The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants (The New Americans: Recent Immigration and American Society)

The New Americans Recent Immigration and American Society

Edited by Steven J. Gold and Rubén G. Rumbaut

A Series from LFB Scholarly

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The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants

Alejandra Castañeda

LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC New York 2006

Copyright © 2006 by LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC All rights reserved. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Castañeda, Alejandra, 1965The politics of citizenship of Mexican migrants / Alejandra Castañeda. p. cm. -- (The new Americans) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-59332-134-1 (alk. paper) 1. Alien labor, Mexican--United States--Social conditions. 2. Alien labor, Mexican--Civil rights--United States. 3. Alien labor, Mexican-United States--Political activity. 4. Political rights--United States. I. Title. II. Series: New Americans (LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC) HD8081.M6C39 2006 323.1168'72073--dc22 2005037271

ISBN 1-59332-134-1 Printed on acid-free 250-year-life paper. Manufactured in the United States of America.

Contents

LIST OF FIGURES

vii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix

1. INTRODUCTION

1

2. CITIZENSHIP AND BELONGING: BUILDING A TRANSNATIONAL SOCIAL SPACE

27

3. HARD TEXTS: ENGAGING WITH THE LEGAL REALM

73

4. THE CULTURAL POLITICS OF CITIZENSHIP: MIGRANT VOICES

93

5. OPENING THE NATION? WHO BELONGS HERE?

103

6. LAW AS PRACTICE: EXPERIENCING THE LAW

129

7. BUILDING CITIZENSHIP: PRACTICES OF NATIONHOOD AND BELONGING

151

8. CONCLUSION

189

BIBLIOGRAPHY

197

INDEX

213 v

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List of Figures

TABLE A.

MAPPING U.S. INITIATIVES

77

TABLE B.

INITIATIVES MÉXICO

117

vii

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Acknowledgments

Throughout the process of writing this book, I received the support and financial assistance of various institutions. I want to thank the Fulbright-García Robles program, the Social Science Research Council Migration program, México’s Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología, UC-MEXUS and to the University of California Santa Cruz Chicano/Latino Research Center and the Anthropology Department. In particular I will always be deeply thankful to the Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California San Diego, for accepting me as a fellow and a guest scholar. I would be at fault if I did not mention the institutional and academic support given to me at different moments by the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia, in particular its Director Sergio Raúl Arroyo. I also thank the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the Universidad Iberoamericana for their kind welcome and support in the final phase of the preparation of the book. I sincerely thank Olga Nájera-Ramírez, Jonathan Fox, and James Clifford, for their guidance and insight. Likewise, I am grateful for the help provided to me by Juan Molinar-Horcasitas, Héctor TejeraGaona, Juan Manuel Sandoval, Miguel Moctezuma, Gaspar RiveraSalgado, Jesús Martínez, Raúl Ross, Nayamín Martínez, Primitivo Rodríguez, Gonzalo Badillo, Rufino Domínguez and all the members of the Coalición por los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero. I would especially like to mention Mika Court: I could not have finished the book without her help and friendship. I thank my colleagues Emiko Saldivar and Casey Walsh for their encouragement and constant support. To my family, I thank them for providing me with strength. This project would not have been completed without the moral support of my husband Jerry. For his patience and kindness, todo mi cariño. ix

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Migratory Spectacles Studying the tensions and dilemmas of the relationship of Mexican migrants to the nation-states of México and the United States, the following paradox becomes apparent: citizenship, formed and protected by laws, lived and enacted by individuals, both forbids and necessitates migrants. Conceptually and theoretically, any study of migrants within nation-states leads to the following questions: What do migrants do to citizenship? How do they practice citizenship and impact the nation-state? The underlying question of this work is how migrants’ transnational practices challenge and redefine state definitions and practices of citizenship. In other words, rather than accepting migrants as marginal actors facing the nation-state, this work argues that citizenship is constructed both by nation-states and by migrants’ transnational practices. Indeed, the lens may even be pushed further. As a result of the interdependent and complex relation between México and the United States, the degree to which the nation-state depends on migration is certain. Is the nation-state also dependent on a flexible citizenship? Is the nation-state happy to produce illegitimate outsiders, upon whom the system depends? This work points in the direction of these larger questions by exploring the cultures of citizenship currently at work in the Mexican migrant transnational space. An analysis of citizenship through the spectacles (both lenses and events) of migration underlines how practices of belonging are inextricably related to practices of citizenship as defined and policed by nation-states. A level of negotiation takes place among the legal and cultural dimensions: legal frameworks are reformulated to deal with the existence of migrants and their situated cultural practices, sometimes to include them in the polity, sometimes to exclude them (often by 1

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 2 criminalizing them) from the benefits of citizenship. Thus, the politics of citizenship that migrants face represent a complex whole of institutional/state practices and frameworks, which the migrants in turn reconfigure through their own political practices and senses of belonging. In order to address Mexican migrants’ practices of citizenship, I explore three domains inherent to the spaces they occupy, craft and attempt to inhabit: community/belonging, the letter of the law, and formal political arenas. In contrast to the language present in all of these domains –legal and informal, public and private– which foregrounds “essential” identities in the quest for definitions of belonging and legitimacy, this work recognizes (as do some of the migrants I encountered) that ideas, politics, and cultures of citizenship are constantly performed, contested, and reformulated. Within transnational migration, there are instances where nation-states and people converge, opening spaces of confusion and conflict in which both people and laws at different times and in different ways either endeavor to expand or restrict rights. Transnational migration poses a challenge to the very discourses and myths of citizenship that the nation-state would have be true, and inalienable. Migrating between México and the United States connects Mexicans with several places along a transnational spatial dimension. They encounter the legal frameworks of two different nation-states and, therefore find themselves constantly facing the need to contest, revindicate, and define the contours of their citizenship. This work searches to understand how migrants challenge notions of citizenship by examining the dilemmas that surround the relation of migrants to nation-states. Based on the ethnographic data derived from my research with politically active Mexican migrants, and in the migrant community of Aguililla (México) and Redwood City (the United States), I argue that for migrants, citizenship lies at a crossroads of legal definitions of membership and senses of belonging. Though it may appear as fairly obvious that legal and personal frameworks are at work in the definition of citizenship, or membership to a nation-state, in practice citizenship becomes slippery, highly contested, and always a charged issue of language, politics, and position. The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants explores the spaces of citizenship as contested and performed by migrants between two sovereign nations, the United States and México. More

Introduction 3 importantly, the work explores these spaces through the discourses, varying engagements and changing perspectives of people who themselves either establish or cross-between and within the borders of identity, body-politic and sovereignty. Reflecting the lives of the migrants I studied, the research for the work was multi-sited. Traveling between communities in Aguililla, México and Redwood City, California, one encounters worlds shaped by decades of migration, through which transnational communities and families have constructed and continue to construct unique social spaces. Migrants’ constant and determined connection to their homeland, together with the work of those who actively belong to sociopolitical movements, have created sites of struggle — spaces — where citizenship is contested, where a politics of citizenship is configured to face the nation-state. Within this context, citizenship becomes a site of political and cultural struggle in everyday interactions as well as in relations between people, state institutions and laws, and between nation-states.1

Contested Belongings: Cultures of Citizenship and Imagined Communities Migrants are people who live connected to two or more countries and who, because of this fact, have to confront the question of where they belong and where they place their primary allegiances. Whether nations, villages, or families, these spaces of community have a fundamental role in defining what citizenship is in practice. From a state-down approach, citizenship becomes a question of rights and duties. However, such a perspective elides the foundational role of identity, which influences practices of citizenship and belonging within communities. Though powerful legal frameworks restrict or expand migrants’ rights, migrants speak of their situations not in legal terms but in terms of their own senses of belonging to one nation-state, town, or another. To them, senses of belonging remain a more significant feature of citizenship than any legal framework; and, it is these senses and beliefs of belonging that determine their everyday actions and

1

See Rosaldo, Renato and William Flores. 1997. “Identity Conflict, and Evolving Latino Communities: Cultural Citizenship in San José, California.” In William Flores and Rina Benmayor. 1997. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Beacon Press, Boston.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 4 practices, which in turn have an impact on the nation-state and its frameworks. For the purposes of this work, and for the lives of the migrants I study, citizenship/ membership in a nation-state, is not a given. As the two nation-states of the United States and México produce laws to deal with the uncomfortable existence of migrants, a conflictive relation emerges. In the U.S., Mexican migrants are tacitly accepted as a labor force while simultaneously many forces work to keep them out of the political community. However, it is important to note that Mexican migrants also interact with these supra-entities through their everyday actions. Migrants’ existence seems to be at a disadvantage facing either of the two nation-states they cross, however they do have voices and practices to express their own contestations and visions of the terrain. Through their very existence and practices, migrants engage in a tense relationship with the different agents that form part of the state, and which appear to be constantly attempting to exclude them from any entitlement and or sense of belonging. And, in the process, they redefine the terms and limits of their membership. In fact, the very idea for this work lies upon the recognition that citizenship and nation-states constantly shift and change and that the position of migrants, their rooted and grounded identity, has historically had much to do with these changes. Migrants enter a contested terrain in which, via their movements and practices, they have power. Specifically, after the political reforms in 1996 Mexican migrants who had been historically disenfranchised and denied political existence were calling upon the Mexican state to recognize their political rights. In a first instance, citizenship is a legal status defined within the framework of the nation-state. But citizenship also refers to belonging to a community, imagined or otherwise. Scholars generally study citizenship by emphasizing one dimension, either the legal or the cultural. Typically, legal definitions of citizenship receive the most attention in that, officially, constitutions figure as the founding and defining documents of nation-states. Within legal frameworks that presume territory and location as a prerequisite to citizenship, migrants represent an obvious challenge to nation-states’ enclosed notions of citizenship. However, between legal proscription and daily practice lie other elements ––such as economic factors, especially flows of labor and capital–– that also impact the construction of citizenship.

Introduction 5 If any traditional or essential politics of citizenship could ever be defined, those terms themselves are undermined by the structural demands of today's economic reality where the very terms of nationstates are being reconfigured by the regime of flexible accumulation, which requires a mobile work force as well as mobile capital. In the case of Aguililla/Redwood City, this economic conjuncture becomes particularly interesting when nation-states like México and the United States begin to change their rules and practices because of citizens’ actions or, as is more often the case, of de facto non-citizens who, regardless of or because of a status granted to them by the state, impact the very reality of those nation-states. Thus, while taking into account the economic contexts of migrants and nation-states, this work focuses on legal definitions of citizenship and nationality as cultural practice merging legal and cultural frames. The work’s lens follows the language and interests of nation-states and individuals, because in the language of the state ––via its laws–– and of people ––via their stories and practices–– citizenship, and definitions of belonging lie at the heart of the matter.

Citizenship and Inequality Studying citizenship necessarily involves analyzing texts in relationship to lives. The present work brings together four bodies of literature, including studies in: citizenship theory, migration, political culture, and legal anthropology. In every case, the literature is both a support and a text to be analyzed for its intervention within larger discourses. Citizenship theory, for example, is the central question of this work. It is a question theorized, not only by the anthropologist, but also by migrants who maneuver their lives within and without state frameworks, and by nation-states as they attempt to define who can be a member of their polity. The book both foregrounds and contests conceptualizations and discourses of citizenship as theory and practice. The discussion around citizenship concentrates on understanding how membership in a society is established. The notion of citizen is both ideological and structural. Within European history, the notion of citizenship became first and foremost a vindication of one’s equality before the law. Cutting across differences in class and birth was a new political and universal identification ––Citoyen, Citoyenne–– which made one equal before the law. Mainly grounded in Western history, citizenship has come to be viewed as a universal

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 6 concept. However, in practice universals are never so pure, and thus theorist of the concept of citizenship search to understand the content, the spirit and the form of the laws determining citizenship, but also the social arrangements entangled in producing such rights. At the heart of sociological discussions on citizenship lies Thomas Marshall’s (1950) liberal theory. For him, citizenship is a question that pertains to modernity and is “essentially the amalgam of three categories of rights: civic, political, and social.”2 Together they constitute and define social membership. Marshall defines citizenship “primarily in terms of the evolution of civil society and the working out of the tensions between the sovereign subject and solidarity in a nationstate.” Between the formal political equality and the persistence of extensive social and economic inequality, citizenship is understood, therefore, as the modality whereby benefits —and thus, equality— are distributed to different sectors of a society.3 The articulation of class interests required the development of a political citizenship, that is, of electoral rights and wider access to political institutions. In this sense, political citizenship ––the right to vote, to associate freely with others, to participate in the government–– developed “with the evolution of modern parliamentary democracy” and the appearance of the welfare state.4 My work with Mexican migrants between the U.S. and México has lead me to understand that citizenship indeed entails the interaction of the three set of rights foregrounded by Marshall: civic, social, political. However despite the fact that with the welfare state these rights appeared to be spread throughout the whole society, a dimension of inequality remained. As Bryan S. Turner points out, while citizenship is bound up with the problem of unequal distribution of societal resources, it does not solve

2

Flores, William. 1997. “Citizen vs. Citizenry: Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Cultural Citizenship.” In Rina Benmayor and William Flores. Op. Cit. P. 257. 3 Cf. Turner, Bryan S. 1993. “Contemporary Problems in the Theory of Citizenship”. In Bryan Turner. Citizenship and Social Theory. SAGE, London. P. 3 4 Turner, Bryan S. 1993. Op. Cit. p. 6

Introduction 7 the problems of inequality. Rather, citizenship appears as a contingent, and an arbitrary set of rights.5 Where Marshall foregrounds the equal entitlements promulgated under a welfare state, Turner shows that by definition a state cannot be responsive to every member of the polity in the same way. Turner understands the modern question of citizenship as being structured by two central problems: 1) how to define social membership in a highly differentiated society where the authority of the nation-state appears to be under question, and 2) how to allocate resources efficiently and equally in a state of unequal allocation of resources, which continues to be dominated by various forms of particularistic inequality.6 In this sense, citizenship is a changing category ––equal in name but not in practice–– whose content is constantly negotiated and modified through political and cultural struggles, a connection that migrants´ perform through their daily lives and political activities. When migrants appear at the center of the question of citizenship, cultural issues are foregrounded. The contradictions, the inequality inherent to citizenship becomes more acute in relation to migrants. Following this vein, Renato Rosaldo argues that the contradictions are not only inherent and constantly negotiated, but that citizenship is by definition about difference. The way liberal democracy has defined citizenship has always presupposed the exclusion of certain groups from the category of citizenship, that is, of having rights and equality. To explain the connection citizenship and difference, Rosaldo develops the concept of cultural citizenship, which he defines as: the right to be different and to belong in a participatory democratic sense. It claims that, in a democracy, social justice calls for equity among all citizens, even when such differences as race, religion, class, gender, or sexual orientation potentially could be used to make certain people less equal or inferior to others.7

5

Flores, William. 1997. Op. Cit. P. 257, quoting Bryan S. Turner. 1993. “Outline of a Theory of Human Rights.” Sociology 27(3) P. 498. 6 Cf. Turner, Bryan S., 1993. Op. Cit. P. 2 7 Rosaldo, Renato. 1994. “Cultural Citizenship and Education Democracy.” In Cultural Anthropology 9(3). P.402

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 8 By celebrating “the right to be different and to belong,” the notion of cultural citizenship addresses directly the lack of a de facto meaningful citizenship, where the principle of equality fails to be applied to all areas of social life. Rosaldo, thus, reclaims the marker of difference to argue, together with William Flores and Rina Benmayor, that the question of citizenship is centrally defined by a sense of belonging and the right to be different within a nation-state. Citizenship is not only the possession of a paper, and it also implicates subjects taking action and claiming space in accordance with their cultural practices. Citizenship is about being visible, being heard, and belonging.8 As Renato Rosaldo explains, “citizenship is informed by culture…claims to citizenship are reinforced or subverted by cultural assumptions and practices.”9 Like Rosaldo’s approach to citizenship, I argue that migrants’ citizenship is built upon their tense and unavoidable relation to the state. However, whereas Rosaldo’s concept of cultural citizenship advocates different ways of being a citizen of the United States, this work turns the lens towards México and different ways of being Mexican in México and in the U.S. A study about Mexican migrants who have to deal with two nation-states requires a recognition of the interaction between legal realms, the ideas of citizenship they produce, and the cultural practices that signify belonging to a particular political and cultural community– –a multi-sited interaction that Rosaldo does not prioritize. This book contributes to the understanding of citizenship, migrant political subjectivity and the changing face of nation-states, through the study of three differing engagements of citizenship by migrants in the transnational social space they create between the U.S. and México. Case studies of migrants, their subjectivities and movements do more than simply illustrate that the legal and the cultural realms are constantly redefined and interlaced with each other. They point to how —as Rosaldo also illustrates— change comes from below. Furthering the debate examining relations between citizens and nation-states, anthropologist Aihwa Ong develops a theory of

8

See Rosaldo, Renato. 1997. Op. Cit. P.37 Rosaldo, Renato. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship, inequality, and multiculturalism.” In Benmayor, Rina, and William Flores. 1997. Op. Cit. P. 35.

9

Introduction 9 citizenship and its quality of flexibility. Ong looks for human agency, and how it produces and negotiates cultural meanings within late capitalism where mobility and flexibility become the new discourse of both capital and citizenship. Following the regimes that structure, condition and manage everyday interactions and transnational strategies of migrant-citizens, through their family, state, and economic transactions, Ong observes “a form of cultural politics embedded in specific power contexts” where nations and states are entities that are still bound to each other, while also influencing citizens. Migrants, who live under a condition of transnationality, are surrounded by a mix of regimes of power that alternately discipline, regulate or civilize subjects in place or on the move.10 However, as capitalist practices “induce” and favor displacement, subjects respond “fluidly” to changing economic and political conditions. On the one hand, citizenship encourages subjects to identify with a local arena. On the other hand, these same subjects are encouraged to operate in global arenas. Even though the nation-state works upon subjects, with regimes of governmentality framing their existence, those who have the capacity to be more flexible and mobile are the ones with the possibility to accumulate more capital and social prestige. An equal and celebrated status within the society thus depends upon “flexibility” and “mobility”. These same subjects are “regulated” by “logics and practices…produced within particular structures of meaning about family, gender, nationality, class mobility, and social power.11 Different accounts of displacement under “flexible capitalism” can shed light on how the nation-state is far from being erased or subverted by a transnational capitalism that seems to come from nowhere, as well as having a mysterious destiny. There are many ways in which Mexican transnational migrants get around nation-states’ constraints, just as other migrants do. However, the consequences for México and the U.S. as nation-states and their approaches to citizenship point to a different transnational relationship. This work addresses migrants’ agency by looking at Mexican migrants´ everyday forms of

10

Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship. The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P. 28 11 Idem.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 10 resistance to state regulations.12 This approach allows for an understanding of Mexican migrants’ particular genre of “flexible citizenship.”13 Migration in its various strategies poses the question of the new forms of inequality that “citizenship” is beginning to embody globally. When nation-states are seen as sovereign and separate entities based on static enclosed identities, then mobility and migration appear as a threat to the very terms and notions of its sovereignty. However, such is clearly not the case. Rather, mobility and migration are both celebrated and punished by nation-states in the negotiation of citizenship. For Mexican migrants to the United States their flexible citizenship rests more on a flexible belonging than on their possibilities to stretch away of nation-state regulations.

On migration: reconceptualizing space and place beyond the nation-state

In the literature about transnational migration, the discussion begins with words themselves. Is the question migration or immigration, displacements, diasporas, or travels? How are these terms entangled with each other and with citizenship? One recent shift in the theoretical apparatus involves referring to migrants instead of immigrants. Whereas immigrant implies someone who moves and permanently stays in the place of arrival, migrant refers to someone who continues to move back and forth between two homes that may entail a homeplace, a nation, a community, or another place (maybe a mythical

12

James Scott defines everyday forms of resistance as the “ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups.” These forms of resistance “require little or no coordination or planning; they make use of implicit understandings and informal networks, they often represent a form of self-help, they typically avoid any direct, symbolic confrontation with authority.” Scott, James C. 1985. Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. Yale University Press, New Haven/London. P. xvi. 13 C.f. Ong, Aihwa. 1992. “Limits to Cultural Accumulation: Chinese Capitalists on the American Pacific Rim”. In Nina Glick-Schiller, Linda Basch and Christina Blanc-Szanton (Eds). Towards a Transnational Perspective on Migration, Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. Vol. 645. 14 Cornelius 1990b; Dinerman 1982; Escobar Latapí 1993.

Introduction 11 home, an imaginary origin). Both concepts are intertwined with the notion of citizenship, since the latter attempts to categorize people with nation-states, sometimes in a strict fashion, other times in a more flexible manner. Although the literature on México-U.S. migration is vast, it focuses mostly on demographics, labor flows, and economics. Patterns of migration and sending and receiving communities have been the privileged models of analysis of migration.14 However, recent works move beyond this frame, pondering the cultural and political components of migration.15 Within the last decade the study of migration has shifted its focus concentrating on the transnational processes in respect to México-U.S. relations as well as with other regions of the world, providing a broader frame for understanding the interconnected and transnational nature of migration.16 The transnational migration model aims to understand migration as a dynamic process of people constantly moving with corresponding displacements of cultural meanings, practices, and economic exchanges.17 In this model, communities are seen as extended across the border, as multilocational. This approach is informed by theories of transnational capitalist processes and the ways in which they induce and/or presuppose displacements of people. An important feature of this model lies in the fact that such studies aim to understand the agency that migrant communities have instead of viewing them as passive components of transnational capitalism. Within this perspective, migration is seen as a network, a connection, or a circuit.18 These perspectives share a common understanding of migration as a lived spatial dimension constructed through social relations at both the macro and micro levels. Likewise, these approaches allow for an understanding of citizenship as central to migrants’ lives, as well as to the nation-states they inhabit.

15

González Gutiérrez 1995; Lowenthal and Burguess 1993; Dresser 1993; Pérez Godoy 1998; Zavella 1997; Nájera-Ramírez 1994; Rivera-Salgado 2000. 16 Portes, Smith, and Landlot, 1999; Ong 1992, 1999; Basch et al 1994; Wiltshire 1992; Glick Schiller et al 1992; Massey, Durand et al 1991; Goldring 1996; Rouse 1989; Rivera-Salgado 2000; Fox, J., 2005. 17 Portes 1996, Glick-Schiller 1992; Basch 1994; Rouse 1992; Goldring 1996; Wiltshire 1992; Kearney 1991, 1995; Nagengast and Kearney 1990; Smith and Guarnizo 1998; Levitt, 2001. 18 See Rouse 1992; Goldring 1998, Rivera-Salgado 2000, Fitzgerald 2000, Smith and Guarnizo 1998.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants A revalorization of the spatial dimension brings the discussion around migration to a different point. Whereas in the pushpull model locality is seen as a fixed place, which is always-already there, in the multilocational model the local is revalued as a space in flux, where meanings, cultural forms and practices are produced, transported, and reinscribed through the intensity of migration. The local is not only the place where migrants come from. The local is the space in which they live, which might also be connected to various places in different countries. In some of this literature these spaces are referred to as transnational social communities and/or transnational social fields. The concept of transnationalism itself is open to different interpretive frameworks. In cultural studies, transnationalism is understood in terms of flows of meaning and material objects.19 Thus, some scholars have focused on the dynamic exchanges and emerging cultural landscapes of transnational flows of culture.20 On the other hand, in migration studies, transnationalism can be understood as “systems of social relations that are wider than national borders.”21 In any case, the focus is on movements of people, activities, networks, relationships, and identities of transnational migrants.22 Once understood as subjects operating within transnational spheres, migrants become transmigrants, “part of a social system whose networks are based in two or more nation-states and who maintain activities, identities and statuses in several social locations.”23 Thus, transmigrants’ social relations span borders; “their identities, decisions and social networks connect two or more societies simultaneously.”24 When migrants are understood in a transnational context, it is found that migrants retain their relationships to their home society, “not in 12

19

Appadurai 1996, Hannerz 1996, Clifford 1997. e.g. Hannerz 1989; Appadurai 1996; García-Canclini, 1989. 21 Glick-Schiller, Nina. 1992, Op. Cit. P. 10. 22 Bauböck, 2003; R. Rouse, 1989; L. Goldring, 1992; M. Kearney and C. Nagengast, 1989; Fox & Rivera-Salgado, 2004; Portes, 1997; Fox, 2005; Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992, Op. Cit. P. 10. 23 Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. Op. Cit. P. 1 24 Idem. 20

Introduction 13 contradiction but in conjunction with their settlement with their host societies.”25 Furthering the perspective on migration as a transnational social space, by focusing on migration’s connection to citizenship, this work illustrates how transnational migrant’s experiences articulate them in relationship to several places within a transnational spatial dimension, thereby complicating their sense of belonging and often their political allegiances. In this sense the issue of citizenship directly impacts migrants’ lives each time their activity in a particular nationstate is questioned, limited, or forbidden as a result of their migrant practices. Within the context of a new global space produced by the use of new communication technologies which undermine an older sense of a “place-called-home,” leaving people placeless and disoriented, migrants would be a fine example of postmodern disorientation inasmuch as they seem to be unbounded and displaced.26 If one understands migration as a process of leaving one place and settling down in another, of being pushed out from a region and pulled in by another, then, probably, migrants experience a lack of orientation, a loss of a place they can call home. But if the gaze is moved away from the departing and arriving poles, maybe it is possible to see that “home” for a migrant is that connected space, where the linkage lines get thicker the more they are traveled, walked, lived, and filled with words, stories, and meanings. Many readings of place as “home” imagine it as portraying the “security of a (false) stability and an apparently reassuring boundedness,” thus requiring places to be identified as enclosures, and establishing “their identity through negative counter-position with the Other beyond the boundaries.”27 Doreen Massey proposes an alternative conceptualization of place as formed out of social interrelations. Most striking, within her model, is the observation that a proportion of social interrelations stretch beyond that “place” itself.28

25

Glick-Schiller, Nina. 1992. Op. cit. P.8 In Massey, Doreen. 1992. “A Place Called Home.” In New Formations No. 17, Summer. P. 8 27 Cf. Massey, Doreen. 1992. Op. Cit. P.13 28 Cf. Massey, Doreen. 1994. “Double Articulation. A Place in the World”. In 26

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 14 The problem arises when one then tries to figure out why, for so many people ––especially migrants, particularly Mexican migrants in the U.S.–– “home” figures and is narrated as a stable, bounded place. Moreover, because of the intensity in which this space is inhabited by people, it acquires qualities of permanence and solidity. While migrants recognize that they left home because it was economically insecure — because home excluded their own imagined futures— the experience of displacement makes migrants narrate an idyllic “place called home,” a place where they belong and where they feel themselves to be a part, as citizens.

The Nation

The study of the relation between migration and citizenship is also embedded in theories and conceptions of nation and state. The debates on the nation concentrate mostly on whether it is an invented tradition (Hobsbawn and Ranger, 1983), an imagined community (Anderson, 1983), the result of the industrial revolution (Gellner, 1983), or a construct built on primordial roots such as ethnic origins (Smith, A., 1986). All of these theoretical frameworks share a common goal, which is to present what represents itself as “natural,” “primordial,” or necessary as in fact “invented,” “imagined,” or “constructed.” Unlike nationalist language and claims, studies in political culture understand the nation as something mythic, invented, contested and dreamed rather than as a primordial force or entity. For Benedict Anderson, nations are imagined “because the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion.”29 Nations are imagined as limited entities, with boundaries. Likewise, they are imagined as sovereign, free. Finally, nations are “imagined as a community, because regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship.”30 Anderson does not share the view of nationalism as a political ideology but rather as a more complex set of cultural interactions ––including but not limited to the political–– that allow for

Angelica Bammer, Ed. 1994. Displacements. Univ. of Wisconsin Press, P.115 29 Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Imagined Communities. Verso, London/New York. p.6. 30 Anderson, Benedict. 1983. Op. Cit. P.7

Introduction 15 the imagining of the nation: namely language or the origin narratives of a particular nation, which usually place it in opposition to some other entity. From Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger’s perspective, although they do not focus on defining the nation, the invention of tradition becomes the founding principle of a community’s identity. This theoretical approach to identity construction can and has been applied toward thinking about the nation. When the nation is viewed as an invented tradition, it entails the use of various sorts of materials that have been accumulated throughout the history of a society, which then elaborates a narrative of its origins, accentuating those traits that will appear as its heart and soul. “Inventing traditions... is essentially a process of formalization and ritualization, characterized by reference to the past, if only by imposing repetition.”31 The existence of the nation is reified as a supraentity that seems to have always been there, or at least to embody the destiny of a society through the use of symbols such as the flag, images, or the national anthem, which appear to represent the essence of the nation. In their everyday practices Mexican migrants experience a reinvention of their Mexicanity and of their traditions. The migration process, with time, memory and distance in the middle, makes Mexican migrants more nationalists, more rooted in a notion of home that acquires different characteristics depending on the circumstances. In contrast to the previous approaches, for Anthony Smith ethnicity is the concrete feature that enabled the appearance of nations and nationalism.32 Modern nation-states simply extended and deepened the ways in which the members of an ethnie associated and communicated. Here ethnie functions as the axis that allows for the existence of a broader, perhaps more abstract, sense of belonging to a community such as a nation. In contrast to Anderson’s position, and

31

Invented traditions is taken to mean “a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behavior by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past... they normally attempt to establish continuity with a suitable historic past”. P. 1. Eric Hobsbawn. 1983. “Introduction: Inventing Traditions”. In Eric Hobsbawn and Terence Ranger. 1983. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge, Cambridge Univ. Press. P. 4. 32 Smith, Anthony D. 1986. The Ethnic Origin of Nations. Blackwell, Oxford U.K.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 16 Ernest Gellner’s, who stress the novelty and modernity of nationalism —especially its correlation with the needs of industrialization— Smith recognizes the existence of a “continuity between ethnic identities and loyalties on the one hand, and nationhood and nationalism on the other hand”.33 Here ethnicity appears as the element that sustains any experience of nationhood and nationalism. According to Ernest Gellner, nationalism and the nation-state are not necessarily based on ethnicity. For him, ethnicity is not a given; moreover it is a construct of the state itself. The rise of nationalism should be explained in relation to the development of industrial society. Gellner’s theory rests on the idea that industrial economic growth requires particular forms of polity and culture. According to Gellner, it was mass education that provided a common culture, which then allowed the community a nationalistic perspective. Thus, Gellner places the educational system as the core provider of the narrative of a shared community, of an identity beyond kinship. Deconstructing a nation’s own ideological presentation of itself and its communities allows for an understanding of how imagined communities and senses of belonging are lived as real. Transnational migration produces a trans-national social space that transcends territorial boundaries. The chapters that follow show how a sense of sharing a common bond, rooted in history, in places, in language is integral to the experiences of Mexican migrants citizenship. From this sense of belonging, migrants construct a social space through their everyday practices. The notion of imagined communities is relevant to how Mexican migrants understand themselves as they act and interact everyday. This work takes into consideration the imaginary dimension, entailed in the idea of a México that exists beyond its geopolitical boundaries, by asking: What practices and memories do Mexican migrants in the U.S. share? In what ways is México an imagined community? How do legal and political frameworks intersect with conceptions of identity, ethnicity, and place to create migrant communities, whether imagined or real? However one frames the questions, migrant imaginations, inventions and/or constructions contest and re-define the lines and limits of national hegemonies. In

33

Kellas, James G. 1993. The Politics of Nationalism and Ethnicity. MacMillan, Hong Kong. P.48.

Introduction 17 other words, the rich work done by theorists of nation and state, can be usefully applied to understanding the traditions, inventions and practices of migrants as they craft identities on, over, beyond, and between nation-states.

The State The debate on the nation intersects with the discussion of the state. Usually, anthropologists have viewed the state as an invasive presence in local life. Classical political anthropology looked at the formal organization of power relations —mostly at the local level— or at the processes that intervened in political struggles, or concentrated on the description of individual strategies to obtain and maintain power. Later works have studied the state primarily as a cultural formation. An important aspect to highlight about ethnographies that focus on the state is that they study politics a cultural practice, as practices that produce meaning and power.34 A useful perspective on the connections between nation, state and identity, appears in Michael Herzfeld’s study of the Greek state. In his book Cultural Intimacy, Herzfeld studies the political culture of Greece by looking at the way in which social actors interact with the nation-state´ rhetoric.35 He analyses how peoples’ daily actions and speech around the state “validate the nation-state as the central legitimating authority in their lives.”36 For Herzfeld, while the state is reified as an entity whose authority is beyond individual control, at the same time it can be and is subverted through the reformulation and recasting of official idioms in people’s daily interactions and imaginings of the state. The study of the state and its political culture according to Herzfeld must be grounded in the details of daily life —“symbolism, commensality, family, and friendship— that would make it convincing for each specific case or that might call for the recognition of the cultural specificity of each nationalism.”37 Herzfeld considers that top-

34

Herzfeld 1996; Anderson 1990; Anagnost 1997; Pemberton 1994; Ivy 1995. Herzfeld, Michael. 1996. Cultural Intimacy. The Social Poetics in the Nation-State. Routledge, New York/London. 36 Herzfeld, Michael. 1996. Op. Cit. P.2. 37 Herzfeld, Michael. 1996. Op. cit. P. 4-5 35

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 18 down explanations of the nation-state, e.g., Anderson’s, Gellner’s and Hobsbawn’s, suggest that ordinary people have no impact on the form their local nationalism takes, an assumption that is problematic since it excludes the role that particular cultural formations play in the configuration of specific nation-states and their political culture. These accounts do not acknowledge how a sense of cultural intimacy is fundamental in the rethinking of multiple pasts, which at the same time are constructed out of intimacy, “and intimacy can also recompose its geopolitical claims.”38 For Herzfeld, an anthropological study of national political culture requires an understanding of how citizens — including bureaucrats— engage in shaping the meaning of the national identity, whether they reflect or contravene official ideology. Inasmuch as the meaning of the nation is debatable —openly or not— the state cannot be understood as a monolithic, autonomous agent. Undergirding Herzfeld’s work lies earlier work in Anthropology that emphasizes the discursive and performative processes involved in the formation of nation-states. Cliffford Geertz’s and Nicholas Dirks’s account of the state foreground the cultural aspect of politics, whether it is seen as a spectacle or as the result of discursive practices. In Negara, Clifford Geertz studies the Balinese state, which he describes as the “theater state.” In his analysis of this particular state formation, Geertz focuses on the cultural elements that allow for the existence of a determinate political organization.39 According to Geertz’s reading, the Balinese state had a strong expressive component —rooted in a particular mythic story that legitimized the existence of the existing political structure— which outweighed other elements that are usually attached to the configuration of the state, such as concentration of power and the exercise of government.

