Mexican Women and the Other Side of Immigration: Engendering Transnational Ties (review)

The introduction to Mexican Women and the Other Side of Immigration sets the stage for the study of San Ignacio Cerro Gordo's immigrant community, its connection to Detroit, Michigan, and its impact in the economy of San Ignacio in the state of Jalisco. It provides the reader with an introduction/preface to the Catholic Church and its role in the recognition of immigrants (los hijos ausentes) while also serving as a summary of historical works by sociologists, economists, and Chicano historians who have shown the differences of Mexican immigrants in the Southwest. The author credits those who have done work on the Midwest, particularly Gabriela Arredondo. Gordillo explains that her own work expands on transnational and gendered studies done before but views immigration as one experience that takes into account the Mexican and the U.S. experience (5). Crucial in this section is Gordillo's idea that oral histories provide historians with an important tool to trace women's immigrant experience, a phenomenon that challenges what she considers hegemonic male-oriented narratives on transnational subjects (12-3).

Chapter 1 focuses on the importance and influence of San Ignacio's emigrants in the religious celebrations as well as the economic and cultural transformation of San Ignacio and Detroit. Gordillo points out that immigration studies need to consider the experience of working-class Mexicans and how they situate themselves in their place of origin and the receiving site (21). She traces the experience of San Ignacio to Detroit through the Mercado family and those who followed and, in turn, the immigration of males through the braceros, agricultural workers in California, their road to Detroit, and the manner in which women become active heads of households while husbands are away. From Gordillo's perspective, women's participation in the migratory experience is an active one even if they stay behind because women make a home in their arrival town in the U.S. and preserve a home in their town of origin (23). This, according to Gordillo, positions women in new roles, making gender divisions nebulous as women begin to challenge patriarchal roles. For example, Doña Minerva's transnational experience, according to Gordillo, allows her to question traditional roles and advocate for a more equal partnership where men share domestic chores (38). The chapter ends with an overview of the socialization of women in Detroit, and how their Cristero background influences their religious position on education and, at the same time, how their religious experience in Detroit influences the changes they make in San Ignacio.

Chapter 2 addresses generational perspectives on gender and sexuality. Gordillo begins with two quotes—a Chicago interview from 1937 and a present-day eighteen-year-old from San Ignacio—to explore gender relations and how U.S. capitalism affects courtship in San Ignacio. The narratives used in this section reveal what young men and women perceive as desirable or acceptable for marriage and how they create their identities based on a binational cultural system and, in doing so, construct a transformative new identity that may be in opposition to that of both countries.

Crucial in chapter 2 is Gordillo's illustration of how women deal with opposing and conflicting moral values (77). The interviews elucidate that a woman's purity has little to do with the Catholic Church's values; it is linked to losing control or being marginalized by husbands if they practice premarital sex. Topics covered in this chapter include the lack of sexual education in older and younger generations, an excellent overview of the accessibility of birth control in Mexico since the 1930s, the Catholic Church's position on oral contraceptives, the dangers of multiple pregnancies in older generations, and alternatives for younger women. Through her older subjects, she states that even older generations challenge San Ignacio's priests' perspective on family when they argue that people from San Ignacio have lost their traditions...