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 at: http://www.rienner.com
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.