Zapotecs on the Move: Cultural, Social, and Political Processes in Transnational Perspective

Notes

209 introduction 1. Barrio refers to a geopolitical and administrative area. Four barrios constitute the village community of Yalálag. 2. Bi gwlash is a Zapotec term that means fellow countryman or fellow countrywoman. In Spanish, it means paisano. 3. In Mexico, the term community has been used to define the ethnicity of a people, for example, the Zapotecs, the Mixe, and the Triques, among others. Also, it has been used to refer to a pueblo, as in village or a village community: for example, the community of Yalálag or the community of Villa Alta of the Sierra Juárez. 4. Italics are in original. 5. See Faist 2000b, Goldring 2001, Glick Schiller and Fouron 2001, Levitt 2001a, Smith 2006. 6. Following Durkheim’s ideas of social reality, Bourdieu refers to social reality as “a set of invisible relations, those very same relations that constitute a space of positions exterior to each other and defined by their proximity to, neighborhood with or distance from each other, and also by their relative position—above or below, or even in between, in the middle” (1990, 126). 7. See Cornelius and Lewis 2007, Fernandez and Gonzalez 2003, and Smith 2006. 8. See Debry 2010, López Castro 2007, Mahler 2003, Menjivar 2000, and Moran-Taylor 2008. 9. At present in Oaxaca, there are two festivals of La Guelaguetza. Oaxacan indigenous and mestizo communities and the Oaxacan government organize one of them. Since 2007, the dissident social movement of elementary school teachers and the APPO have organized the second one. 10. See Basch, Glick Schiller, and Blanc-Szanton 1994, Fitzgerald 2000, Glick Schiller and Fouron 2001, Mahler 1995, Pessar 1995, and Rouse 1989. 11. In this context, “ethnic immigrant minority” means an indigenous Mexican immigrant group that interacts with other indigenous Mexican immigrant groups and a majority group such as mestizo Mexican immigrants or Mexican Americans. N O T E S 210 Notes to pages 20–44 chapter 1 — the yalálag zapotecs 1. For detailed description of the history of migration of other Zapotec immigrant communities to the United States, see Bartolomé and Barabas 1986, Cohen 2004, Hirabayashi 1993, Hulshof 1991, Kearney 2000, Klaver 1997, Malpica 2007, Rivera-Salgado 1999, Stephen 2005b and 2007b, Velasco 2005, and Young 1976. Patterns of migration vary as some communities immigrate to different places in the United States, and destinations have changed over time. 2. Except for the bracero generation, throughout this book, I use pseudonyms to protect the identities of Yalaltec participants. 3. After World War II, the U.S. and Mexican governments established the guest worker program, better known as the Bracero Program, under which Mexicans worked in agriculture and transportation and helped to maintain American railways. See Durand 2007, Hernández 2010, Stout 2008, Tienda 1989. 4.Yalaltecos speak Zapotec as a first language. Currently, in Yalálag, there are 2,112 inhabitants (INEGI 2010d). According to the Mexican census (INEGI 2005), 1,171 Zapotecs speak Zapotec. Of this number, 1,037 speak Spanish, 127 do not speak Spanish, and 7 are unspecified. 5. Ueda 1992 and Tienda 1989 point out that thousands of braceros became illegal immigrants , since they overstayed their working permits. In the 1950s, Mexico sent 300,000 immigrant workers. 6. Studies of internal migration in Mexico identify seasonal labor migrants as the Zapotecs and Mixtecs going from Oaxaca to work in the sugar plantations in the state of Veracruz (Hirabayashi 1993; Hulshof 1991; Klaver 1997; Stephen 2005, 2007; Young 1976). 7. These migratory patterns coincide with those of other Zapotec village communities in southern California. See Cohen 2004, Hirabayashi 1993, Hulshof 1991, Klaver 1997, Nader 1969, and Stephen 2005b, 2007b. 8. López and Runsten 2004 and Hulshof 1991 note that quite a few Zapotec villagers from the Central Valleys who were related to Tlacoluleños arrived in Los Angeles via Tlacolula networks. 9. It is common to find that marriage among Zapotec immigrants has remained endogamous in Mexico and in the United States. 10. Hondagneu-Sotelo proposes a typology of family migration to describe the different patterns of families who are coming and settling in the United States: family stage migration , family unit migration, and independent migration (1994, 39). 11. Even now,Yalálag does not have a hospital. There is just one rural clinic that provides basic health care. If someone gets seriously ill, they must travel to Oaxaca City. 12.In her study Gendered Transitions: Mexican Experiences of Immigration,HondagneouSotelo 1994 finds that...