38

Herzfeld defines cultural intimacy as “the recognition of those aspects of a cultural identity that are considered a source of external embarrassment but that nevertheless provide insiders with the assurance of common sociality, the familiarity with the bases of power that may at one moment assure the disenfranchised a degree of creative irreverence and at the next moment reinforce the effectiveness of intimidation.” Herzfeld, Michael. 1996. Op. cit. P.3/P.13 39 Geertz, Clifford. 1980. Negara. The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princenton University Press,Princenton, P. 16

Introduction 19 Whereas for Geertz the study of the state requires a spectacular/performative approach to culture, to look at culture as an elaborate performance, in contrast Nicholas Dirks in The Hollow Crown focuses on the ephemeral and transitory discursivity involved in the making and the operation of the state. The elements that Dirks highlights in order to understand the Indian state in eighteenth century Southern India are: conceptions of sovereignty, transactions in gifts and kinship, the structure and form of hegemony and what he calls the textualized discourse —such as genealogies, ballads, chronicles— which he approaches as cultural discourse.40 In his analysis, Nicholas Dirks insists upon relations of power and dominance as explanatory frameworks to the reified social order —the caste system —that otherwise appeared determined by structures of thought. For Dirks, the social relations that produced Indian society, “far from being ‘essentialist’ structures were permeated by ‘political’ inflections, meanings, and imperatives”.41 Geertz’ and Dirks’ works on the state provide analytical tools to understand how the Mexican and U.S. nation-states perform their own hegemony in relation to migrants. Understanding the performative and discursive dimension also allows an comprehensive perspective of how migrants interpret and respond to discourses and spectacles of power thereby reshaping the contours of the nations, states, and nationalisms they inhabit. Theories of nation and state point to questions of membership and democracy, issues that are at the forefront of this work. Underlying the discussion around democracy are prior assumptions about who is defined as a member of the national imagined community and who is excluded from it. Apparently, to define itself, every nation needs to establish itself in opposition to some other (Barth, 1969). There is a need to exclude in order to contain the community. In some cases the conception of national citizenship is ethnically based. As Aristide Zolberg explains, other nations ––most democracies–– hold a political conception of citizenship, although many combine this “apparently open-door membership with a more or less manifest ethnic identity as

40

Dirks, Nicholas. 1987. The Hollow Crown. Ethnohistory of an Indian Kingdom. Cambridge University Press, Great Britain. P. 404. 41 Dirks, Nicholas. 1987. Op. Cit. P. 404.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 20 42 well.” Nationhood thus continues to include an ethnic dimension, which tends to be “activated if and when cultural ‘others’ turn up as potential or actual immigrants and tends to generate efforts to exclude or at least restrict the flow.”43 Democracies all over the world are posed with an essential challenge: how to solve the exclusion principle intrinsic to the definition of citizenship? Modern democracies situated within transnational economies based on traveling labor and commodities have to face an even bigger task: how to include citizens that live beyond the territorial boundaries of the nation-state? Mexican migrants tend to express their relationship to the nation-states they inhabit as a connection with monolithic entities. However, their own practices and interpretations of the legal and social frameworks they encounter contribute to the constant reconfiguration of the legal, economic and political boundaries of México and the U.S. This work reviews how the spectacle and discursive dimensions become conspicuous and engulf Mexican migrants’ transnational political and everyday practices. As México and the United States enter a phase in which they have to respond to these challenges, this work shows how legal changes have taken place to address citizens on the move while at the same time reactionary forces pull back in order to sustain an idea of an enclosed nation.

Methodology Based on multi-sited ethnographic research, this work addresses the specificities of three domains of citizenship ––belonging, law, and politics–– and the politics of citizenship produced by their articulation. In the study of each cultural space of citizenship the use of a specific set of methods was required in order to allow for an ethnography of engagements of citizenship. To understand what a transnational social space is and how it functions, I describe the specific space of Aguililla-Redwood City, and the particular culture of citizenship it produces. The purpose of this

42

Cf. Zolberg, Aristide R. 2000. “The Politics of Immigration Policy: an Externalist Perspective.” In Foner, Nancy, Rubén G. Rambaut and Steven Gould, Eds. 2000, Op. Cit. P. 62. 43 Zolberg, A. Idem.

Introduction 21 chapter is to provide an ethnography of belonging. Therefore, in this first engagement of citizenship, I present how migrants, through their situated cultural practices, create a sense of belonging. Belonging is central to the notion of citizenship, and it is here where membership to a community is negotiated at a more horizontal level. To capture migrants’ perspective, I engaged in participant-observation, conducting open-ended interviews with people who had been migrants themselves or had family members in the U.S., together with life-history narratives. I traveled from Aguililla to Redwood City following this community’s traditional migrant route. In Redwood City, Aguililla’s parallel town, I worked with the Aguilillan migrant community, concentrating on questions surrounding citizenship, legality, and the affective dimension entailed in migration. In particular, I reviewed the process for obtaining U.S. citizenship. Likewise, I participated as an instructor in local citizenship classes where Aguilillans were applying for citizenship. I was thus able to establish connections with some of those in the Mexican community who were already going through a process of changing their formal legal/political status, i.e., their citizenship. To understand how migrants establish the terms of their belonging and allegiance to a given community, I conducted openended interviews and recorded life-history narratives, which afforded an in-depth view of the emotional side entailed in migration and helped understand how connections to the hometown or the country are maintained and imagined, as well as blurred. To approach the second culture of citizenship presented in this study, I review several legal changes that took place mostly between 1994 and 1996, although some extended to 2005, to understand how México and the U.S. as nation-states define and limit migrants’ membership. Namely, I focus on the Mexican non-loss of nationality law, the reform to article 36 of the Mexican Constitution that opened the possibility for the vote abroad, the U.S. 1996 Immigration law, California’s Proposition 187, and some aspects of the 1996 welfare reform legislation. Laws play a central role in the constitution of the politics of citizenship of the Mexican transnational experience. Therefore, the work explores the selected group of laws in three ways: a) as texts, reviewing their meaning, their impact, and the political context in which they emerge; b) as they interact in migrants’ daily lives, and impact their existence, and are interpreted and enacted by migrants; and c) as a site where two nation-states converge and engage with each other and their citizens.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants In México City, I worked at the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) reviewing their material on the legal changes that took place in 1996 regarding the nationality law and the constitutional reform to article 36. This reform, which opened the possibility for the vote abroad, included a clause stating that the IFE had to organize an Experts Commission in 1988 to study the possibility for implementing the vote abroad. I reviewed the legal, bibliographical, and journalistic material that the IFE gathered on the subject and followed the work of this Commission. The main purpose for analyzing these laws, as well as the work of the Commission, was to examine the ways in which México and the United States, as nation-states, consider and address migrants' membership and thus comprehend the specific space of citizenship produced. This analysis of the institutions and structures entangled in migrants’ existence allows for an understanding of how nation-states, via laws exclude migrants from the right of membership in the state, as well as they constrain migrants’ possibilities for exercising full membership. In this sense, the work emphasizes the role law plays in the construction of situated cultural practices of citizenship. Finally, the third culture of citizenship I describe emerges as a result of the open political activities of the Mexican migrants who have been lobbying for the political rights of Mexicans living abroad. These migrants have organized different political and academic events on the subject, as well as lobbying trips to engage directly with the Mexican Congress and the political parties. To gain a closer look at their perspectives and political attitudes, I participated in forums related to the vote abroad both in México and in the U.S., as well as in various electronic groups that focused on this subject. More specifically, I conducted in-depth interviews with three migrants who represent a wide spectrum of the political activities of Mexican migrants. In this sense, I address migrants’ practices of citizenship in the formal political arena, practices that are at the same time, permeated by senses of belonging, and produce a particular culture of citizenship. The work moves between everyday life and the formal political sphere, covering different articulations of transnationality and citizenship. Through the ethnographic material presented, I portray the cultural specificity of the politics of citizenship enacted by Mexican transnational migrants as they interact with two nation-states in ways that serve to reconfigure the very terms of these entities. Likewise, by 22

Introduction 23 analyzing a group of laws, I examine how México and the U.S. define the limits of their membership and categorize migrants in ways that powerfully affect their ability to travel and function in their daily lives. This two-way movement is what I understand as politics of citizenship, an approach that frames the work.

Organization of the book The book is organized in three parts addressing the engagements of citizenship of Mexican migrants: Citizenship and Belonging; Citizenship and Law which includes four chapters; and Politics and Citizenship. Chapter 2, Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space, addresses the culture of citizenship constructed in the transnational social space of Aguililla-Redwood City, as an example of one of the dimensions entailed in citizenship. The main purpose is to obtain an image of how migrants build a sense of belonging when they inhabit a transnational social space. I describe how Aguililla and Redwood City form this transnational social space, and how the residents of this space live. Likewise, I look at transnational migrants’ stories, Aguilillans in California, in order to understand how the transnational sphere is lived and signified in very concrete and “local” ways. Contiguous and almost metonymic relations between México and the U.S. reinforce the social space that migrants have built around them. As part of these transnational social spaces, communities undergo changes, which travel back and forth between México and the U.S. This chapter attempts to describe this migrant space and demonstrate the inseparable socio-cultural and economic links established by this transnational community. The existence of such transnational social spaces provides an arena for understanding how the meaning of citizenship is negotiated in everyday life. The next four chapters form the second part of the book, which focuses on law as language and as praxis, and the interactions between law, people, and citizenship. Although I recognize that laws are texts, I look at them as political practices. While laws might seem formal and distant from everyday life, I consider them as sites where state and people converge as well as powerful tools for political change. Chapter 3, Hard texts. Engaging with the legal realm, deals with the legal framework that structures Mexican migrants´ lives in the

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 24 United States. I review the U.S. 1996 immigration law, California’s Proposition 187, and the 1996 Welfare Reform Act as it pertains to immigration policy. Chapter 5, Opening the Nation: Who Belongs Here? focuses on Mexican law reviewing closely the Mexican constitutional reform of article 36 that opened the possibility for the vote abroad and the non-loss of nationality law. Each of these two strictly legalistic chapters is articulated with a chapter that presents the interaction between migrants and laws to understand how these play a role in the construction of migrants’ citizenship. Chapter 4, The Cultural Politics of Citizenship: Migrants Voices, concentrates on how migrants experience and practice the law. This chapter shows the different relations migrants establish with the laws that cross their daily existence in the U.S., as well as their own interpretations of these laws. Chapter 6, Law as practice: experiencing the law introduces the debate that has surrounded the initiatives produced by the Mexican Congress in relation to the vote abroad and the nationality law. Again, the perspective is on law as practice. The chapter presents the different meanings citizenship has both for migrants and for México as a nation-state. Furthermore, the chapter focuses on the political campaign carried out by the Mexicans living abroad to lobby for the vote for Mexican elections. Migrants’ existence raises another set of problems around national boundaries and sovereignty. In other words, Mexican migrants, because they are a significant potential political and economic constituency in both México and the U.S., have become the locus of a struggle for the reconfiguration of national boundaries amongst these two distant neighbors. This book argues that migrants might in fact live in the margins, yet their space-in-between, while being a potential place of resistance, also implies that their lives perform the contradictions of nation-states in the making and in the blurring. Moreover, the same legal discursive corpus that surrounds migrants ––immigration laws, nationality, and voting laws–– also frames the notion of the border, displacing it from its geographical dimension and moving it to a political realm. Finally, migrants ––who have been historically disenfranchised and denied political voice–– are insisting on their rooted and grounded identity in order to claim political agency and thus challenge constraining definitions of citizenship.

Introduction 25 Chapter 7, Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging, searches to understand how the situated cultural practices of Mexican migrants who are politically active impact a larger notion of citizenship. The chapter presents the stories of three Mexican migrants, Andrés Bermúdez ––otherwise known as the Tomato King–– Rufino Domínguez from the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional, and Raúl Ross, who through different political venues are negotiating and building a notion of citizenship. I reflect upon these stories in the face of citizenship theory, and address more closely the question of citizenship and how it is contested by the existence of politically active migrants. The discussion of migration and citizenship necessarily leads to questions of entitlements, rights, inclusions, exclusions, and evaluations of who does and who does not count as a full member of a nation-state. Rather than looking at the construction of citizenship within the exclusive boundaries of a nation-state, I focus on how transnational migrants appear to threaten the sovereignty of both the imagined community they leave and the one where they arrive. This approach allows for an understanding of how citizenship is constructed in the interaction between nation-states’ particular definitions, and migrants’ transnational practices, claims, and senses of entitlement.

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CHAPTER 2

Citizenship and belonging: building a transnational social space

In 1987, México's left wing opposition candidate, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, paid a visit to his Michoacano countrymen in order to personally ask for their support for his 1988 presidential election candidacy. That Cárdenas wanted Michoacano support was not surprising: the Mexican state of Michoacán has been known as the symbolic heart of Cardenismo, the ideology conceived by Lázaro Cárdenas, former president of México in the late 1930s, who tried to incorporate the social and agrarian reforms of the Mexican Revolution into his government. What was unique about this phase of Cárdenas' 1988 campaign, however, was that it unfolded not in the state of Michoacán but rather several thousand miles away, in Silicon Valley, California. Home to Redwood City, otherwise known (to Aguilillans) as La Aguililla Chiquita, this area has a high number of migrants from Aguililla, Michoacán. Cárdenas' campaign trip signaled a new trend in the contemporary Mexican notion of political practice that actively includes Mexican citizens living in the United States. Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ visits are an example of a moment when national politics transcends nation-state boundaries to address its own locals.44

44

For Cardenismo in Silicon Valley see Martínez, Jesús. 1993. “At the Periphery of Democracy: The Binational Politics of Mexican Immigrants in Silicon Valley, California.” PhD Dissertation, University of California Berkeley.

27

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Drawing on ethnographic data collected in Aguililla and Redwood City, this chapter explores how citizenship is built in the transnational social space formed by migrants moving between Aguililla and Redwood City. By recounting their stories, I show how migrants create a social space that while framed by national and transnational political processes is lived and conceived as Aguilillan, as local, and ultimately, as Mexican. Like the migrants I interviewed, I begin with Aguililla, travel to and return from the United States, and theorize what the political, the local, and the community are in this transnational social space. 28

Aguililla Aguililla is located in the Valle de Apatzingán, better known as Tierra Caliente, at the southwestern end of the state of Michoacán. Aguililla looks like any small Mexican town with its stone streets and houses with Spanish style roofs and sometimes adobe walls. At the heart of the town is the plaza with a kiosk in the middle, and surrounded by the Palacio Municipal, stores, and a “grand hotel.” The church is one block uphill, at the top of Aguililla. There are five main population centers in the municipio of Aguililla: El Aguaje, Dos Aguas, Naranjo de Chila, El Limón, and the county seat Aguililla. The rest of the municipio consists of smaller hamlets of less than one hundred people. The region is primarily agricultural, consisting of small family-owned ranches and communal ejidos. The population centers are the hub of connection around which the ranches circulate and flow. In Aguililla, as in other towns in Michoacán, the culture of politics is best articulated by the confrontations between Cardenistas and those who are not Cardenistas. In general, in Michoacán, many

After Cárdenas, other politicians have gone to the U.S. to establish ties with the migrant community. Ricardo Monreal campaigned with Zacatecan migrant organizations for the 1997 Zacatecas governor race. He received a substantive support from the Zacatecan hometown associations in the U.S. Although the Casas de Guanajuato predated Vicente Fox, he worked with Guanajuatan groups, first as a governor to promote investments in Guanajuato and later to promote his presidential candidacy. In 1999, the formation of the organization Migrantes Mexicanos por el Cambio was announced to support Vicente Fox. This organization purportedly represented 250 thousand immigrant families (see MIMEXCA, Press release. 1999. El Universal, October 20.)

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 29 people were waiting for the return of Lázaro Cárdenas. The old men that hung out every afternoon in Aguililla’s main plaza were among those waiting for the return of the General. These men with white hair and strong features, with sad gazes and long silences at first glance appear as if frozen in time. In actuality, they are living history, narrating past tales while actively partaking in the construction of Aguililla’s contemporary history. The men from the plaza are for the most part ejidatarios, owners of collective land given to them by General Lázaro Cardenas’ government at the end of the 1930’s. During the 1990 municipal election, political power shifted to the leftist Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) due mostly to the support of ejidatarios and small landholders, all of them hard core Cardenistas. As one of the 113 municipios in Michoacán, Aguililla has been governed by the PRD since 1990. However, in the 1998 local elections, the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) ––supported by Aguililla’s elite–– came close to winning the municipal election. The PRD held the municipality with the support of the small landowners and the ejidatarios, the guarachudos as the middle class PRIistas called them.45 In this state, it can be said that Lázaro Cárdenas’ specter and legacy are ever-present. After the Michoacán November 2001 elections, when his grandson PRD candidate Lázaro Cárdenas Batel was elected as governor, the wait and hope for Cárdenas’ return was fulfilled. Michoacán is a state where the diversity of México's contemporary political landscape expresses itself clearly. In this state all three main political parties are strongly represented. Michoacán is a state where, after 1988, political opposition to the then ruling party, the PRI, made a significant advance. The PRD has alternated majority status with the PRI, and the Partido de Acción Nacional (PAN) has also had significant rising support. Moreover, as the stronghold of Cardenismo, and ––the home of former president Lázaro Cárdenas–– Michoacán represents the historic force that originally gave political strength to the opposition left wing party, the PRD. This political vitality travels with Michoacano migrants; and the Cardenista spirit present in Michoacán’s political landscape also manifests itself in the Michoacano migrant community.

45

Guarachudo derives from huarache, which means sandal, which campesinos wear everyday. As it was used it was meant as a derogatory classist comment.

30

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants

An Aguilillan family On my initial journey, by bus, to Aguililla I met María, a migrant woman who traveled back and forth form California to Aguililla and to Guadalajara selling goods. She suggested I stay at her comadre’s home Yola because it was not a good idea for a young single woman to be alone in Aguililla. Yola and Don Tadeo, her husband, agreed and I lived with them during my stay. Of a working class family, Yola is a housewife in her late thirties, mother of two teen-age daughters. The house has two rooms, one for the two daughters who shared their bedroom with me, and the master bedroom. There is a big kitchen with a dining table, and a small den for the T.V, which also serves as Yola’s candy store. In the middle of the house lies an open patio, with a water well ––a pila–– that warms up in the middle of the day, just in time for people to take a shower. The girls go to school and help their mom with the tiendita, the candy store. The afternoons are spent watching telenovelas, Mexican soap operas, which are a significant topic of conversation. A retired migrant worker, Don Tadeo lived in the United States for several years, and has two daughters from his first marriage who live in Redwood City and San Jose. While working in the United States, Don Tadeo suffered a work injury that paralyzed his legs. Now in Aguililla, he receives a retirement pension and a worker’s compensation check. His daughters also send him money regularly. Their house is located at the entrance of Aguililla, close to the army fort; it is only half built, it is in “obra negra”. As many households in Aguililla, this family depends upon their participation in the Aguilillan transnational migrant circuit for their economic existence. However, because of Don Tadeo’s income from the U.S. they are better off than other people in Aguililla. Don Tadeo and Yola were born in El Limón, another population center of Aguililla, which is surrounded by ranches. They grew up there, and a part of their family still lives in this small town. Don Tadeo took us on a day trip to El Limón. Dirt roads cross El Limón. Adobe houses line the main street. There is a school and a few corner stores. In the afternoons people sit outside their homes watching children play in the streets and talk to their neighbors. For the family, going to El Limón was like a picnic to the countryside. We went to the river that runs by the side of the town, for many, its main attraction. Many people gather there to swim and enjoy themselves. During our

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 31 picnic Yola and Don Tadeo delighted the girls and I with stories of their childhood, of other people that lived in El Limón, and of what it was like to grow up in a rural community, where part of being a child includes taking care of the pigs or helping in the family orchard. However, unlike those from the towns, the people from the ranches are less trusting of outsiders, like Yola’s older sister Asunción, who asked me several questions about what kind of job I had, and what kind of work I was doing in Aguililla and, most importantly, for whom. She told me about the time students came to ask questions, I think it was the census, and not long after that the soldiers and the police raided several ranches for marihuana production. While one thing is not necessarily related to the other, in Asunción’s imaginary it is; she, like many others in Aguililla, does not welcome outsiders. The ranches and urban centers depend upon each other economically and politically. Aguililla can be considered a livestock and agricultural community as the majority of Aguilillans (55.1%) work in these areas with a third of the production aimed for the consumption of the producers, and the rest for local and national markets.46 The private sector produces for the markets whereas the ejido lands mostly produce maize and beans, poultry, and occasionally livestock, for the subsistence of the ejidatarios.47 It would seem that, strictly speaking, there are no major problems in Aguililla. The land produces enough for local consumption and external markets, there is an internal market and the municipio is economically connected to the rest of the region, providing for a variety of options for the people of Aguililla. Likewise the political landscape appears to have evened out with the change of party, a fact that at the same time has brought more accountability as the PRD governments have been under constant scrutiny by the PRI opposition. So, why is Aguililla a town with a long history of migration?

Roots: Aguililla’s origin stories During our endless conversations Yola told me many stories about Aguililla. As we sat at her dining table, or inside her kitchen, Yola would pour some coffee into clay mugs and begin to narrate tales. The

46

This represents .99% of the total livestock produced in Michoacán. Cf. Informe Solidaridad, Michoacán. 1998. Pp.12 and 22. 47 See Censo Agrícola Michoacán. 1995. Tomo III, P.1474.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 32 stories of Aguililla unfold one after another. The lives of the inhabitants of this town get entangled with each other, from the church, from Yolanda’s roof, inside Carlota’s candle-lit home, and from the mountains that surround this Michoacán town they all contribute to the recreation of Aguililla´s history, and also its identity within the nation, the state, and transnational contexts. If you speak to Aguilillans, even the name of their town points to mythic origins of their particular historical identity as a town. As the story goes, when colonial settlers founded Aguililla back in 1683, it received the name Los Terreros, probably reflecting the territorial desires of the colonizing mind. The town’s name was changed due to a special event, which took place around 1723. One day when a small child ––el indio Juan Pablo–– was playing, he was grabbed by an eagle, an aguila real. He yelled and screamed and some aguilillas, small eagles, that lived near his hut fought against the big eagle until they were able to free the child and softly set him on a haystack. When a priest who visited the communities heard the story directly from the indio Juan Pablo, he renamed the village and called it Aguililla.48 Perhaps, this mythic origin of Aguililla can serve as the metaphor to view the social structure of Aguililla, and its inhabitants, to understand the quality of their resistance, and their displacements and even their renowned belligerence, their opposition to big eagles, to government ruling. Furthering the symbolic spirit of Aguililla’s history of resistance at the margins of the nation-state, Aguilillans tell the story of Mamey Cave. This story is one of the many manifestations of the relation between an enclosed Aguililla, with secret codes that only belong to them, and an Aguililla unavoidably related with the rest of the region and the nation. This cave is one among several caves in Aguililla, all of them guarding different aspects of Aguililla’s history. According to some townspeople, in the Mamey Cave or Cueva del Mamey lies a hidden treasure from a bygone war. As Yola told me: The Mamey Cave opens only on Holy Thursday and Good Friday. Many have attempted to go in because it is said that there lies a hidden treasure that was left after a war, the one

48

1998. Apéndice No. 1 de la Monografía del “Escudo de Aguililla”. Conozca la historia del escudo, su descripción y el reglamento para su uso como “símbolo representativo”. Document in process at the moment provided to me by the Municipio (County) authorities in October. P.7

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 33 called the Cristero War, when the government stole huge amounts from the people and concealed the money there [in the cave]. My father remembers that war. The cave is where the money from that time remains, gold and silver coins, unlike today’s that when they fall they don’t even make noise...There are treasures in that cave, they’ve come to study it, from the United States and from other parts because there are treasures. The cave is spellbinding. It is known that there is gold because my dad and Don Cutberto were there, they went during Holy Days. Only on these days the door opens...This is the reason why others who have tried to go have not found the pots and money. My Dad and Don Cutberto left palms to mark their trail and had “ocote” ––small wood torches–– to light their path. Then they found the pots but didn’t bring anything, only Don Cutberto brought some dust from one of the pots in his pants’ pocket. They didn’t know there was money. My dad brought a stone. Back in town, when they told Don Cutberto that the dust was gold, and that in the stone there was gold, lots of people wanted to go but they were unable to go in because the door was closed. The Holy Days had passed.49 The Mamey Cave story is remarkable because it places Aguililla in relationship with regional and national historical events like the Cristero War or Cristiada referred to in the story as a time “when the government stole from the people.” But the story also connects Aguililla to contemporary issues of political representation and property rights. The Cristiada, the war between the anticlerical Plutarco E. Calles’ government and the Catholic church, took place between 1926 and 1929, and related in particular to communal land use, a particularly important topic for Aguililla because of its later connection to Lázaro Cárdenas’ land reform. For those who fought with the Catholic Church known as cristeros, the soldiers of God, peasants most of them, the war was about defending their land and their beliefs. While the Cristiada War was lived by Aguilillans, and by other people from the region, as a war to defend their religious beliefs, it was also a war against an abusive central government that was failing to fulfill the promises of the 1910

49

Conversation with Yola, Aguililla, October 1998.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 34 Revolution against Porfirio Diaz’ regime.50 Yola’s version of the Mamey Cave story emphasizes that the treasure in the cave was the people’s money taken away by the central government. In this sense, the big eagle was once more making its presence felt in Aguililla’s history. According to anthropologist Roger Rouse, Aguililla closed itself off from the rest of the region during the nineteenth century. This separation ––or marginalization–– by Aguilillans was derived in part from two opposite perspectives that existed in Aguililla during the nineteenth century.51 One group of Aguililla’s elite favored the presence of outsiders and investors in order to do commerce with them. The people who were based outside the town center, in the ranches, on the other hand, rejected and distrusted the presence of outsiders in Aguililla.52 Moreover, whereas in the rest of the country the authority of the state was reinforced during Porfirio Díaz’ regime (the Porfiriato), in Aguililla it continued to be weak.53 Thus, as Roger Rouse shows, Aguililla became a safe-haven for people who were escaping from the police, from a personal fight, or from a dreaded central government. Paradoxically, Aguililla’s initial political isolation was the factor that drew outside people to the area. The socio-political events that took place throughout the first half of the twentieth century in México such as the Mexican Revolution, the Cristiada War, and Lázaro Cárdenas’ agrarian reform deeply impacted Aguililla’s social structure, providing a space for the expression of local tensions.54 As Aguilillas’ elites struggled against the threats posed by the government they also had their own internal

50

Porfirio Díaz was in power for thirty four years (1876- 1910) before he was ousted in 1910. 51 Rouse, Roger. 1988. “Migración al Suroeste de Michoacán durante el Porfiriato: el Caso de Aguililla.” In Thomas Calvo and Gustavo López, Eds. Movimientos de Población en el Occidente de México. CEMCA/ Colegio de Michoacán, México. P. 242. 52 Cf. Rouse, Roger. 1989. Mexican Migration to the United States: Family Relations in the Development of a Transnational Migrant Circuit. Dissertation, Anthropology Department, Standford University. P. 15 53 Cf. Rouse. 1988. Op. Cit.. P.242. 54 Cf. Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P. 15.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 35 social conflicts to overcome in order to exercise local hegemony.55 Today, Aguililla has gone from an enclosed community, which made it difficult for non-natives to migrate into the area and invest, to an open economy where international transactions take place, together with a constant flow of people and transnational connections. The Mamey Cave story links Aguililla with a larger regional and national history; but, it also expresses a desire in Aguililla to gain economic prosperity, to find the treasure, by way of passing through a magical door. It could be said that today Aguilillans have found two ways of passing through the magical door: migration and drug trafficking, two practices embedded in the national economy of the United States, of México, and in Aguililla’s contemporary transnational life.

Magical Doors: Family Feuds

One of the more negative and most publicized/ public understandings of Aguililla refer to drug trafficking and family feuds. As Aguilillans grapple with the violence that surrounds them, they are also trapped by the discourse produced by the media ––newspapers and corridos (songs)–– that reinforce the image of Aguilillans as violent people. This kind of discourse articulates perfectly with the negative images within the U.S. of the dangers of migrants. However, while many of the negative portrayals represent grains of truth, the aim of this work is to complicate nationalist imaginings of migrants to see how they experience, transform and contest their own perceived marginality. Marginality is a distinctive characteristic of Aguililla and is intrinsically entangled in the way Aguilillans engage with the nationstates of México and the United States. Being on the margins of a larger order of some kind is a position that Aguilillans equally resist, re-affirm and project through their transnational practices. As Aguilillans search for magical doors to express, live, and transform their marginality, drug trafficking indeed appears as a strategic possibility within a limited range of options. Aguilillans are infamous in their region for being conflictive. The engineer from the municipio and Ana, one of the two daughters of the family I stayed with, told me that the reputation comes from an event that took place in 1990. A family was having a party in one of the rancherías when a squad of federales otherwise known as judiciales ––

55

Cf. Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P.16.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 36 federal police–– shot at them. People ran, hid and returned fire but they were not able to hit any of the federales. Later the federales were ambushed and killed. Only one of them escaped alive and managed to make it to the army post, and before dying told the soldiers what happened. The judiciales immediately went back, and killed all those named Valencia, and raped the women. The municipal president, Salomón Mendoza from the PRD, was accused of being a narco and was taken to Almoloya, México’s maximum-security jail. Afterwards, he was set free through the intercession of the Human Rights Commission. “La fama viene de ahí, pero aquí es tranquilo” was the engineer’s comment.56 Though, as the engineer affirms, life may be tranquil in Aguililla, some people are forced to leave the county because of a wide variety of personal problems, animosities, and tensions. Many find themselves embedded in long-standing controversies that one way or another keep them from having free mobility within Aguililla, usually cuentas pendientes, accounts to settle. Contrary to what the engineer said, Yola and Don Tadeo told me about a family member, Goyo, who had to leave town and move to Apatzingan because of a quarrel he had with another man: He had to leave, just like that, only because of a man’s bravado, someone that thought too much of himself. A kid came and broke Goyo’s light bulb. Goyo punished the kid and the next day the kid did the same thing. Goyo was ready to hit him when the father came out and told Goyo: ‘if you have a problem with him you’ll have to deal with me’. Goyo asked why the kid kept breaking his light bulb and the father said because he ordered him to do so. Then Goyo was grabbed, and at gunpoint they made him eat potato chips and soda. People started gathering to defend Goyo, and they had guns but the man still had Goyo at gunpoint and managed to escape. His godfather took Goyo to Apatzingán in his truck and this is why he sold his home and moved to Apatzingán. They say that the other man has already been killed. I think that is the

56

“The fame comes from that time, but Aguililla is peaceful.” Conversation, Aguililla, October 1998.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 37 case because Goyo is buying [a home] again here [in Aguililla] because he did not like Apatzingán very much.57 This detailed story portrays one dynamic of interpersonal relations in Aguililla, which in many occasions end in conflicts that are played out and sometime temporarily resolved through violence. Statistics show Aguililla as decidedly more violent than most surrounding polities. In 1990, the homicide rate per every 100,000 inhabitants in the municipio of Aguililla was of 258.3 deaths, in contrast to Michoacán’s overall 33 deaths per every 100,000. By 1999 the homicide rate was down to 60.5 deaths but still remained significantly higher than adjacent municipios and the state rate.58 For example, in 1999, Aguililla doubled its adjacent municipio Apatzingán in homicide rates, while the state percentage was 16.1 deaths, and only the municipio of Tepalcatepec had a significantly higher rate of homicides than Aguililla.59 Countervailing the presence of violence as a mode of social reckoning are the raucous parties that fill the town particularly when there is a good harvest of tomates ––as marihuana is familiarly called. At such times, Aguililla turns into a party town. Many private parties take place, bullets are fired in the air; the streets are filled with new cars and a lot of drunk people who come down from the mountains. Many of the revelers are not natives of Aguililla, but come to work in the ranches for the harvest. A striking case that exemplifies the complexities of this transnational social space relates to a family feud that started in Aguililla and traveled to Redwood City. Mateo, Doña Carmen, Ana, Yola, Lalo, and other people I met, as well as newspapers from Redwood City and San José provided me with various narratives of this feud. The feud is a good example of how a transnational social space can operate through social relations over and beyond state sanctioned controls. The socio-cultural and economic links established provide density to a community that is geographically separated while remaining tied in its history. According to some testimonies the feud between the Mendoza family and the Ramos family —in other narratives it is the Gil family— began when a member of the Mendoza family “se robó una muchacha” (stole a young girl) from the Ramos family. This “theft” provoked

57

Conversation, Aguililla, November 1998. I thank Andrés Villarreal for the information he provided to me from his crime data base. 59 Villarreal, Andrés. 2000 Crime Data Base. 58

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 38 retaliation, which then caused another violent response, thereby escalating the violence, scope, and complexity of the feud, which ended up crossing the border. In other versions the feud began because the family’s cows were invading someone else’s land. As Lalo told me: The mother told her sons to go kill the cows, the husband told her not to encourage them because they would be killed; ‘they are going to kill them’ ––he told her–– then the sons went and killed the cows. Later one by one the sons were murdered.60 A conflict that started, at least in the stories people tell, in terms of women and cows grew more complicated and violent when drug trafficking ––with its concomitant risks, larger profits and inherent violence— became an element of Aguililla’s economic terrain. Aside from the production of livestock, Aguililla’s main economic activity has become the production of marihuana, which in turn is mainly sold in the United States. As a town with a long history of migration that can be dated back to the 1940’s, Aguililla’s participation in drug trafficking via migration began most likely in the 1980’s. The family feud between the Mendoza and the Ramos traveled to the U.S. in 1988 and by 1991 it was still taking place as reported by local newspapers. By then it was already entangled with drug trafficking. As violence escalated, regional newspapers such as The San Jose Mercury News, made an extensive coverage of the cross-border vendetta.61 This case, aside from its shocking violence, serves to shed light on the mechanisms that constitute a transnational social space such as the one formed by Aguililla-Redwood City. The story demonstrates that transnational migrants are part of kinship and economic networks that move with them as they travel. When migrants cross the border the past is not left behind. Values, resentments, attachments, antipathies, ties; they all migrate with people’s displacements. In this multilocational history, migrants sustain shifting status and identities.62 Thus, every time they travel, migrants interlace

60

Interview, Redwood City, May 1999. See Bank, David. “Bad Blood. Two families’ vendetta has killed at least 34 in México and Bay Area.“ San José Mercury News. Sunday, July 28, 1991. Page 1A. 62 Cf. Nina Glick-Schiller. 1992. “Transnationalism: a New Analytic Framework for Understanding Migration.” In Nina Glick-Schiller, Linda Barsch and Cristina Blanc-Szanton. 1992. Towards a Transnational 61

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 39 a social web that, although circumscribed by transnational relations, acquires solidity for those who live in it. First and foremost, migrants remain members of a family; their kinship ties structure part of their lives and define their immediate identity. Likewise, they are part of a town, its practices, and its history. Migrants continue to belong to their hometown because of these networks, because of their economic interest, and mostly because of their emotional investment. The Aguilillan feud, marked by kinship, shows how belonging to any of the feuding families signified an entanglement in violence and drug trafficking, an uncommon form of belonging but belonging nonetheless. Moreover, as in Aguililla’s origin story, drug trafficking appears not only as an alternate economy but also as part of the opposition to the big central eagle ––or, the federales or the judiciales on both sides of the border.

