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Diaspora 5:3 1996 Daily Life in the Transnational Migrant Community of San Agustín, Oaxaca, and Poughkeepsie, New York1 Alison Mountz Dartmouth College Richard A. Wright Dartmouth College Introduction Ten young men hold a simple white casket in place in the back ofa red van with New York license plates. They accompany the casket through town to the cemetery in San Agustín, Mexico. They are the only male migrants remaining after the Christmas holiday that brought so many back to spend a few weeks with families before returning to work in el norte. While they mourn Mauricio's death with his family in San Agustín, others mourn with Mauricio's newly arrived little brother in Poughkeepsie. Mauricio died not in the dangerous space ofel norte but rather in the safe, taken-for-granted space of the village. He bought the van in the U.S. and proudly drove these cousins and friends home. They had all stayed in the village longer than usual so that Mauricio could propose to his girlfriend. Mauricio planned to then return north for two years to save money for his wedding. Now people march behind the van honoring the premature death of a hard-working eighteen-year-old migrant. By the standards of the villagers, he was an exemplary success, responsible both to family and community, and so most of the village attends the procession. The villagers identify with the tragedy because Mauricio's death represents the realization oftheir fears. Villagers pray that absent husbands, sons, cousins, and boyfriends will survive and prosper to return soon to their families. Zapotee tradition holds that the death of a child must be a happy event in order to replace the happiness missed in life. On this occasion, however, the villagers find little to celebrate in the death ofa friend, the disappearance ofyouth, and the fears of absence. While one body is lowered to its final resting place, another is escaping from San Agustín to el norte as quickly as possible. He killed Mauricio in a fight. His first destination: the border. A place that has meant beatings, rape, or disappointment to some, money to others, incarceration to still others. But today, to him it means nothing more than freedom. Today is Sunday, the day when paisanos are buried and the day when one can most readily cross to the U.S. for there are not as many officers of la migra guarding the border.2 403 Diaspora 5:3 1996 This paper seeks to understand the rhythms of daily life in a transnational migrant community that we call [OP] . The space that once divided two physically distant and distinct places—San Agustín, a village in the state of Oaxaca (O), and Poughkeepsie (P)—has been eliminated. San Agustín now incorporates parts of the space of Poughkeepsie. We show that alterations in the conceptualization and utilization of space and time enabled the creation of this single transnational "locale" [OP]. Inhabitants of [OP] act daily in pursuit of shared objectives and with an acute awareness of events occurring in other parts of [OP] . The scene from Mauricio 's funeral gives a sense of the geographically extended form of social practice in this transnational migrant community. [OP]'s roots can be traced to the rural Zapotee community of San Agustín, located a few miles from the provincial capital in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. The extension of San Agustín began ordinarily enough, with the migration in the early 1980s of one Oaxacan to Poughkeepsie, a small metropolitan area seventy miles north of New York City. In classic network migration fashion (e.g., Massey et al.; Massey, Goldring, and Durand; Portes and Bach; Wilson), this immigrant encouraged male family and friends from the Central Valley region of Oaxaca to join him. Within a decade, the Mexican population in and around Poughkeepsie swelled to a number in the thousands. Most of these sojourners entered the country without inspection from border officials and work without inspection (cf. Kearney, "Borders"). We know that immigrants to the United States have always been part of a larger to-ing and fro-ing between sending communities and a...

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