UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

SANTA CRUZ

THE POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP:MEXICAN MIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES

A dissertation submitted in partial satisfactionof the requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in

ANTHROPOLOGY

by

Alejandra Castañeda Gómez del CampoJune 2003

The Dissertation of Alejandra Castañeda Gómez del Campo is approved:

_______________________________Professor Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Chair

_______________________________ Professor Jonathan Fox

_______________________________ Professor James Clifford

___________________________________Frank TalamantesVice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies

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Politics of Citizenship. Mexican Migrants in the United States

Alejandra Castañeda

Abstract

This dissertation aims 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. 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

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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.

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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,

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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 Nájera-

Ramírez, 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.

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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 VBuilding Citizenship: Mexican Migrants’ Practices of Nationhood and Belonging

Chapter VI Conclusion

Bibliography

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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

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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

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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

1 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.

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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

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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,

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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,

this dissertation argues that citizenship is constructed both by nation-states and

by migrants’ transnational practices.2 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 nation-

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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

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

state 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.

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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.

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

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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.

Contested Belongings:

Cultures of Citizenship and Imagined Communities

3 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.

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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’

actions or, as is more often the case, of de facto non-citizens who, regardless of

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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 nation-

states, 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

thus theorists of the concept of citizenship search to understand not only the

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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

the eighteen-century when individual rights––such as freedom of speech, fair 5 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. 7377 Bryan S Turner. 1990. “Outline of a Theory of Citizenship”. Sociology 24 (May 1990) Vol. 2. P. 191.8

? Cf. Bryan S. Turner. 1993. “Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Citizenship”. In Turner, Bryan. Citizenship and Social Theory. SAGE, London. P. 3

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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

membership in a highly differentiated society where the authority of the nation-

9 Idem. P. 19110 Bryan. S Turner. 1993. Op. Cit. p. 611 William Flores. 1997. Op. Cit. P. 257, quoting Bryan S. Turner. 1993. “Outline of a Theory of Human Rights.” Sociology 27(3) P. 498.

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state 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

citizenship have not accounted for the different ways in which so-called equal

12 Cf. Bryan S. Turner, 1993. Op. Cit. P. 213 Idem P. 2

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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.40221

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’s concept of cultural citizenship advocates different ways of being a

15 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. 73816 Renato Rosaldo 1997. Op. Cit. P. 96.17 See Renato Rosaldo. 1997. Op. Cit. P.3718 Renato Rosaldo. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship, inequality, and multiculturalism.” In Rina Benmayor, and William Flores. 1997. Op. Cit. P. 35.

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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 nation-

states, Aihwa Ong develops a theory of flexible citizenship. As we saw with

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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 nation-

states 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

influencing citizens. She then tries to understand how under a “condition of

19 Aihwa. Ong. 1999. Op. Cit. P. 6.20 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.

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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 nation-

state regulations in their favor by having the right to make claims on the nation-

states to which they ascribe themselves. They hold in their hands several

passports that permit their various citizenships and multiple legal statuses.

However, Ong shows that the flexibility and power of these Taipans is also

22 Aihwa Ong. 1999. Op. Cit. P. 2823 Aihwa Ong. 1999. “Introduction”. Flexible Citizenship. The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Duke University Press, Durham-London. P. 324Aihwa Ong. 1999. Idem

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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”

and “mobility”. These same subjects are “regulated” by “logics and practices …

produced within particular structures of meaning about family, gender, 25 Aihwa Ong. Op.Cit. P. 626 Aihwa Ong. Op. Cit. P. 6.

26

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

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

27 Idem.27

transnational migrants get around nation-states’ constraints, just as the Hong

Kong Taipans do. But the consequences for México and the U.S. as nation-

states 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/

unequal) in name, even as they endeavor to acquire equality in practice by living

out a form of “flexible belonging”.

28 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

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 However, recent works move beyond this frame,

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

30 Cornelius 1990; Dinerman 1982; Escobar Latapí 1993.31 González Gutiérrez 1995; Lowenthal and Burguess 1993; Dresser 1993; Pérez Godoy 1997; Zavella 1997; Nájera-Ramírez 1994; Rivera-Salgado 2000.