Magical doors: understanding Aguilillan migration As Aguilillans engage the dynamic of their own history, migration becomes a second magical door. Even though drug trafficking appears as such a salient aspect of Aguililla’s transnational social space, and it is firmly crossed with Aguililla´s migration, it certainly does not account for the full spectrum of relationships that take place in this transnational social space. In their everyday lives, Aguilillans demonstrate that they can and do exist beyond the culture and economy of violence produced by drug trafficking. Through migration Aguilillans put into play all their situated cultural practices to face the two nation-states with which they are connected. Migration in Aguililla can be traced to the 1940’s. Different theoretical narratives endeavor to explain the root causes of migration. According to anthropologist Roger Rouse, changes in the region such as the construction of new health facilities stimulated population growth, creating pressure on the local economy.63 Likewise, schools were built, quickly changing a traditionally illiterate population into a municipio that could not satisfy the interests of its increasingly educated population. Also, improvements in communications and

Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity and Nationalism Reconsidered. N.Y, The New York Academy of Science Annals, vol. 645. P. 1 63 Rouse. 1989. Op. Cit. P. 27.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 40 transportation made it easier for people, goods and capital to move in and out of the community. All these factors created a need for cash that the local economy could not provide.64 Thus, migration to other population centers became the answer. As the influence of the bracero program spread throughout Michoacán, migration to the U.S. also became an option for Aguilillans.65 Different circumstances could be pointed out as central influences for Aguililla´s migration such as the distribution of resources, in particular land distribution. A key aspect of Aguililla’s political economy is its land tenure: 21% is ejidal land (collectively owned) and 79% is privately owned.66 Private ownership of land in Aguililla is highly concentrated in the hands of a few and only a small fraction of Aguililla’s land belongs to small landowners.67 The consequences of this fact explain, in part, the social structure in Aguililla. Although the ejidatarios own 21% of the land this does not necessarily mean that they and their families can afford to live off what they produce. Data on education is also an important indicator of the social circumstances of the county (municipio). The municipio of Aguililla has 64 elementary schools that provide service to 4714 students, four junior high schools that serve 642 students, one high school with 124 students, and one work- training center with 15 trainees.68 Clearly there are not enough junior high schools to meet the demand. However, with the existence now of a high school in the main town, young people do not have to leave Aguililla, going to the bigger town Apatzingán to continue with their studies. For young women, who are extremely protected in Aguililla, this has meant a diversification of their life options. They can continue studying, learn a skill and work, and

64

Rouse, Roger. 1989. Op. Cit. Idem. The bracero program was a labor agreement between México and the United States that started during World War II (1942) and ended in 1964. See Durand, Jorge and Douglas S. Massey, 2003. Clandestinos. Migración México-Estados Unidos en los Albores del Siglo XXI. Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas/Porrúa, México. 66 Cf. Informe Solidaridad, Michoacán, 1998. 67 Idem. 68 Informe Solidaridad Michoacán. 1998. P.18, Table III. 65

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 41 perhaps not marry too early in their lives. On the other hand, according to local beliefs and oral accounts, schooling is not among the most valued qualities for an Aguileño man. Young men are pressured by their families to enter the job market as soon as possible to produce income for the household. In this context, of limited work options, migration appears as the main path to follow. Likewise, the population pyramid of Aguililla is also an indicator of living conditions in Aguililla. Population growth in the municipio has been negative at least since the 1990s with a high population drop in particular among the age groups situated 15 to 29. The population drop strongly indicates a high percentage of migration, especially from the groups that represent the core of the work force. In this sense Aguililla is a nursery town, where people are educated and nourished to feed the U.S. labor market.69 In the municipio, the engineer in charge of the Programa de Solidaridad ––México’s government program for social policy during the early 1990’s–– probably had the most informed perspective on the facts concerning Aguililla. According to his analysis, an important aspect in Aguililla’s economy is the remittances migrants send to their families. Together with the revenue that comes from drug trafficking, they represent the biggest percentage of Aguililla’s income. Aguilillan migrants go either to the South or the North. The people that migrate to the South are the ones most likely to be connected to drug trafficking. The people that go North have a wider set of reasons as they follow a tradition of migration, including economic reasons and familial ties that might get one involved in the drug trafficking business. In the Aguilillan transnational social space migration and drug trafficking appear inextricably interconnected, they are the two magical doors Aguilillans turn to in order to better their lives. For Aguilillans today migration occurs under very distinct economic and social conditions, which are in turn reproduced by the impact that drug trafficking or migration itself have had in the region. In this sense, the formation of a tradition of going to el otro lado as Rafael, a young man from Aguililla explained, has become a relevant factor of the socioeconomic context. People from Aguililla have had access to external goods to which they have become accustomed. In turn, Aguililla’s local economy has opened to some of these new

69

Informe Solidaridad Michoacán, 1998. P.17.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 42 commodities. Furthermore, the cash that allows for this exchange usually comes from remittances. Thus Aguilillans expect more than what can be accomplished if they lived all their lives in Aguililla, thereby migration appears as an answer to their heightened expectations. Moreover, running the risk of being tautological, it can be said that today in Aguililla migration is the reason for migration. Among Aguilillans there is a general perception that a high percentage of Aguilillans live in the U.S.70 Aguililla is considered one of the municipios in Michoacán with intense migration.71 Although there is no exact estimation of the migrant population, it is safe to say that practically everyone in Aguililla knows someone that has experienced migration. As Rafael says, “once someone grows up they have to go to the United States, if not, one is not happy, it’s the tradition, the tradition of going there cannot be lost.”72 That migration is part of the culture of Aguilllan young men is not surprising, it echoes trends of many other regions of México. Anthropologist Pierrette Hondagneau-Sotelo explains that “popular folklore defines a journey northward as a rite of passage”, one that is “sustained by vibrant transnational social networks and by the glories of return migrants.”73 In Aguililla, in order to be considered a part of the community, there is an expectation that one participate in the migrant circuit. It is a tradition, as Rafael says. “Es de a fuerza,” it is a must. Therefore to tell the history of Aguililla also means to engage in a story of the formation of a transnational migrant circuit. Aguililla and Redwood City are two towns that, while located in two different countries, form an extended social space. Economic variables alone cannot capture the full spectrum of the aspects

70

Informe Solidaridad. 1998. P. 17. In the 1980’s, 7000 of 26,000 Aguilillans lived in Redwood City (Roger Rouse 1992). 71 Subcomisión Demográfica. 1998. “La geografía de la migración mexicana a los Estados Unidos.” IFE. Informe de la Comisión de Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto de los mexicanos residentes en el extranjero. 12 de noviembre de 1998, México. Anexo II, P.3. 72 Rafael Peña, 24 años. Interview, Aguililla, November, 1998. 73 See Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 1994. Gendered Transitions. Mexican Experiences of Immigration. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles. P.191.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 43 implicated in the migration trend that started in the 1940’s and continues today.74 Although Aguililla includes several rancherías, rural areas, the town has been growing in a significant way, as Don Tadeo and his compadre Juan told me. Migrants who are building houses and contributing to the development of the town, in part have influenced this transformation from a rural haven to an urbanized one. For example, a relative of Yola did not want to return to Aguililla unless a toilet and a whole bathroom were set up. Apparently he was afraid of being bitten by a scorpion due to the lack of sanitary installations. As a consequence of their experiences abroad, many migrants share the expectation of improving the urban facilities in Aguililla, and continuing the social “well-being” they have in the U.S. Migrants compare differences in lifestyles, and constantly assess what they prefer from their life in the United States and what they appreciate from their life in México. Citizenship in this transnational social space is built upon the foundation of desires for a better life, maintaining family ties, and participating in the sociopolitical scenario that is constructed by Mexican transnational migrants.

“La Aguililla chiquita”: the formation of a transnational social space75 For Aguilillans, Redwood City is “La Aguililla chiquita”. As Mateo, a young man from this town, told me when we met back in Aguililla, “wherever you go [in Redwood City] there are only people from here,” that is, from Aguililla.76 In 1995, an estimated 10,000 Aguilillans lived in Redwood City and the neighboring community of North Fair Oaks.77 Different aspects of Aguilillans’ lives and practices go back and forth between the two towns. The main street in Redwood City, “la Middlefield”, is full of restaurants with food from the region; furniture stores like the Mueblería Uruapan sell the same kind of furniture one can find in Aguililla. A landmark on Middlefield Avenue is El

74

See Rouse, Roger. 1989. Op. Cit. Fragments of this section have already been published in Castañeda, Alejandra. 2004. “Roads to Citizenship: Mexican Migrants in the United States.” Latino Studies 2004, 2, (70-89) Palgrave MacMillan Ltd. 76 Interview, Aguililla, November 1998. 77 García, Edwin. 1995. “Living in Two Worlds. The Migration began in the 1940s.” San José Mercury News. Wednesday, December 27. Page 1A. 75

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 44 Mercado Aguililla owned by Alvaro and Martha Arias, “purchased in the 1970’s from a native of Aguililla who decided to return to his homeland.”78 The Mercado Aguililla sells food imported from México and particularly from Michoacán, such as the traditional sweet pastries known as morelianas. The clientele of the Aguililla Market are loyal to it, especially to its Michoacán style carnitas.79 Of course, the baptism, quinceañera and bridal store could not be absent, selling core commodities that contribute to the reproduction of Mexican sociocultural life. Traditional events and commodities represent the material reproduction of Michoacán, of home, of a displaced familiarity, of the materialization of memory. In Redwood City, Saint Anthony’s Catholic Church is a place where many Mexicans living in the area gather every Sunday for mass, and for other church activities. Located in “la Middlefield” it is surrounded by a Mexican neighborhood. The Church is a central point in Aguilillans’ social life. It is where children are baptized or take their first communion, and godparents, compadres and comadres, enter the kinship system contributing to the expansion and solidification of Mexican migrants’ web of social relations. The different religious events contribute to a larger understanding of belonging to a Mexican/Aguilillan community. The jobs that Aguilillans in Redwood City have are mostly geared to the service area. Most of their positions are acquired through kinship and personal connections, as is the case for most migrant networks.80 The network and its connections, and the class position the majority of its members have acquired, marks whether Aguilillans will have an easier or a harder life as migrants. Some Aguilillans, after a long process, now own small businesses like beauty parlors, barbershops, markets, restaurants, clothing stores, furniture stores, and photography services, to name a few. They are the better off Aguilillans. Others are employed as janitors or maids. Some are gardeners or work in restaurants, or in hotels. Overall, a shift has occurred from an initial trend of working in the fields when Aguilillans

78

Ferris, Susan. “One town, two worlds”. The San Francisco Examiner. Cf. Susan Ferris. Op. Cit. 80 Cf. Durand & Massey, Op. Cit., 2003; Also see Lopez-Castro, G. &Pardo Galvan, S., 1988. 79

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 45 came as braceros, to working in the blue-collar sector of Silicon Valley and other industries in the area.81 As Aguilillans migrate between Aguililla and Redwood City, they reinforce their community through their situated cultural practices. The constant movement of people, goods, remittances, rituals, old and new traditions, political discussions, family feuds, history lessons, all articulate in the construction of a transnational social space. As an example of what Luin Goldring, Robert Smith, Roger Rouse and other scholars refer to as transnational social space, Aguililla and Redwood City shape a circuit where migration stands as the central route for the exchanges that take place. Migrants build their transnational social space following different strategies. Memories and family ties are also articulated through the exchange of commodities. For example, the Panadería Michoacán in La Middlefield, with its smells and traditional Mexican pastries, evokes memories of a place called Aguililla, a place called home. This place, as Doreen Massey explains writing on how these kinds of migration practices and translocal places exist throughout the world, derives its identity “from the fact that it had always in one way or another been open; constructed out of movement, communication, social relations which always stretch beyond it.”82 In this sense, Aguilillans’ commodity exchange appears as a practice that engulfs a myriad of social relations and contributes to the existence of a place called home characterized by its transnational linkages. Through their exchanges migrants create a place for belonging, a place to establish citizenship. As a businessman, a comerciante, José trades commodities but through his trades he enacts more than an economic exchange. José is a married man in his early thirties who now lives in San José after moving from Redwood City. When we met, José had been living in the U.S. for ten years. He was born in Aguililla, worked there while he was very young, and studied only until first grade. When he moved to the U.S., he studied one year of English. His wife Mercedes was born in Durango; they met in Redwood City and got married. José and

81

See Fonseca, Omar and Lilia Moreno. 1988. “Consideraciones históricosociales de la migración de trabajadores michoacanos a los Estados Unidos de America: el caso de Jaripo.” In Lopez-Castro, G. & Pardo Galvan, S. Migración en el Occidente de México. El Colegio de Michoacán, México. 82 Massey, Doreen. 1992. Op. Cit. P.14.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 46 Mercedes own a clothing store located in a Mexican neighborhood in San José. Initially, it was a jewelry store, like the one his brother Mateo ––a municipal clerk in Aguililla–– has back in Aguililla. Mateo and José used to exchange jewelry and selling-techniques but eventually José chose to focus on clothing. At the store things appear to be somewhat overcrowded, but they are well organized. It looks like a tienda de pueblo, just like those that exist in Aguililla. They sell clothes and accessories for the whole family, baptism, first communion, and wedding dresses, as well as music, and household items. Particularly hot items are cowboy boots, together with belts, buckles, and sombreros that are favored by most Mexican men in the area. To be in the store, to be there, is like being in México; by way of the power of the objects a sort of transportation “back home” takes place. The objects, the commodities that are exchanged in the store signal various aspects of Mexican migrants’ life. They are markers of difference, as José has observed throughout his years as comerciante: “Mexican businesses only work because of our own race. The gringos don’t buy here; they go to other stores. They come in and leave. They don’t like it. We sell clothes that the Mexicans like. It’s another style.”83 Indeed what he sells at his store reflects an aesthetic. The store sells clothes that are in fashion among the Mexican community, a fashion that is dictated mostly by the “gruperos”, the norteño music groups.84 Just as the objects sold at José’s store are markers of difference, of style, of a racialized style, by the same token they are markers of commonality. The store turns into a place ––a locale–– where nostalgia is as much of a commodity as a builder of identity. A place for reunion, for economic and social exchanges, the store creates and recreates familiar images, material memory practices through which a sense of citizenship, of belonging to a community is also constructed. Jose’s store is a place where raza acquires a connotation of solidarity. Race is as much about difference as it is about commonality. According to José, Chinese and Indians go to his store because they know they can bargain; while the gringos do not like the commodities sold at his store. José’s testimony points to the relevance of race and

83

Interview, Redwood City, April 1999. Norteño or grupero music is very popular among Mexican migrants and in the communities they come from. 84

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 47 how it is already a part of his language, and of the way he conceives of himself in relation to “others”. José talks about “one’s race” ––la raza de uno–– in contrast to Chinese people ––los chinos–– or Indians ––los hindues–– or los Gringos, all of whom he views as races. José’s experience and understanding of race have more of an ethnic undertone, as he equates race with nationalities. His story shows how ethnic enclaves are produced and reproduced in very material ways. Again, as with the construction of community, the making of a concrete (and changing) ethnic identity occurs in everyday practice and it “has its origins in relations of inequality”.85 However, while José came to the U.S. with a notion of who he was as a Mexican and a Michoacano, this social construction, this identity changed as he encountered different conditions and social relations as a consequence of his migrant experience. Experiences of one’s “ethnicity,” or race and changes in one’s sense of identity are embedded in relations of power86 In this sense, as Mexicans cross the border they are bound to face conditions of inequality that place them in a position of contestation. One of the forms that this contestation takes is the construction of an identity vis-a-vis the others; an identity that draws force from the nation, from the town, from tradition, from nostalgia, from memory, from place. Aguilillan´s commodity exchange, like those that take place at José´s store, appear as a practice that engulf a myriad of social relations and contributes to the existence of a place called home and a citizenship characterized by its transnational linkages.

Routes: Gender and changing spaces of identity While some goods, flavors, smells, rituals and people go to Redwood City, others travel to Aguililla. The linkages established between these two towns create a connected community, a transnational migrant circuit.87 As Aguilillans make their trip back home, some only once, others several times; some taking a long time to return, others planning on returning to the U.S., some having already come back to retire, their

85

Comaroff, John. 1996. “The Politics of Difference in a World of Power.” In Edwin Wilmsen and Patrick McAllister, eds. The Politics of Difference: Ethnic Preferences in a World of Power. Univ. of Chicago Press. P. 166. 86 Comaroff, John. 1996. Idem. 87 Rouse, Roger. 1989. Op. Cit. P.2

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 48 movements and stories build an ongoing circuit of exchanges, which include money, commodities, trends, knowledge, kinship ties, compromises, and experiences. Regardless of the particular nature of their activities, all migrants are immersed in the process of cultural and commodity exchange. And, as seen with José, as migrants engage the network of exchanges, and travel between various social conditions and relationships, the ways in which they identify themselves also change. For many years, María would take merchandise from Aguililla to Redwood City to sell it to the Mexicans living in the area; she would sell clothes, blankets, covers, and other household goods through an abonos system ––a layaway plan, involving small payments every week or two. The profit María made was marginal considering the risks she would take to move the merchandise. María was based in Aguililla trying to regulate her status in the U.S. As a result, she did not travel to Redwood City but she continued to sell in Aguililla, by bringing in products from Guadalajara. A woman in her early thirties, María is one of seven daughters from a poor Aguilillan family. She has been part of the migrant circuit since she was eighteen years old, and through her multiple trips she has constructed a social network that extends from Aguililla to Redwood City. During that time, she gave birth to and raised three daughters and one son, all of them born in the U.S. All the trips María has made in her life have given her the opportunity to develop commercial skills that otherwise might have remained only as a latent potential. María´s business trips and the exchanges she engages in allow for a consolidation and reproduction of her social transnational network. As anthropologist Pat Zavella has shown, women use their own networks to migrate, mainly by appealing to their comadres. The network of comadres, of women, is also used strategically for economic survival.88 María’s house-to-house trail to sell commodities and collect money involves a complex of relationships and dimensions inherent to life in Aguililla. The exchange of commodities is not limited to goods and money; it includes valuable information about the people in the

88

See Zavella, Pat. 1996. “Teníamos que sufrirle a la pasada: Mexicana Transnational Migrants in Santa Cruz County.” Manuscript. Presented at the Seventh International Conference on Latino Cultures in the United States. P. 6. Also see Levitt, Peggy. 2001. The Transnational Villagers. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 49 community. During her visits to different households, chismes –– gossip, rumors–– are shared, reproduced, and most surely exaggerated and twisted. “They say...I heard...I was told.” María’s trade routes show how women participate in the construction of Aguililla’s transnational social space, whether it is through the remittances earned and sent to them by family members in the U.S., or by developing their own networks of support, socialization, and exchange. The movement of people and goods gets intertwined with social relations, personal vending skills, and a financial logic, which implies a good knowledge of the local market and, significantly, of its personalities. María takes advantage of her web of social relations to conduct her merchant activity. The two are indistinguishable, and mutually interdependent, activities. An incident in María’s travels illustrates the strategic aspects of social relations. Early in the day, María went to a house where a woman asked her for a blanket, she said she would pay cash, and advised her daughter, who was about to get married, to buy several things from María. In another house María told this story; she was happy because the bride-to-be meant good business. The lady of the house, la Señora Jiménez, told her not to trust the woman because she did not pay, although the daughter was different, she was a better client. Continuing on María’s business trip we came to the house of an older woman with a beautiful patio full of plants. There, María bought bullets that the woman makes from what seemed to be used shells. The transaction was made in a secretive manner surely because it is illegal. María wanted the bullets for her husband, who is known to like to get drunk and shoot his gun in the air, but also as someone who feels the need to be protected by a gun mainly because he constantly gets himself in trouble. Constructed along lines of social relations and economic necessity, the position of migrants within their transnational social space is often an ambivalent one. As migrant women enter the workforce gender relations shift. In her work on the transnational village of Dominicans in Boston, Peggy Levitt explains that among migrant couples dramatic changes in household structures and decision making occur.89 Though María, like many migrants, considers the U.S. to be an ideal place to live because of the variety of working

89

Levitt, Peggy, 2001. Op. Cit.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 50 opportunities and the possibility of eventually having access to them, she nonetheless appreciates other qualities in her life in Aguililla. María would rather live in the United States than in México because, as she puts it, “the poorest person from over there––the U.S. – –will always be richer than the poorest person from here–– México.” Notwithstanding her positive outlook of the U.S., she and her husband decided a year ago to return to Aguililla, their hometown, with their two younger children Faviola and Hilario. In her own words, María points to a significant gendered aspect of migrating within a transnational social space, “My husband would rather live in México, he doesn’t want to go back [to the US]. Here he doesn’t do anything, he doesn’t work; we live off the houses we rent.”90 Because her husband does not choose to have a job, María has become a comerciante to supplement their income. She now brings goods from Guadalajara, which she then places in Aguililla through an abonos system. She has to work hard or else, as I overheard in a conversation, her husband would get upset and probably would beat her. Coinciding with James Clifford’s understanding of diasporic women as transnational subjects, María is caught between “patriarchies, ambiguous pasts and futures.”91 As Clifford explains, for diasporic women, “community can be a site both of support and oppression.”92 For María, her life as a transnational migrant has exacerbated one aspect of patriarchal relations ––as she becomes the breadwinner in her family, tensions arise. Reflecting the degree to which she might be exposed to other perhaps dangerous social conditions and sanctions, she still wants to stay with her husband even if this means being exposed to domestic violence The issue of living in the U.S. brings up two contrasting gendered desires. For María, the U.S. signifies the opportunity for a better life where, for example, “no kid spends Christmas without a gift.” Whereas in México her husband “doesn’t do anything, he doesn’t work,” in the U.S., he works outside of the home and she has a stronger position in the household. Alternatively, for her husband, life in the

90

Interview, Aguililla, December, 1998. Clifford, James. “Diasporas.” 1994. In Cultural Anthropology. Vol. 9(3). American Anthropological Association. P. 314. 92 Clifford, James. 1994. Idem. 91

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 51 U.S. means a loss of power within the family, and in face of a society, which sees him as a second class citizen compared to the power he perceives he holds in México. As with other migrant communities, migration translates differently for men and women, both concerning their roles in the household, but also their identities in the larger social and political realm.93 As Goldring, Hondagneu-Sotelo, Levitt, and other scholars have shown, whereas migrant men tend to think and talk more about returning home, to México, women want to settle down in the place where they and their family find more comfort. Luin Goldring, in her studies on transmigrant citizenship practices, argues that women tend to receive limited benefits from their relationship with Mexican political authorities and membership in the Mexican nation. “Instead, they are more likely to participate in issues and in locations that bear a more direct relationship to their identities as women, mothers, workers, and so forth.”94 As women tend to be excluded from active citizenship in the political arena, they, as Goldring says, have strong social networks which allow them to practice substantive social citizenship in the United States, and in their hometowns in México.95 For Lucha —who I met in Redwood City–– living in the U.S. has made her a different social subject where she can exercise newfound agency and authority in her family. Lucha was born in Aguililla to a poor family and migrated for the first time when she was twenty; she was 34 years old when we met. According to Lucha, had she stayed in Aguililla, she would have been expected to be a housewife and respect her husband’s authority. In Redwood City, in contrast, she works outside of the home and has her own authority. In her eyes, her new position gives her security and a new sense of who she is as a woman. I can support myself, this is what I like, because if I go to México I am going to starve to death because I did not study

93

According to Pierrette Hondagneau-Sotelo, a household that is immersed in migration is a “highly charged political arena where husbands and wives and parents and children may simultaneously express and pursue divergent interests and competing agendas.” Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 94-95. 94 Goldring, Luin. 2001. The Gender and Geography of Citizenship in MéxicoU.S. Transnational Spaces.” In Identities, Vol. 7(4), P. 504. 95 Cf. Goldring, Luin. 2001. Op. Cit. P. 501. Also see Zavella, Pat. 1996. Op. Cit.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants over there, I only studied until the 5th grade…. In México, I went there last year and I did not see anything of interest, no…As for me, I would only go to a place where I can be responsible for me and my children, where I will be able to pay for where I live.96 Lucha’s life is embedded with many of the contradictions migrants inhabit. She migrated following her husband, but migration has made her a very independent woman. At first, she and her husband labored in the fields. Once they settled in Redwood City she worked in electronics, at a hotel, and at a factory. Working made her realize that she could have some control and voice in her family’s decision-making. Likewise, she has learned that education is a path for better working opportunities and for an improved lifestyle, something that she has tried to instill in her children because, as she says, “we [she and her husband] were a couple of burros, I don’t want my children to be like that. If they are nothing in life, let it not be because we didn’t push them”.97 However, despite the fact that migrant women acquire more prominence in their families, many of them still want their men to feel as if they are the ones in command.98 While Lucha has experienced a transformation in gender relations in her family, she does not necessarily fit the mold of wanting to keep her husband around. While she continues to be married, she does not hold her husband in high esteem, and through her migrant experience she insists that she has become a different kind of woman: I have been able to ‘salir adelante’, to make it. If my husband is around or not, I am able to make it… As a woman from Aguililla, it is better to be here. The Aguilillan man is no good; my husband is very lazy… As a woman, one can deal very easily; as a woman you can work, move forward…99 Lucha’s story is a good example of a process of subject making. Hondagneu-Sotelo views such processes as gendered transitions, which she understands as a “change in women’s and men’s relative positions of power and status in the larger social structure of power.”100 These 52

96

Interview, Redwood City, May 1999. Interview, Redwood City, May 1999. 98 Levitt, Peggy. 2001. Op. Cit. P.101. 99 Interview, Redwood City, May 1999. 100 See Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 195. 97

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 53 transitions are an intrinsic part of a transnational migrant experience where identities and categories shift usually in paradoxical ways.101 Through her jobs Lucha has been able to “salir adelante,” and go from depending on her husband and following him, to fending for herself and her children. Because her husband is not very reliable, is a big spender, and is not home very often, Lucha is now the decision maker in her family, which allows for a revalorization of herself. Nevertheless, the issue of gender relations and gendered desires is not unambiguous. As migration empowers some women, others feel inadequate or isolated precisely because of the experience of migration. Equally, important is how masculinity changes as part of the migrant experience and gender transformations.102 María, for example, is now a comerciante who has constructed a female network to conduct business. She does not contest the authority of her husband because she wants to have him by her side. In this case, following the traditional gender roles, the male figure is still the central authority of the family, despite of the fact that he is not the bread-winner. In contrast, while still subdued to the male opinion, the female figure has acquired more responsibilities, which include home, nurturing the family, and bringing income to the household.

Family life in a transnational social space As regions get immersed in transnational migration, family life goes through changes at the level of gender and parental relations. The involvement of families in migration implies decisions on child-rearing practices, as well as issues of authority between parents and children, and between wives and husbands. Likewise, familial ties and family feuds set in motion the social relations involved in migration. In the Aguililla-Redwood City case family ties and feuds get intertwined creating a unique terrain of identity-formation and decision-making.

101

On patriarchal gender relations and migration. See Pierrette HondagneuSotelo. 1994. Op. Cit. P.193 102 See Hirsch, Jennifer S. 2000. “En el Norte la Mujer Manda: Gender, Generation, and Geography in a Mexican Transnational Community.” In Foner, Nancy, Rubén G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, eds. Immigration Research for a New Century. Multidisciplinary Perspectives. 2000, Rusell Sage Foundation, New York. P. 385.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Maria´s return to Aguililla was based on two primary reasons: a legal one and a parental one. The legal reason that made María decide to come back to México was based on her husband’s raucous behavior. Because María and her husband were applying for U.S. residency, any problem with the law would jeopardize their efforts to legalize their situation. She decided to play it safe and came back to Aguililla. More significantly perhaps, as parents, María and Ramón were worried that their son Hilario would go down the wrong path. They decided to return to Aguililla so that he would not go bad––“para que no se desperdiciara” (e.g. become cholo, a gang member). Their descriptions of differences between family life in the U.S. and in Aguililla reveal the tensions that migrants constantly face between public and private identities within the U.S. Over there you cannot beat your children because they get upset and call the police. You cannot raise your children like that. Once he is done with high school then he can choose if he wants to go back. The same goes for Faviola. She has to learn Spanish, not cholo.103 María expresses the anxiety that she feels over the direct intervention that different government institutions have in family life in the United States, something that neither she nor most migrants can accept. María and her husband Ramón share this view; and, their concerns were significant enough that they decided to return to México. For them it is about being able to control the path their son Hilario takes. Likewise, María lays out another element that migrant families have to deal with: language. Interestingly enough the opposition here is not with English but with cholo, which is a mix of Spanish and English. In María’s view, proper use of Spanish is what she wants for her children ––or rather she does not want them speaking cholo. Set up in this manner, the problem moves beyond the linguistic level and becomes a question of cultural values and of staying away from cholo culture, which for most Mexican migrant parents is the equivalent of gang culture. Complaints about the interference of outsiders in family life and the impossibility of controlling the immediate social context are common to most Mexican migrants. José and Mercedes share María’s ambivalent relation to life in the United States. 54

103

Interview, Aguililla, December, 1998.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 55 It is O.K. here, one can live better than in México but it’s not like being in one’s own home. There are always problems. The children, for example, it is a problem because they don’t allow us parents to educate them well, to spank them, because they send the police. Once in Junior-High, the children don’t pay attention, and they can’t be put to work. Then, they only learn to depend on us, to demand, to do nothing, and they get into the gangs. We don’t want our children growing up here.104 José and Mercedes repeat a heart felt sentiment that most migrant parents share, as they observe the not so benevolent intrusions of U.S. law and government institutions, such as the police and school, in their private family life. They feel that these institutions hamper the process of educación of their children. These institutional practices of interference represent one of the many instances in which migrants encounter the materiality of the state, when a legal framework clashes with their situated cultural practices Migration not only evidences the differences in child-rearing practices but also the conflicts entailed by them. Because the issue of authority and respect towards parents is central in Mexican families, many migrant parents express their discomfort in what they perceive as intrusive institutional practices in their family lives, which in turn undermine their personal and parental authority. A sub-text to many migrant parents’ fear of the cholo is the degree to which Mexican migrants are criminalized within the political imaginary of the United States. Globally, María’s concerns point to the degree to which migrants effectively have no political recourse that would protect their “privacy” in the United States. As soon as Mexican migrants cross the border, they are seen as carrying the nation with them. Marked as Mexican within a racist U.S. political economy, individual migrants no longer possess any individual or private persona that might be protected by law. Indeed, more often than not, the law’s interventions in their lives signify a loss of power rather than a protection or a benefit. Often, in order to reclaim their privacy, migrants choose to return to México, or to travel the route of obtaining U.S. citizenship. Through their critical judgments of differences between México and the United States, Mexican migrants make strategic

104

Interview, San José, April 1999.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 56 decisions that allow them to delineate, and reclaim, their own cultural citizenship. Within the imaginary that feeds their movements and decisions, transnational migrants see themselves as belonging to a concrete, though sometimes rather mythical place. For many Mexican migrants in the U.S., México remains an idyllic place: Where children respect their parents, where family always comes first, and where people can have a party without worrying that the neighbor will call the police because we all know that “today for you, tomorrow for me.105 Perhaps these migrants engage in imagining an ideal life that never was, evoking a sense of solidity and permanence to counter a context of constant change, conflict, and contradictions. Nonetheless, as migrants express their nostalgia for home and their aversion for a lack of privacy in the social space they inhabit while in the United States, they demonstrate a keen critical consciousness of the different political positions they occupy as subjects of a deeply contested and culturally ambiguous transnational space. Children born in a transnational social space play upon and negotiate particular flows of identity and belonging. As a child, Faviola (María’s seven year old daughter) thinks of the United States as a better place to live than México, even if she is mostly surrounded by other Mexicans. The youngest of four children, she recently went back to México with her brother and her parents. I like it more over there [Redwood City] because my sisters take me to the stores and many other places. Over there the “ratón” [the mouse ––tooth fairy] brought me two cuartar (quarters), over here [Aguililla] nothing. I like Redwood City because it is a several story “vecindad” [building] and there are a lot of people...yes, they are all Mexicans...I like it because my friend Beri is there.106 Over here and over there. Faviola thinks of both places simultaneously. She was born into a transnational social space. Her short seven years are a testimony of it. For example, as Faviola was talking about losing a tooth and receiving cuartars or cuarars from the ratón, I found it hard to figure out what she was referring to until I

105

Testimony of Don Tomás, Mixtec migrant that has been living in the U.S. for 30 years. Interview, Watsonville, CA, November 1995. 106 Interview, Aguililla, December 1998.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 57 realized that she was talking about quarters. Initially, I could not understand Faviola because I had displaced her out of the transnational social space to which she belongs. I was listening to her from el otro lado, and from that place, I could not understand her pronunciation of a word with which, in English, I am, however, quite familiar. The conversation with Faviola demonstrates the specificity of an identity and a space that is connected to multiple places. Faviola’s world is lived in terms of two highly contested places framed by the notions of territory and boundaries. However, her youthful recognition of these places is one un-crossed by these notions in a strict sense. Indeed, the meaning(fulness) of legal, linguistic, and national borders is not very clear in the life of someone like Faviola. How does Faviola understand her membership to the U.S. and to México as nation-states? So far in her seven years, Mexicans have dominated Faviola’s social space. Indeed, Faviola told me that she had never met any gringos, “I’ve never met a gringo.” “Never met a güerito (white person)?” I asked. “No, she replied.”107 And, yet, Faviola went to kindergarten while in the U.S. and English words are part of her language and thought. That said, according to her, “It was in Spanish…I went [to school] with Mexicans and.... others”. Her hesitation, and doubtful look, before finding the word “others” clearly meant, others who were not Mexican.108 Whatever the facts, Faviola’s notions are telling statements as they deal with a central issue in a migrant’s life: assimilation and integration within U.S. society. Faviola’s transnational social life will make her face specific questions of belonging that she would not have to confront otherwise. She is a transnational subject who in her own way is now dealing with issues of belonging. At age seven, her preoccupations translate as what she likes and what she does not like from each place. As a child, she articulated her transnationality in terms of commodities. For example, though in many ways she preferred life in the U.S., Faviola also preferred certain things about Aguililla, particularly her house there: “I like my house (in Aguililla), I like it more than the one over there (U.S.). It has two floors, and a yard. Yes, I also like it

107 108

Interview, Aguililla, December 1998. Idem.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants here but I like it more over there. Over there they give me presents.”109 Over here and over there appear in Faviola’s narrative as she articulates what is significant in her life. This constant comparison by migrants is what Pat Zavella defines in her study of workers in el Bajío and in Watsonville as peripheral vision.110 As Zavella shows, in regions of intense migration, work and family life are always compared and imagined with what is on the other side: significantly, this comparative perspective exists regardless of whether someone has migrated or not. Faviola’s words deeply reflect how life in a transnational social space is experienced and translated. From wherever she stands in the transnational continuum, she constantly imagines el otro lado. On the one hand, she benefits from the commodities she can acquire in the U.S. such as toys, and clothes that she gets from her sisters. Perhaps for her the U.S. signifies economic well being. And yet, in México she lives in a house owned by her parents, in direct contrast to their living situation in the U.S. where they rent an apartment. Faviola’s story highlights the ideals many Mexican migrants pursue: a better life in material terms and in keeping with Mexican social relations and cultural values. Doña Carmen, whose voice reflects the experiences and nostalgia of many other Mexican migrants, is a clear example of the pursuit of this ideal cultural citizenship, of this space of belonging that is constantly claimed by migrant subjects through their everyday practices facing the nation-state and the social context that surrounds them. Doña Cármen is a woman in her sixties of middle class origins who came from Aguililla to the United States at the end of the 1960’s, and now lives in Redwood City. She raised her children by herself. Her husband left her before her youngest son was born. She was already living in the U.S. at the time and received the support of her siblings who were also living in the U.S. Her parents and one brother stayed in 58

109

Interview, Aguililla 1998. Zavella, Pat. 2002. “Engendering Transnationalism in Food Processing: Peripheral Vision on Both Sides of the U.S.-México Border.” In Velez-Ibañez, Carlos and Anna Sampaio. Transnational Latina/o Communities. Politics, Processes, and Cultures. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Oxford. Pp.238-239. 110

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 59 Aguililla. She went back and forth between Aguililla and Redwood City for several years, and now she goes back to México only on holidays. At some point in this history of travels, one of her brothers told her to come to the U.S. to have her second son because that way it would be easier for her to arrange her residency papers. As in other cases, Doña Carmen’s migration story is an example of moments in which migrants use laws in their favor, when law acquires life. This is a juncture where the state, through laws, and people, meet. In their everyday encounters with regulations and restrictions, people decipher and build a frame of possibilities and impossibilities through which they maneuver. For Doña Carmen, obtaining residency meant more mobility in the labor market, access to other benefits for her and her family, and flexibility in her movements between Michoacán and California. In the middle of a long conversation with her, I asked about the place of birth of her children: “So, your two daughters were born here and your two sons there?” She corrected me, “no, my two daughters were born in México and my two sons here in the U.S.”111 I laughed; being in that house that felt so much like a middle class Mexican home, and talking for so long about México, Aguililla, and her stories, my mind had tricked me into thinking I was in México. Was I in México? Had her words transported me? In response to the vertigo of my questions and laughter, Doña Carmen said: In reality we are in México. This is México only that they took it away from us, I don’t know, in a war, as they do, but we have more right to be here. We shouldn’t be asking for rights because we have more right to be here.112 As our conversation reveals, the idea of space that permeates migrants’ existence (and in this case the researcher’s also) is not a rigid one even though it might be perceived as such from some perspectives. Here is a category that for Doña Carmen is up for contestation. México is here; it is the space migrants ––in her words, “we”–– inhabit even when the geopolitical borders indicate differently. Doña Carmen is a very articulate woman, with a sense of belonging strongly informed by

