation of rural areas (Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004;Cohen 2005), integrating migrants into community governance from afar, and getting an injection of resources and new ideas from their members abroad. ...
Despite high rates of out-migration, Mexican indigenous communities play a crucial role in biodiversity conservation. However, little is known about migrants' role in environmental management. This research brief explores the case of the Purépecha of San Pedro Ocumicho, Michoacán, and its transborder community in the Coachella Valley of California. We find that migrants maintain strong cultural ties to their community of origin. However, many are undocumented, are unable to access steady and well-paid employment, and would be unable to return to California were they to visit Mexico. Furthermore, government structures in Ocumicho are weak, providing few opportunities for migrants to contribute. These factors currently preclude migrants from influencing environmental decision making in their home community. Our findings point to the need for more comprehensive and longitudinal studies to better document and explain the variations in migrant support for environmental governance in their communities of origin.
... Según Kearney (1994, p. 64), uno de los efectos más importantes de la migración internacional es la reproducción de la autonomía como pueblos indígenas. En coincidencia, Solís y Fortuny (2010, p. 130), comparando los procesos de organización transnacional ligados a la migración internacional de indígenas Hñahñú (Otomí) de Hidalgo a Immokalee, Florida, y de Mayas de Yucatán a Los Ángeles, reportan que las organizaciones indígenas transnacionales buscan no solamente mejorar las condiciones de vida en su lugar de origen, sino ganar autonomía frente a los gobiernos locales, en la misma línea de los purépecha en Chicago (Schütze, 2014). Un estudio reciente de Durán (2021) con mezcalas de Jalisco, muestra el surgimiento de movimientos indígenas transnacionales para defender recursos naturales, como el agua o la tierra, y contra las narrativas de desarrollo y progreso que sustentan la explotación y extracción de recursos indígenas bajo el capitalismo global. ...
Resumen. La migración indígena latinoamericana es un fenómeno multiétnico, más antiguo que la migración mestiza y con un carácter transnacional, debido a vínculos comunitarios antiguos y vitales. A lo largo del siglo XX, las migraciones indígenas en América Latina reconfiguraron la geografía étnica trazada por los estados modernos, no sólo dentro de los países sino también más allá de las líneas geopolíticas que dividen a América Latina de Estados Unidos, Canadá y el continente europeo en el Norte. Este artículo esboza un complejo campo de reflexión sobre las diferentes trayectorias de los flujos migratorios indígenas en la América Latina contemporánea. La migración indígena ha tenido un impacto en la redefinición de las identidades étnicas y en las nuevas formas de resistencia de los pueblos indígenas en la economía internacional, así como en la reconstrucción de la conciencia indígena en las configuraciones étnicas de más de un Estado-nación. El artículo ofrece un panorama general de la migración indígena continental y algunas experiencias regionales relevantes que van desde el sur al norte del continente.
... A estas comunidades recreadas fuera de la región purhépecha se suman, en el plano nacional, los de Capácuaro, Pamatácuaro y Sicuicho en Guadalajara, Tonalá, Tlaquepaque, Tlajomulco y Zapopan (Flores, Salinas y Alejandre, 2017;Bayona, 2009Bayona, , 2011Bayona, , 2012Ambriz, 2011;Cuellar, Del Carpio y Flores, 2017); Capácuaro en el Estado de México (Sánchez y Bautista, 2014 (Leco, 2003(Leco, , 2009(Leco, , 2012(Leco, , 2013(Leco, , 2014(Leco, , 2017Leco, Kido y Molina, 2008;Leco y Hernández, 2011;Rodríguez 2007;Schütze, 2014;Zavala, 2010;Farias, 2017Farias, , 2018Reyes, 2016). 3 ...
... These remittances, while significant in aggregate terms, can be small at the level of individual households, appear to be declining over time, and have limited village-level impact when used solely to meet basic family needs (Delgado Wise and Rodríguez Ramírez 2014). This reality has helped to shift focus from the individual to the "collective" migrant (Moctezuma 2000)-the active migrants who self-organize to affect change in communities of origin (Orozco and Rouse 2007;Fitzgerald 2008) and, in some cases, facilitate the transfer of political power from home village to migrant community (Smith 2006;Schütze 2014). 2 While the establishment of hometown associations and other types of migrant organization is well documented (Hirabayashi 1993;Orozco 2003), the impacts that these organizations have on their communities of origin have often been assumed rather than empirically demonstrated (Levitt and LambaNieves 2011). ...