29

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

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

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

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:

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 35 Appadurai 1996, Hannerz 1996, Clifford 1997.36 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.

31

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

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.

38 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. 140 Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. Op. Cit.41 Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. Op. cit. P.8

32

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

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

42 In Doreen Massey. 1992. Op. Cit. P. 843 Cf. Doreen Massey. 1992. Op. Cit. P.1344 Cf. Doreen Massey. 1994. “Double Articulation. A Place in the World”. In Angelica Bammer, Ed. 1994. Displacements. University of Wisconsin Press, P.115

33

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

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

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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

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

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

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

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

46 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.48 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.

36

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.

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 nation-

state 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 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. 4350 Anderson, 1990.

37

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

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

51 Interestingly, in many cases, the literature developed in this field plays in to and in turn influences practices of citizenship.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).

38

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 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. 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. 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.

39

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

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, 58 See Nivón, 1990; Segovia, 1975; Fromm and MacCoby, 1973.59 Eduardo Nivón in Roberto Varela. Op. Cit. P. 9.60 Esteban Krotz 1996; Guillermo De La Peña 1990; Adriana López Mojardín 1994.61 See Roberto Varela. 1996. "Los Estudios Recientes sobre Cultura política en la Antropologia Social Mexicana". In Esteban Krotz. 1996. Op. Cit.

40

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

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.

62 Cf. in Roberto Varela. 1996. Op. Cit. P.1663 Esteban Krotz in Roberto Varela. 1996. Op. Cit. P.4.

41

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.

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 64 Bonfil 1987; Paz 1950; Fuentes 199465 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.

42

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

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

67 Cf. Roger Bartra en Roberto Varela. 1996. Op. Cit. P.14. My translation.68 Roberto Varela. 1996. P. 1969 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

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.

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

70 Benedict Anderson. 1983. Imagined Communities. Verso, London/New York. p.6.71 Benedict Anderson. Op. Cit. P.7

44

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

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

72 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.

45

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

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

73

? Anthony D. Smith. 1986. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Blackwell, Oxford U.K. P. 22.46

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

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.

74 James G. Kellas. 1993. The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity. MacMillan, Hong Kong. P.48.47

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

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 48

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

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

75 Herzfeld 1996; Anderson 1990; Anagnost 1997; Pemberton 1994; Ivy 1995.76 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

49

argues against what he understands as top-down explanations of the nation-

state, 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

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

78 Michael Herzfeld. 1996. Op. Cit. P. 679 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

50

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.

Spectacle and Performance

Undergirding Herzfeld’s work lies earlier work in Anthropology that emphasizes

the discursive and performative processes involved in the formation of nation-

states. 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

51

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

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,

80

? Clifford Geertz. 1980. Negara. The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princenton University Press,Princenton, P. 1681 Clifford Geertz. 1980. Op. Cit. P. 13.

52

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 pre-determined

order established by notions of purity and pollution, Dirks argues 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

82

? Nicholas Dirks. 1987. The Hollow Crown. Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, Great Britain. P. 404.83 Nicholas Dirks. 1987. Op. Cit. P.784 Nicholas Dirks. 1987. Op. Cit. P. 404.

53

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.

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 85 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.

54

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.

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 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.

55

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

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-to-

face 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

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.90 Cf. Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 56-57.

56

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

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 ethnography-

of-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’

91 Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P.1192 Cf. Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 28-29.

57

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-to-

faceless 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

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 93 Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P.38-39.94 Laura Nader. Op.Cit. P.4495 Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 49.

58

the U.S. came into existence. It is in this sense that this dissertation can be

considered an ethnography of law.

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 life-

history narratives. 59

I traveled from Aguililla to Redwood City following this community’s

traditional migrant route. In Redwood City, Aguililla’s parallel town, I worked

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

60

role in the constitution of the politics of citizenship of the Mexican transnational

experience. Therefore, the dissertation explores the selected group of laws in

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

61

exercising full membership. In this sense, the dissertation emphasizes the role

law plays in the construction of situated cultural practices of citizenship.

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 in-

depth 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

62

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.