111 112

Interview, Redwood City, June 1999. Interview, Redwood City, June 1999.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 60 history, the place she comes from, and her own ideas of what constitutes México. Doña Carmen’s personal history, and her migrant life crossed by two nation-states drive her beyond the simple repetition of a school history lesson. When she says “this is México only that they took it away from us…we have more right to be here…” she is indeed referring to a lesson taught in school in México. However, for her it is a lesson learned beyond this institution; it is a lesson she has lived every single day of her thirty years as a trans-national migrant both permitted and punished by the nation-states between which she moves. As Sallie Westwood and Annie Phizacklea indicate in their study of transnationalism and the politics of belonging in Latin America, “nations and national stories construct national time, the time of heroes and special events, this form of national time stays with people when they leave one nation-state and move to another as part of the migratory process.”113 For Doña Carmen, the official version of Mexican history about the loss of half of the territory is very real, and becomes a potent source to understand her notion of here in her life and her identity. National stories help explain how “belonging is not fixed despite the level of ideological investments made by the nation-state.”114 Rather, as with Doña Carmen, “the sense of being a part of the nation is contingent upon specific moments which tie the individual biography and national history together.”115 In this sense, for many migrants the particular piece of Mexican history narrated by Doña Carmen plays the same role in the construction of an identity, a belonging that is cemented upon an opposition to the U.S. and the need to re-affirm their Mexicanity vis-àvis México. She and many other Mexican migrants participate in such a narrative of the nation in order to establish a strategic sense of entitlement, by making claims of belonging and citizenship in accordance with the sociopolitical contexts they encounter. Migrants’ practices of belonging are translated into identity formations, and understandings of citizenship that relate to a larger, if not always immediate, national community. In her studies on Rwandan

113

Westwood, Sallie and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Trans-nationalism and the Politics of Belonging. Routledge, London/New York. P.6 114 Westwood, Sallie and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Op. Cit. P.11. 115 Idem.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 61 refugees, Liisa Malkki shows how identity is “always mobile and processual, partly self-construction, partly categorization by others, partly a condition, a status, a label, a weapon, a shield, a fund of memories, and so on.”116 While operating in a different socio-political context than the one studied by Malkki, Mexican migrants also go through processes of re-invention of their identity and their roots. Identity formation for Mexican migrants like Doña Carmen rests upon the specific history of relations between México and the U.S., the labeling they face in the social relations they encounter in the U.S., and their own situated cultural practices. In the process of forming identity, migrants establish a sense of belonging to a community, a sense of solidity, of place, of roots, in other words, of citizenship. Migrants feed and substantiate their sense of entitlement by reaching to a notion of place that in their words and feelings appears as solid as a rock. According to Doreen Massey, The way we characterize places is fundamentally political. The politics lies not just in the particular characteristics assigned to places (whether they include racist or sexist features…or social class issues) but also in the very way in which the image of place is constructed.117 For Doña Carmen, her place is political because it is marked by the distinctions of political history, ethnicity, race and class mentioned by Massey. Likewise the transnational social space she inhabits is also fed by nostalgia and by memory practices “that serve to illuminate and transform the present.”118 Just like in the moment of our conversation, when Doña Carmen showed me a picture of herself, drinking water from a special place in Aguililla. In a dreamy tone, she told me: The water is incredible, it tastes delicious, and people go and wait for hours to fill up their buckets. Not much water comes out, but it has a special flavor...at the end, at the other side of

116

Malkki, Liisa H. 1997. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees.” In Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. 1997. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P. 71. 117 Massey, Doreen. 1994. “Double Articulation. A Place in the World.” In Angelica Bammer, Editor. Displacements. University of Wisconsin Press. P. 114. 118 Cf. Massey, Doreen.1994. Op. Cit. P. 119.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Aguililla...through this street, after those rocks, that is where the water comes out as if filtered, pure, the best flavor. 119 As Doña Carmen describes in detail the unique place where the sweet water emanates she tries to evoke its taste one more time. For her, it represents the flavor of Aguililla, her childhood, her family and the place occupied by the connection Aguililla-Michoacán-México. Doña Carmen’s testimony reveals a phenomenological aspect of the sense of belonging migrants hold with respect to their hometown in a first instance, and to México more generally. Moreover, when Doña Carmen evokes her memories and senses, these are tightly related to her notion of an aquí ––a here–– that become the reference points of her true belonging and her true citizenship. Rather than cutting the links with home, migrants’ displacement situates their home-place within a larger context of interactions that help ground and internalize their sense of belonging. This is what Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson refer to as structures of feeling which they understand as structures that: Enable meaningful relationships with particular locales, constituted and experienced in a particular manner, necessarily include the marking of ‘self’ and ‘other’ through identification with larger collectivities. To be part of a community is to be positioned as a particular kind of subject, similar to others within the community in some crucial respects and different from those who are excluded from it.120 Doña Carmen’s story is a fine example of such structures of feeling. Her life as a migrant in the United States has made her establish an identity both in opposition to the United States but also strongly in connection to México and Aguililla, as well as to places and smells evoked by images. Doña Carmen’s identity articulates with the racial context she has faced in the U.S. since her arrival. As a Mexican woman in California, Doña Carmen encounters a process of racialization in her everyday life. She is aware of it when she feels perceived as someone with fewer rights “to be here.” Michael Omi and Howard Winnant

62

119

Interview, Redwood City, June 1999. Gupta, Akhil and James Ferguson. 1998. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P.17. 120

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 63 argue that, “society is suffused with racial projects, large and small, to which all are subjected. This racial ‘subjection’ is quintessentially ideological.”121 Through different rules, and classification, people “are inserted into a comprehensively racialized structure. Race becomes ‘common sense’ ––a way of comprehending, explaining and acting in the world.”122 Living in a racially tense state such as California where racial projects subject people to a structure of inequality, of meanings, of labeling, of possibilities and impossibilities, Doña Carmen’s response to this context is to affirm her identity and battle back. She resists the new subjectivity she acquired when she crossed the border by narrating her story as that of a Mexican who has a right to be here thus displacing the field of discussion and the unequal balance of power relations and senses of entitlement. Her response to the arguments which deny her rights of belonging is to return to history and reveal other origin-stories, other histories and structures of place. Through her knowledge of history and her grounded sense of belonging, Doña Carmen is able to counter worlds that would grant her illegitimacy and creates an identity where, in her own mind at least, she is equally entitled to live where she lives. Doña Carmen, of course, is not alone in this process; other Mexican migrants are locked in this subject-making game.

Family ties

In contrast to the traditional view of migration, which travels from México to the U.S., Gustavo moved from Redwood City back to Aguililla. He was born in the United States in a middle class environment, and at age 24 he decided to live in Aguililla, his parents’ hometown. Traveling from Redwood City to Aguililla, Gustavo is an

121

Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Racial Formation in the United States. From the 1960s to the 1990s. Routledge, New York/London. p. 60. In the same tone, Pat Zavella explains “racialization” as “a process by which social, economic, and political forces determine the content and importance of racial categories, and by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings.” Zavella, Pat. 1997. “The Tables are Turned.” In Juan F. Perea, Ed. Immigrants Out! The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States. New York University Press, New York and London. p. 137. 122 Michael Omi and Howard Winant.1994. Op. Cit. p.60.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 64 unusual migrant because he does not migrate to the United States; instead, he travels to México. Gustavo’s story reveals another layer of the transnational social space that is constructed and lived by Mexican migrant communities. Gustavo followed his father’s route back to his roots. All of Gustavo’s siblings were born in the U.S. His father had initially crossed the border with papers and continued to travel back and forth every two or three years. While in the U.S., Gustavo’s father kept his residency status. He never wanted to become a U.S. citizen. When Gustavo was three years old his family came to live in Aguililla. Gustavo has good memories of that time. The family remained in Aguililla for three years before returning to Redwood City. Later, at age 24, three months before we met, Gustavo came to Aguililla with his father who had been working as a foreman at Stanford Ranch and decided to return to Aguililla, to his home, after years of living in the U.S. Thus, Gustavo’s father is one of those migrants who fulfilled the dream of returning. He is back in his hometown, his son is with him, and together they manage their own ranch. Now that he is in México, Gustavo enjoys living in Aguililla but he does not have a negative view of life in the United States. According to Gustavo his reasons for returning to Aguililla were as much experimental as nostalgic for a connection with the past traditions of his family and people: The other side is very different. I have lived in the U.S. all my life; I want something new. Perhaps it is the best thing that can happen to me, to be here, and well, I want to experiment, I want to know, and I like my family very much.123 Gustavo’s words illustrate an aspect of why and how migration becomes a tradition. In the case of young people going to “el otro lado”, the other side of the border conveys newness, change, experience, and expectations. Just as Gustavo is excited to try something new, other young migrants share these feelings with him; the difference being that their route is most often from their towns in México to the U.S. and Gustavo’s route brought him back to México. Gustavo’s travels for many reasons, the least of which is economic: he travels to find his father’s memories, his stories, and his places. Gustavo was born in the U.S. and thus he is a U.S. citizen. His parents are Mexican, thus through blood ties they provide Gustavo

123

Interview, Aguililla, October 1998.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 65 with Mexican nationality. How significant is this dual-identity to Gustavo? I went to school where there were only whites, only Americans, in Palo Alto High, in a rich area…We [the Mexicans] pretended to be strong…we were young and angry with everyone, even more so with them…we had a lot of gabacho [white] friends, but the majority did not like us. We had fights, although they also mistreated us, we did not think anything in particular.124 Gustavo’s life was marked by the U.S. racial formation where an “us” versus “them” mentality is present in everyday interactions and reinforced by the meaning people give to these interactions. Class is also a factor, of which Gustavo is aware. “They” are rich, and “us-we” are on the poor , apparently disenfranchised side of the story. This kind of discourse is clearly present for someone who grows up in the U.S. as a minority, and it becomes a reality for most Mexicans when they cross the border into the U.S. regardless of their social standing within México.125 Whereas Gustavo travels to Aguililla searching for memories, Mateo stays in Aguililla where he builds memories for others, for the ones that live in ‘el otro lado’. Mateo is the Christ during Easter, when he re-enacts the crucifixion. He participates in the celebrations of the Virgin in the special dances that take place when the Virgin travels to different neighborhoods, and he organizes the annual Pastorela or nativity play. In turn, all these events are filmed and become memories for the migrants. Not only do they enrich the transnational social space of Aguililla-Redwood City, they are practices that are lived by Aguilillans through a simultaneous sense of distance and proximity; they are memories because they evoke an identity, they are “symbolic and hence intersubjective.” 126 When Aguilillans in Aguililla perform these memory practices, and when Aguilillans in Redwood City

124

Interview, Aguililla, October, 1998. With the exception of indigenous people who experience racism in México and in the U.S. Racial differentiation in México is more of a silent practice than an open and recognized issue. 126 Boyarin, Jonathan. 1994. “Space, Time, and the Politics of Memory.” In Jonathan Boyarin, Editor. Remapping Memory. The Politics of Time Space. Minneapolis/London, Univ. of Minnesota Press. P.26. 125

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 66 embody them, they imagine themselves as part of a common space. Through their rituals and community ties, they are indeed enacting their identity, reinforcing their links, and affirming their membership. Mateo, a young man in his mid-twenties, grew up in Aguililla with his grandparents after the rest of his family left for the United States. Also a member of a middle class family, Mateo is married and has a job at the municipality as an accountant. His siblings used to tell him that he was lazy because he only wanted to go to school; they opted instead to migrate. For Mateo’s family to study was a waste of time and it only demonstrated Mateo’s lack of work ethic. They valued work and education differently. Mateo now has a good job in the municipality and he also owns a jewelry store. When his grandmother died, his aunts and uncles insisted on moving his grandfather to the United States. When he was about to leave, Mateo’s grandfather told him: Look son, you have to promise me that you will come for me before June, that you are not going to leave me over there, that you will come for me. I don’t want to leave you here alone. I don’t want to go. If you don’t come for me and I die, I’ll come back and pull your legs at night…your grandmother already told me when I’m going to die, I don’t want you to leave me over there.127 Mateo promised to bring his grandfather back after school ended. Then, in June, his grandfather got sick, and as Mateo tells the story: I went in an emergency to Tijuana, I arrived in Freemont, at the hospital as I soon as I could. He had been in a coma for two days. I entered and told him: ‘grandpa’, look, I’m here, I’m here to take you to Aguililla.’ He opened his eyes, he looked at me, and then he died. He was just waiting for me. Later we brought him back to Aguililla to bury him. 128 Mateo kept the promise made to his grandfather. Whereas Mateo’s grandfather wished to live and die in Aguililla––his home, his territory– –his sons and daughters wanted him with them, with his other grandchildren, the abuelo being a cornerstone of the family. Perhaps the abuelo signified home and family; for them he symbolized their belonging and connection to México. When the abuelo became ill,

127 128

Interview, Aguililla, October 1998 Idem.

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 67 Mateo crossed the border without documents and rushed to the side of his grandfather. He was waiting for Mateo to die in peace because he knew Mateo would take him back to Aguililla, where he belonged. As Mateo fulfilled his promise he demonstrated how migration is embedded with memories and linkages, with “here” and “there” as powerful dimensions that frame migrants’ family ties. Death in a migrant family reverberates throughout the network of social relations established through years of migration, and also underscores the issue of membership. Death brings to the forefront the relation between belonging, home, and territory, between identity and roots.

Spaces of belonging As a consequence of their displacement, migrants engage in a process of re-invention of themselves that necessarily leads them to reflect on the place they belong. The analysis of Mexican migrants’ transnational practices allows for an understanding of how they build a unique sense of belonging in the spaces they inhabit. In the making of lives and places, multiple stories, viewpoints and practices thread as different layers involved in the construction of a sense and a space of belonging, and of a citizenship. While migrants might experience, narrate and conceptualize belonging and identity as fixed categories, migration destabilizes these categories. Transnational migration brings a reflexive dimension into people’s lives where categories like place, identity, and belonging lose sturdiness even though they continue to seem fixed and solid. Through migration people become involved in processes of re-invention of themselves, their communities, and their sense of home––whether it be their nation or their hometown. Nation and migration form loci of sentiments and emotions crucial to a sense of home.129 This process of re-invention implicates politics, memory practices, commodity exchange, identity formation, as well as social and economic remittances.130 Through these practices migrant communities, like the

129

Westwood, Sallie and Annie Phizacklea. 2000. Op. Cit. P. 11 For Peggy Levitt, social remittances refer to transactions among migrants. She identifies three kinds of social remittances: normative structures (ideas, values and beliefs), systems of practices (households tasks, political and religious participation), and social capital. Op. Cit. Pp 59-62. 130

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 68 one formed by Aguililla and Redwood City, lay the ground to establish their sense of belonging, and their citizenship. Mexican migrants living in the United States face multiple contradictions and dilemmas. Being here and being there are two categories that constantly intersect in their lives. Here is a category that expresses a location in space-time. However, when it is considered in relation to Mexican migrants living in the U.S. it not only expresses physical presence in a particular geographical locale, it also includes a distant here fed by nostalgia, together with symbols and signifiers of nation. In the Aguililla-Redwood City transnational social space, belonging rests upon understandings and experiences of place, home, family, identity, among other elements. In migrants’ discourse the spatial categories allí and allá, or here and there, become essential in their understanding and articulation of who they are, and their place in the web of sociopolitical relations that surround them. Here and there are always present in speech, they are loaded with meaning and provide clues for the comprehension of the transnational social space constructed by Mexican migrants. Here is a moving category. Here as nation or as home is invoked and embodied by migrants through memory practices, socio-economic exchanges, and processes of identity formation. Moreover, here makes evident the existence of a there, of distance. Here is a moving category. The presence of these dimensions in migrants’ lives reflects the bifocality they enact. For some migrants the way they inhabit their peripheral vision, the simultaneous presence of here and there, is through memory practices. Doña Carmen is full of memories that make her re-live her life in Aguililla, a place where special pure water comes out from a stone. Through her memories and stories she enacts a here that contains taste and smell. This evocation is Doña Carmen’s strategy to articulate her belonging to a place called home. As Doña Carmen remembers, she also brings into play the dimension of history and the force it holds in the forging of a sense of belonging. When Doña Carmen refers to history, here turns into territory; México is where she lives, where she belongs, she is here. Her here is historically and symbolically charged. Likewise, María’s life illustrates practices of belonging. María moves commodities at the same time that she gathers stories ––gossip– – about others and the ups and downs of their migrant lives. María is

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 69 here and there through these stories, through these memory practices, as well as with the economic transactions she establishes everyday. Moreover, the saga of her own efforts to secure U.S. residency, to evade problems with U.S. law, and to provide a good education to her youngest children (as Mexicans, on her terms) show how here and there are very real and material spatial dimensions in María’s life. As material and symbolic relations occur through the exchange of commodities in transnational migration, other social processes get intertwined profoundly affecting migrants’ identity formation. Through the exchanges that take place in their store, José and Mercedes have become aware of racial differences, and moments of identity. Race impacts migrants’ experience of here and there. Gustavo experienced racialization while growing up in the U.S. As Faviola recognizes the existence of others, or when Doña Carmen places her identity in opposition to the U.S., they participate in a racialization process. As in many other cases of transnational migration, kinship is one of the main features that structure the lives of Mexican migrants. Family ties as well as family feuds provide structure in migrants’ lives. On the one hand, kinship ties establish routes of travel for migrants. Migrants go where their kin is. Kinship ties also form the web of support migrants require particularly when they first arrive, and that will always be there for socializing. And in rare cases, kinship can also place some people as part of a chain of a longstanding family feud. While kinship certainly structures the lives of Aguilillan migrants, at least their routes of displacement, family relations are in turn changed through the migrant experience. The most notable transition takes place on the level of gender. The migrant experience locates women in a position in which they have to seek employment in order to make ends meet which provides them with a different position than the one they held in their hometown where they usually do not work outside the homestead. Under the new circumstances, their role in the household decision-making process changes; sometimes they even become the main providers, as in the cases of María, Doña Carmen or Lucha. María’s migrant experience has sparked a shift in her family gender relations. She is a different kind of a woman because of migration. So is Lucha, who has definitively contested and transformed the balance of household decisions, as well as her sense of who she is as a woman.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Another change which migrant families experience has to do with the relation between parents and children. An ongoing complaint often voiced by Mexican migrant parents refers to the difficulties of raising (educar) their children the way they were used. Interference from state agencies, and the fear they provoke, changes the authority Mexicans parents are used to hold. The general perception among migrants is that, here, the children become more easily spoiled. Here, they talk back to their parents. For some parents the most pressing question is how to deal with drug issues or with gangs. Like María, Ramón, Mercedes, and José, they do not want their children to become cholos. These issues do make parents consider very seriously the possibility of going back to México. Nonetheless, in most cases, such as with Faviola, families want the comfort and access to commodities they have found in the U.S. along with the quality of Mexican life. Aguililla’s economy is based strongly on drug trafficking. This commerce, which travels across borders, plays a central role in the construction of this particular transnational social space. There are some Aguilillans who do participate in this activity on both sides of the border and have made it a significant aspect of this transnational social space’s economy and social dynamics as portrayed by the family feud. Citizenship in this transnational social space is built upon the foundation of family ties, desires for a better life, and a particular sociopolitical scenario. Michoacán is immersed both in intense political activity and migration, making the interrelationship between the states of Michoacán and California, and between the municipalities of Aguililla and Redwood City, a strong case of transnational politics. For many migrants, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ presence in the national political arena, and in the Silicon Valley region went beyond a political interest; it also represented a larger connection with home and with history. It reminded people of their Michoacán and Mexican roots. In this conjuncture, for many Michoacano migrants politics has turned into an issue of belonging. The opening anecdote about Cárdenas’ visits allows for an understanding of the simultaneity of the life migrants sustain where identity and citizenship are elusive categories. Likewise, it could be read as one of the ways in which people mediate their transnational condition, as they strategically choose their membership. Mexicans living in a transnational social space such as Aguililla-Redwood City are simultaneously conscious of both sides of the border. There are different elements that cross this lived space: 70

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 71 spatial categories such as here and there; kinship as a key social structure and network that marks the routes migrants will take in their travels. These routes are intersected by a myriad of cultural, political and economic relations such as the ones described in this chapter. Mexican migrants’ routes and their thick practices of belonging build a social space that exists within a transnational dimension. The existence of these routes, practices, and spaces has become a challenge for the nation-states that are implicated. How is membership to the nationstate established under such circumstances? While migrants indeed contest the borders of the state as well as notions of citizenship, México and the U.S. respond to the challenges posed by transnational migration.

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CHAPTER 3

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm

The way migrants live in Redwood City, La Aguililla Chiquita, shows the complex cultural ties involved in making a transnational space, which migrants experience as home. In contrast to how Aguilillans’ transnational practices shape their citizenship as a form of belonging to a larger community, laws define citizenship within the hegemonic framework of the nation-state. The relation between law and citizenship produces a culture of citizenship framed by the network of laws and institutions that affect migrants’ political situation and their everyday lives. To follow migrants´ relationship to laws this book approaches law as practice, and migrants as users of the law. A user theory of law means the user of the law is its driving force. Whether they be powerful entities that shape the law based on their own interests thus turning the law into a hegemonic tool, or powerless users, who change the law through their everyday practices, subjects’ disputes over power, autonomy, and democracy, demonstrate that people are the life of the law. 131 For migrants the laws emanating from two different state formations, México and the United States, form a conjuncture in their lives. This study focuses in two main sets of laws which structure a legal discursive corpus that frames the notion of the border, displacing it from its geographical dimension and moving it to a political realm. From the United States, the 1996 U.S. immigration law, the 1996 welfare reform legislation (with crucial aspects that pertain to

131

Cf. Nader, Laura. 2002. The Life of the Law. Anthropological Projects. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles. P.4

73

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 74 immigration), and California’s 1994 proposition 187 appear as a set of regulations that delineate and limit migrants´ life in the United States. From México, the non-loss of nationality law and the Constitutional reform of article 36 that opened the possibility for the vote-abroad, shaped a space for migrants´agency. These laws articulate along national, transnational, and personal dimensions of citizenship and migration. To grasp the consequences these laws entail for migrants, it is necessary to comprehend their broader political and cultural significance. Because migrants’ subjectivities are shaped by the shifting connections the laws sustain as they intersect with their lives, it becomes necessary to understand how the law works as an embodied practice, experienced and contested by people. When citizenship is defined in the legal realm, with its consequent categorization of people, it already appears as a political space where power struggles take place to determine inclusions and exclusions, but also where spaces of resistance and contestation emerge. Studying laws portrays the institutional dimension entailed in citizenship. However, legal texts are embedded with cultural meanings, values, and social practices that are the life of the law. The structure produced by the interrelation of the corpus of laws produced by México and the U.S. to deal with migrants can be understood as a web of possibilities and impossibilities through which migrants move. It can be said that transnational migrants in the particular space they inhabit––such as the one formed by the connection Aguililla-Redwood City––find themselves being addressed and constituted as political subjects by two different state formations. The body of laws that frames migrants´ lives becomes a discourse inasmuch as it is produced from the institutional point of view, deriving its power from the institutions themselves––judicial system, presidency, electoral institutions.132 Nonetheless, as much as laws are hard texts they indeed contain a dimension of proliferation of meaning that allows the people subjected to them to avert their overwhelming institutional powers. That said, the materiality of the law, its performative effect, must be emphasized. Because they appear as texts, sometimes laws seem to remain at that level. Mexican

132

Foucault, Michael. 1976. “The Discourse of Language.” Archaeology of Knowledge. Harper Colofon, New York. P.216.

In The

Citizenship and Belonging: Building a Transnational Social Space 75 migrants’ lives demonstrate the opposite. Laws become material, they become real when migrants experience them. In their lives state institutions, legal discourses are a constant, spectral and lively presence. Beyond this theorization, laws appear as moving texts and the privileged ethnographic place where the nation-state is literally written and at work, where the meaning and value of the nation is always invoked. The laws analyzed in this section describe the structural and discursive connection that exists between Mexican migrants and the nation-states they inhabit. This is a space with many restrictions, characterized by both open and undisclosed labeling, by racialized divisions, by the commodification and objectification of identity. Likewise, when these laws interlock they indicate one of the ways in which México and the U.S. maneuver as nation-states in a transnational era where people’s migration shakes conservative definitions of boundaries. To understand the context and laws that surround migrants lives is key for a future consideration of a politics of citizenship where membership to a community or to a nation-state, and the battles behind the definition of the practice of this membership, is always at play. This book shares the idea that “law comprises more than judicial or legislative institutions; it also includes the social and cultural organization of law.”133 Like other anthropological works, it focuses on specific laws, and how people relate to them. However, the present work is not about the process of dispute, about the litigant, or the plaintiff. It reviews the law as part of a wider set of social relations to which it has to respond. It looks at people, Mexican migrants, and how laws impact their daily lives. This work studies the history and context in which the laws directly impacting Mexican migrants to the U.S. came into existence. It is in this sense that this work can be considered an ethnography of law.

133

Laura Nader. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 49.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Throughout Mexican migration to the United States migrants´ lives have shifted along with a set of immigration laws, bi-national agreements, government policies that have evolved in accordance with the needs of the U.S. economy, and the more immediate political special interests. After the 1929 economic crash and during the depression (1929-1933), Mexican migrants were massively deported, only to be lured back in to the U.S. labor market through the Programa Bracero (1942-1964) signed by both countries. This Program set the bases for the beginning of a migration trend in several regions of México, which continues today. This is the case for Aguililla where some people signed as Braceros, thus beginning to build the migrant network that matured and turned the Aguilillan community into a transnational social space.134 The different bi-national agreements and the continuous modifications to U.S. immigration law outlines Mexicans´ history of migration. Likewise, this framework delineates their everyday existence, and prefigures the strategies migrants will need to follow to build their transnational citizenship. What is possible and what is not is already inscribed in immigration law. Mapping the different immigration initiatives allows for an understanding of how, regardless of the constraining intentions most of them contain, migrants´ situated cultural practices bring life to the law, they embody it, and in doing so they reshape it. 76

134

Cf. In Fonseca, Omar and Lilia Moreno. 1988. “Consideraciones históricosociales de la migración de trabajadores michoacanos a los Estados Unidos de América: el Caso de Jaripo.” In López Castro, Gustavo, coord. Migración en el Occidente de México. El Colegio de Michoacán, México. Pp. 75-77.

Table A: Mapping U.S. Initiatives Date Initiative 1942- Bracero 1964 Program

Content Proponent Cover needs of Bi-national U.S. labor Agreement market in II World War Limited time contract, option to be rehired

1986

Legalize agricultural workers (Special Agricultural Workers) Legalize migrants w/ long migration history before 1982, w/5 years of residency (LAW) Sanction employers of undocumented immigrants Increase border control budget.136

Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA)

135

Restricted amnesty, unrestricted amnesty, sanctions and control

Details Mainly in agro-industry and the railroad135

Approved and implemented Permitted legalization of 2.3 million Mexican migrants137

Fonseca, Omar and Lilia Moreno. 1988. Op. Cit. Cf. Durand, Jorge and Douglas S. Massey. 2003. Op. Cit. Pp. 169. 137 Durand, Jorge and Douglas S. Massey. 2003. Op. Cit. Pp. 170. 136

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Table A, continued Date 1994

Initiative Content Proposition Illegal aliens 187 ineligible for public social services and public school Requires states + local agencies to report suspected illegal aliens to the INS Manufacture, issue, sell false documents a felony

1996

Personal Responsibi -lity and Work Opportunity Act

No access to food stamps, funding for disability or Medicaid coverage for both documented and undocumented immigrants

78

Proponent Republicans from California

Details Approved by California voters California Legislature Record 1007 Challenged in courts. Not implemented

Approved Otherwise known as Welfare Reform

Table A, continued Date 1996

Initiative Illegal Immigration + Immigrant Responsibi -lity Act IIRAIRA

Content Border + interior enforcement Smuggling and doc. fraud enforcement Apprehension and removal of deportable aliens Restrictions against employment Restrictions on benefits, other

April Citizenship Amend 2, Reform Immigration 2003 Act of and 2003138 Nationalization Law to deny citizenship by birth in the U.S. if the parents are not citizens or permanent residents

138

Proponent

Details Approved Measures against illegal immigration Operation Hold the Line (Texas) Operation Gatekeeper (San Diego)

Congressman Nathan Deal Republican

H.R. 1567

Cf. Table of Comparative Analysis of Migratory Initiatives by the U.S. Congress in Zebadua González Emilio. 2004. “El Debate Migratorio en Estados Unidos.” Informe del Primer Año de Actividades Legislativas 20032004. Congreso de la Unión, México. Pp.133-137.

79

Table A, continued Date July 10, 2003

Nov. 2, 2005

139

Initiative Border Security and Immigration Reform Act139

Content No to an amnesty No to citizenship for migrant workers including undocumented migrants living in the U.S. Mandatory registration in guest worker program within first year of publication of law or deportation Restrict workers mobility supervised by Labor Dept. Proposition Requires proof 200 of citizenship for voting purposes Proof of citizenship to have access to public benefits

Zebadúa, 2004. Op. Cit. 80

Proponent John Cornyn Judd Gregg (Republican Senators)

Details S.1387

Approved by Arizona voters 56% to 44%

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm

81

The land of the free WE CAN STOP ILLEGAL ALIENS If the citizens and the taxpayers of our state wait for the politicians in Washington and Sacramento to stop the incredible flow of ILLEGAL ALIENS, California will be in economic and social bankruptcy. We have to act and ACT NOW! On our ballot, Proposition 187 will be the first giant stride in ultimately ending the illegal alien invasion….140 In 1994, 58.8% of California voters approved a ballot measure named Proposition 187, which banned illegal aliens from the use of basic public services.141 This initiative “emerged from the suburbs of Los Angeles and Orange County in 1993 as the ‘Save Our State’ campaign” ––S.O.S.–– a campaign aided by Republican Party funding, and strongly supported by then Governor Pete Wilson who used it as part of his re-election agenda.142 It is important to note that this initiative was born out of a group of citizens from Orange County, lead by Ronald Prince and Republican political consultant Robert Riley. The relevance of this fact is that it was a citizen’s proposal, supported by republicans that set the stage for a major transformation in immigration law in the United States.

140

Arguments in favor of Proposition 187. California Legislature Record 1007. 1994. See Annex 5. 141 “Official title: Illegal Aliens, Ineligibility for Public Services and Reporting Initiative Statute. Summary: Makes illegal aliens ineligible for public social services (unless emergency under federal law), and public school education at elementary, secondary, and post-secondary levels. Requires various state and local agencies to report persons who are suspected illegal aliens to the California Attorney General and the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service. Mandates California Attorney General to transmit reports to INS and maintain records of such reports. Makes it a felony to manufacture, distribute, sell or use false citizenship or residence documents.” California Legislature, Ballots. Proposition 187. Summary. 1994. 141 McDonnell, Patrick. 1999. “Davis won’t appeal Prop. 187 ruling, ending court battles.” Los Angeles Times, July 29. 142 McDonnell, Patrick. 1999. Op. Cit. Also cf. California Legislature, Ballots. Proposition 187. Summary. 1994.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants As can be observed in the opening quote, Proposition 187, used tabloid campaign style, to play upon xenophobic attitudes not only in California but also in the U.S. in general, thereby galvanizing latent anti-immigrant feelings, in particular against Mexicans. According to Alejandra Marchevsky, the success of Proposition 187 rested on “its ability to closely link crime and immigration in the public imagination”, thereby constructing anyone that came across the border illegally ––especially from the South–– as an invader, a criminal, therefore undeserving of basic human civil rights.143 The arguments in favor of Proposition 187 stated that “welfare, medical and educational benefits are the magnets that draw these ILLEGAL ALIENS across our borders”.144 These illegal aliens. Through its language, Proposition 187 successfully contributed to an effect of estrangement, of othering, where migrants stopped being people and turned into real aliens, creatures far from human dignity. These illegal aliens. Proposition 187 included provisions preventing illegal immigrants from attending public schools, receiving social services, and subsidized health care. Likewise it penalized the manufacture and use of false documents to conceal illegal immigrant status. It also required that law enforcement authorities, school administrators and medical workers turn in suspected illegal immigrants to federal and state authorities. By bringing the enforcement of the law down to the level of public workers such as teachers, doctors, nurses, social workers, and employers, the consequence would have been a policing social environment where the racial other became the necessary object of suspicion. “Is it the way you speak? The sound of your last name? The shade of your skin?” These were some of the questions posed in the arguments against the Proposition, a proposal that looked to use suspicion as a tool for the enactment of the law but failed to define the basis for such suspicion. A closer reading of Proposition 187 allows for an understanding of the institutional and performative power entailed in this legal text. As Massey and Durand explain, Proposition 187 82

143

Marchevsky, Alejandra. 1996. “The Empire Strikes Back: Globalization, Nationalism and California’s Proposition 187.” In Critical Sense. A Journal of Political and Cultural Theory. Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring. Cf. P.13. 144 Arguments in favor of Proposition 187. California Legislature Record 1007.

