Día de muertos en los Estados Unidos
Por: Rufino Domínguez Santos
Oceanside, California, 31 de octubre de 2004. El Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional (FIOB) realiza por cuarto año consecutivo la celebración del “Día de los muertos” en Oceanside. Para la celebración de este año cerraron una cuadra de la calle Pier View en el centro de la ciudad, muy cercano al Concilio. Desde la mañana de ese día podíamos ver a unas 10,000 personas caminando por la calle contemplando los altares de diferentes comunidades y organizaciones oaxaqueñas como la Coalición de Organizaciones y Comunidades Indígenas de Oaxaca (COCIO); todos adornados con flores de cempaxuchitl o flores amarillas que fueron sembradas en la misma ciudad en un terreno disponible gratuitamente para la comunidad; también se podía apreciar el pan especial para la ocasión y la comida tradicional.
Building Civil Society Among Indigenous Migrants
Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado
Ed.’s note: This essay was excerpted with permission from the book Indigenous Mexican Migrants in the United States, edited by Jonathan Fox and Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (Centers for U.S.-Mexican Studies and Comparative Immigration Studies, UCSD, 2004). For the longer, footnoted version of this essay, see the introductory chapter to the book, which is available through the University of California, San Diego’s Center for Comparative Immigration Studies at: http://www.ccis-ucsd.org/PUBLICATIONS/Indigenous.htm
The past and future of the Mexican nation can be seen in the waves of the tens of thousands of indigenous people who each year set out on their voyages to the north, as well as the many others who have already settled in countless communities within the United States. To understand indigenous Mexican migrants in the United States today requires a binational lens, taking into account basic changes in the way Mexico is increasingly recognized as a nation of migrants, a society whose fate in intimately linked with the economy and culture of the United States. But the specific indigenous migrant experience also requires recognizing that Mexico is a multiethnic society where basic questions of indigenous rights have made it onto the national agenda but remain fundamentally unresolved.