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

63

and forth between México and the U.S. This chapter attempts to describe this

migrant space and demonstrate the inseparable socio-cultural and economic

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

64

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.

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

65

order to claim political agency and thus challenge constraining definitions of

citizenship.

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.

66

67

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’

visits are an example of a moment when national politics transcends nation-

state boundaries to address its own locals.96

96 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.

68

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.

Aguililla

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.)

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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

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

97 See map. Figure A.98 This represents .99% of the total livestock produced in Michoacán. Cf. Informe Solidaridad, Michoacán. 1998. Pp.12 and 22.

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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

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

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Figure A. Map of Aguililla.

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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. His daughters also

send him money regularly. 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

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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:

1021998. 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

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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

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 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

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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

money taken away by the central government. In this sense, the big eagle was

once more making its presence felt in Aguililla’s history.

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.

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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

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

105 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. 15107 Cf. Roger Rouse. 1988. Op. Cit. Note: Porfiriato refers to Porfirio Díaz’ regime. P.242.108 Cf Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P. 15.

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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. As

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 109 Cf. Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P.16.

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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

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

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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 maximum-

security 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 long-

standing 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

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 110 “The fame comes from that time, but Aguililla is peaceful”. Conversation, Aguililla, October 1998.

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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

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

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 1998.112 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.

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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

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

114 See Figures B and C.86

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

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. By then it was already entangled with drug

115 “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.

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trafficking. As violence escalated, regional newspapers like The San Jose

Mercury News, made an extensive coverage of the cross-border vendetta.116

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.

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Figure B

“Two Families Locked in a Deadly Feud”

Copyright © 1991 San Jose Mercury News.

All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

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90

Figure C. Chronicling a cross-border family feud

Copyright © 1991 San Jose Mercury News.

All rights reserved. Reproduced with permission.

91

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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

117 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

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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. All these factors

118 Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P. 27.94

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.120 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.

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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. 96

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. 97

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,

125 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.

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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.

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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

130 “Por donde quiera que vaya [in Redwood City] hay pura persona de aquí” Interview, Aguililla, November 1998.131 Edwin García. 1995. “Living in Two Worlds. The Migration began in the 1940s.” San José Mercury News. Wednesday, December 27. Page 1A.

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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 Susan Ferris. “One town, two worlds”. The San Francisco Examiner.133 Cf. Susan Ferris. Op.Cit.

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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

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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.14.103

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

135 “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.

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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

of his migrant experience. As Comaroff explains the changes are embedded in

137 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.

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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

build an ongoing circuit of exchanges, which include money, commodities,

trends, knowledge, kinship ties, compromises, and experiences.

138 John Comaroff. 1996. Idem. 139 Roger Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P.2

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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

network of comadres, of women, is also used strategically for economic

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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.

The movement of people and goods gets intertwined with social relations,

personal vending skills, and a financial logic, which implies a good knowledge of

140 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.

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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.

Constructed along lines of social relations and economic necessity, the

position of migrants within their transnational social space is often an ambivalent

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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

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

141 “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.

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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

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

142 James Clifford. “Diasporas.” 1994. In Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 9(3). American Anthropological Association. P. 314.143 Idem.144 James Clifford. 1994. Idem. 145 Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 94-95.

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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.

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

146 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.

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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

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

148 “…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 1999.150 Peggy Levitt. 2001. Op. Cit. P.101.

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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 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.

151 “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

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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

relations involved in migration. In the Aguililla-Redwood City case family ties and

feuds get intertwined creating a unique terrain of identity-formation and decision-

making in this transnational social space.

154 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.

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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

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 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.

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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, to demand, to do nothing, and they get into the gangs. We don’t want our children growing up here.156

156 “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.

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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

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 118

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

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

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 la policía porque todos sabemos que hoy por ti, mañana por mi .” Interview, Watsonville, CA, November 1995.

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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

“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

158 “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

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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,

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 1998.

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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

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 159 “No, nunca he conocido un gringo.” ¿Nunca a un güerito? No.” Interview, Aguililla, December 1998.160 “Fue en español...fui con Mexicanos y-doubting-unos de otros.” Idem.161 “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.”