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 83 pretended to create a new division among the Mexican migrant community: between residents with limited rights and citizens with full rights. The obvious consequence was that migrant residents opted to obtain naturalization.145 Likewise, in the arguments in favor and against the initiative it is possible to capture how migrants are imagined and portrayed, and the very material consequences of such images (Chavez, 2001; Zavella, 2002). The main arguments in favor of the Proposition rested on claims of how “illegal immigration” [sic] represented a cost of “an estimated five billion dollars a year.”146 For those who were feeling the effects of reductions in Medicaid or the strain in the educational system, the arguments presented by promoters of Proposition 187 were compelling. Because migrants are always seen as a cost rather than producers of value, they represent the ideal scapegoat. Considerations in favor and against Proposition 187 both took as their point of departure a similar notion of immigrants: they are illegal, they are a problem; as alien to this country they cannot become a part of it. The opinions against Proposition 187 did not escape the discourse of viewing immigration as a problem and immigrants as a source of expenses covered by taxpayers’ money. They advocated in favor of reinforcing the border and focused on how Proposition 187 would end up costing 10 billion dollars to the state of California on account of the loss of federal funds. As Kitty Calavita (1996) argues in her study on the symbolism of Proposition 187, this initiative portrayed a “new politics” of immigration based on “balanced budget conservatism”. Moreover, those against the Proposition presented their arguments in the ballot for the most part in legalistic terms. Among other statements, the counter-position declared that the initiative was “filled with provisions that collide with state and federal laws, state and U.S. constitutional protections and with state and federal court rulings.” These arguments did not appear as a match to the more simple and compelling pro-187 ones.147 It comes as no surprise that with the lack of a strong counter-argument to the core ideas of Proposition 187, with an argument based on how “poorly drafted” the initiative was, at least

145

Cf. Durand, Jorge y Douglas S. Massey. 2003. Op. Cit. Pp. 178. Arguments in favor of Proposition 187 147 Arguments against Proposition 187. 146

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 84 at the level of the text the battle was won before it even went to the voters. As migration without papers is transformed into a criminal act, behind laws like IIRAIRA or Proposition 187 lies the perception that the established national ways are jeopardized by immigration in general. Even though these laws appear in the phrasing as practical responses to the economic problems caused by the presence of migrants, in fact they are mostly concerned with the political and cultural impact migrants have in the overall dynamic of life in the United States. In the U.S., objections to the presence of immigrants derive mostly from objections to cultural attributes such as race, religion, and language (Zolberg, 2000). These objections often later translate into laws, as in the case of Proposition 187, or the English only initiatives that are moving through different states.148 The solutions immigration laws propose reflect an approach to migrants as a negative aspect of U.S. life. The proposed solutions are about restricting, enforcing, deporting, apprehending. The discourse produced by IIRAIRA, the welfare reform, and Proposition 187 is nothing less than a portrait of the institutional power the laws contain and project, and the fear of the unwanted but so needed ‘other’. Of course the full explanation of why Proposition 187 was approved by California voters cannot rest on a textual analysis. Issues of race and class played a significant role in the final results. For example, the majority of the registered electorate in California is white, while in relation to the population as a whole it has lost its majority status at least since 2000, a trend that was already noticed in the past decade. In 1994, 81% of the electorate was white. Out of this group,

148

“In the United States alone, just about every cultural attribute imaginable has been found objectionable at one time or another, notably ‘race’––as constructed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, referring not only to ‘Asiatic’ and blacks but also mixed-breed Mexicans, different European nationalities, and Jews––religion (notably Roman Catholics, from the eighteenth century until quite recently), and language (German speakers in the late eighteenth century, Spanish speakers today).” Aristide R. Zolberg. 2000. “The Politics of Immigration Policy: an Externalist Perspective.” In Nancy Foner, Ruben G. Rumbaut, and Steven J. Gold, Eds. Immigration Research for a New Century. Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Rusell Sage Foundation, New York. P. 63

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 85 according to a poll conducted by Los Angeles Times, 63% of the white electorate voted yes for Proposition 187.149 Latinos voted overwhelmingly––77%––against it, however, they only represented a low 8% of the electorate.150 Three and a half years after the controversial ballot was passed by California voters, a federal judge in Los Angeles “issued a final order forbidding implementation of the core provisions of Proposition 187, declaring that those parts of the controversial 1994 ballot initiative targeting illegal immigrants’ use of public benefits is unconstitutional.”151 By the time Gray Davis came into office he had to decide whether California’s government should continue the appeal against Los Angeles U.S. District Judge Mariana R. Pfaelzer’s ruling. Davis’ government inherited this appeal from Pete Wilson’s tenure. On July 1999, attorneys for Governor Gray Davis and civil rights organizations that supported proposition 187 reached an agreement to end litigation. The provisions at the heart of Proposition 187 were put aside. It seemed that this dark moment was behind. Was it really?

Domino effect: the legacy of Proposition 187 In his work on popular images of immigration and the politics of nation, Leo Chavez explains that “following the assumption central to Proposition 187, that social services—not jobs—[were] the magnet drawing undocumented immigrants to the United States,” the U.S. Congress responded to the legacy of California´s Proposition 187 accordingly.152 Thus, while the application of Proposition 187 were trapped in the courts and were never fully enacted, the ideology behind it, the negative feelings, the proposed policies, started to make their way up to Congress. Likewise, in this year Congress passed welfare

149

See Weintraub, Daniel W. 1994. “Crime, Immigration Issues Helped Wilson, Polls Find.” The Los Angeles Times, 9 November. A1 and A22. 150 See Marchevsky, Alejandra. Op. Cit. P.12. 151 McDonnell, Patrick. 1998a. “Judge’s Final Order Kills Key Points of Prop. 187. Courts: a permanent injunction is levied on the ‘94 measure targeting illegal immigrants’ use of public benefits.” Los Angeles Times, Thursday March 19. 152 Chávez, Leo R. 2001. Covering Immigration. Popular Images and the Politics of the Nation. Berkeley/London/Los Angeles: University of California Press. Pp. 192-193.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 86 reform legislation that, among other things targeted aid to legal immigrants. In sum, in 1996 the United States Congress transformed immigration law. By August, Congress had approved the welfare reform legislation––the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act––which imposed new restrictions on aid to documented migrants. In addition, in September, Congress passed the Illegal Immigration and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 [IIRAIRA], signed by then President Bill Clinton, made illegal immigrants ineligible for most nonemergency public aid.153 Both laws can be seen as the legacy of California’s Proposition 187. Furthermore, Proposition 187 can be read as the legacy of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA). IRCA, which was portrayed as an amnesty, affected the lives of many Mexican migrants who applied for residency. How does IRCA coincide with later racist proclamations like Proposition 187, or the welfare reform? As Pierrette Hondagneau-Sotelo explains, “while the media portrayed IRCA as a liberal and generous law because of legalization provisions, the primary impulse behind it was immigration restriction.”154 While IRCA included provisions to legalize agricultural workers and undocumented migrants already settled in the U.S––before 1982, a central goal of IRCA was to sanction those who employed undocumented immigrants thereby reducing migration’s pull factor. Likewise, IRCA sought to increase the budget for apprehending undocumented migrants at the southern border.155 These last two policies continue to reappear in posterior immigration policies. However, it is important to notice that despite the intent to stop the intensity of undocumented immigration flow, IRCA turned into a pull factor. Many families, in particular women and children—whom before tended to migrate with papers— decided to migrate with the hope of obtaining legal residence through

153

See Legomsky, Stephen H. 1997. “Non-Citizens and the Rule of Law: the 1996 Immigration Reforms.” In Research Perspectives on Migration, Vol. 1/ Number 4, May/June. 154 Hondagneu-Sotelo, Pierrette. 1994. Gendered Transitions. Mexican Experiences of Immigration. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles. P. xiv 155 Cf. Hondagneu-Sotelo. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 207.

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 87 IRCA´s so called amnesty, in spite of the fact that they were not legally eligible to apply.156 The welfare reform legislation of 1996 mainly took away food stamps, funding for disability payments and Medicaid health coverage from both documented and undocumented immigrants. This legislation ended a long-standing assistance program for families with children. “The law was expected to save the government $54 billion over the following six years, or $24 billion, to come from restricting legal immigrants´ use of food-stamps, Supplemental Security Income, and aid for low income elderly, the blind, and the disabled.”157 By 1997, some of these rights had been partially restored, in particular eligibility for legal immigrants to receive disability payments and Medicaid health coverage.158 In 1998 Congress restored federal food stamp eligibility to needy legal immigrants ––namely children, the elderly and disabled– who had been dropped from the program. Despite these changes, a significant number of adults between ages 18 and 64 remained uncovered because the new provisions failed to include all the noncitizens residents who were covered before.159 Another limitation of the modifications to the welfare reform lies in the fact that it only applies to residents who settled before August 22, 1996, when the federal welfare overhaul became law. While most of these provisions were restituted, the effect this law and Proposition 187 had on Mexican migrants’ understanding of their vulnerability in the U.S. became permanent. A feeling of disadvantage in relation to U.S. laws has led many migrants with residency to decide to obtain U.S. citizenship, as is the case of many Aguilillans like Doña Carmen, or María. For migrants, the distinction between the name of one law or another is not clear, whether it is a state law or a federal one, the two levels are viewed as emerging from one single entity: the U.S. government. Moreover, what is clear for

156

Cf. Cornelius, Wayne. 1990a. “Los migrantes de la crisis. El nuevo perfil de la mano de obra mexicana a California en los años ochenta.” In Gail Mummert. Población y Trabajo en Contextos Regionales. El Colegio de Michoacán, México. Pp. 119. 157 Chávez, Leo. Op. Cit. Pp. 193. 158 See McDonnell, Patrick J. 1998b. “Food stamp eligibility to be restored for 250,000.” In Los Angeles Times, Friday, June 5. 159 See McDonnell, Patrick. 1998b. Idem

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 88 most Mexicans in the U.S. is the way laws impact their lives, and reenforce exclusionary perceptions of Mexicans in the U.S. where whether citizens or not they still face discrimination. For Mexican migrants, the specter of Proposition 187 prevails.

Attack the enemy: Illegal Immigration Reform And Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRAIRA) While the Welfare reform legislation mostly restricted residents’ rights, IIRAIRA’s main provisions deal with illegal immigration. As Stephen Legomsky explains, “IIRAIRA seeks to attack illegal immigration on several fronts––at the border, in the interior, in prosecutors’ offices, and elsewhere––and invests additional law enforcement resources to ensure that assault stands a good chance of success.”160 To summarize, IIRAIRA contains five sections, or Titles, each of them addressing a specific area of the complex immigration agenda in the United States: a) Border and interior enforcement; b) Smuggling and document fraud enforcement; c) Apprehensions and removal of deportable aliens; d) Restrictions against employment; e) Restrictions on Benefits; and f) Miscellaneous provisions. Each of these titles include their own set of policies which re-enforce prior ones or modify them. For example, in the 1990s the INS concentrated new enforcement resources to the border with such actions as “Operation Hold the line” in El Paso, or “Operation Gatekeeper” in San Diego. With IIRAIRA, Congress implicitly endorsed this particular INS strategy.161 Critics of these policies argue, “these operations merely diverted illegal entries to other crossing points or induced those who succeed in achieving illegal entry to remain longer rather than go back and forth.”162 Moreover, these militaristic style policies not only have failed to stop migrant flow from the South, they have pushed the crossing of the border to harsher and more dangerous conditions, where migrants put their lives at risk. It would seem as if the INS is counting on migrants dying instead of having to deal with them when they cross the border. IIRAIRA brought an increase in border patrol agents, and the construction of more physical barriers. Among the more serious

160

Legomsky. 1997. Op.Cit. Cf. Legomsky. 1997. 162 Legomsky. 1997. Op. Cit. P.13 161

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 89 consequences are the provisions that establish civil penalties for illegal entries, and the authorization to fingerprint illegal aliens. When an entry with no visa takes place, the person is not deported immediately. The migrant is arrested and sent to a detention center. A file is opened and from that moment the arrested migrant has a police record thus hindering later possibilities to become a legal resident and/or citizen. These particular IIRAIRA policies criminalize migration thereby imposing harsher conditions on migrants’ lives. In this case migrants go from being workers, fathers, mothers, to becoming criminals. Again, a line has been crossed for them, and again migrants acquire a new subjectivity with far reaching consequences for their daily lives. IIRAIRA also restricts immigration judges’ discretion in deportation cases. Before IIRAIRA, immigrants at risk of being deported had to prove continued physical stay in the U.S. for at least seven years, good moral character during that period, and demonstrate that deportation would cause extreme hardship to the alien or to his family (whether citizens or residents). Under IIRAIRA, a migrant is now required to have good moral character, they can be deported without a hearing, they have to demonstrate continuous presence was extended to ten years, and hardship to the alien himself is no longer basis to allow a judge to stop a deportation. Another aspect of IIRAIRA applies to legal residents. This particular provision expands the notion of “aggravated felony” and “conviction,” which in turn affect non-citizens who have some criminal record placing them in the possibility of being deported regardless of circumstances. As Stephen Legomsky explains, the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988 introduced the category of aggravated felony. According to Legomsky this notion “has become one of the most amended terms in the Immigration and Nationality Act.”163 Whereas initially aggravated felony referred “to such crimes as murder, and firearms and drug trafficking, the term’s meaning has been consistently broadened by lawmakers keen to demonstrate that they are ‘tough on crime’.”164 The different amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act have, in certain cases, extended the term of aggravated felony “to such crimes as minor drug possession, turnstile-jumping and graffiti-

163 164

Legomsky, Stephen. 1997. Op.Cit. P.13. Idem.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 90 making––even if these crimes occurred years ago.”165 Furthermore, as Legomsky explains, the term “conviction has undergone a similar metamorphosis, and now includes many state deferred adjudication or diversion programs that previously had little or no immigration consequences.” Likewise, IIRAIRA “sharply curtails the possibility of the immigrant receiving a waiver of deportation based on mitigating circumstances.”166 The impact of changes to the meaning of categories like ‘conviction’ and ‘aggravated felony’ for non-citizens is very real, as it can have material consequences such as deportation or a severe reduction of their options to defend themselves. A key issue here is the retroactive nature of these criminalizing threats of deportation. Whereas before residents were treated with the same eyes under the law that ruled U.S. citizens, with the broadening of the meaning of these categories migrants/immigrants/residents are placed in a position of increased vulnerability. Words have power, and these kinds of words not only proliferate in their meaning, they also threaten a migrants’ everyday life. They are connected with immigration law as reminders that only citizens of the United States are fully protected under its laws. As a consequence of immigration laws undocumented migrants get physically separated from the rest of the population by a continual informal judgment that pushes people to accept any kind of job situation. Continuous surveillance, through the 1996 immigration law, is now passed on to the civilian population. This legislation, for example, requires employers to check for the legality of the papers presented by workers, or requires teachers, doctors and nurses to request papers documenting legal presence. These expectations and obligations placed on the civil society provoke a naturalization of the categories of alien immigrant, illegal worker or illegal immigrant.167 By limiting immigrant rights the law enables the existence, the very construction of the category, which it seeks to ban: the illegal alien. It is the law that produces difference.168 (Coutin: 1996; De Genova, 2002). Those immigrants who can respond to this surveillance and differentiation by taking U.S. citizenship opt for what appears to be an

165

Idem. Idem. 167 Cf. Coutin, Susan. 1996. “Differences within Accounts of U.S. Immigration Law”. In Political and Legal Anthropology Review Vol. 19, No. 1, May. P.16 168 Cf. Coutin, Susan. 1996. Op. Cit. P. 11 166

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 91 assimilation move. Each time a migrant takes U.S. citizenship the limits between legality and illegality shift.169 Since IIRAIRA´s policies create a more direct connection between migration and criminalization, they impose harsher conditions on migrants´ lives. With provisions that establish civil penalties for illegal entries, and the authorization to fingerprint illegal aliens, IIRAIRA aimed at hindering migrants´ later possibilities for becoming legal residents and/or citizens. In this sense migrants move between categories, they can go from being workers, fathers, and mothers, to becoming criminals. Every detail of the law, every word, can transform a person from a minor offender into a major criminal thus performing a change in their political subjectivity. They would no longer be able to become U.S. citizens. The different provisions established in IIRAIRA are another step toward the criminalization of immigrants. Paradoxically, while IIRAIRA and other immigration laws search to restrict access to U.S. citizenship, immigration law “simultaneously creates mechanisms through which the illicit can regularize their status.”170 An analysis of the language of U.S. immigration law reveals an ideology where the nation-state appears to be menaced. “Protect the border” is the resulting policy. To protect the border from the Southern invasion is the ever more racialized policy. As Nick De Genova explains, migrant illegality is “produced as an effect of the law, but it is also sustained as an effect of a discursive formation.”171 The solutions immigration laws propose —restricting, enforcing, deporting, apprehending— approach migrants as a negative aspect of U.S. life. However, because they appear as texts, laws sometimes seem to remain at that level. Mexican migrants´ lives demonstrate the opposite. Laws become material, real, when migrants experience them.172

169

See Coutin, Susan. 2003. Legalizing Moves. Salvadoran Immigrants´Struggle for U.S. Residency. The University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. Pp. 11-12. 170 Coutin, S. 2003. Op. Cit. P. 12. 171 De Genova, Nicholas P. 2002. “Migrant Illegality and Deportability in Everyday Life.” In Annual Review of Anthropology, 31: 419-447. Pp.431. 172 Cf. in Castañeda, Alejandra. 2004. “Roads to Citizenship: Mexican Migrants in the United States.” In Latino Studies, Vol. 2, No. 1, April 2004 (70-89). Pp. 82. Also see Zavella, 1997; Martínez, 2002; Coutin, 2003.

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CHAPTER 4

The cultural politics of citizenship: migrant voices

173

I became a citizen so that I wouldn’t lose rights, as they say that residents are losing more rights all the time, well in reality they are forcing one to change citizenship, but I don’t feel less Mexican for that, that doesn’t make me less Mexican, I am still in México.174 This testimony from Doña Carmen —who migrated from Aguililla to Redwood City— represents one of the forms in which migrants engage with the issue of citizenship, that is, in terms of identity and belonging, with the legal realm always lurking around. Her words point toward a set of related issues: first there is the law, the question of rights, to become a citizen in order to maintain rights. Second, the problem of identity ––I don’t feel less Mexican. Finally, the question of membership and sense of place ––I am still in México. Here, Doña Carmen expresses in her own terms how U.S. immigration laws affect her life, or rather, how they induce her to make a decision that she might not otherwise have taken, “they are forcing one to change citizenship.” She is conscious of the fact that there are U.S. laws that directly impact her everyday life.

173

Fragments of this chapter have been published in Castañeda, Alejandra. 2001. “Ciudadanía y Transnacionalismo: el Desafío de los Mexicanos en Estados Unidos.” In Arturo Santamaría. Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: la Nación, la Política y el Voto sin Fronteras. Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa/PRD, México. Likewise, in Castañeda, Alejandra. 2004. “Roads to Citizenship.Mexican Migrants in the United States.” In Latino Studies Vol. 2 (70-89), Issue 1, April. 174 Interview, Redwood City, 1999.

93

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Although she does not mention them specifically, Doña Carmen is referring to the 1996 immigration law (IIRAIRA), and the 1996 welfare reform legislation both of which restricted residents’ rights, and perhaps equally to Proposition 187 and all its propaganda against Mexicans in California.175 The experience recounted by Doña Carmen is again an example of a juncture where state, and migrants meet in the name of the law. With the passage of these laws, and her experience of years of being between the two nation-states of México and the U.S., Doña Carmen has learned that the only way to be fully protected is by taking U.S. citizenship, something that she perceives as a forced but necessary move. Regardless of the setbacks these laws have had in the court system and the new approved laws, together they produced a general sense of instability among migrants. The response for many, however paradoxical, is to become U.S. citizens by way of using the laws that allow for their “legalization”. In doing so, migrants occupy more than an impoverished space where they are not-fully present individuals but rather they represent a new space in politics, which states are reckoning with. In Doña Carmen’s words the issue of belonging to a country, to an imagined community, is clearly present. For her, to take another citizenship does not mean to lose the original one, regardless of laws. I don’t feel less Mexican, she states. At play within the space of uncertainty that migrants occupy are issues of membership, identity, and racialization. According to Nira Yuval-Davis, “it is only when one’s safe and stable connections to the collectivity, to homeland, the state, become threatened, that [belonging] becomes articulated and reflexive.”176 At this point, “individual, collective, and institutional narratives of belonging become politicized.”177 Mexicans in the U.S. are grouped in a racial category, treated as a minority, and are attached with a predetermined baggage of what it means to be Mexican in the 94

175

Although I recognize that state laws are distinct from Federal laws and they do not necessarily coincide, I approach them as a unitary body of laws mainly because this is the way they are perceived by migrants as will be seen throughout this chapter. 176 Yuval-Davis, Nira. 1997. “Gendered citizenship and the politics of belonging.” Keynote speaker at Santa Cruz Conference on Gender and Cultural Citizenship. Manuscript. 177 Yuval-Davis. 1997. Op. Cit.

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 95 U.S.178 Some, like Doña Carmen, do not conform to this situation. She embraces her own notion of Mexicanity even as Mexicanity is re-coded in the U.S. Becoming a U.S. citizen appears as a kind of cultural politics that resists the production of Mexicans as foreigners without simply moving towards assimilation into the U.S.179 In this sense, a politicized language of belonging articulates the disjunctures migrants’ confront in their everyday lives. Aside from the powerful social context that surrounds Doña Carmen, her words strongly express her sense of place, of where her nation is located. For her, México is here, where she lives, here in California even though the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo might try to indicate otherwise. Personally, and perhaps now politically, Doña Carmen is a member of two nation-states, she belongs to México regardless of the fact that she felt forced to take another citizenship. Her words reflect a strong sense of belonging revealing the different meanings citizenship holds, but also the contradictory socio-political space inhabited by Mexican migrants. In her life, the legal realm almost acquires a life of its own, a feeling that she clearly expresses when she states, “they are forcing one to become a U.S. citizen.”

Living with the law, strategic decisions María has a positive view of the U.S. She has experienced the benefits she gets from coming and going between México and the U.S. Despite this, she and her husband decided to return to Aguililla. An important reason that made María and her husband Ramón return to Aguililla was the concern over getting in trouble with the law, of being arrested in the U.S. This would jeopardize their residency application, which they are

178

Michael Omi and Howard Winant’s perspective on race is helpful to understand the racialization process that migrants experience. For them, “race is a concept which signifies and symbolizes social conflicts and interests by referring to different types of human bodies.” Their main concept is that of racial formation which they understand as “a process of historically situated projects in which human bodies and social structures are represented and organized” and ruled. Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. 1994. Op. Cit. Pp. 54-55. 179 See Rosaldo, Renato. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism.” In William Flores and Rina Benmayor. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Beacon Press, Boston. P. 31

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 96 conducting through their daughters who are U.S. citizens. Thus, to stay in the U.S. they have to leave the U.S. María, like many migrants, is well acquainted with immigration law. A relationship of familiarity is established with these laws inasmuch as she knows the ones that affect her more directly. This knowledge enables her to maneuver through them. Together with the assistance of Hispanic lawyers ––as she stated–– María and her family have realized the concrete impact immigration laws have on their lives: I know of several stories about friends, comadres, acquaintances that won’t be able to arrange their papers because the migra ––border patrol–– caught them and that is a felony and with one felony any possibility of papers is annulled, and things like that. Like my comadre who was taken to a detention center from Tijuana to Las Vegas for trying to cross with false papers. She was isolated for a month and we didn’t know anything about her until she was released.180 Even though María has first hand knowledge of the problems to which she is exposed as a migrant in the U.S., María is not overly critical; indeed she claims, “the gringos have a right to defend their country.” Her statement reflects the INS and U.S. media discourse, which portrays migrants as aliens that need to be stopped. Border Patrol policies such as “Operation Gatekeeper” in California or “Operation Hold the Line” in Texas demonstrate the militaristic approach immigration policy has taken in the U.S. particularly in relation to Mexicans. As María accepts the right the U.S. has to defend itself, meaning, the border, she remains trapped in the warlike discourse that portrays migrants as invaders and the border as a line that needs to be safeguarded from them. Needless to say in the aftermath of the September 11 tragedy, this militaristic discourse has been reinforced. María’s experience of U.S. immigration laws is mainly one of a strategic nature. She wants to protect herself and her family, and seeks for the best way to do so within the letter of the law. She wanted to acquire residency status by way of her oldest daughter who is a U.S. citizen. She was familiar with this option as possibly her only opportunity to eventually become a U.S. citizen. Moreover, her familiarity with the laws that impact her everyday life included the knowledge that if the applicant has a criminal record, regardless of the nature of the charge, then the doors to a “legal” life are closed. Under

180

María, interview Aguililla, November 1998.

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 97 IIRAIRA’s provisions, which include a harsher section on deportation, the terms of what constitutes an aggravated felony and conviction have expanded through the years making it more difficult for non-UScitizens who have had minor problems with the law to arrange their legal situation, thus providing grounds for deportation. Immigration laws directly affect María and her ability to stabilize her life by, in this case, acquiring U.S. citizenship. Thus, she wants to be careful and avoid any problems with the law. In this sense, her biggest worry is her husband and his reckless behavior. María accepts the terms of immigration laws; she is familiar with them, and even though she agrees with the idea that migrant workers are invaders. In this sense, Maria’s embodiment of the law falls within the institutional discourse that produces it; she cannot get out of it and have a critical perspective. Nonetheless, María has, as is very common among migrants, a strategic view about her needs and those of her family. A harsher example of how laws impact migrants’ lives comes in the story of how Lucha crossed the border from México to the U.S. My daughter was two years old, I held her close to my chest. We swam to the ocean; it felt like the water was pulling us. It’s very dangerous, like the time when a woman was yelling but we never knew what happened I think she died…my husband was carrying the two boys; the others had their family. That time we made it out …[sic], the bullets zoomed very close. We ran again towards the island, into the ocean...we went back to Tijuana…We tried again with the same coyote [someone who smuggles migrants], that time we made it…We were hiding in the hills, and the migra passed by on horse very close. Of those that came with us the migra caught around six. From the fifteen that left only nine made it…. and from that time, because I saw that we suffered and my children almost drowned, I said we are not returning.181 We are not returning: Lucha’s decisive words are a response to a concrete and negative experience she and her family had when they last crossed the border as ilegales. The tightening of the border in the past years has made it even more difficult for the new wave of migrants. Lucha’s relation with immigration laws derives from her very real experience of the materiality of the border between México and the

181

Interview, San Jose, CA, March 1999.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 98 U.S. When Lucha’s family finally made it past the border patrol, a different route for their life was opened. Contrary to many other migrants’ experiences, of those who are able to return because they hold visas, because they have residency papers obtained through marriage with citizens or legal residents or through their relationships with their migrant family members, a return to México was not an option from the beginning of Lucha’s life as a migrant. This is one of the central ironies in immigration law as it fails to hinder not only the influx but also the settlement of migrants in the U.S., two of the purported central goals of immigration laws. Structurally, the impact of this “failure” is that undocumented migrants who risk crossing the border remain in the U.S. as unstable commodities, selling their labor at less than value within a system of inequality that profits from them.182 That said, Lucha is very content with how her life has turned out in the U.S., with the broad opportunities she has as a woman in contrast to the ones she would have had in Aguililla. In Aguililla, as she explains, her options as a woman would have been limited to household work and dependence on her husband. Here is la tierra de nadie (no-man’s land). From over there, [from] my mom’s family only two people remain in Aguililla…. She was never able to be here; my dad does not like to travel…I am arranging him [papers]. I became a citizen to legalize him so that he may enter whenever he wants to come here. But neither of them want to come. They are happy in México. They say that here they feel like they were in jail, they feel like prisoners, they can’t go wherever they want...I don’t know why they feel like prisoners. I, when I didn’t have papers or anything, I never felt like a prisoner. I went out, took the BART, I got lost all day…183 Migration places migrants in the situation where they have to negotiate their sense of cultural inadequacy, which springs from their mobility. For others, like Lucha, the experience of migration becomes a challenge, and once they become involved in this process, they begin to negotiate their situated cultural practices —i.e. Lucha´s reframing of her gendered role— and their legal and cultural citizenship by way of

182 183

See Piore, 1979; Durand y Massey, 2003 Interview, San José, 1999.

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 99 realizing that they have rights and can be visible regardless of whether they possess or not residency or citizenship papers.

Between a rock and a hard place: contested meanings Although the process of considering a change in citizenship might seem a simple and practical decision, for some migrants it is a choice that implies an analysis of their loyalties, their identity, as well as their practical needs, and the position they hold in the United States. For example, José, a young man from Jalisco who migrated in 1987, was considering applying for U.S. citizenship back in 1997 when we spoke. For him, the different laws and the problematic relation between México and the U.S. leave Mexicans, as he put it, “between a rock and a hard place.” José had been reluctant to apply for U.S. citizenship for a while, but he was giving it more serious thought as a result of the 1996 immigration laws, and the anti-immigrant climate in California. In considering this change of legal status, José was going through an internal debate. I am beginning to discover a new identity inside of me, now I am questioning, do I really want to become a [US] citizen? Do I want to be a part and play the role the U.S. is pressuring me to play? O.K. I want to participate in what there is on both sides, if I want to take advantage of what this country offers...then I might have to become a citizen. But another part of me rebels and says NO! Why should I have to make that change? Although [I know] it is mostly a change of papers, not so much an ideological or psychological one, but one to exploit what this country offers...184 As in the case of Doña Carmen, José’s story shows how migrants interact with and give meaning to the legal realm. José perceives that an external agent, the United States, is making him act in a certain way, and take U.S. citizenship. He resists. At the same time, he recognizes that he can use the legal realm, this “cambio de papeleo,” this “change of papers” for his benefit. For José, laws are simultaneously perceived as hard texts but also as a discourse that can be contested and circumscribed. He feels that he can choose to enter this discourse or remain outside it.

184

Interview, Santa Cruz, CA,1997.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants As Teresa Sierra and Victoria Chenaut argue, just as the power of the law as an expression of the state is recognized, there is also an assumption that a central part of the power of the law rests on its dual character of domination and resistance.185 Migrants embody this duality of the law: they perceive and live its domination mode, its mode through which the authoritative voice of the state is expressed; but they also develop strategies of resistance accordingly, their own weapons of the weak to circumvent the limits the state establishes through laws. When migration laws squeeze and limit the lives of migrants, some like José respond in consequence and view their actions as a way “to exploit what this country has to offer.” Laws are powerful tools of the state but as they cross migrants’ day-to-day existence, their meaning is contested. “I have been here for eight years,” Daniel told me, “an eternity you could say.” A young Mexican migrant from Jalisco, Daniel narrates his journey to the U.S. as a “tourist travel, a temporary stay that ended up in a permanent residence; I stayed here in part because of my age, in part because I found a job.”186 Just like in Daniel’s story, other testimonies narrate coming to the U.S. as a journey. For José or Daniel, migration started as an adventure, the possibility of feeling liberated from the family. Their rhetoric does not center on economic hardships back home, instead it is conceived as an existential necessity. “I needed the freedom that this country more or less offered me, the freedom of not having my parents close by to tell me what to do.” As a member of a very conservative Catholic family, José ––who came to California when he was 18 years old–– describes himself as an exile from religion. Nonetheless, just like other migrants, kinship ties enabled his travel and entrance to the U.S. and marked his trajectory. However family ties are not the only line that structures the journey of these travelers-migrants-exiles. An intricate interweaving of legal, political, religious, and economic relations surrounds and marks their existence. 100

185

Cf. Sierra, María Teresa and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. “Los Debates Recientes y Actuales en la Antropología Jurídica: las Corrientes Anglosajonas.” In Krotz, Esteban. Antropología Jurídica: Perspectivas Socioculturales en el Estudio del Derecho. Anthropos/Universidad Autónoma MetropolitanaIztapalapa, México. P. 151. 186 Interview, Santa Cruz, 1997.

Hard texts: engaging with the legal realm 101 “When did you change your tourist visa to a resident status?” I asked Daniel: “It happened with the amnesty, that is one of the reasons I stayed. The amnesty took place around the time I came and I was able to arrange my papers as a resident. That tied my stay.” Tied? While Daniel was not eligible for the amnesty because he did not fulfill the residency requirements, he benefited from the amnesty nonetheless. In taking residence status, Daniel exploited the law. Daniel’s story shows how individuals can sneak through the interstices of the legal discourse thus maintaining a level of agency by performing a particular political subjectivity, a legal resident one. By “fooling” the law and obtaining a legal category to which he was not entitled under the terms of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA), Daniel performs his political subjectivity in a concealed manner. Migrants are aware of how they can use the legal and political system and slide through its legal frameworks. The way that José, Daniel, Miguel, and others, understand the nature of their relation to the U.S. ––and their decision to take U.S. citizenship–– is articulated in pragmatic, and proud terms. They are, as Miguel, another young migrant from Jalisco explains, reversing the terms of exploitation and power by taking advantage of the U.S.: “it is about sucking some blood from Drácula.”187 Likewise, they feel that they are recognizing and accepting circumstances that are already true, as when Daniel’s states, “I live and I pay taxes here.” The next logical step is citizenship. Nonetheless, there is a point in which the decision to become U.S. citizens trespasses the boundaries of individuals. State discourse and the legal debate converge in subjects, as it pushes them to make decisions, and perform their political subjectivity. As Daniel explains: Yes, I know about the dual nationality law, this is one of the reasons I decided to apply for U.S. citizenship. I resisted it. Although it was not only that, it is also the fact that immigration laws here in California limit one’s possibilities.188 In Daniel’s case the interaction of the laws between México and the U.S. is very clear. The nationality law and the immigration law form a conjuncture in Daniel’s life. One law opens a door; the other restricts

187

Interview, Santa Cruz, 1997. Idem. The dual nationality law was approved in 1996 by the Mexican Congress. 188

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 102 his life. Daniel responds to both. For the U.S. this is an irony in itself because an implied purpose of stricter restrictive immigration laws is to exclude the role that migrants play. The U.S. government idea of closing borders and excluding legal residents from social benefits produces a counter-effect in terms of what the original expectations were. Mexican migrants ––usually reluctant to change their citizenship–– respond to the new immigration laws by becoming U.S. citizens, by using immigration laws in their favor, thus having to be recognized as members of the nation-state.

CHAPTER 5

Opening the nation: who belongs here?

After an incident in Riverside, California on April 1st, 1996, when a Mexican woman was beaten by the border patrol under the presence of a TV helicopter that filmed the abuse of force, pressure was put on the Mexican government to take an active role in Mexican migrant issues.189 This event provided a strategic opportunity to make a decision that had been hanging in the air for a long time. What became an international incident also gave the state party ––the PRI–– the final push to approve the constitutional reform allowing for non-loss of nationality to Mexicans who take U.S. citizenship. On December third 1996, following a long process of consultation and debate, the Mexican Congress passed the new nationality law.

A Mexican with roots The elaboration the nationality law meant a revision and a modification of articles 30, 32, and 37 of the Mexican Constitution. In keeping with the sublimated language of nation-states which formulates power relations and economic ties in language of identity and cultural ties, in its presentation of motives, the presidential initiative underscored one of the main reasons for the amendment as “the boundedness that Mexican migrants sustain with respect to their roots, culture, values,

189

See Fernández de Castro, Rafael. 1997. “The Riverside Incident”. In Migration between México and the U.S. Binational Study/Estudio Binacional. Vol. 3. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores/U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform. Pp. 1235-1240.

103

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 104 and national traditions.”190 Certainly, for many migrants their rootedness has been their symbolic daily bread, but it is a “bread” that is sustained and recreated through their quotidian praxis and through their interaction with the U.S. and Mexican nation-states. In this sense, the law came to recognize an already existing practice ––migrants’ attachment to their roots–– which would continue regardless of any legal change. In speaking of issues of citizenship and nationality, it is important to clarify that Mexican law and U.S. law have a fundamentally different formula for determining and establishing citizenship.191 Whereas in the United States a person born or naturalized within the boundaries of its territory and sovereignty is considered a citizen with full rights, according to the Mexican constitution, nationality and citizenship are two distinct attributes. A person is born a national —which mostly provides him with property rights— and becomes a citizen at 18 years old. A national that holds another nationality cannot hold full citizenship rights. For Mexicans without citizenship, certain rights, political rights in particular, are constrained. Regardless of the 1996 legal change to the nationality law, the distinction between these two categories remained. The change was

190

My translation. “Cabe destacar que es una característica del migrante mexicano mantener el apego a sus raices, su cultura, sus valores y sus tradiciones nacionales. Además de la restricción constitucional vigente [en el momento de la propuesta] de pérdida de la nacionalidad, aunque así lo aconsejen sus intereses, ya sean laborales, ciudadanos, de bienestar familiar o de otra índole en el país donde residen.” [sic] (Doc. 201/LIV/96 [I.P.O.] Año III, Dictámen H. Cámara de Diputados 9 de Diciembre de 1996). 191 According to the Mexican Constitution, a citizen is an individual that holds Mexican nationality, is 18 years old, and has an honest way of living. Mexican nationality is obtained by birth, when a child is born outside of the country with at least one Mexican born parent, or through naturalization. While Mexican nationality establishes membership to the nation, it mostly provides with economic rights. In contrast, the status of citizenship mainly refers to political rights, such as voting and running for election. In the U.S. case, the Constitution establishes that citizens are all those born in U.S. territory, those children of U.S. nationals ––regardless of location of birth–– or those naturalized, being thus subject to U.S. jurisdiction. See Article 34, Constitución Política Mexicana. See XIV Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Opening the nation. Who belongs here? 105 essentially symbolic, a recognition of membership to the nation, however, it was mainly a strategy to avoid addressing the more difficult issue of granting political rights. One of the characteristics of Mexican nationality refers to economic attributes, that is, to the right to hold properties on all Mexican territory, to work, and to invest without the restrictions foreigners have. By way of appealing to migrants’ roots, the government was looking to entice Mexicans living abroad to invest in their home states or hometowns. It comes as no surprise that the nonloss of nationality law already has secondary laws as well as mechanisms for its implementation. For example, Consulates have the necessary information and forms for the recovery of Mexican nationality to those who lost it when they renounced to it under the terms of the old nationality law. It can be said that when the non-loss of nationality law was approved it already came with the necessary elements to be applied. Likewise, the fact that this law is now implemented reflects its true intention: Mexicans abroad are useful to the nation because they are an economic force that represents the third largest source of income for the country. Ex-president Ernesto Zedillo’s initiative has been continued by President Vicente Fox’s administration. President Fox has personally championed with migrant organizations to develop and participate in investments programs. This follows Fox’s own policies as a governor of the state of Guanajuato when he established a close relation with the migrant communities of his state through the Casas de Guanajuato ––hometown associations–– although their strategies of investments in their communities predated Fox’s administration. As President, Vicente Fox has made the migrant agenda a central point of his own. In his first official event in Los Pinos, the presidential compound, Fox met with Mexicans living in the United States and asked them to invest in their homeland, especially in the impoverished communities. In this meeting, President Fox called on the migrant leaders “to invest in businesses and factories in their ancestral villages and throughout rural México, saying his government planned to match any such investment dollar for dollar.”192 Whereas the nationality law appears as a benefit for migrants, as a door that has been opened, as a gesture of reconciliation, it seems more that the intention behind its

192

Cf. Althaus, Dudley. 2000. “Fox extends a hand to Mexican migrants.” The Houston Chronicle, December 3th.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 106 approval was, and is to literally capitalize on migrants’ economic attributes.

