Mexican Hometown Associations in Chicagoacán: From Local to Transnational Civic Engagement

Preface

ix This book follows the challenges and opportunities of Michoacán hometown associations (HTAs) in their efforts to influence the civil societies and governments of two nations—­ Mexico and the United States. The book is based on formal interviews and conversations with HTA leaders, government officials, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) engaged in transnational activities in Michoacán and Chicago. To show how the transnational practices of contemporary Mexican migrant organizations have changed, I also include a historical analysis of early forms of binational engagement among Mexican migrants in Chicago in the early twentieth century. The book draws largely from participant observation and collaborative activist ethnographic research conducted between 2000 and 2011 in Greater Chicago, southern Illinois, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and nine municipalities in the state of Michoacán. The idea for this project emerged in the summer of 2000 while I was working as a consultant for the Mexico-­ U.S. Advocates Network, a project of the Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights. I arrived in Chicago after volunteering at the Tepeyac Association of NewYork, a highly visible migrant-­led faith-­ based Mexican organization.1 When I finished my graduate degree in New York City, I was looking for a job in immigrant advocacy, and Sergio Aguayo, one of my professors at the New School for Social Research, connected me with Susan Gzesh, a well-­ known human rights activist who was then the executive director at the Mexico-­ U.S. Advocates Network in Chicago. After learning about my work at Tepeyac, Susan invited me to help her implement a program financed by the MacArthur Foundation to increase the organizational capacity of HTAs from the state of Michoacán. I agreed and became fascinated with the world of Chicago-­ based Michoacán HTAs. After my contract expired I continued volunteering with the Federation of Michoacán Clubs in Illinois (FEDECMI) between 2001 and 2005. P reface xPreface In the summer of 2008,I accepted a teaching position at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC),and I reconnected with FEDECMI,enjoying access to its monthly meetings and events. FEDECMI also invited me to participate as an observer in two of its digital diaspora list-­ serves.2 During the preparations for the Civil Society Days of the Global Forum on Migration and Development in the summer of 2010, a representative of Latin American HTAs in the United States asked me to write a position paper for the forum dealing with the empowerment opportunities of migrant-­ led organizations, focusing on the U.S. case. I prepared the paper with my colleague Gaspar Rivera-­ Salgado,a Oaxaqueño immigrant academic at the University of California, Los Angeles. The process of writing the paper played an important role in developing the thoughts and conclusions presented in this book. Over the course of the fieldwork, five remarkable events occurred that illustrate the changing relationship of migrant civil society to state governments in Illinois and Michoacán. First, in less than a decade, the modest state migrant affairs office that I visited in Morelia in in 2001 had become the only state-­ level Secretariat for Migrant Affairs in Mexico, and its staff increased from two employees to over forty. Second, in 2004 HTAs collectively founded the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities (NALACC), which included almost 100 Latin American HTAs and grassroots organizations among its membership and chose Casa Michoacán in Chicago’s Pilsen3 neighborhood as its national administrative headquarters. Third, in 2006 then Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich inaugurated the first Office of New Americans Policy and Advocacy and appointed José Luis Gutiérrez, a former president of FEDECMI, as its director. Fourth, Mexicans abroad were granted the right to vote in Mexican presidential elections in the summer of 2006, and one year later Michoacán migrants living abroad became the first Mexican citizens allowed to vote for a governor in the state elections in 2007. Finally, in 2006 the city of Chicago was among the first in the United States to host a mass protest against the Border Protection, Anti-­ Terrorism, and Illegal Immigration Control Act, with the participation of HTA members in leadership roles. Organization of the Book The introductory chapter presents an overview of the social impact and visibility of Mexican migration to Chicago in the last two decades and the historical presence of Michoacán migrants in the Windy City. I introduce the reader to the world of Mexican HTAs in Chicago by including a brief...