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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.

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 American Anthropological Association Meetings, November 24. P. 9.

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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.

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:

163“No mis dos hijas nacieron en México y mis dos hijos aquí en EU.“ Interview, Redwood City, June 1999.124

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

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 164 “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.

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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

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 re-

affirm 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.

165 Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Trans-nationalism and the Politics of Belonging. Routledge, London/New York. P.6166 Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Op. Cit. P.11.167 Idem.

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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

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

168 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.

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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

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

169 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. 119.171 “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.

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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’

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.

172 Akhil Gupta , and James Ferguson. 1998. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P.17.

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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

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

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.

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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

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

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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

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

175 “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.

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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

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

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.

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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

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

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.

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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

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

178 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.

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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

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

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 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.

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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.

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

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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

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 space-

time. 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

180 Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Op. Cit. P. 11181 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.

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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

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

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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

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.

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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.

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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. 145

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

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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

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controls.”182 María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut, in their account of

Anglo-Saxon 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.

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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.148.186 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.

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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 1st, 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.

189 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.

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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.

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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 pre-

reform 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

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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

191 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.

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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.

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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.

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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 47-

year-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 For

197 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.

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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:

“The new law made me feel that I could restore a piece of myself. We were 200 In Binational Study/Estudio Binacional. 1997. Op. cit. Also see in the same study Table on Immigrants admitted and percent naturalized, annex 1.

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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.

Mexicans, welcome to your homeland…I congratulate all of you because these documents return, from a legal point of view,

201 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.

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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

the recovery of Mexican nationality were unrealistic, however for those who

203 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.

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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

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

206 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.

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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

According to Muñoz Ledo, the negotiations that started in 1994 aimed for a

reform as early as that year. However, political negotiations were postponed

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 Mexicana. México, Inst. Inv. Dr. Jose María Luis Mora, Colección Contemporánea Sociología. Pp. 290-291. My translation.

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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

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

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.

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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.

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

212 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.4213 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.”

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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 pre-

requisites 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

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

214

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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.

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

215 Transitory article 8th of the electoral code (COFIPE).165

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

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, 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.

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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 Initiative Content Proponent Details StatusAug. 22th 1996

Reform Article 36

Removal of requirement of voting only within electoral district limits

Bucarelli Agreements May 15th 1995

Opened possibility of vote abroad

Approved

Date Initiative Content Proponent Details StatusDec. 3th 1996

Nationality law, amendment articles 30, 32, 37

Mexicans by birth cannot lose their nationalityRestriction in jus sanguini principle to first generation

Presidential initiative(Ernesto Zedillo)

Adds restrictions for dual nationals: cannot hold public office, among other aspects

Approved

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April 30th 1998

Changes electoral law (COFIPE)

Remove transitory article VIII (electoral law)

Lázaro Cárdenas Batel (PRD)

Eliminate lock clauses (RENACI)

Pending

Nov. 19th

1998

AmendmentArticle 35

Allow voteOf Mexicans abroad

Rafael CastillaPeniche

Make right to vote abroad explicit

Pending

Date Initiative Content Proponent Details StatusApril 15th

1999

Chapter Ninth initiative

Modify previous version of law

Add a Chapter IX to electoral law (COFIPE)

Javier Algara Cossio,

Rafael Castilla Peniche,

Felipe Urbiola (PAN),

Creation of voters’ registry

Allow IFE to sign needed international agreements

Allow candidates

No progress

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Include right vote abroad for Mexicans living outside the country

Lázaro Cárdenas Batel,

Carlos Heredia Zubieta,

José Luis Gutiérrez (PRD)

and Parties to campaign abroad through the IFE

Accept absentee ballot

Create voting centers abroad.219

Date Initiative Content Proponent Details StatusApril 29th 1999,and July 1st

1999

Political reform, included approval of vote abroad (with the needed legal changes)

Modify electoral law (COFIPE), Constitutional articles 6th, 49th. Add three transitory articles to regulate

PAN, PRD, PT

Included Chapter IX proposals.Amendment article 6th to allow vote of Mexicans abroad. Remove restrictions to Mexicans

Approved by Lower HouseApril 29th 1999.Pre-empted by PRI majority Senate, July 1st

219 In Jesús Martínez. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 315. 169

vote abroad for 2000. Remove RENACI requirement

abroad to donate money to political parties or candidates. Allow 2000 vote abroad to those who have electoral Id card.220

1999,Rejected July 8th 1999 by Senate.