Changes in Mexican nationality law Article 30 of the Mexican Constitution deals with Mexican nationality and how it is acquired. According to the Constitution there are two ways in which nationality may be obtained: by birth or by naturalization. Mexicans by birth are those born in Mexican territory regardless of the nationality of their parent; those born abroad whose parents ––mother, father or both–– are Mexican and, those born on Mexican ships or airplanes. Mexicans by naturalization are those who request and obtain such attribute, and those who marry Mexicans, live in México and request the nationality. Before the 1996 reform, parents ––regardless of their place of birth–– could transmit Mexican nationality to their children, as long as they had not acquired another nationality. In the new version only the first generation of children born abroad and having at least one parent born in México are able to claim Mexican nationality. They, in turn, are no longer able to pass onto their children their Mexican nationality through the principle of jus sanguinis. In other words, the possibility of transference of Mexican nationality to those born abroad ends in the first generation in order to guarantee direct ––perhaps local, and lived–– attachment to the nation. Article 32 refers to the legal characteristics of Mexican nationals. The pre-reform version established that Mexicans should be preferred over foreigners for any concession, commission, or employment that is not limited exclusively to Mexicans. Also, the article restricted participation in the armed forces in peacetime, including the police, only to Mexicans by birth. The new rendition of Article 32 adds regulations to Mexicans that hold another nationality to avoid dual nationality conflicts. Concretely the amendment states that: The law will regulate the exercise of those rights that Mexican law endows to Mexicans who hold another nationality, and will establish the norms and rules to avoid dual nationality conflicts. The exercise of public office and functions for which this Constitution requires the need to be Mexican by birth, is reserved to those who hold such quality and do not acquire another nationality. This stipulation [limitation] is also

Opening the nation. Who belongs here? 107 applicable to cases thus established by other Congressional laws.193 The consequences of these restrictions are far reaching as they forbid dual nationals from participating in any elected office, along with a series of electoral functions, and any functions related to national security and sovereignty.194 The modifications to this article and its restrictions for dual nationals, have acquired more relevance as they clearly enter in conflict with citizenship rights, especially with the issue of migrant political candidacies. Moreover, these changes demonstrate that nationality is not a category with a simple definition, and that laws valorize people’s membership to the nation differently thereby creating unequal citizenship. Finally, the main modification included in the 1996 decree, was made to Article 37. This article deals with how Mexican nationality and citizenship can be lost. One case in particular is of concerns to migrants. Previously, the Constitution stated that Mexican nationality would be lost when another nationality was attained.195 The new version indicates that no Mexican by birth can be deprived of his/her nationality. In other words, this modification to the Constitution established the non-loss of nationality principle. Article 37 also refers to how naturalized Mexicans can lose their Mexican nationality. It is important to emphasize that this article has the particularity of dealing with two attributes: nationality and citizenship, which, as mentioned

193

My translation. Fragment Article 32, Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. 2001, February. P. 33. 194 Some of the public positions and functions for which it is required to be Mexican by birth without holding another nationality are: President, Senator, Congressman, Governor, Municipal President, among others. 195 Former version Article 37: A) Reasons for loss of Mexican nationality: First, for acquiring another nationality. Second, for accepting or using nobility titles that imply submission to a foreign State. Third, when being Mexican by naturalization, for residing in the country of origin for five years. Fourth, when being Mexican by naturalization, for pretending to be a foreigner by using a foreign passport. Constitución Política de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. My translation.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 108 before, are different in Mexican legislation.196 Just as there are ways to lose Mexican nationality for those who are naturalized as Mexican nationals, this article indicates that Mexican citizenship can be lost by accepting foreign nobility titles, for voluntary work for a foreign government without permission of Congress, for accepting or wearing foreign insignias without permission of Congress, for admitting titles or functions of a foreign country, for aiding a foreigner or a foreign government against the nation. Moreover, a transitory provision was included in the new nationality law to allow Mexicans who had previously renounced their Mexican nationality as they acquired another ––under the terms of the previous law–– to recuperate their Mexican nationality. An amnesty period of five years was established after the publication of the reforms on March 20, 1997 for the recovery of Mexican nationality. The deadline for this procedure expired on March 20, 2003. As a testimony to how important the notion of retroactively recuperating nationality status became to the state, a new initiative to remove any deadline period for the recovery of Mexican nationality entered the Senate and Lower House on March 2003.197

Migrants and the nationality law One of the purposes of the non-loss of nationality law was to allow Mexicans to hold another nationality without losing any of their economic rights as Mexican nationals. Likewise, this law was meant to enable Mexicans living abroad ––namely in the U.S.–– to expand their options to defend their rights as transnational subjects, on both sides of the border. The nationality law carried a strong symbolic value as it allowed the recovery of the Mexican nationality ––part of their identity, of their feeling of belonging–– to those who lost it when they acquired U.S. citizenship. An important aspect to underscore is that under the previous law people had to send a formal letter of renunciation of

196

At first there was some confusion in reference to this distinction. For example cf. Ross Pineda, Raúl. 1998. “El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero”. La Jornada, México, February 13, 14 and 15. 197 Comisiones Unidas de Puntos Constitucionales, Estudios Legislativos, y Población y Desarrollo. Press release. Mexican Senate. March 19, 2003.

Opening the nation. Who belongs here? 109 Mexican nationality addressed to the Mexican Foreign Ministry. This meant that a legal act, and act of authority, a performative act, sanctioned the separation from the nation thereby establishing migrants’ new political and cultural subjectivity.198 When María Sánchez, a 47-year-old home care provider from border town Tecate, Baja California, became a U.S. citizen in 1985 she had mixed feelings. She was proud of her new standing and, yet, at the same time experienced a sense of loss. “I did not feel I was a traitor by becoming American, but I was leaving a part of my life.”199 For many Mexicans, renouncing their Mexican nationality was a hard decision, a difficult, emotionally complex step. Although the non-loss of nationality law is confusing in relation to political rights, namely voting and/or standing for election, it has facilitated the decision of some Mexican migrants to obtain U.S. citizenship. Mexicans historically had been one of the groups of immigrants in the U.S. with a low ratio of acquisition of U.S. citizenship. Traditionally, only a small portion of eligible Mexican-born immigrants becomes U.S. citizens. The INS has been tracking the cohorts of legal immigrants admitted in 1977 and 1982 to determine if and when they become naturalized citizens. Overall, 46% of 1977 cohort and 41% of the 1982 had naturalized as of 1995. For Mexicans, the comparable proportions are 22.2 and 14.4 respectively.200 Fifty-nine year-old Magdalena Flores González is a good example of the reticence many Mexican migrants demonstrate when it comes to changing their citizenship. She came to the United States 33 years ago, gave birth to and reared four children here, and finally became a U.S. citizen in 1992. It took her 27 years to decide to give up Mexican nationality and take U.S. citizenship. With the non-loss of nationality law Magdalena can have her original nationality back:

198

See Austin, J.L. 1975. How to do things with words. Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts. 199 The Associated Press. 2003. “U.S. Mexicans gain dual citizenship.” New York Times, March 20. 200 In Binational Study/Estudio Binacional. 1997. Op. cit. Also see in the same study Table on Immigrants admitted and percent naturalized, annex 1.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants “The new law made me feel that I could restore a piece of myself. We were born in México...this is all about going back to a reality, the reality that we are Mexicans.”201 María Sánchez shares Magdalena’s feelings, “I feel like I belong there again.”202 In the case of Magdalena, as with many other Mexicans living in the United States, in order to become a U.S. citizen ––a legal status that does not fulfill her identity–– the previous Mexican nationality law constrained her subjectivity by making her renounce what is, in her own terms, her identity. It is important to note that the Mexican non-loss of nationality law was perceived by the general public, and by many organizations, as a dual nationality law despite the fact that it is a law based on the principle that Mexican nationality cannot be renounced. Mexican nonloss of nationality law is not the same as a dual citizenship law. At first it seemed that the new law established that if a person took another citizenship they would lose their political rights although they would keep their rights as nationals of México, related mostly to land tenure and business transactions. The distinction becomes significant when, as a result of this reform, dual nationality appeared as an obstacle to the exercise of full citizenship rights. On June 5th 1998, then President Ernesto Zedillo presided in a ceremony in Houston, Texas, where 100 Mexicans recovered their Mexican nationality. Mexicans, welcome to your homeland…I congratulate all of you because these documents return, from a legal point of view, something that each of you has kept intact in your heart, at times for many years: the will to be Mexicans.203 Originally, the Mexican Embassy estimated that three million naturalized [U.S. citizens] would reclaim Mexican nationality over the next few years. However, the exact number of Mexicans who have requested their nationality back is not clear. According to the Foreign Affairs Ministry, between March 20, 1998 and February 2002, 44,300 110

201

Howe Verhovek, Sam. 1998. “Torn Between Nations, Mexican-Americans Can Have Both.” In The New York Times, Tuesday, April 14. P. A12. 202 The Associated Press. 2003. March 20. Op.Cit. 203 Althaus, Dudley. 1998. “Dual nationality now reality. Houstonian among a 100 celebrating Mexican law.” Houston Chronicle, June 5th 1998.

Opening the nation. Who belongs here? 111 204 people had recovered their nationality. In December 17, 2002 the Partido Acción Nacional published an announcement on dual nationality that reported 54,000 applications. By the legal deadline of March 20, 2003, only 67,000 people had applied for the recovery of their nationality.205 Recent information shows that this low turnout has not changed. What is evident is that the numbers of people who responded to the effort made by the Mexican state in regards to the nationality law did not correspond to the governments’ raised expectations. It is evident that the expectations concerning the amount of people who would request the recovery of Mexican nationality were unrealistic. One interpretation of this fact, which coincides with many testimonies, is that of those who took U.S. citizenship within the previous nationality law a very low percentage actually renounced their Mexican nationality. Likewise, another group consists of those Mexicans who have U.S. citizenship and consider unnecessary to recover their Mexican nationality because they feel detached from México, or because they do not feel more or less Mexican on account of a paper. Another explanation of the level of response lies in the fact that the possibility of requesting the recovery of Mexican nationality was not promoted through migrant organizations, but rather the government relied only in the Consular network. Last, but not least, the doubt that re-acquiring Mexican nationality could jeopardize their legal status in the U.S. remains a strong enough factor for migrants with U.S. nationality that they do not take advantage of this law. However, for those migrants who decided to formally reclaim their Mexican nationality it was their cultural citizenship what they were re-affirming. Interestingly, for them this cultural aspect needed to be sanctioned by a legal one to become significant. Indeed, while citizenship involves culture and law, the fact that a majority of migrants did not take advantage of the law should not go unnoticed. Both responses by migrants —taking or not taking advantage of a law— are examples of how law is lived and signified by people, of the presence

204

I thank Jonathan Fox for this information. Original source: Dirección General de Asuntos Jurídicos de la Cancillería Mexicana. 205 The Week in México. 2003. “The Senate passed a measure aimed at eliminating deadlines for Mexicans living abroad to regain Mexican citizenship…” San Diego Union Tribune, Sunday, March 30. A-24.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 112 and meaning of the nation-state for migrants both in their daily life as in their more symbolic understanding and feeling of membership. The new nationality law opened a space both for a sense of agency that was not there before, and for a new kind of political subject. As if trapped in the middle of a whirlwind, subjects respond and are interpelated by laws, thereby reshaping the contours of their subjectivity. For those Mexicans who requested the recovery of their Mexican nationality, it meant erasing a feeling of loss and acquiring a new sense of belonging. For others, the legal change gave them a sort of symbolic permission to request U.S. citizenship, which for most migrants represents a very practical move that has real consequences in their every day existence. This might be one of the reasons of recent shifts in naturalization rates by Mexicans. For example, in 1999 Mexicans had a 24.7 percent index of U.S. naturalizations, the highest for that year.206 Another and more pressing reason rests on the role restricting immigration laws have had in Mexican migrants´ lives in the U.S.

A citizen’s right Changes are not gratuitous. When the PRI dominated Congress endorsed the non-loss of nationality law and the reform of Article 36 of the Mexican Constitution to open the possibility for the vote abroad, they apparently enabled Mexicans living abroad to remain connected–– rooted––to México. However, behind these new laws lies a long struggle by Mexican migrants whose agenda has been to have these rights recognized. It can even be said that their voices were heard. The question here is how were their voices interpreted by the political and civil society? How were their claims read, and how accepted is their membership to the nation? Mexican migrants’ belonging, their citizenship, is paradoxically recognized and denied at the same time. Sometimes they are called upon, remembered as silent heroes, other times they are seen as suspicious, vulnerable, and less Mexican. The

206

U.S. Department of Justice. 2000. P. 170. In Bada, Xóchitl. “Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: Apuntes para el Estudio de una Plena Ciudadanía Transnacional.” Paper presented at the Foro Internacional sobre Ciudadana Migrante y Democracia, Universidad de Guanajuato, 8 y 9 de marzo, 2001. Manuscript. P. 7.

Opening the nation. Who belongs here? 113 letter and the spirit of the nationality law attest to the ambiguity that Mexicans living abroad carry with them. In 1994 México underwent a national political reform; the outcome came to be known as the Bucarelli Agreements.207 Among other topics, in these agreements the issue of the vote abroad was brought up as part of the left wing Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) agenda in negotiations that started in 1994 which aimed for a reform as early as that year. However, political negotiations were postponed until 1995, and by then included the presence of President Ernesto Zedillo.208 The agreements reached upon by the political parties and the President included the migrant vote. The Mexican Congress finally approved the initiative in August 1996.209 On August 22, 1996, under the LVI Legislature of the Mexican Congress, a political reform was passed which included an amendment to article 36 that opened the possibility for the vote abroad. The original article specifies as one of five obligations of a citizen to “vote in popular elections [elecciones populares] at the corresponding electoral district.” This meant that in order to exercise their right to vote, citizens had to do it within the boundaries of their electoral district. However, some exceptions were in place for those who were traveling within the boundaries of México. They could cast their vote in special polling places but only for presidential elections. The argument supporting the amendment of Article 36, established that the reason for the “modification was precisely to grant the suffrage to those Mexicans living abroad, thus providing an extension of the political membership and, therefore, of their citizenship.”210 In its final version, the initiative specified that “the right to vote outside of the district, including the vote abroad, can be exercised (for the year 2000) once Congress establishes the

207

See Ross Pineda, Raúl. 1999. Los Mexicanos y el Voto sin Fronteras. Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y Socialista, México. P. 134. 208 Ross Pineda. 1999. Op. Cit. P.134. 209 Cf. Martínez, Jesús. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 291. 210 Martínez, Nayamín. 2001. “El voto de los mexicanos en el extranjero. Inconclusa extensión de la ciudadanía.” Paper presented at the Round Table Ciudadanías Excluidas/Excluded Citizenships. Indigenous and Migrants in México. Center for US-Mexican Studies, February 16. P.4

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 114 corresponding legal reforms to make it effective.”211 The amendment indicated that Mexicans have the right and the obligation to vote independently of the place they find themselves on Election Day. Once the restriction to vote within the limits of a particular electoral district was eliminated, the possibility for the vote abroad was opened. In a first instance, the prospect for the vote abroad represents a shift in the legal notion of citizenship, of the limits of this category. Likewise, it is a door through which politically active migrants perform their agency. For many Mexican migrants, the opening of this door came as a result of their own political efforts rather than as an initiative of the Mexican political system. Despite the fact that civilian organizations and opposition parties keenly promoted the vote abroad, it was under a PRI run Congress ––following a presidential initiative, and a negotiated proposal–– that the legal changes to the nationality law and the electoral reform took place. The concrete consequences for the Mexican political scenario are beginning to take shape but remain unclear. Whereas the 1996 electoral law was meant to allow Mexican citizens living outside the country to vote in federal elections, beginning with the 2000 process, it remained as a political gesture rather than a fait accompli as it did not take effect for that year on account of multiple obstacles established by political actors, mainly members of the PRI. Even though the right to vote outside of the country was guaranteed by the Constitution since 1996, the concrete changes to the electoral law, the particular norms and rules ––secondary laws–– for its implementation took almost ten years to be defined and negotiated. At first, two legal pre-requisites were established which prevented the immediate implementation of the vote abroad. The new electoral law required the elaboration of a Citizens National Registration (RENACI), in charge of the Secretaría de Gobernación ––the Interior Ministry–– as the basis of the electoral process. This was a problematic aspect of

211

Informe Final de la Comisión de Especialistas sobre las modalidades del voto de los Mexicanos residentes en el extranjero. Op. Cit. P. 5. In Castañeda, Alejandra. 2001. “Migrantes y Construcción de la Ciudadanía.” Paper presented at the Round Table Ciudadanías Excluidas/Excluded Citizenships. Indigenous and Migrants in México.Center for US-Mexican Studies, February 16. P. 2.

Opening the nation. Who belongs here? 115 the reform because the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) had become a citizen run body, independent of the executive branch, through a long and tough political process. The IFE became the tool that provided confidence in the electoral system; therefore, having the government back in the electoral process through the use of RENACI’s database instead of IFE’s did not appear as a viable political option. The second pre-requisite established the need to form an interdisciplinary Commission of Specialists in order to study different modalities for the vote abroad.212 It was only after a group of Mexican migrants came to México City in early 1998 to pressure the IFE that the Specialist Commission was formed. This Commission delivered its final report to the IFE’s General Council on November 12, 1998. In their concluding statements the Commission found the vote abroad to be viable and they introduced several options for its implementation. Likewise, and perhaps the most significant of their conclusions, the Commission did not encounter any clause within the nationality law that established the possession of another nationality as an obstacle to lose Mexican citizenship. In other words, political rights had to be respected. Moreover, the delivering of the report meant that one legal obstacle was cleared. However, notwithstanding the political advances, the right to vote for Mexicans living abroad remained a pending issue that relied on the short-range interests of the political parties to pressure for its implementation. It took, however, a citizens initiative, a Coalition of migrants organizations and individuals, to gather the different political forces and pressure them to come up with a solution for the implementation of the vote abroad in 2006. In June 27, 2005, Congress responded with 455 votes in favor out of 500 possible ones, of a Senate proposal of absentee ballot.

Law and political disputes The struggle for the vote abroad has surfaced in different instances of Mexican history. In his latest book, sociologist Arturo Santamaría identifies various moments in which Mexicans living in the U.S. have

212

Transitory article 8th of the electoral code (COFIPE).

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 116 expressed and acted upon their interest for their homeland.213 Santamaría explains that there was political activity by Mexicans in the U.S. that can be dated back, for example, to 1904 with the Magonistas and the Partido Liberal Mexicano who supported Ricardo Flores Magón against Porfirio Diaz’ regime; or to 1922 with José Vasconcelos’ presidential candidacy who took his campaign to the U.S. South West, and New York, among other places, and was significantly supported by Mexicans living in the U.S.214 More recently, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ presidential campaign in 1988 revived the political participation of Mexicans living in the U.S. leading to the emergence of the PRD in the U.S. and to a political movement that advocates for the political rights of Mexicans living abroad.215 The 1996 changes to the Mexican Constitution came as the result of pressure from the Mexican community living in the U.S. as well as of the opposition left-wing party PRD. During Zedillo’s presidency the PAN incorporated into its agenda migrants’ political demands. Now that the PRI is in the opposition, many of its Congress representatives, and some governors, are accepting the importance that Mexican migrants have for the nation, their states, and for their own personal agendas. This has allowed for an improvement in the communication lines between migrant organizations, political parties, Congress, and the Presidency. After the 1996 reform, there have been other initiatives that aim to modify different legal inconsistencies or problems that came with the original 1996 initiative. The following table lists and describes these initiatives.

213

For example, 1865, 1904, 1910, 1929, 1937, 1988, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2000. Santamaría Gómez, Arturo. 2001. Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: la Nación, la Política y el Voto sin Fronteras. México, Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa/PRD. P. 23. 214 See Santamaría Gómez, Arturo. 1994. La Política entre México y Aztlán. Relaciones Chicano Mexicanas del 68 a Chiapas 94. Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, México. Pp. 23-27. 215 See Santamaría, Arturo. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 104. Pp. 142,143.

Table B. – Initiatives México Date Aug. 22nd 1996

Initiative Reform Article 36

Content Removal requirement of voting only within electoral district

Proponent Bucarelli Agreements May 15th 1995

Details Opened possibility of vote abroad Passed

Dec. 3rd 1996

Nationality law, amendment articles 30, 32, 37

Mexicans by birth cannot lose their nationality Restriction in jus sanguini principle to first generation

Presidential initiative (Ernesto Zedillo)

Adds restriction for dual nationals: cannot hold public office, among other aspects Passed

April 30th 1998

Changes electoral law (COFIPE)

Remove transitory article VIII COFIPE

Lázaro Cárdenas Batel (PRD)216

Eliminate lock clauses RENACI Pending

Nov. 19th 1998

Amendment Article 35

Vote abroad as right of citizen

Rafael Castilla Peniche

Make explicit right vote abroad Pending

216

See Ross Pineda, Raúl. 1999. Op. Cit. P.138

117

Table B, continued Date April 15th 1999

Initiative Chapter Ninth initiative

April 29th 1999 and July 1st 1999

Political reform, included approval of vote abroad (with the needed legal changes)

217 218

Content Modify previous version of law Add a Chapter IX to electoral law (COFIPE) Include right vote abroad for Mexicans living outside country Modify electoral law, Constitution articles 6th, 49th. Add three transitory articles to regulate vote abroad for 2000. Remove RENACI 218

Proponent PAN: Javier Algara Cossio, Rafael Castilla Peniche, Felipe Urbiola PRD: Lázaro Cárdenas Batel Carlos Heredia Zubieta, José Luis Gutiérrez PAN, PRD, PT, PVEM

In Martínez, Jesús. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 315. Martínez, Jesús. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 317.

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Details Creation of voters’ registry, IFE sign international agreement Allow campaigns abroad through IFE Accept absentee ballot Create voting centers.217 No progress

Allow vote abroad in 2000. Remove restrictions for donations to campaigns from Mexicans abroad Vote for those holding electoral Id card. Passed April 29th 1999 (Lower H) Preempted in Senate July 1st 1999, Rejected July 8th 1999

Table B, continued Date Oct. 4th 2001

Initiative Sixth Circumscription (district)

Content Create new electoral district Mexicans abroad proportional representation candidacies guarantee vote abroad Book IX COFIPE

Proponent Introduced by Gregorio Urias German (PRD), Authored by MUSA (Mexicans in the USA)

Details 40 new Congress seats for migrant representatives Pending

June 12, 2002

Add transitory article to COFIPE

Senator Genaro Borrego Estrada, PRI

Promote proportional representation candidacies Pending

July 24, 2002

Create Sixth Circumscription (district)

Miguel Bortolini, PRD

Elect 40 migrant Congressmen, and 60 indigenous ones

Jan. 9th 2003

Zacatecan Migrant Law

Establish proce-dures for migrant federal Congressseats Elect proportional representation Congresmen Recognize bi-national residency. Political representation in local Congress, proportional representation candidacies

Federación de Clubes de California, Frente Cívico Zacatecano Carlos Pinto Pérez, Miguel Moctezuma

Passed

119

Table B, continued Date April 2003

Initiative Reform nationality law, article 37

Content Remove time restriction for recovery of nationality

Proponent Senator Genaro Borrego Estrada

Details Passed

April 2425, 2003

Vote abroad law proposal

Add new chapter to COFIPE and Amendments to Constitution Full political rights in phases

CDPME219

Electoral id card Credentialization campaign in U.S. Vote by phone or mail. Allow registered voters to contribute to campaigns Implementation in phases Pending

April 28, 2003

Reforms to COFIPE

Allow migrant candidacies and vote abroad Electoral registry voters abroad

Eduardo Rivera Pérez, PAN

219

Coalición por los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero. Also see Badillo, Gonzalo, compilador. 2004. El Voto de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero. Documentos. Gobierno del Estado de Michoacán, México.

120

Table B, continued Date April 30, 2003

Initiative Reform Articles 52, 53, 54

Content Creation of Sixth Circumscription

Proponent Senator Raymundo Cárdenas PRD

July 2003

Reform Michoacan´s electoral code

Governor Lazaro Cardenas Batel, PRD

Feb. 22, 2005

Vote abroad, Reform COFIPE, Book IX addition

July 2004

Vote abroad

Addittion book IX Regulate vote abroad in secondary law, allow michoacano vote abroad Credentialization abroad Polling booths abroad Vote for President IFE Councils in each country Allow vote abroad, restricted to people with electoral id

Details Elect 20 proportional representation migrant Congressmen Allow naturalized Mexicans for over 10 years proportional representation candidacies Allows migrant candidacies

Laura Martínez Rivera, PRI

Went to Senate for approval, Rejected in Senate Approved 391 favor, 22 Abstentions, 5 against

President Vicente Fox (Francisco Jose Paoli Bolio)

Voting centers in the U.S. Pending

121

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants

122 Date April 28, 2005

Initiative Vote abroad

Content Absentee Ballot

Proponent PRI, Senator Silvia Hernandez

June 28, 2005

Vote Abroad

Absentee Ballot

Senate

Details Vote to those with electoral ID Register intention to vote with IFE Approved by 91 votes in favor, two against One abstention Same. Passed by 455 out of 500

Most of the proposals center on the mechanisms to implement the right to vote abroad. The first initiatives aimed at eliminating the obstacles included in the initial 1996 Reform. With different emphasis the initiatives searched to reform the electoral law (COFIPE) to allow for the vote abroad and, secondly, to allow migrant representation in Congress. Some proposed the creation of a voters registry of Mexicans living abroad, to accept absentee ballots, and to create voting centers abroad. Others include provisions to allow the Electoral Institute to sign needed international agreements, and to allow candidates and Parties to campaign outside of the country through the IFE, as well as to accept contributions from Mexicans living abroad.220 An important moment in this story took place in April 1999 when an opposition majority Congress approved an initiative that included some of the suggestions already made by the Experts Commission.221 Yet, because it entered as a package for a broader political reform, which the PRI opposed, this latter initiative got trapped in the political battles between the Lower House and the PRI majority Senate, which rejected the reform on July 1999. Thus, the possibility for the vote in 2000 began to slip away.

220

Martínez, Jesús. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 315. 1996 electoral code Transitory Article VIII, or Código Federal de Instituciones y Procedimientos Electorales. 1997. IFE, México. P.302. 221

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The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Characteristic of the story of the vote-abroad is the fact that migrants have been deeply involved in the struggle not only through public protests but rather by making proposals and lobbying in Congress and other venues where they have entered in an intense dialog with México´s political class. An example of this commitment are the initiatives formulated by migrants and introduced to Congress through the political parties. The first one is known by migrants and politicians as the “Sexta”. It entered the discussion at the House of Representatives through the PRD on October 4, 2001. This initiative proposed the formation of a sixth electoral district that would include Mexicans living abroad. The main advocates of this initiative were migrants from an organization called Mexicans in the USA (MUSA), along with other migrant organizations. The proposition mainly focuses in modifications to constitutional articles that refer to political representation. The aim is to open the option for proportional representation candidacies for migrants. At the heart of this project lies the idea that political representation is essential for México’s democracy to be complete, and for migrants’ interests to be accurately represented in Congress. Finally, another initiative on the vote abroad has been developed by the Coalición por los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero (CDPME), a bi-national and heterogeneous group of migrant activists, journalists, political leaders and scholars. The proposal is in part a result of a series of forums that took place on both sides of the border. These forums were co-organized by various migrant organizations with some Governors ––mainly Oaxaca and Michoacán–– and with the Senate, specifically by Senator Genaro Borrego, president of the Commission for the Reform of the State, and the Lower House. While asserting the importance of and need for migrants’ political representation, this initiative is centered on first achieving the right to vote abroad, and through a phased process to access political representation. In sum, in relation to the vote abroad thirteen initiatives have been presented to the Mexican Congress after the 1996 political reform. Except for the final two initiatives, none of these proposals were vindicated by the PRI even though a PRI ran Congress approved the initial 1996 reform. In addition, Zacatecas’ local Congress approved in 2003 a Migrant Law, which recognized the attribute of bi-national residency to allow for migrant political candidacies and representation

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 124 in the local Congress through proportional representation candidacies. Likewise, Michoacán local Congress has been preparing and discussing an equivalent migrant law to include migrants´ in Michoacán´s political processes. The constant vacillation among the political parties has contributed to a lack of clarity in the letter of the law, thus leaving open legal loopholes that keep migrants still at the margins of the decisionmaking process of the nation. The struggle for full political rights for Mexicans living abroad continues.

Mixed messages and the life of law

With the approval of the two constitutional amendments in 1996, there was an institutional reevaluation of the importance that Mexican migrants hold for the nation. These laws directly make reference to the issue of citizenship. They establish who belongs to the nation, who can be considered a full citizen, that is, an integral member of the political community, and who does not belong in the national community. The non-loss of nationality law and the reform to Article 36 of the Mexican Constitution which opened the possibility for the vote abroad are two legal changes that have convergent histories although divergent consequences.222 First, these changes have different ramifications in reference to inclusion or exclusion of migrants as Mexican citizens. Both modifications signaled a movement towards the integration of this significant sector of the country’s population. However, the acknowledgment of the importance that Mexican migrants have for the nation has not been smooth; the full recognition of their political rights remains a pending issue. When the 1996 nationality law was approved, some migrant organizations and also some politicians understood it as a law that would hinder the right to vote of Mexicans living abroad. As stated previously, the Commission of Experts appointed by Congress to study the vote abroad, in their final report concluded that there were no clauses in articles 37 and 38 of the Constitution that established the possession of another nationality as a reason for losing Mexican

222

The basic reform was the appearance of the principle of indelible (non-loss) nationality law (popularized as dual nationality law). Approved on December 1996, came into effect on March of 1998, a year after it was published in the Diario Oficial de la Federación.

Opening the nation. Who belongs here? 125 223 citizenship. That is, people who had acquired another nationality could still exercise most of their citizenship rights, in particular their right to vote.224 However, in this same report, the Commission noted that while the Mexican judicial framework had no references about the right to vote for those nationals with dual nationality, it does contain explicit dispositions that restrict Mexicans with dual nationality from occupying election offices and other public functions reserved to Mexicans by birth, as specified in Article 32 of the Constitution.225 Despite its limitations, the acknowledgement of Mexicans abroad through the new nationality law was a significant move for a country with strong nationalist sentiments constructed especially vis-avis the proximity with the United States. The passing of the law was not easy as it encountered strong resistance in certain political circles in México. Most of the negative opinions referred to the fact that Mexicans living in the United States could represent a threat to the sovereignty of the nation. The basis for this argument assumes that when another nationality is acquired, the original one gets blurred because of the territorial distance, and the lack of current information

223

The Commission’s final report, in relation to the principle of non-loss of nationality and the exercise of the vote abroad, came to six conclusions. Two of them stand out. Point number four: “the Mexican legal system has no references in relation to the right to vote for those Mexican nationals who hold another nationality. However, both the Constitution and the nationality law contain explicit provisions that restrict Mexicans with another nationality from standing for election and other public functions. These restrictions that mainly affect the organization of electoral polls, and the functioning of political parties, shall be observed during the electoral process.” Point number five: “The dispositions in Articles 37 and 38 of the Constitution do not consider the possession of another nationality as a cause for losing or suspending citizenship. Therefore, the provisions related to the loss or suspension of citizenship equally apply to Mexican citizens with one nationality, and to those with dual nationality [sic].” See Reporte Final Comisión de Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto de los mexicanos residentes en el extranjero. 1998. IFE, November 12, México. P. 110. My translation. 224 Idem. 225 Comisión de Especialistas, 1998. Op. Cit. P. 110.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 126 about México.226 According to this perspective, Mexicans living abroad are more vulnerable to be manipulated by U.S. interests as they adopt foreign cultural values and practices.227 Moreover, some voices even declared that it would be correct to treat those naturalized Mexicans as foreigners, because when those individuals who previously were Mexicans decided to associate their legal situation with a country other than México, they could no longer be Mexican. Therefore, by this logic, they were foreigners.228 The latter represents the point of view of a sector of México’s political class, and also of the general population––cutting across class, region, and Party affiliation–– that conceives Mexican nationality as an untouchable essence. Migrants, with all their ambiguities, trouble this category. With the seeming validation of Mexican migrants through the changes to the nationality law, a blurring of the lines between Mexicans abroad and Mexicans living in México was inscribed in the letter of the law. However, the contradictions contained in the nationality law clearly reflect the inadequacy and lack of will of the Mexican political system to take the necessary steps towards enfranchising Mexican migrants. This, in turn, underscored and reinforced distinctions between different kinds of Mexicans. Even though at first glance the 1996 changes made to Article 36 of the Constitution appeared to be friendly to Mexicans living abroad, they left unfinished the political reform that would allow citizens outside of the country to vote in the 2000 elections. Nine years later, the door for the vote abroad was opened through the absentee ballot initiative. Moreover, in spite of all of the initiatives and their intention of positively affecting migrants’ lives and addressing their political rights, only one of them propose a change to article 32. As the interest of many migrants grows in participating in local and national politics, the clause in Article 32, which restricts Mexicans who hold another nationality from the possibility of holding public office ––

226

Arellano García, Carlos. 1995. “Inconvenientes y peligros de la doble nacionalidad.” In Memoria del Coloquio La Doble Nacionalidad. Palacio Legislativo, LVI Legislatura, Cámara de Diputados del H. Congreso de la Unión. June 8-9, México. Pp. 40-41. 227 See Carpizo, Jorge. 2001. “El Peligro del Voto de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero.” Nexos, Julio. Pp. 11-12. 228 Arellano García, Carlos. 1995. Op. Cit. P. 50.