This article reports on the current state of collective migrant organizing for two Indigenous communities in Oaxaca, Mexico. Strained relations between migrant organizations and village authorities combine with small active memberships to limit the level and type of fund-raising in support of village development and governance. These findings highlight the difficulties that communities face to maintain effective translocal institutions over time, particularly as first-generation migrants "retire" and a lack of new arrivals hinders organizational renewal. Este artículo informa sobre la situación actual de la organización colectiva de migrantes en relación a dos comunidades Indígenas de Oaxaca, México. Las relaciones tensas entre las organizaciones de migrantes y las autoridades comunales, combinado con pocos miembros activos, limita la capacidad de generar fondos de apoyo para el desarrollo y gobernanza de las comunidades. Estos datos enfatizan las dificultades que afrontan las comunidades para mantener instituciones translocales que sean efectivas a través del tiempo, especialmente cuando las primeras generaciones de migrantes "se jubilan" y la falta de nuevos obstaculiza la renovación organizacional.
This paper proposes an approach for analyzing the gender and geography of citizenship practices in transnational social spaces in order to contribute to theorizing on state‐transmigrant relations and citizenship. Drawing on feminist scholarship on citizenship, I conceptualize citizenship as including formal rights and substantive citizenship practices that are exercised in relation to different levels of political authority, and in different geographic sites within transnational spaces. The approach is used to examine dynamics between Mexican state policies and programs and transmigrant organizations in Los Angeles. Using data from research on migration between Zacatecas and California, I argue that men find a privileged arena of action in transmigrant organizations and Mexican state‐mediated transnational social spaces, which become spaces for practicing forms of citizenship that enhance their social and gender status. Women are excluded from active citizenship in this arena, but often practice substantive social citizenship in the United States.
This chapter examines the different forms of violence that characterized the relationships between indigenous people and the contemporary, neoliberal, state. It focuses on the militarization of internal security during the system of rule underpinning the so-called “perfect dictatorship” of the Party of the Institutional Revolution, and how it gave rise to repressive violence such as the massacre carried out by the Guerrero state police on seventeen members of the Organización Campesina de la Sierra del Sur (OCSS) at Aguas Blancas in 1995 and the counterinsurgency campaign launched by the Mexican army against the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) in Chiapas. The chapter also looks at the repression of the Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) by federal police during the administration of Vicente Fox government in 2006, as well as the violent practices of the drug cartels that led Felipe Calderón's government to criminalize a wide variety of social movements across the country.
This empirical study focuses on migrants from the Mexican state of Michoacán who live in Chicago and are engaged in the Federación de Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois. The article argues that their complex and multidimensional cross-border practices create transnational political spaces. It shows how the practices of Mexican migrant organizations overcome the geographic limits of traditional political spaces – the nation-state and the local community – and bring together intertwined dimensions of “the political,” which in this case refers to: the symbolic importance of the struggle for political rights, the feeling of belonging, the public recognition gained by participation in 3-for-1 public infrastructure projects and the empowerment of the migrants as expressed by their transnational political agendas.
Lynn Stephen's innovative ethnography follows indigenous Mexicans from two towns in the state of Oaxaca--the Mixtec community of San AgustIn Atenango and the Zapotec community of TeotitlAn del Valle--who periodically leave their homes in Mexico for extended periods of work in California and Oregon. Demonstrating that the line separating Mexico and the United States is only one among the many borders that these migrants repeatedly cross (including national, regional, cultural, ethnic, and class borders and divisions), Stephen advocates an ethnographic framework focused on transborder, rather than transnational, lives. Yet she does not disregard the state: She assesses the impact migration has had on local systems of government in both Mexico and the United States as well as the abilities of states to police and affect transborder communities.Stephen weaves the personal histories and narratives of indigenous transborder migrants together with explorations of the larger structures that affect their lives. Taking into account U.S. immigration policies and the demands of both commercial agriculture and the service sectors, she chronicles how migrants experience and remember low-wage work in agriculture, landscaping, and childcare and how gender relations in Oaxaca and the United States are reconfigured by migration. She looks at the ways that racial and ethnic hierarchies inherited from the colonial era--hierarchies that debase Mexico's indigenous groups--are reproduced within heterogeneous Mexican populations in the United States. Stephen provides case studies of four grass-roots organizations in which Mixtec migrants are involved, and she considers specific uses of digital technology by transborder communities. Ultimately Stephen demonstrates that transborder migrants are reshaping notions of territory and politics by developing creative models of governance, education, and economic development as well as ways of maintaining their cultures and languages across geographic distances.
Sociopolitical remittances, rural development, and Mexican migrant hometown associations: the shifting nature of transnational and trans-local connections in the Chicago-Michoacán corridor
- Bada Xóchitl
Aumentó en 2009 apoyos del Programa 3x1 en Michoacán
- Cambio De Michoacán