Oct. 4th

2001Sixth Circumscription (district)

Creation of a new electoral district with proportional representa-tion candidacies of Mexicans living abroad, and guarantee the vote abroad

Introduced by Gregorio Urias German (PRD), Authored by MUSA (Mexicans in the USA)

Pending

Date Initiative Content Proponent Details StatusJan. 9th

2003Zacatecan Migrant Law

Recognize bi-national residency. Political representa-tion in local Congress through plurinominal candidacies

Federación de clubes de California, Frente Cívico Zacatecano Carlos Pinto Núñez, Miguel Moctezuma

Pending

220 Martínez, Jesús. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 317.170

LongoriaApril 24-25, 2003

Vote abroad law proposal

Add new chapter to COFIPE and correspon-ding amend-ments to Constitution

CDPME221 Electoral id card Temporary credentialization campaign in U.S. Vote by phone or mail. Allow those inscribed in the electoral registry to contribute to campaigns.

Pending

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

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

221 Coalición por los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero.171

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

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, 222 See Raúl Ross. 1999. Op. Cit. P.138.223 Jesús Martínez,. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 315.

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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

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.

224 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.

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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.

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

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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 decision-

making process of the nation.

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

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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

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 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. 227 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

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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

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

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. 110.230 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.

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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

invest in their home states or hometowns. It comes as no surprise that the non-

loss 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

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.

178

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

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

233 Cf. Dudley Althaus. 2000. “Fox extends a hand to Mexican migrants.” The Houston Chronicle, December 3th.179

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,

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.

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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

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

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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.

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

234 Arturo Santamaría Gómez. 2001. Op. Cit. P. 163.182

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

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.

235 Arguments in favor of Proposition 187. California Legislature Record 1007. 1994. See Annex 5.236 “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.? 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.

183

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.

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

238 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.

184

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.

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

240 Idem241 Arguments against Proposition 187. California Legislature Record 1007.

185

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

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’.

242 “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 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

186

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

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

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.

187

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

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

245 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.

188

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 non-

emergency 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

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

246 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.

189

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

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.

247 Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo.1994. Gendered Transitions. Mexican Experiences of Immigration. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles. P. xiv248 Cf. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 207.249 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

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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.

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

251 See chapter IV191

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

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.

252Stephen H. Legomsky. 1997. Op.Cit.253 Cf. Stephen H. Legomsky. 1997.254 Stephen H. Legomsky. 1997. Op. Cit. P.13

192

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.

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.

193

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

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

255 Stephen Legomsky. 1997. Op.Cit. P.13.256 Idem.257 Idem.258 Stephen Legomsky. 1997. Op.Cit. P.13.

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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

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

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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.

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.

259

? Cf. Susan Coutin. 1996. “Differences within Accounts of U.S. Immigration Law”. In Political and Legal Anthropology Review Vol. 19, No. 1, May. P.16260 Cf. Susan Coutin. 1996. Op. Cit.. P. 11

196

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

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.

197

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

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

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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.

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

261 Michael Foucault. 1976. The Discourse of Language. In The Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colofon, New York. P.216.

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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

allow for alternative existence, like the ones Aguilillans have created through in

the transnational social space they have constructed.

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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.

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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

264 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.

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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.

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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

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.

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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

protected from their restricting effects is by taking U.S. citizenship, something 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.

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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 notion

of Mexicanity even as Mexicanity is re-coded in the U.S. Becoming a U.S.

269 Nira Yuval-Davis. 1997. “Gendered citizenship and the politics of belonging.” Keynote speaker at Santa Cruz Conference on Gender and Cultural Citizenship. Manuscript. 270 Nira Yuval-Davis. 1997. Op. Cit.271 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.

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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.”