Opening the nation. Who belongs here? 127 Senate, Lower House, Governorships, Presidency, electoral duties, among others–– and any job related with national security and sovereignty, becomes more relevant. This section of Article 32 formally establishes a distinction between different kinds of Mexicans, where Mexicans who hold another nationality are considered as less Mexican, as they are not full members of the national community. With the conflation of categories and prejudices, migrants’ citizenship and loyalty to the nation remains in question. Despite the divergent paths taken by the non-loss of nationality law, and the 1996 reform to Article 36, which opened the space for the possibility for the vote abroad, their mere existence makes evident the fact that there are millions of Mexicans living in the U.S. who are disenfranchised and excluded from exercising a citizenship in any of the nation-states they inhabit. The non-loss of nationality law opened one of the doors that had been closed. Even though this positive step was taken, the issue of political rights remained trapped by political obstacles, legal clauses, and by the lack of secondary laws to implement the reform to article 36. It took nine years for Mexicans living abroad to reacquire one of their political rights, voting, although they continue to be de facto second-class citizens as long as they cannot participate like any other Mexican citizen in electoral processes. The problems faced by the migrant campaign for the vote abroad, which included the reform of Article 36, can only be read as a symptom of the contradictory attitude the Mexican nation-state as a whole, not only the government, has had toward Mexicans living abroad. Just as they are recognized as valuable members of the nation, mainly for economic reasons, they are rejected as active members of the political community; they have no room in the national decisionmaking process. In spite of this, migrants continue to consider themselves as members of their nation of origin, of México. As sociologist Arturo Santamaría explains, Mexicans living abroad have not separated their political identity from the economic and cultural ones.229 The significance of these two legal changes is far reaching. This body of laws points to México, a political space but also a source of identity and situated cultural practices. To review these laws in detail

229

Santamaría Gómez, Arturo. 2001. Op. Cit. P. 163.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 128 allows for a better understanding of who is considered a member of the nation-state, who is excluded from this membership, and how this membership can be practiced. Most importantly, the detail of the law, of these two laws in particular, demonstrates the fragility of the space called México. Ironically, the laws attempt to re-enforce the structure of the nation-state when they are being confronted by the fact that nearly ten million Mexicans live in the U.S. The legal and the political system respond to the challenge by reframing the membership to the nation. In the tug of war in which México and the United States are engaged, what is at stake is the definition of the nations, the redefinition of borders. Although the non-loss of nationality law and the constitutional reform to Article 36 in appearance only affect México, they in fact involve another nation-state, the United States. Via laws, the political enters the transnational sphere. While economic barriers are being erased to allow for fluid commercial and financial transactions, in contrast, geopolitical borders are strengthened in order to contain immigration. What happens between México and the U.S. is a transposition of two nation-states, of two countries that at different levels erupt into the “other’s” space. Nonetheless, in the unequal relation between México and the U.S. —which is currently taking place under the shadow of NAFTA and national security concerns— different ways of expressing a voice, of moving beyond the geographical borders take shape. Governments are not the only ones who speak for the nation. In this case, México speaks through each person who decides to cross the border. In the legal discursive battle established between these two nation-states México performs a maneuver through which, by rendering flexible its notion of nationality with the openness and apparent vulnerability this entails, it in fact reaffirms Mexican nationality. With these new laws the Mexican state trespasses the boundaries that the United States would like to maintain clear and precise. With the constitutional reform to article 36 and the non-loss of nationality law the Mexican nation-state follows its citizens in blurring its boundaries. The purpose is to extend itself beyond its territorial limits by allowing its citizens to be recognized as Mexican nationals independently of their acquisition of another citizenship. In so doing, México symbolically expands its sovereignty while, at the same time, this same sovereignty is being undermined by the implementation of NAFTA.

CHAPTER 6

Law as practice: experiencing the law∗

I arrived as a mojado ––a wetback. I am a son of braceros, and now I am the Mayor of Lynwood. I became a citizen in 1999. I want to be an example to other Mexicans.230 As the statement above reveals, Fernando Pedroza’s life has been crossed by laws (“I became a citizen in 1999.”) and international treaties (“I am a son of braceros”) and marked by social labeling (“I arrived as a mojado”). This statement relates the story of someone who since his childhood has been immersed in the migration history between México and the United States. He is the son of workers who came to the United States as a result of a treaty established between these two nations during the period of 1942-1964.231 Mayor Pedroza’s narration of his arrival as a mojado who in time became a U.S. citizen is a tale of transit among legal and social categories. Fernando Pedroza’s crossing of boundaries of nation, state, and class (from mojado to Mayor) allow him to participate in local politics, in the political place where he lives. His is one of the many stories of how Mexican migrants go through a process in which they embody

∗

Portions of this chapter were published in Castañeda, Alejandra. 2001. “Ciudadanía y Transnacionalismo: el Desafío de los Mexicanos en Estados Unidos.” In Arturo Santamaría Gómez. Mexicanos en Estados Unidos: la Nación, la Política y el Voto sin Fronteras. Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa/PRD, México. 230 Fernando Pedroza, Lynwood’s Mayor. Statement, Forum “El Derecho al Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior.” Los Angeles, February 9, 2003. 231 Cf. Santamaría Gómez. 1994. Op. Cit. P. 51.

129

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 130 intersecting legal discourses as inseparable from cultural and political practices of citizenship. Whereas the previous chapter dealt in more detail with the corpus of laws that affects migrants’ lives, this part of the book turns the focus to the people, to Mexican migrants in the U.S., who have to live with the consequences of their transnational engagements. These pages explore how a culture of citizenship is formed when it is explicitly related to law, as well as when law becomes a part of migrants’ everyday practices. The following pages are guided by the idea that laws cannot be separated when people experience them or embody them, that is, when laws come to life. The spaces of quotidian life are key for understanding how subordinate groups manage to appropriate dominant legality, adapt it to their own languages, and in some instances oppose it or question it.232 I portray some of the different forms in which migrants interact and interpret laws as seemingly hard texts that bring them into confrontation with nation-states and their own senses of belonging and community.233 To understand this process, I present the connection between citizenship and belonging following migrants’ testimonies of their experiences and interpretations of the legal frameworks they encounter everyday. Likewise, I look at citizenship as it is experienced and constructed by politically active migrants who address the nation-state in the public sphere but also through the articulation of their practices of belonging and political investment. To recapitulate, this chapter is about experiencing the law. It is about law, which appears as the language of the state, turned into practice, that is, an embodied text. Although laws might seem formal and distant from everyday life, I consider them as sites where state and people converge, as well as powerful tools for political change. In this sense, law is seen as a form of cultural practice. As Laura Nader argues, the analysis of institutional practices such as legal discourse contributes to “illuminate places where power is being reconfigured and reconstituted, but one must first recognize power as something to be reckoned with in building theories of everyday life activities.”234

232

Cf. Sierra, María Teresa and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. Op. Cit. P.149. Nader, Laura. 2002. The Life of the Law. Anthropological Projects. University of California Press, Berkeley/Los Angeles/London. P. 113. 234 Nader, Laura. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 118. 233

Law as practice: experiencing the law 131 The purpose of her work and of this book is developing an understanding of the power of law and the power in law. The chapter begins with a revision of the cultural politics of citizenship implicated in migrants’ situated cultural practices and perspectives on the laws that affect their possibilities to be members of one or several communities. Furthermore, I review the debate that took place as several migrant groups and different political sectors in México pushed for the dual nationality law and a vote abroad reform for the 2000 elections. Because the Mexican legal changes have stopped short from enfranchising Mexicans living abroad, the debate over their political rights has continued well past the 2000 elections. In particular, I consider how the struggle for the vote abroad goes beyond the strictly political sphere and moves into the cultural realm. To do so, I present moments in which the Mexican political system has endeavored to engage directly and consistently with the Mexican community in the United States.

Bearers of betrayal: migrants, political rights, and dual nationality Entitlements Voting rights are a significant feature of citizenship for migrants. Here, the way a sector of Mexican migrants define citizenship, coincides with how nation-states define citizenship. José, a young migrant from Jalisco, meditates about his existence as a political subject. I want to go deep down into politics, mostly because of all the movements and changes that are taking place in México...the constant struggle that is taking place in México inspires me and lights a fire inside of me and makes me want to go there...I feel a little bit tied because I am physically here and not there, I cannot be active. But at the same time, here are many Mexicans and Latinos that if we could raise their consciousness...I know it is a dream...well, maybe I think that we could put a lot of pressure on the Mexican government.235 Here and there. Here, José feels tied. There, is where he wants to act. Here, is where he is physically. There, the place he wants to influence. José knows he stands between a desire to participate in Mexican politics and a realization of a physical impairment to fulfill this desire.

235

Interview, Santa Cruz, 1997.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 132 Despite his torn position, he looks beyond his circumstances and imagines a possibility for having an active political subjectivity. Other migrants follow his example. In the past twelve years Mexican migrants have intensified their involvement in Mexican politics, which in 1996 contributed to the two constitutional amendments described in chapter III, namely, the non-loss of nationality law and the constitutional reform of Article 36.236 The reform of article 36, which opened the possibility for the vote abroad, brings together very clearly the legal and the socio-cultural aspects of citizenship. These two shift as they interact in peoples’ practices as well as with institutional actions such as government´ policies, initiatives discussed in Congress introduced by political parties or the government, and approved laws and reforms. First, from a legal liberal perspective, voting is a right of a political nature and indicates membership in a polity. Second, for the migrants that have been lobbying for the vote-abroad, the right to vote appears as an indicator of different classes of citizenship, of membership in a community or exclusion from it. The right to vote for many disenfranchised migrants establishes as first class citizens those who are eligible for every right, versus second-class citizens who have limited rights. In this sense, the vote is seen as a reflection of citizenship; a notion that in migrants lives expands to impact the sociocultural realm. For a long time, the Mexican government and the different political sectors of the country remained deaf to Mexican migrants’ demand to allow the vote outside of the country and for the non-loss of nationality law. With the initial impetus sparked by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ presidential candidacy in 1988, different migrant groups started to pressure for the migrant vote. Once the approval of the reform to Article 36 in 1996 took place, many migrants and migrant organizations formed a Coalition to push for the effective implementation of the vote abroad for the year 2000, the Coalición de Mexicanos en el Extranjero Nuestro Voto 2000.237 Some of the

236

I followed the migrant campaign in favor of the vote abroad which took place (and is still happening) among groups of Mexican citizens living in the U.S. with the Mexican electoral authorities, legislators, political parties, as well as with other migrants living in the U.S. 237 Martínez, Jesús. 1999. “Resistir en la Jaula de Oro. La identidad de los Migrantes.” La Jornada, Suplemento Masiosare. Sunday May 9.

Law as practice: experiencing the law 133 organizations involved in this struggle were, among many others, the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional, Comité Pro-Voto 96-2000, Comité Pro-Uno, Casa Aztlán, Illinois; Consejo Electoral Mexicano del Medio Oeste, Illinois, Confederación de Clubes y Organizaciones Zacatecanos, Comité de Derechos Humanos del Este de Los Angeles, Coalición Internacional de Mexicanos en el Extranjero, Migrantes Mexicanos por el Cambio (Mimexca), Southwest Youth Collaborative, Illinois, Comité de Derechos Humanos del Este de Los Angeles. Most of these organizations come from California, Illinois, Iowa, and Texas. Their constituency includes migrants with legal residency and undocumented migrants who demand the right to be counted and valorized as significant and full members of México.238 Abstracts from a letter sent to the Mexican Senate by a migrant who participated in the campaign for the vote abroad demonstrate the meaning this issue had for this group of Mexicans. In his letter, Felipe Delgado, a migrant who lives in Los Angeles, makes a case for the right migrants have to vote in Mexican electoral processes. At different points in the missive he responds to comments or attacks concerning the right to vote abroad from the Mexican political arena: You might think that we are not affected by politics in México. On the contrary. That a political line divides us, in other words a border, is not reason enough. We are not uprooted people —desarraigados— as you call us.239 To exclude migrants because they are desarraigados ––uprooted–– only demonstrates a lack of knowledge of the multilayered connections migrants sustain with México. For Felipe, Mexicans living in the U.S. are not uprooted, he even calls upon the Senate to make Patria Juntos. This letter reveals how Patria and nation are the sources that feed migrants’ roots, or the vision that unites Mexicans on both sides of the border.240 For Felipe it is the source that maintains his cultural

238

According to the report of the Comisión de Especialistas sobre el Voto en el Extranjero, the five states with the largest concentration of Mexican population are California, Texas, Arizona, Illinois and New York. 239 Felipe Delgado. Letter to the Mexican Senate. December 1998. 240 In her work on the charreada, Olga Nájera-Ramírez explores how charros hacen Patria, that is, how through their cultural practices they engender nationalism. Nájera-Ramírez, Olga. 2002. “Haciendo Patria: La Charreada and the Formation of a Mexican Transnational Identity.” In Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 134 connection, a cultural identity that is not necessarily bounded by space. Moreover, hacer Patria implies situated cultural practices, which he, along with most migrants, expresses also in economic terms. Likewise, Mexican politics directly affect the lives of millions of Mexicans impacted by migration. Decisions and policies take place at the local, regional and national level and migrants have no formal way to speak to those resolutions. To name a geo-political line, a border, as the reason to exclude migrants from the political processes of México appears as an arbitrary reason for Felipe. If the right to vote is a universal right, why is it limited by a border? In his petition (or lobby, or push) for the right to vote, to be considered a first class citizen, Felipe Delgado echoes the voices of many migrants that live in the U.S. To persuade the Senate he gives them facts: We are Mexicans who have demonstrated to our México for a long time with actions, like our economic contribution, this being one of the more solid pillars of the Mexican economy, if not the strongest, the one that is always there regardless of the circumstances.241 Through his letter to the Senate, Felipe stresses why he considers that migrants are not unos desarraigados. Seven billion dollars in remittances annually confirm this. But not only that, their investment in México is constant, it has always been there, no matter the circumstance; unlike, for example, the so called capitales golondrinos, that come in and out of the country in search only of profit and hardly ever trickle down to the local or regional level.242

and Anna Sampaio, Eds. Transnational Latina/o Communities. Politics, Processes, and Cultures. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc, USA. 241 Felipe Delgado, 1998. Op. Cit. 242 Remaining fragments of the letter:“Con respeto me dirijo a ustedes para informarles que un gran número de mexicanos en Estados Unidos y demás paises estamos luchando para lograr nuestros más nobles y elementales derechos como mexicanos de primera clase, y uno de nuestros objetivos es el voto. Varios de ustedes o quizá todos dirán que debemos de tener este derecho tan elemental. Mi mensaje es exhortarlos a que tomen parte positiva en este proceso de apoyo no solamente a nosotros los mexicanos radicados en el extranjero, sino a ustedes mismos. Senadores, hagamos patria juntos, sean parte de este proceso y no parte de un sistema que por muchos años ha fallado. Tengan conciencia, valor cívico porque este es su deber. No se inclinen hacia

Law as practice: experiencing the law 135 After the final outcome of the 1999 political battle established between the House of Representatives and the Senate for an electoral reform, members of the Coalition for the 2000 vote published a letter of protest addressed to the Senate in the newspaper La Jornada. The political reform proposal included the implementation of the vote-abroad, in accordance with the suggestions made by the IFE’s Experts’ Commission that studied its viability. We, the Mexicans who live abroad repudiate the Senate’s treason by denying us the right we hold as Mexicans to vote abroad. We understand this anti-democratic measure as an attack on the democratization of our country. Experts from the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE) have stated that the vote abroad is technically viable, and that the Institute is capable of organizing the migrant participation in the 2000 elections. It was Congress itself which approved unanimously back in 1996, the reform that allows the suffrage. Besides, Article 39 of the Constitution grants us the right of changing or modifying our government….243 Also, the Group Migrantes Mexicanos por el Cambio (MIMEXCA), in an interview with the newspaper El Universal made the following statement: We support Vicente Fox because we consider him to be the best man to make the difference, our right to vote was denied but they cannot take away our Mexican blood from our veins, and we want to participate in the change.244 Aside from the case migrants make for their right to vote, in the statement to La Jornada, the above letter as well as in Felipe’s missive, and in many others that were circulated throughout this campaign, what

los intereses de unos cuantos. Fijen los ojos en el pueblo de México, los cambios se dan por su propio peso, es irreversible detenerlos. Que en la historia se escriban sus nombres como servidores del pueblo y no como enemigos del mismo.” Atentamente, Felipe Delgado,Los Angeles, CA. (Send to the Senate in December 199, my emphasis.) 243 Fragment of a letter to the Senate and published in La Jornada. June 29, 1999. My translation. 244 MIMEXCA Press release. 1999. El Universal. “Group that organizes as a result of the Senate’s failure to pass the modifications to the law for the vote abroad in 2000.” October 20. My translation.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 136 stands out is their emphasis on the vote and how they connect it to their citizenship and identity. “We are not uprooted,” is Felipe’s version of the connection citizenship-identity. “Our vote was denied but they can’t deny us our Mexican blood” is Mimexca’s reading. As for the letter to La Jornada, most of the arguments revolve around legality. Citizenship is built upon connectedness, and ties but mainly on the possibility of exercising a set of rights, a definition that is framed in the same terms set by the nation-state’s institutions. Citizenship is also framed in terms of roots, which “involves intimate linkages between people and place.”245 These linkages might exist in migrants’ memories, or in the nation-state narratives of la Patria or the Motherland; the role of these feelings of belonging in migrants’ transnational political practices cannot be underestimated. Realities Not all migrants are interested in politics. Rafael, for example, tends to have a low profile when it comes to participating in politics in the U.S.246 As he says, “ni frio ni calor. I don’t get into it. I am interested, but I don’t see why because at the end they end up doing whatever they want anyway.”247 Not even when it comes to defending his rights does Rafael consider participating in politics: To be honest, over there, there is no time for that. I work all the time, I don’t rest not even on weekends. I work all the time, maybe I rest one day during the week like Wednesday or Thursday…and well many times on my day off I have other things to do, instead of wasting my time.248 For Rafael politics is a waste of time and for that matter, of money, as it takes away time for work and for other activities. Politics do not

245

Cf. Malkki, Liisa H. 1997. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars Refugees.” In Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson. Culture, Power, Place. Explorations in Critical Anthropology. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P. 52. 246 Rafael was in Aguililla for what he called vacations, “por que no tengo fines de volver al pueblo (no interest on returning to town).” He had been in Aguililla since August 1998 and was planning on returning to Redwood City between March or April 1999. Interview, Aguililla, 1998. 247 My translation. Interview Aguililla, November 1998. 248 Idem.

Law as practice: experiencing the law 137 interest him because he cannot see the connection between them and his immediate reality. However, Rafael was familiar with the new nationality law, he knew that if he became a U.S. citizen he did not have to give up his Mexican nationality. He learned about it in Redwood City through the news, when it was approved. There are people that don’t know of that law. I‘ve spoken with people that don’t know. They say ‘I don’t become U.S. citizen because I lose Mexican rights. These are lies, you can’t lose them anymore. Despite his disregard for politics, Rafael finds time to be aware of something that, it seems, is more real for him. Nationality and citizenship understood as having or not having rights, as having an easier life, especially in the U.S. For Rafael these are practical matters. He is getting U.S. citizenship and he does not conceive of himself as less.

Dangerous ambiguities?: the status of Mexican migrants USBC (U.S. Border Control) notes: some observers fear that dual citizenship may set the stage for the Mexican government to exert tremendous influence in future American elections. The recent immigrants from México are clearly divided on their loyalties and may indeed vote in American elections for what is best for México, not America.249 Mexican migrants are constantly portrayed as a threat to the interests of the United States, as bearers of betrayal. What is important to point out is that this same argument was made in México when the non-loss of nationality law was passed, as well as in the debate surrounding the vote abroad initiative. When the Mexican non-loss-of-nationality law came into effect, a debate around its consequences started in the United States. Dual nationality has an ambiguous status in the United States, neither encouraged nor barred, officials said. The United States requires immigrants seeking citizenship status to renounce other allegiances, U.S. officials note, but cannot

249

McDonnell, Patrick J. 1997. “Dual Citizenship for Mexicans? México delays dual nationality plan one year.” Los Angeles Times, March 6.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants regulate whether foreign countries recognize that renunciation.250 When the Mexican embassy estimated that three million Mexicans were eligible for the recovery of their Mexican nationality, the mere possibility of such an enormous amount of dual nationals in the U.S. opened the doors to anti-Mexican sentiments. Likewise, with the possibility that the new law could add the largest number of dual nationals on U.S. soil, a debate on how dual nationality might undercut the meaning of citizenship in this country began among conservative groups in the United States.251 The legal action taken by the Mexican government in 1996, with the approval of the non-loss of nationality law, opened the question in many circles in the United States as to what nationality meant in this country. “Would dual nationality ––or the stronger status of dual citizenship that might follow–– corrode American citizenship?”252 For many, the answer is affirmative. With the dual nationality law, some consider that the allegiance and fidelity to the U.S. stated in the oath naturalized citizens take, is undermined or never fully embodied. The anti-immigrant group “Voice of Citizens Together”, based in Southern California, viewed the Mexican dual nationality law as “nothing less than a large-scale movement by the Mexican government to reverse the results of the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,” when México “gave up” much of what is now the Southwest of the U.S. after a war over 150 years ago.253 Others emphasize the fact that allowing naturalized citizens to hold dual citizenship or nationality is against the law.254 “The time has come when America needs to enforce the 138

250

McDonnell, Patrick J. 1997. Op. Cit. Cf. McDonnell, Patrick. Idem. 252 West, Woody. 1998. “The two faces of dual nationality. America should not accept México’s new law allowing dual citizenship.” In Insight on the News v. 14, n. 22, June 15. P. 48. 253 McDonnell, Patrick. 1997. Op. Cit. 254 The oath naturalized citizens take reads as follows: “I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or a citizen.” West, Woody. 1998. Op. Cit. 251

Law as practice: experiencing the law 139 law.”255 What most of these arguments forget to assess is that the majority of dual nationals are those children of Mexicans born in the U.S., who by birthright are U.S. citizens and through blood ties are Mexicans. Furthermore, even though dual citizenship has been de facto recognized in the U.S. for other nationalities, when it comes to Mexicans holding dual nationality the flexibility disappears. Migrants do not only appear as a threat to the U.S. They also appear as a threat to México where in some discourses they figure as contaminated; having acquired attributes of the “other” culture they can no longer be loyal and cannot be fully trusted. A sector of México’s political class has argued against the passing of the nationality law and the vote abroad reform under the premise that these two legal changes are a dangerous move that could affect Mexican sovereignty. The two central voices representing this position have been Mexican lawyers’ Jorge Carpizo and Diego Valadés. They consider that the question is not about harming the rights of those who live abroad, but rather on protecting the rights of those who “live inside.” Their argument is based on the idea that, considering the number of Mexicans living in the U.S., if migrants were enabled to vote they could indeed decide the result of the elections. According to this perspective, the problem is that when migrants settle in the U.S., they adopt foreign customs and detach themselves from México. As a consequence migrants appear to be more susceptible to U.S. interests, thereby participating in Mexican politics in accordance to those interests.256 So, despite the fact that the vote is guaranteed to everyone regardless of how they will vote, this notion gets contaminated because of the larger geopolitical —an unequal— relationship between the U.S. and México as nation-states. Groups in both the U.S. and México recognize that there are a great deal of people migrating across the border. Most groups see this migration as a problem; and, yet, the conditions of possibility for this migration are never addressed. Rather, laws attempt to regulate existing migration Several revealing preconceptions stand out in this position. First, it represents an underlying preconception of a nation that is inside, that is enclosed in some pure way, and which must be preserved from threats. Second, Mexicans living abroad are differentiated from

255

Edwards, James J.. “Dual Citizenship is Dangerous”. 1998. The Christian Science Monitor. April 29. 256 Cf. Carpizo, Jorge. 1998. “El Peligro del Voto de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero.” Nexos, Julio. Pp 11-12.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 140 Mexicans living inside México. This type of argument in fact establishes two kinds of citizens: first and second class citizens, where the latter cannot hold full citizenship rights because they can harm those of the citizens that remain pure by always living in México. Migrants constantly face the image of bearers of betrayal, mistrusted here and there, in their town, in México, in the United States. They come and go loaded with contradictions, of heroes and traitors, invaders as well as needed labor, which they negotiate every day. Although the effects of the dual nationality law are far from what the Mexican Embassy had originally expected, and while the implementation of the vote abroad might take some time, Mexican migrants hold a symbolic weight for the nation inasmuch as they represent a part that has been rejected, disenfranchised, despite the fact that they sustain a significant portion of the feeble Mexican economy. In part, it is their perseverance, their stubborn remembering of home that has contributed to a transformation of contemporary Mexican political practices. The two legal changes —non loss of nationality law and the constitutional reform to article 36 that opened the possibility for the vote abroad–– modify the meaning that politics has for the nation and for people at the same time that they impact transnational migrants’ lives in a very concrete way. For José, as we saw earlier, the different laws and the relation between México and the U.S. leaves them, as migrants, “between a rock and a hard place.” The dual nationality law is not all we wanted because you can no longer keep voting in México and that is something that would affect me because I want to be able to vote in Mexican elections, but I also want to be able to vote here...I am not clear about what decision I should make. The status of migrants is not simply a question of national politics or binational relations. Their status points to the existence of a transnational social space that is integrated by their daily experiences and their relations to the two nation-states they encounter. Mexicans’ allegiances when they live in the United States, especially when they hold U.S. citizenship reveal that the notion of sovereignty is inhabited by people and it moves with their displacements. When Mexican migrants’ loyalties are questioned what is put in doubt is their belonging to a national community. If they are still considered “citizens” represented and protected by the state, then

Law as practice: experiencing the law 141 the quesiton becomes how. For anthropologist Peggy Levitt, “the issue is not whether migrants should or should not belong, in some way, to two polities but that, given that increasing numbers live transnational lives, how their rights and representation can best be guaranteed.”257 Politically active migrants constantly connect rights with belonging and loyalty. Contrary to the PRIista official discourse of the two years before the 2000 election, rather than viewing the vote abroad as a threat, migrant organizations stress that it re-enforces México’s sovereignty as long as the exercise of democracy reaches all Mexican citizens.

Politics, and the nation On November 1997, ten years after his first electoral visit, Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, then recently elected governor of the Federal District (México City), returned to California. With a clear grasp of the political importance Mexican migrants have both in México and in the United States, Cárdenas and his party, the PRD, appreciate the role that migrants can play in presidential elections. As Cárdenas phrased it when interviewed at Stanford University: “We could see more than a million voters (going to the polls) in this part of the country.”258 This statement sums up in a very pragmatic way the question of where a nation-state can draw its boundaries: For México, the nation includes “this part of the country” ––meaning the U.S.–– where there are one million potential voters. In other words, México includes California, as long as there are a significant number of Mexican citizens in the area. It could be said that every time Mexican politicians directly address migrants, they are enacting the enlargement of México’s sovereignty.259

257

Levitt, Peggy. 2001. Op. Cit. P. 206. Levander, Michelle. 1997. “Cárdenas visits Bay Area”. San Jose Mercury News, Nov. 21. My emphasis. 259 An interesting coincidence of Cárdenas standpoint on this issue can be seen in the Plan Nacional de Desarrollo 1994-2000 which stated: “La nación mexicana rebasa el territorio que contiene sus fronteras. Por eso, un elemento esencial del programa Nación Mexicana será promover las reformas constitucionales y legales para que los mexicanos preserven su nacionalidad, independientemente de la ciudadanía o residencia que hayan adoptado”. P.15. In La Doble Nacionalidad. Memoria del Coloquio, Palacio Legislativo. 1995. LVI Legislatura, Cámara de Diputados. México, June 8-9. P.5. 258

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Alongside the discussion on politics and sovereignty are attached questions of the productions of subjects, particularly political subjects in the case of Mexican migrants. With the reform to Article 36 and its implications in relation to the vote abroad, a new kind of subjectivity was projected onto the migrant population moving from an economic one, in which they were considered one more variable ––a worker–– to a political one, in which they become, again, a part of the polity ––a citizen. Through the years many Mexican migrants have expressed their interest in participating in Mexican political processes. Echoing Felipe’s letter demanding the right to vote, different migrant organizations have been returning to México as political lobbyists symbolically waving the estimated seven billion they send to their relatives in México each year. For many Mexicans living in the United States, this is an issue that goes beyond voting rights. “It is about a process of reconciliation between Mexicans and their homeland,” stated Jesús Martínez, a scholar and a member of the migrant coalition that lobbies in México City. “They should let us vote because we love México as much or even more after we leave,” declared Ted Rodríguez, who heads an organization of natives of Cuautla in the state of Washington. “And we don’t leave México because we want to. We leave because we have to.”260 According to these testimonies, many more Mexican migrants want to actively participate in the political processes that are taking place in México. These migrants are interested in being a part of the transition towards a more participatory democracy, which has been taking place in México over the past twenty five years. Moreover, while for Mexicans living in the U.S. the non-loss of nationality law means recognition of their identity as Mexicans, it also seems to speed up the process of becoming U.S. citizens, thus opening a new constituency in the U.S. political panorama.261 Thus, 142

260

Corchado, Alfredo, Claudia Fernandez and Alejandra Xanic. “México debates letting immigrants vote in U.S. Despite financial ties, some balloting limits.” In The Dallas Morning News/ Publico/ El Universal, April 5 1998. 261 Starting in 1997 and due to the amnesty provisions of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act, about 1.7 million long-term unauthorized migrants and an additional 1.3 million unauthorized Special Agricultural Workers applied for legalization. Of this group, a significant portion is applying or

Law as practice: experiencing the law 143 the non-loss of nationality law intersects with the electoral reform. The connection between the two Mexican legal changes is very clear, particularly when people experience them and, in doing so, their belonging is put in question. Many changes have taken place in the last decades that have contributed to a reevaluation of the status and role of Mexican migrants. According to anthropologist Manuel García y Griego once Mexican migrants were given the right to keep their nationality when acquiring another, a significant increment in naturalizations has occurred, as well as broader political participation.262 When it comes to the vote-abroad of Mexican-Americans who can claim dual nationality, the opinion is divided among the MexicanAmerican organizations. In a study of the opinions of MexicanAmerican leaders on the vote-abroad, the findings report that the directors or presidents of these organizations mostly oppose the implementation of this law.263 According to the report among national organizations such as LULAC the Council of La Raza, or the South West Voter Registration Project, there is a total opposition to the vote of U.S. citizens who have opted for, or are able to opt for, Mexican nationality by way of their Mexican born parents. Likewise, the vote of Mexicans by birth that have already acquired U.S. citizenship is not accepted, although here the opinion is divided especially when it comes

considering to apply for U.S. citizenship. As reported in the Bi-national Study, “beginning in 1995 the number of Mexican immigrants becoming citizens increased substantially at least in part because those legalizing their status under IRCA became eligible for naturalization.” Cf. Estudio Bi-Nacional México-Estados Unidos sobre Migracion. 1997. Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores,.México. P. 1 and 3. Also see Table 8, Annex IV Doc. 3-3. Subcomisión Socio-Demográfica. Reporte Final Comisión de Expertos. 1998. Op. Cit. 262 Participation in the Binational Forum “Los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Exterior.” March 9, 2003, University of Texas, Arlington. 263 Fundación Solidaridad México-Americana. 1996. “Sondeo de Opinión a Líderes Mexicano-Americanos sobre el Voto de los Mexicanos Residentes en Estados Unidos para Elecciones Presidenciales en México”. For the “Comisión de Especialistas que estudia las modalidades del voto en el extranjero” established by the Instituto Federal Electoral (IFE). México, July. P. 10.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 144 down to regional or state organizations.264 The reasons for this opposition concentrate on the worry of being accused of lack of loyalty to the U.S. thus augmenting the anti-Mexican atmosphere.265 Also highlighted is a focus on promoting the vote within U.S. electoral processes rather than dividing the efforts by turning to México. Contrary to the idea that promoting the vote for Mexican elections is a distracting factor, for many activists and academics the value of the extraterritorial vote lies in its potential to project migrants towards a broader political and social participation both in México and in the United States.266 In other words, Mexican political activity has to be viewed as concomitant and as bilateral effort. “Today, Mexican immigrants are the object of interest of democrats and republicans in the United States, and of [PRI] priistas, [PRD] perredistas, and [PAN] panistas in México.”267 In this sense, the main issue is to promote the development of migrants’ civic participation to defend and claim their rights on both sides of the border. On January 9, 2003, the Consejo de Presidentes de Federaciones de Clubes de Oriundos de Los Angeles (Federations of Hometown Associations) organized an event to discuss the vote abroad as part of a series of Forums that were taking place on both sides of the border. The L.A. Forum was the largest of all. More than 500 people were present, many of who were not able to enter the crowded auditorium. Migrants from other parts of the United States traveled to be present. There were people from Chicago, Arizona, Texas, Northern California, all of whom had been involved in the long struggle towards the recognition of the political rights of Mexicans abroad. These series of binational events are a sign that for the first time there is a state vision towards Mexicans living in the U.S. Scholars and politicians came from Sinaloa, Zacatecas, Oaxaca –– including the governor of the state–– Michoacán, and México City. Of major relevance was the presence of Senators from the different

264

Reporte Final Comisión de Especialistas. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 10 Cf. Fundación Solidaridad Mexicano-Americana. 1996. Op. Cit. Table 4.2. P. 11 266 Cf. García y Griego, Manuel. 2003. Op. Cit. P.4. 267 García y Griego, Manuel. 2003. “Del México de Afuera al México de Adentro.” Paper presented at the Foro Binacional Los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Exterior. March 9, University of Texas, Arlington. P.5. My translation. 265

Law as practice: experiencing the law 145 political parties at the local and federal level, like Genaro Borrego (PRI)––head of the Commission of Foreign Affairs ––and Raymundo Cárdenas from the PRD. The Lower House was also represented. There were twenty elected officials from the federal and local level. At the Los Angeles Binational Forum, Arnoldo Torres from UNIVISION presented a panorama of how the extraterritorial vote for Mexicans living in the U.S. is viewed by Latino organizations. For him, the majority of Latino groups are against it although not publicly. According to these groups, the Latino project and the Mexican project are at odds with each other; that is, the extraterritorial vote damages the Latino political agenda, it is a distracting factor. As a strategy, Torres proposed to incorporate Latino organizations into the Coalition for the vote abroad, as well as to take into account the arguments of those who are not in favor. The purpose would be to develop educational campaigns for the vote abroad, and to neutralize the campaigns against it. In an insightful commentary on Arnaldo Torres’ presentation on the competing agendas between Latinos and Mexicans, a Mexican migrant in the audience categorically stated: “Well, yes, but we cannot become U.S. citizens and vote because we don’t have papers. At least we can vote in México.” For this migrant, the whole discussion on whether or not Mexicans should organize politically is clear. For many Mexican migrants, the alarmist position that some of the Latino organizations have in relation to the extraterritorial vote cannot be justified. The defense of migrants’ rights on either side of the border, especially of those who are undocumented, has to go through México. Mexican migrants’ current low level of political participation, regardless of whether it is for issues related to the U.S. or México, places the struggle for political mobilization beyond competing agendas.268 When migrants address issues that affect them on both sides of the border they are enacting their own transnational citizenship. This transnational condition implies that as migrants become more politically aware and active, they will necessarily have to perform their citizenship in the broadest sense of the term. Migrants cannot be enclosed in a political box. Debates not only take place in public events and meetings. One central tool that politically active migrants use to discuss, organize, debate, and develop their ideas has been electronic mail,

268

Cf. García y Griego, Manuel. 2003. Op. Cit. P.2.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 146 mainly through electronic groups and lists. In February and March of 2003, a debate over whether or not the Constitution allowed migrant political candidacies ensued in two of these lists. One argument, sustained by Raúl Ross, quoted Article 32 of the Mexican Constitution, which states: “The exercise of public office and functions for which under the terms of the present Constitution it is required to be Mexican by birth, is reserved to those who hold this quality and do not acquire another nationality.” He then proceeded to quote Article 55 that states: “To be a Congressman it is required: 1) to be Mexican by birth…” Raúl does not quote the other articles that refer to Senators, President, and armed forces. Other restricted positions are not named in the Constitution but derive from it, and are listed in secondary regulations. What is important to emphasize is that Ross understands that migrants with dual nationality cannot be political candidates in Mexican elections. As he states, he is doing a literal reading of the law, not an interpretation.269 Other members of the electronic group who are part of the struggle for the vote abroad have challenged Raúl’s position. For some the nationality law has judicial loopholes that make it ambiguous. Others, citing the Constitution, consider that the legal text does not establish that a binational cannot be a Congressman, and that there is still no law that regulates the rights of dual nationals, a requirement stated in Article 32. Moreover, some consider that the public posts for which dual nationals are barred need to be specified, and they do not know of any such list. Ross answered with a transcription of Article 55 of the Mexican Constitution. A list of these positions does exist; it is included in the documents that were produced by the IFE Experts Commission for the study of the vote abroad, a list that is based on the nationality law approved in 1996 by the Senate.270 However, this is not widespread knowledge. Some migrants consider that a strict reading of the law will exclude possible candidates for Congress. For example, two migrant

269

Raúl Ross Pineda. March 17, 2003. E-group fundaciónmexico @yahoogroups.com. My translation. 270 This list names 65 jobs that are restricted to Mexicans by birth who have not acquired another nationality, among others: senators, congressmen, governor, president, member of any electoral board. See Subcomisión Internacional. 1988. “Anexo I. Legislación comparada”. In Reporte Final de la Comisión de Expertos. IFE, Op. Cit. P. 73 Anexo.

