Legacies of (In)Equity

For most of the twentieth century, villagers in Partida and Retorno lived by growing corn. Neither hometown had roads, let alone electricity or running water. Only one in four people owned shoes, and less than 20 percent could read. To access urban markets or schools, Carmen's and Alma's parents had to walk for two or three days through the mountains. The Oaxacan government neglected such villages almost entirely. As long as the pueblos delivered votes to the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI; Institutional Revolutionary Party), they were free to run their own affairs. In principle, indigenous people followed the customary system of communal governance known as Usos y Costumbres. In practice, men ruled, blocking women from voting or holding property and demanding that they ask their husbands' permission to leave the house. In some villages, including Retorno, a few men took over the local government, using their power for personal gain.

Then, in the 1950s and 1960s, labor recruiters came to Oaxaca. In the state of Sinaloa, 1,300 miles to the north, Mexico had begun building a vast, new agroindustry, whose growers needed cheap labor (see map at front). Recruiters trekked into Oaxaca to tap its isolated, indigenous population. They promised the peasants cash advances and double or triple the wages earned at home. As Mexico urbanized, demand for urban service workers soared as well. Oaxacans began to leave for such paid work. By the 1980s pioneer migrants from both Partida and Retorno had gone on to California, almost universally crossing the border without legal authorization. By the 1990s almost 90 percent of the villages' migrants were headed, undocumented, for the United States.

Though farm recruiters came to both villages, they got little traction in Partida. Instead, people from Partida held out for urban jobs. They became servants in middle-class homes in Oaxaca. They cleaned houses in Mexico City. Eventually, they found themselves in Los Angeles. Instead of traveling as families, most left as young people, alone, in search of opportunities before they settled down. More than half were women.

In contrast, Mixtec families poured into farmwork. By the 1970s Alma, her parents, and three-quarters of Retorno were making a yearly trek to the tomato fields in Sinaloa. Winters they worked; summers they came back to the village. From Sinaloa, labor contractors drew them farther north, funneling them into the hostile, rural area of North County San Diego. In Mexico, women and children had worked alongside the men. Yet when men from Retorno went on to the United States, women sought reprieve from the trials of industrial farms. Many returned to Oaxaca, refusing to go on.

HOW HOMETOWN POWER DYNAMICS SHAPE EMIGRATION

These histories stand in for a broader trend, in which Zapotec migrants tended to move to Los Angeles, while Mixtecs went to farmwork. Though other scholars have traced these differences, few offer a clear explanation. If both groups were poor and isolated, and both left at the same times and volumes, how did they come to take such different paths? In general, researchers know that industrialization pushes emigrants out of rural towns. Typically, those with more money, skills, education, and networks have the best prospects as migrants. By contrast, the poor often have to move within their home countries to build cash and contacts before they can continue abroad. Theorists of social networks also show that family and hometown ties play critical roles in defining where individuals end up — and in which jobs. Migrants from rural areas, in particular, follow others from their hometowns. Indeed, it is common to find an entire restaurant or ranch in Southern California staffed entirely by migrants from a single Mexican village.

Many scholars also assume that Mexico-U.S. labor migration follows a relatively standardized process. First, men move into U.S. farmwork, then they bring their families, and eventually migrants branch into different places and jobs. Some researchers contend that even when two communities appear to have different migration patterns, they may just be at different stages of this process. Those with migrants living in cities may simply have had more time to branch out. As for different starting points, this model implies that variations are due to chance. For instance, some scholars argue that an early migrant "in the right place at the right time" might help his whole village find contacts in New York City, while those of a neighboring pueblo remained consigned to farmwork. In this rendering, landing in Los Angeles or North County San Diego appears almost accidental.

This chapter shows that, in fact, hometown power dynamics shape the choices available to a village's early migrants — and thus to its networks as a whole. In the twentieth century, Partida and Retorno faced similar poverty and isolation. Technically, both villages governed themselves under Usos y Costumbres and held communal titles to their land. Yet they practiced autonomous governance in starkly different ways. Partida followed a traditional model of indigenous participation, running itself as a commune (albeit a patriarchal one). It redistributed land, insulating families from debt. As a result, when farm recruiters came to the village, its residents had just enough resources to refuse their overtures. Men in Partida also rotated into local leadership posts like village president or secretary. While serving in such positions, they gained access to Oaxaca City and learned of urban opportunities. Soon they began sending their children to the city for education and jobs. Thus, men in Partida were able to reject farm labor and build a pattern of independent, urban migration. Later these urban ties also helped women from Partida flee male control.

In contrast, Retorno was unequal, pressing whole families into farmwork. Even though Retorno technically followed Usos y Costumbres, in practice, it was ruled by caciques, or local political bosses. These caciques used their positions to strip other villagers of land, converting the poor into sharecroppers. By the time farm recruiters arrived in Retorno, most of its residents were destitute, landless, and in debt. Elites also monopolized access to cities. As a result, poorer families had little choice but to accept farm jobs. Driven by debt, men, women, and children cycled back and forth to northern Mexico for seasonal agricultural work.

Each community's internal migration patterns then channeled it into a different destination in the United States. Like many Sierra Zapotecs, young men and women from Partida began to work as housekeepers in Mexico City. While there, women met wealthy U.S. families who offered them work in Los Angeles. Even though men from Partida were recruited into farmwork in the United States, just like those from...