272 See Renato Rosaldo. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism.” In William Flores and Rina Benmayor. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Beacon Press, Boston. P. 31

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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

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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

273 “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.

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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.

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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

border patrol, a different route for their life was opened. Contrary to many other

274 “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.

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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

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

275 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

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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

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.

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.

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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,

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

276 “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.

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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-to-

day 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.

“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 277 Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 151.278 Interview, Santa Cruz, 1997.

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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.

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

279 Interview, Santa Cruz, 1997.216

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

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 counter-

effect in terms of what the original expectations were. Mexican migrants––

usually reluctant to change their citizenship––respond to the new immigration

280 Idem.217

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

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

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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

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. 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.

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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

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

283 Martínez, Jesús. “Resistir en la Jaula de Oro. La identidad de los Migrantes.” La Jornada, Suplemento Masiosare. Sunday May 9, 1999.

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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:

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

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.285 “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.

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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

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:

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.

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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

After the final outcome of the 1999 political battle established between

the House of Representatives and the Senate for an electoral reform, members

287 “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:

“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.

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.

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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

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

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…”290 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

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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

linkages might be problematically reified in migrants’ memories, or in the nation-

state narratives of la Patria or the Motherland. However, the importance of their

presence in migrants’ transnational political practices cannot be underestimated.

Realities

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.

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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

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

292 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.

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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

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

295 Patrick J McDonnell. 1997. “Dual Citizenship for Mexicans? México delays dual nationality plan one year.” Los Angeles Times, March 6.

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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 anti-

Mexican sentiments. Likewise, with the possibility that the new law could add

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

296 McDonnell, Patrick J. 1997. Op. Cit. 297 Cf. McDonnell, Patrick. Idem.

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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

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

298 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.301 James Jr. Edwards. “Dual Citizenship is Dangerous”. 1998. The Christian Science Monitor. April 29.

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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. As a consequence

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

302 Cf. Jorge Carpizo. 1998. “El Peligro del Voto de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero.” Nexos, Julio. Pp 11-12.230

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

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

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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

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

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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

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,

303 Peggy Levitt. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. P. 206.304 Michelle Levander. 1997. “Cárdenas visits Bay Area”. San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 21. My emphasis.

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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

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 305 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.

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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

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

306 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 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.

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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

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 anti-

Mexican 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.

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. 10.310 Reporte Final Comisión de Especialistas. 1998. P. 10311 Cf. Fundación Solidaridad Mexicano-Americana. 1996. Op. Cit. Table 4.2. P. 11

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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

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,

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.

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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

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

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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 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 314 Cf. Manuel García y Griego. 2003. Op. Cit. P.2.

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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

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

315 Raúl Ross Pineda. March 17, 2003. E-group fundaciónmexico @yahoogroups.com. My translation.240

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 mid-

term elections, have been disqualified because of their dual nationality status.

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

316 This list names 65 jobs that are restricted to Mexicans by birth who have not acquired another nationality. See Annex 4. 317 Cf. Rogelio Hernández. 2003. “Los candidates con doble nacionalidad impedidos.” Milenio. Nacional. Wednesday April 9.

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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.

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

318 Adolfo Aguilar Zinser. 1997. “Nacionalidad Compartida.” Reforma, Editorial. Friday December 5.319 Cf. María Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 140.

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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.

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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 trans-

local and/or transnational practices, through their political and cultural practices

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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.

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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 self-

representation 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

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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

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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

specific struggles, and subject themselves to political struggle.325 Moreover,

322 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.49325 Cf. Evelina Dagnino. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 50.

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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

their citizenship. Mexican migrants do tend to have an essentialized

understanding of their identity, some engaging at the national level, while others

326 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

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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,

transnationalism is not necessarily a concept that sheds light on these

interactions.329

327 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.3.329 David Fitzgerald. 2002. Op. Cit. P.4.

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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

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

330 Idem.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.

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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

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,

332 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.

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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

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,

333 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.

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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

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 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. 501.335 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

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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

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 Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois. September. P.1337 Luin Goldring. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 5.338 Luin Goldring. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 2339 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.

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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,

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

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.

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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 Cf. Luin Goldring. 1999. Op. Cit.343 Cf. Evelina Dagnino. 1998. Op. Cit. Pp. 50, 51

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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

1982, and became a U.S. citizen in the early 1990’s.346 At the beginning, Andrés

344 “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 24.346 Cf. Kevin Sullivan. 2001. “México reverses triumphant return of Tomato King.” The Washington Post, September 11.

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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 1st 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

migrant candidates were Andrés Bermúdez, otherwise known as The Tomato

King, who represented the PRD––which in Zacatecas is composed mainly of ex-

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.

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PRI 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

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.

349 Araceli Martínez Ortega. 2002. “Monreal no quería que ganará la alcaldía: Bermúdez.” El Universal, Tuesday February 12. Estados, P.7

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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

migrants’ political rights during his campaign for Governor.353 However, behind

this gesture there was no true intention of seeing Andrés Bermúdez elected.354

350 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 9.353 See Luin Goldring.1999. Op. Cit.354 See Araceli Martínez Ortega. 2002. Op. Cit.

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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

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.

355 Cf. Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.356 Idem.357 Cf. Araceli Martínez Ortega. 2002. Op. Cit.358 Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.

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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.

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 359 See Jennifer Mena. 2001. Op. Cit.360 Idem361 See Kevin Sullivan. 2001. Op. Cit.

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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

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

362 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. 364 Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001b. Op. Cit.

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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

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

365 Cf. Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001b. Op. Cit.267

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.

The electoral controversy not only placed the Mexican political system in

a convoluted situation, the Tomato King’s participation in the elections also

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.

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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,

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.

370 Interview March 9, 2002. Los Angeles.371 Idem.

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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

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 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 28.375 Cf. Arturo Cano. 2001. Op. Cit.

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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

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. 376 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.

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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

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

379 Cf. Kevin Sullivan. 2001. Op. Cit.380 Kevin Sullivan. 2001. Op. Cit.

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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

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

381 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.

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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

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.

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.

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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

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

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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

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

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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

their sense of identity, but that nonetheless continues to address the larger

question of the nation.

Rufino Domínguez, the story of an indigenous leader.

383 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.

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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

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

384 The Hermanos Maristas (Maristas’ Brothers) are a religious semi-order in the sense that the Brothers are not ordained priests.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.

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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

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

386 Interview, March 2002.279

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.

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

387 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.

280

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

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

389 Interview, March 2002.390 Idem.

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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

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

391 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. 1454.395 Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 1999. Op. Cit. P. 1454.

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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

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––396 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. 241.397 Interview, March 2002.

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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

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

398 Gaspar Rivera-Salgado. 1999. Op. Cit.399 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.

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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.

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 400 Based on an interview with Raúl Ross Pineda. March 2002.

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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

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

401 Raúl Ross Pineda. 1999. Los Mexicanos y el Voto sin Fronteras. Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y Socialista, México.

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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

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

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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

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

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. 22.404 Jesús Martínez.1998. Op. Cit. P. 2405 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.

288

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.

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,

406 Jesús Martínez. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 7407 Jesús Martínez. 1998. Idem.

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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

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

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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,

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

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.

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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 13th 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.

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.

409 Lower House Political Commission, Senate Political Commission.292

A second Migrantour held another series of activities from the 18 th 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

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

410 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.

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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

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

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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.

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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 self-

identification 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.

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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 Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001b. Op. Cit. September 6.412 Jennifer Mena. 2001. Op. Cit.

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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

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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 nation-

state 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 nation-

state 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.

299

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

300

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 nation-

states 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

301

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)

302

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

413 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.

303

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-migration-

citizenship. 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

304

is about the right to retain difference while attaining membership to the

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

414 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.262415 Cf. Aihwa Ong. 1999. Flexible Citizenship. The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P. 113.

305

Another scenario presented in the dissertation refers to the different

layers of interaction that can be seen in the Mexican migration case between the

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

306

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.

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.

307

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

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 a peripheral perspective which nonetheless is never transparent.416

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

416 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.

308

does regiments their lives, also provides for new routes. Rather, it should be

understood as a web of possibilities and impossibilities 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.

309

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