Law as practice: experiencing the law 147 leaders, one with legislative experience, were convinced that they could not register as candidates because of holding dual nationality. More recently, migrant leaders Manuel de la Cruz, Felipe Cabral and Luis de la Garza ––the last two proposed by the Comisión de Mexicanos en el Exterior–– who were already included in the proportional representation lists of the PRI, PAN, and PRD for the coming mid-term elections, have been disqualified because of their dual nationality status. When it seemed that the movement of Mexicans in the United States had already achieved a wider migrant presence in México’s political scenario, the strict letter of the law comes back to haunt Mexicans living abroad.271 Since 1997, then Senator Adolfo Aguilar Zinser had already foreseen the consequences that the judicial inconsistencies contained in the new nationality law would provoke. Among others, he mentioned that following the terms of the 1996 law, dual nationality in México effectively becomes a second-class nationality or citizenship, because it bars dual nationals from exercising public office, and a series of functions considered relevant for the safekeeping of the nation’s sovereignty.272 As if Mexican migrants were a threat to México’s sovereignty, the content of Article 32, rejects migrant candidacies on account of dual nationality status, and expresses a state of affairs in which migrants are seen as Mexicans but not quite. Likewise, it is a rejection that chooses to ignore that as U.S. immigration laws become stricter, more Mexicans face the need to apply for U.S. citizenship.

Law, nation, and belonging Mexican migrants define their membership to a nation-state through their identity and sense of belonging, as well as in the strategic decisions they make throughout their life. These decisions remain inherently connected to the legal realm developed by the United States and México to deal with their presence. Migrants interpret and react to this framework in strategic ways. Because laws entail an hegemonic dimension, it is not impartial or static, and judicial changes condense power and social relations.273

271

Cf. Hernández, Rogelio. 2003. “Los candidates con doble nacionalidad impedidos.” Milenio. Nacional. Wednesday April 9. 272 Aguilar Zinser, Adolfo. 1997. “Nacionalidad Compartida.” Reforma, Editorial. Friday December 5. 273 Cf. Sierra, María Teresa and Victoria Chenaut. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 140.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants María and Lucha’s stories portray the more pragmatic side of the relation between migrants and the laws that affect them. In their lives laws have indeed been hard texts, material realities, which they interpret and acknowledge. José, Daniel and Doña Carmen unravel stories of citizenship as practices of signification where the connection between identity and law acquires preeminence. As Doña Carmen’s testimony shows, some Mexican migrants have a strong sense of territoriality, and of belonging to a larger community, which exceeds the limits established by a nation-states’ laws. Migrants’ constant back– and–forth complicate these limits. The interest in their hometown and in México, the remittances they send, and the memories they sustain through the years, that is, the intensity of their situated cultural practice, represents one of the challenges posed by Mexican migrants to how citizenship is understood today. For Mexican migrants recovering their full citizenship rights recognizes their role in the process of the making of the nation. Because the dilemma of keeping strong connections with the homeland, whether political, economic or emotional, is so present among many groups of Mexican migrants, their lobbying efforts in México, their political activity abroad, their every day remembering of their country, make the Mexican migration case one where a politics of citizenship is clearly performed and displayed. Likewise, the legal struggle that is taking place also depicts how, by pushing an agenda upon the national political scene, Mexican migrants are becoming active political actors rather than mere symbols of heroism, or images of the country’s failure to include everyone’s past, present and future. For many migrants citizenship is indeed a legal status, and it is closely related to political rights. However, through the recognition of the leverage laws have in their lives, migrants move beyond their limitations, and as a response to them become, as I mentioned before, active political actors. This new existence as actors that impact the Mexican political arena turns into a feature of the new citizenship that migrants are constructing and one that both México and the United States have to deal with. Though the legal discourse does structure the formal relation between these two states, the México-U.S. relation does not begin or end with the laws that each government promulgates. Each side in this binational relation carries out divergent efforts to fortify its sovereignty. One state goes through elaborate and expensive procedures to close its sovereignty by passing anti-immigration laws most of which are practically if unofficially labeled as anti-Mexican. 148

Law as practice: experiencing the law 149 The other state seeks to extend its sovereignty by displacing traditional notions of sovereignty from a territorial notion on to every Mexican who crosses the border. In both nation-states internal resistance to these laws appear as people grapple emotionally and conceptually with nationalist ideas of citizenship and belonging. Individuals find themselves participating in this legal battle, which they in turn end up inhabiting and performing. The two legal frameworks migrants face can be seen as representing contrasting national projects and cultures of politics, which migrants engage in their everyday practices and, by the same token, which they transform. Migrants construct a culture of citizenship where the legal discourse is translated into political practices of belonging and membership. Moreover, because migrants find themselves immersed in at least two interlocking legal worlds, they develop counter-hegemonic responses through their situated cultural and political practices. In doing so, they bring life to the law.

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CHAPTER 7

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging

Spaces of transnational migration such as the Aguilillan migrant circuit, and the experiences of those who actively engage the nation-state ––i.e. Mexican migrants lobbying for the implementation of the vote abroad– – provide a framework for understanding how a culture of citizenship is shaped. This chapter explores politically active migrants’ practices of citizenship, and how they engage in a battle for its meaning and limits, within a transnational and trans-local setting. In this sense, nation, region, locality and ethnicity appear as dimensions where migrants’ political practices take place. The stories presented here center on practices of citizenship that are mainly connected to the political sphere, but are also mediated by the language of identity, and by migrants’ sense of belonging. The present chapter aims for an understanding of the interaction between citizenship and politics. Previously, I discussed the cultural and legal contexts that influence migrants’ construction of citizenship. This chapter explores how migrants create a transnational citizenship, marked by trans-local and/or transnational practices, through their political and cultural practices within a scenario of contrasting political cultures.274 By trans-local I understand the

274

My understanding of political culture follows that of Sonia Alvarez, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, which they define “as the particular social construction in every society of what counts as political. In this way, political culture is the domain of practices and institutions, carved out of the totality of social reality, that historically comes to be considered as properly political.” In Alvarez, Sonia, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, Eds. 1998. Cultures of

151

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 152 movement between two or more localities while sustaining a hometown or regional connection. This connection allows for the development of a transnational social space, which crosses the socio-political, economic, and historical boundaries of two or more nations. I explore how these boundaries are lived and contested by following the stories of three Mexicans who have experienced migration and have invested part of their lives in the political sphere. Migrants articulate power and culture in different manners. Through their political practices they address the nation-state within the language of the law, as well as within the language of identity. In speaking of a culture of politics, of meanings and practices entangled in power struggles, the actions of Mexican migrants in the United States have indeed impacted México’s political scene culminating in the appearance of new laws and political campaigns that take place in the United States such as those of Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, Vicente Fox, and various candidates for governorships.275 Migrants’ lobbying, their protests, and the debates they foster, permeate the Mexican political landscape, and have found echo in the letter of the law with the 1996 Constitutional changes, and subsequent initiatives introduced in Congress. In this sense, they are the life of the law, and their emergence as transnational political actors has added a new dimension to México’s culture of politics. The chapter is divided into three sections. First, I examine some vying perspectives on citizenship and its connection to culture and democracy. In order to frame the case studies introduced here I review theoretical work on transnational political participation. This work is important because it provides with a perspective on the connection between migration, citizenship and politics. Second, I present the stories of three migrants who, through their political involvement, have impacted the development of a culture of citizenship. They are cases of civic and political self-representation on the part of migrants. I selected these cases following two main criteria: a) the actors engage in politics on both sides of the border; and b) they involve the migrant experience. The first story is about a migrant from

Politics. Politics of Cultures. Re-visioning Latin American Social Movements. Westview Press, USA. P. 8. 275 Cf. in Alvarez, Sonia, et.al. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 7.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 153 Zacatecas, Andrés Bermúdez ––The Tomato King–– an agribusiness owner in Northern California who became active in the political arena of Jerez, Zacatecas, his hometown. The second case is that of Rufino Domínguez, a migrant indigenous leader from Oaxaca. In these stories, the indigenous migrant appears as a political subject who organizes transnationally, and forges a politics of citizenship where indigenous migrants, their specific identities, and political needs are at the forefront. Finally, I present the story of Raúl Ross, a Veracruzano migrant who lives in Chicago and is immersed in a political campaign lobbying for the political rights of Mexicans living abroad. Enlarging the sense of what democracy means, his words and life history provide elements to understand citizenship as a cultural right. These three stories present different political strategies as they engage with local Mexican political cultures. Finally, by comparing the particular political practices and the cultures of citizenship these actors enact, the third part of the chapter threads the elements that shape migrants citizenship, which although departing from the political sphere, it always includes the legal realm and senses of belonging.

Understanding citizenship and migration As the category of citizenship changes within the context of migration its definition provides a framework to understand what a politics of citizenship means. When intersected with works on transnational migration that emphasize issues of citizenship and/or political participation it is possible to view how distinct practices of politics, and claims of membership in the nation-state enrich the notion of citizenship. Just as citizenship goes beyond the legal realm involving cultural practices at the same time that it is strongly related to democracy, democracy is seemingly bound to the political regime. However, this notion necessarily includes the cultural realm, where practices of exclusion and inequality have marked social relations, relations that, for example, social movements in Latin America have been trying to change. As a consequence of the social movements that have emerged since the 1970’s, there has been a shift in the notion of democracy. This conception of democracy “transcends the limits both

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 154 of political institutions as traditionally conceived and of actually existing democracy.’’276 It is a democracy that changes in practice. Because of its connection to democracy, the notion of citizenship has also undergone a redefinition. Prevailing neoliberal versions of citizenship, which place the core notion of rights under scrutiny and change, attempt to redefine “the political domain and its participants based on a minimalistic conception of both the state and democracy.”277 Thus the effect of neoliberalism is to integrate citizenship to the needs of the market. Likewise, there is a systematic elimination of consolidated rights in order to shrink state responsibilities.278 Mexican migrants also expand the notion of rights to the right to have rights. As Evelina Dagnino in her work on Latin American social movements explains, a right is understood as the right to have rights beyond previously defined and established rights, created in the practice from specific struggles, and subject themselves to political struggle.279 Through a gradual understanding of the connection between culture and politics, social movements articulate their situation, and that of others, as the right to have rights. Once grounded in this general notion of democracy ––the right to have rights–– citizenship becomes central to the struggle towards democratization. This redefined notion of citizenship renders operational the “enlarged view of democracy” which characterizes the new social movements, whether they be urban, rural, feminist, minority, or ecological. The practice of each social actor provides more meaning and breadth to the notion of citizenship. Each claim for equality, difference, and other rights opens the meaning of citizenship. While here citizenship is seen as a cultural practice, it also contains the idea that everyone is a bearer of rights. In his revision of theoretical perspectives of transnational citizenship, Jonathan Fox delineates four trends questioning “nation-

276

Dagnino, Evelina. 1998. “Culture, Citizenship, and Democracy: Changing Discourses and Practices of the Latin American Left.” In Alvarez, Sonia, Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, eds. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 49. 277 Dagnino, Evelina. Idem. 278 See Dagnino, Evelina. 1998. Op. Cit. P.49 279 Cf. Dagnino. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 50.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 155 280 state-based models of citizenship.” The first evolves from the globalization process, which ends to undermine national and local rights. The second and third refer to the incorporation of “transnational migrant communities into the public sphere, long distance nationalism” and to the “rise of a transnational civil society” with “claims of membership to cross-border civic and political communities.”281 Forth, processes of regional integration that foster the recognition of individual and communities rights facing transnational authorities.282 The second and third trends identified by Fox are the ones that serve to better describe Mexican migrants’ transnational politics. The three cases reviewed in this chapter involve the practice of a transnational citizenship that includes the development of a cross-border civil society that engages the public sphere, long distance nationalism and claims to membership to an enlarged community. From a perspective that focuses more on the migratory process, David Fitzgerald’s work on Michoacano migrants and their practices of citizenship introduces identity into the discussion of political rights. As he explains, there is a connection between citizenship and an essentialized identity. This process of essentialization “legitimates the claims for rights, “and is especially present among diasporas and transnational migrants.”283 Through their practices and their relation to the nation-state, transnational migrants define the content of their citizenship. Mexican migrants do tend to have an essentialized understanding of their identity, some engaging at the national level, while others ground their identity at the state and community levels, as seen in the narratives of José in his store in San jose, Doña Carmen in her house in Redwood City, and with most Mexicans lobbying for their right to political voice. In his study of a union local in Southern California and its transnational political practices, Fitzgerald questions the excesses in the

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Fox, Jonathan. 2005. “Unpacking Transnational Citizenship.” Annual Review of Political Sciences. No. 8: 171-201. Pp. 173 281 Idem. 282 Cf. Fox, J. 2005. Op. Cit. Pp. 173. 283 Fitzgerald, David. 2000. Negotiating Extra-Territorial Citizenship.Mexican Migration and the Transnational Politics of Community. Center for Comparative and Immigration Studies, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California. Monograph No. 2. P. 9

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 156 use of the concept of transnationalism in migration studies because they tend to conflate categories of nation, state, culture, and geography.284 Fitzgerald proposes to set aside the use of transnationalism, which he interprets as a transcendence of nationalism, but to keep its analytical tools. Through the study of the union, Fitzgerald advances a theoretical framework that attempts to disaggregate: Types of political borders, types of nationalisms, and levels of identification, which he understands as theoretical tools. He thus attempts to disentangle the transnational from the translocal. Through the study of the political dynamics in the union, he discovers that translocality appears to be more relevant than any transnational ‘workers of the world’ discourse.285 Furthermore, he considers that while kinship, locality, nation, class, and race, are levels that interrelate with each other in migration, transnationalism is not necessarily a concept that sheds light on these interactions.286 Because the union is made up of a large migrant constituency ––mostly from two adjacent villages in Michoacán–– Fitzgerald considers that the “internal political structure of the union is bi-local in that it is based in two localities separated by a state border and 1500 miles.”287 Kinship relations play a strong role in union politics. However, Fitzgerald recognizes that the union’s dynamics move beyond this bi-local setting. He finds that the union constructs dual nationalisms because national symbols of both countries are present (the flags, pledge of allegiance, the Virgin of Guadalupe); the union sustains contacts with the Mexican consulate, it lobbies for U.S. social rights as well as Mexican political rights with Mexican authorities, and it conducts citizenship classes. In sum, Fitzgerald calls for an understanding of migrants’ realities as transborder, bi-local, and translocal. Fitzgerald agrees with Alejandro Portes’, Luis E. Guarnizo’s, and Patricia Landlot’s perspective that considers that transnationalism

284

Cf. Fitzgerald, David. 2002. “Rethinking the ‘Local’ and ‘Transnational’: Cross-Border Politics and Hometown Networks in an Immigrant Union.” Manuscript. P.4. 285 See Fitzgerald, David. 2002. Op. Cit. P.3. 286 Fitzgerald. 2002. Op. Cit. P.4. 287 Idem.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 157 is more useful when applied to the economic domain. This view is especially evident when he argues “how transborder ties can improve the economic prospects of low skill workers and transnational entrepreneurs.”288 Such a position is problematic because it allows for a qualification of entrepreneurs as transnational, while workers are not given that same quality, as if workers were not part of a larger set of economic relations that spanned beyond the local, regional, or state levels. In Fitzgerald’s precision of the use of the term “transnationalism,” by addressing both bi-local or trans-local situations, and what he calls dual nationalisms practiced by the union leaders and by the union in general, he is in fact dealing with transnational issues. Contrary to his own claims, I consider that Fitzgerald’s study demonstrates that the local may also be transnational precisely because a multiplicity of levels are interacting, and because larger economic and political processes frame the social relations that are taking place. Another approach that takes into consideration the cultural aspect of citizenship is the one developed by Renato Rosaldo. According to him, new social movements have Expanded the emphasis on citizens’ rights from questions of class to issues of gender, race, sexuality, ecology, and age…new citizens have come into being as new categories of persons who make claims on both their fellow citizens and the state.289 Mexican migrants fuse class and race with questions of nation and community. Indeed they make claims on their fellow citizens and the state, but for them there is more than one state with which to deal. Indeed, more problematically, their fellow citizens might not consider them as “fellows” at all. Thus, claims of citizenship are not only expressed in the political arena; the signs of inclusion and exclusion are perhaps more evident in migrants’ everyday lives, where people are integrated into or marginalized from the community.

288

Fitzgerald, David. 2002. Op. Cit. P. 14. Also see Portes, Alejandro, Luis E. Guarnizo and Patricia Landlot. 1999. “The study of transnationalism: pitfalls and promise of an emergent research field.” Ethnic and Racial Studies 22(2):212-37. 289 Rosaldo, Renato. 1997. “Cultural Citizenship, Inequality, and Multiculturalism.” In Flores, William and Rina Benmayor. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Beacon Press, Boston. P.30.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants The histories and the stories of Mexican migrants in the U.S., illustrate how citizenship can be viewed as a political strategy, a perspective that emphasizes its character as a historical construct rather than a universal essence as the liberal tradition has defined citizenship. For authors like William Flores, Renato Rosaldo, or Evelina Dagnino, the new citizenship goes beyond a central reference in the liberal concept, what Dagnino understands as The claim to access, inclusion, membership, and belonging to an already given system. What is at stake, in fact, is the right to participate in the very definition of that system, to define what we want to be members of, that is to say, the invention of a new society.290 However, those Mexican migrants who struggle for the recognition of their political rights are, at least in a first instance, demanding to be included in an already given system. Yet, through their practices migrants are in fact taking part in a re-invention of that system, the nation, which in turn, through people, practices, and their imaginaries has to define legally and emotionally their new role. In the long-term migratory process between México and the U.S., migrants have developed practices of citizenship, which are manifested in various forms, both institutional and private/ personal. In her studies on transnational migration, anthropologist Luin Goldring argues that citizenship includes two dimensions. The first one refers to rights, and the second to substantive citizenship practices.291 Goldring defines substantive citizenship in terms of migrants’ connections to their communities of origin. Many of them have structured their practices in hometown associations, thus thickening their membership and practices of belonging. These bottom-up associations or clubs have become the basis for a more institutionalized relation between the Mexican nation-state and migrants. However, for the Mexican 158

290

Dagnino, Evelina. 1998. Op. Cit. P.51. Also see Flores, William. 1997. “Citizen vs Citizenry: Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Cultural Citizenship. Epilogue.” In William Flores and Rita Benmayor. Op. Cit. Pp.257, 258. 291 Cf. Goldring, Luin. 2001. “The Gender and Geography of Citizenship in México-U.S. Transnational Spaces.”. In Identities, Vol. 7(4) pp.501-537. P. 501.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 159 government, these associations are only relevant inasmuch as they can provide economic benefits to their communities of origin, as well as political lobbying in the U.S. on behalf of the Mexican government.292 Mexican migrant clubs have existed since the 1920’s. The Federations ––a conglomerate of hometown associations–– are a more recent appearance due mostly to a change in Mexican policy toward migrants.293 The first federation that emerged from below is the Federación de Clubes Zacatecanos. According to Goldring, Zacatecans in the U.S. enact their membership to their localities of origin by participating in and conducting hometown “community” projects, thus “engaging in transnational substantive citizenship at the subnational level.”294 These particular situated cultural practices of building community and establishing citizenship in the form of institutions by migrant groups, or even individuals, began to be seized upon by the state in the 1990’s. The purpose of this action was to encourage investment projects in migrants’ communities with matching funds from the government. This strategy by the Mexican government was “built on well established patterns of bottom-up transnational practices and organization.”295 Hometown clubs tend to organize to invest in works that interest the community such as sidewalks, roads, schools, health services, a kiosk, Churches. Most of these are what Luin Goldring understands as social benefits. Migrants “expand the social citizenship ‘benefits’ available in their communities of origin…They have taken off where the state left off…”296 However, the decision-

292

See Goldring, Luin. 1998a. "Power and Status in Transnational Social Fields". In Luis Eduardo Guarnizo and Michael P. Smith (Eds). In Transnationalism from Below. Comparative Urban and Community Research, Vol. 6. P. 1. 293 Espinosa, Víctor. 1999. La Federación de Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois: Construyendo Puentes entre Chicago y Michoacán. Heartland Alliance for Human Needs and Human Rights/ Chicago Community Trust/ Federación de Clubes Michoacanos en Illinois. September. P.1 294 Goldring. 1998a. Op. Cit. P. 5. 295 Goldring. 1998a. Op. Cit. P. 2 296 Goldring, Luin. 1999. “From market membership to transnational citizenship? The changing politization of transnational social spaces.” Chicano-

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 160 making process of what is needed for the community and how the collective remittances should be invested places the population in conflict with each other. Determining which project should be chosen, what is more relevant for the hometown or for the returning migrants sometimes leads to conflicts of interests or to the choice of a seemingly less useful or productive project. Other transnational practices of citizenship that some Mexican migrants develop are strongly connected to the political realm. Aside from the hometown associations, and now the Federations, migrants have developed a myriad of transnational practices that contribute to the construction of their citizenship. For Jonathan Fox, an organized transnational social movement has a high degree of density, of cohesion, where the social subject is present in more than one country.297 As he explains, this description fits the “paradigmatic case of the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Bi-nacional,” an organization of which Rufino Domínguez is a member.298 As Fox explains, it is in these organizations where practices of citizenship are at their highest point, as they demand strong commitment from their members. According to this definition, only a few transnational social organizations can be considered dense and cohesive. However, some hometown associations do present such characteristics. Many migrants are political actors, different but equal as Rufino Domínguez would phrase it in describing the situation of indigenous people. Being bearers of rights in any case ––regardless of the possession or not of papers that establish legal residency, citizenship, and/or nationality–– migrants struggle to be recognized as full members of the nation, not only as market citizens.299 Theirs is a “citizenship from below,” as defined by Evelina Dagnino, where actors establish what they consider to be their rights and fight for them based on their own situated cultural practices.300 Migrants’ practices of

Latino Research Center Working Paper, UCSC, No.23, April. P. 3. See also David Fitzgerald. 2002. Op. Cit. 297 Cf. Fox, Jonathan. 2001. “Evaluación de las Coaliciones Binacionales de la Sociedad Civil a partir de la Experiencia México-Estados Unidos.” Revista Mexicana de Sociología, Instituto de Investigaciones Sociales, vol. 63, num. 3, Julio-Septiembre, 2001, México. Pp. 207-264. P. 216. 298 Cf. Fox, Jonathan. 2001. Op. Cit. P.216. 299 Cf. Goldring. 1999. Op. Cit. 300 Cf. Dagnino. 1998. Op. Cit. Pp. 50, 51

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 161 belonging and of connectedness to the nation, the state, and their communities, are their best arguments for their claims to citizenship.

Andrés Bermúdez, el Rey del Tomate, and transnational politics “PANTALÓN VAQUERO, BOTAS Y SOMBRERO, VOTEN POR BERMÚDEZ QUE ES EL MERO MERO”301 Andrés Bermúdez was born in the town of El Cargadero, in Jerez, Zacatecas. The story of this town is one that repeats itself throughout Zacatecas and many other states in México. The population in El Cargadero is approximately 700 inhabitants, in contrast to the 1,400 migrants from this town who live in the U.S.302 The people of El Cargadero harvest peaches, but their main source of income, as is the case for the rest of the region, comes from remittances. In addition to this characteristic of El Cargadero’s demographics, is the fact that the migrant population is composed mostly of young people, a pattern that is repeated in Jerez and other regions of the country. Lack of opportunities, tradition, adventure, or all of these factors combined contribute to people’s decision to migrate. Bermúdez began his life as a migrant when he was 23 years old, 29 years ago more or less. He left his town in 1973 and entered the U.S., by hiding with his wife in the trunk of his compadre’s Buick. He received U.S. residency in 1982, and became a U.S. citizen in the early 1990’s.303 At the beginning, Andrés Bermúdez worked in the fields as a laborer, and later as a tractor driver. Once he learned English, “he became an intermediary between bosses and his jereziano paisanos. Thus he started his own business.”304 Bermúdez’ handle on English gave him an advantage, which he used to become a middleman. For Bermúdez, learning English and acting as a middleman was when he

301

“Cowboy pants, boots, and hat, vote for Bermúdez who is the main man.” Political slogan used during Bermúdez ‘campaign for the Municipal Presidency of Jeréz, Zacatecas, 2001. My translation. 302 Cf. Cano, Arturo. 2001. “Los migrantes regresan a votar…y ser votados.” La Jornada, México, Sunday June 24. 303 Cf. Sullivan, Kevin. 2001. “México reverses triumphant return of Tomato King.” The Washington Post, September 11. 304 Cano, Arturo. 2001. Op. Cit.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 162 first started to exercise management of people and power relations. Being a broker, a middleman, provided him with an arena for developing himself as a leader. Today, in his agro-business he mainly employs Mexicans, “90% Mexicans, 30% Zacatecan” he states.305 Jerez was nearly forgotten in the national scene, even as it was present in the close or far reality of Jerezianos, but the municipality jumped into the national political scenario in 2001, and became the center of a dispute over who could and who could not participate in Mexican politics. On July 1st 2001, local elections were held in the states of Zacatecas, Durango, and Chihuahua. During the campaign for local elections in Jerez, Zacatecas, the municipio went through an unusual electoral process that reverberated nationally as well as in certain areas of the U.S. The uniqueness of this election for the municipal presidency derived from the fact that two of the candidates were migrants. The migrant candidates were Andrés Bermúdez, otherwise known as The Tomato King, who represented the PRD –– which in Zacatecas is composed mainly of ex-PRI militants–– and Salvador Espinosa who was the candidate for the small party Convergencia por la Democracia. It was The Tomato King’s candidacy that stirred the most comments and, eventually, the most controversy. On July 1st, 2001, Andrés Bermúdez won the elections and became one of the first migrants to win elected office. As the PRD candidate, the Tomato King originally had the support of Zacatecas’ governor Ricardo Monreal Avila. As a matter of fact, Monreal was the one who invited him to participate in Jerez’ elections. He [the governor] had come to see the machine I invented to transplant tomatoes and legumes, and to observe how the production grew and work was easier…once here, he invited me to be a candidate. I liked the idea, and thus I began, not without first talking to some companies because I was interested in creating jobs in my town, and bring a real proposal of what I was going to do.306

305

Interview, March 9, 2002. Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Forum “Migrantes Mexicanos y Ciudadanía: 1er. Foro sobre el Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior,”organized by the Frente Cívico Zacatecano. 306 Martínez Ortega, Araceli. 2002. “Monreal no quería que ganará la alcaldía: Bermúdez.” El Universal, Tuesday February 12. Estados, P.7

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 163 According to the Tomato King, he did not want to participate in politics if he could not offer something concrete like investment projects that could generate jobs. That was his vision of politics, and he was going to enable it because he had the knowledge and connections that resulted from his migrant experience. Before participating in these elections, according to Andrés Bermúdez, he had not done anything political. “Nada….Nada,” he insists. “I helped the clubs in San José. I helped them do projects, organize dances, do things…but me, think about politics, no…I was a simple campesino, campesino because my enterprises are agricultural ––from el campo.”307 He had been more concretely involved with the club of El Cargadero, his hometown. In El Cargadero, it is very common to find plates on the side of public works stating “Donated by The El Cargadero Social Club.”308 Although The Tomato King does not recognize his participation in the clubs as political, he was part of the public social arena of Zacatecanos, of Jerezianos to be more precise. However, it was his success in the business world and the support he received from the Frente Cívico Zacatecano in Northern California, that made Bermúdez an attractive candidate for the governor of Zacatecas.309 Ricardo Monreal’s invitation to the Tomato King was more a gesture towards Zacatecan migrants and the Frente Cívico Zacatecano, to demonstrate that he was serious when he proposed to recognize migrants’ political rights during his campaign for Governor.310 However, behind this gesture there was no true intention of seeing Andrés Bermúdez elected.311 Monreal used the Tomato King, bragged about his success, but he was not really interested in having him enter directly into local politics. The local PRD thought that he was not

307

Interview, March 9, 2002. Mexican Consulate in Los Angeles. Forum “Migrantes Mexicanos y Ciudadanía: 1er. Foro sobre el Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior,”organized by the Frente Cívico Zacatecano. 308 Cano, Arturo. 2001. Op. Cit. 309 Cf. Mena Jennifer. 2001. “Once a Mexican illegal, now a U.S. citizen, Bermúdez wins election as mayor of Jerez, Zacatecas, México.” Los Angeles Times, July 9. 310 See Goldring.1999. Op. Cit. 311 See Martínez Ortega, Araceli. 2002. Op. Cit.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 164 going to be able to defeat the opponents in the general elections, so they were not interested in his candidacy either.312 But nobody explained this to the Tomato King, who really believed he was the candidate and that he could win. Bermúdez gained the support of Zacatecas City PRD mayor, and allied himself with a sector of Jerez’ PRD.313 With these alliances, the money he brought to the campaign, and his own charisma, he won. During his campaign, Bermúdez used a lot of his own resources in community projects, such as fixing 600 kilometers of roads, and installation of streetlights and some sport facilities.314 For journalist Arturo Cano, “Andrés Bermúdez, The Tomato King as he likes to be called, is one of the two candidates that left as mojados and came back with his pockets filled with green bills to conquer power.”315 This image does not precisely describe most migrants. Even more, it is an image very close to the one portrayed by critics of the vote abroad as they express suspicion towards migrants, because the U.S has tainted their ways. Thus, the discourse in both its positive and negative manifestations organizes itself around the same terms. Contrary to the distrustful and negative perception of migrants persistent in many Mexican political circles, Andrés Bermúdez conducted a political campaign that very much reproduced old paternalistic ways of Mexican political culture. Through his gifts, parties and constructions ––which for him meant a way to show people that he could bring investment and a better life to Jerez–– the Tomato King was indeed, indirectly, buying support. In doing so, he was reproducing a familiar way of practicing politics in México. With the triumph in his hands, Andrés Bermúdez began a celebration tour, which took him, among other places, to California. As part of his activities, Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante invited him to a fundraiser in Silverado. He met Sen. Joe Dunn (D-Santa Ana) and U.S. Rep. Loretta Sánchez (D-Garden Grove).316 The main goal of his tour was to meet with agribusiness leaders to develop strategies of investment

312

Cf. Cano, A. 2001. Op. Cit. Idem. 314 Cf. Martínez Ortega. 2002. Op. Cit. 315 Cano. 2001. Op. Cit. 316 See Mena, Jennifer. 2001. Op. Cit. 313

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 165 317 for Jerez. From the day of the election through early September, the Tomato King was preparing to begin his work as a Municipal President of Jerez, something that would start with the official ceremony on September 15, 2001. His trans-local work and vision were part of his campaign from the start. After his victory of 9,641 votes, more than a thousand votes over his PRI opponent, who had 6,602, and 2,896 that Salvador Espinosa received, the Tomato King ousted the long ruling PRI.318 However, the PRI then proceeded to protest Bermúdez’ election. Following Bermúdez’ success with the people of Jerez and other parts of Zacatecas, and when the story began to be publicized at the national level as a result of his electoral victory, the PRI questioned and officially presented a legal complaint against the eligibility of Andrés Bermúdez as a candidate for Jerez’ municipal presidency. “The Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) promoted a Constitutional review trial before the Federal Electoral Tribunal of the Judicial Power (Tribunal Electoral Federal del Poder Judicial de la Federación-TRIFE) over Bermúdez Viramontes’ eligibility to occupy a popular election office (cargo de elección popular)…”319 The argument of the objection was based on the fact that Bermúdez was a U.S. citizen; therefore he was not Mexican and could not run for election. According to Carlos Alvarado Campa, PRI representative in the Zacatecan Electoral Institute, “the election of the ex-bracero (sic), better known as The Tomato King is unconstitutional on account of having acquired U.S. citizenship since the 1980’s.”320 For the PRI “The Tomato King had not renounced his U.S. citizenship, because he had yet to present to the electoral institutions his certificate of Mexican nationality, a document that had to be issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”321

317

Idem See Sullivan, Kevin. 2001. Op. Cit. 319 Amador Sánchez, Angel. 2001b. “Presenta el Rey del Tomate prueba de nacionalidad.” El Universal, México, Thursday September 6. 320 Amador Sánchez, Angel. 2001a. “Impugna PRI al Rey del Tomate.” El Universal, México, Wednesday September 5. 321 Amador Sánchez, Angel. 2001b. Op. Cit. 318

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 166 The PRI based their argument on the new nationality law. For them, it was the fact that Bermúdez held dual nationality that made him ineligible.322 Bermúdez presented evidence of his Mexican nationality by showing his birth certificate, his electoral identification card ––which requires proof of residency to be issued, and is considered the most trusted document of identification in México–– along with a letter from the Mexican Consulate acknowledging Bermúdez’ request to recover his nationality in accordance with the new nationality law. Despite the evidence, according to the PRI he was not a Mexican in the full sense of the term. Nationality was the contested terrain; it was here where the battle of belonging was being fought. The PRI’s particular reading of the nationality and electoral law illustrates different aspects of the complicated relationship between migrants and their nation, state, and hometown. The first aspect to analyze is how the Zacatecan PRI was asking, almost demanding, that the Tomato King renounce his U.S. citizenship. The Tomato King’s political incursion and his migrant life raised questions of residency and citizenship, feeding a regional and national debate on these issues. While the PRI’s main argument against his candidacy took a legal venue, behind this rhetoric laid ruptures that stand between the people who stay and those who leave. For a sector of the population in México, migrants are looked at with suspicion, as somehow less Mexican because they have been tainted by the U.S.323 For others of course, migrants have proven their belonging to the nation, they are symbols of endurance. Moreover, for the families that stay, migrants are the much needed and missed absent. On September 6, 2001, the Federal Electoral Tribunal overturned Andrés Bermúdez’ triumph.324 The legal reason Bermúdez’ victory was overturned was not based on whether he was or was not Mexican. Rather than support its decision on nationality, the Federal

322

Cf. Amador Sánchez, Angel. 2001b. Op. Cit. See for another example Fitzgerald, David. 2000. Negotiating ExtraTerritorial Citizenship.Mexican Migration and the Transnational Politics of Community. Center for Comparative and Immigration Studies, University of California La Jolla, California. Monograph No. 2. 324 See TRIFE. Juicio de Revisión Constitucional Electoral. Expediente: SUPJRC-170/2001. 323

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 167 325 Electoral Tribunal’s criterion for denial was based on residency. As a matter of fact, the Federal Electoral Tribunal stated, “the nationality of the Tomato King was not in question, he is Mexican, they declared.”326 The problem was that in his application to recover his Mexican nationality, Bermúdez indicated his California residence as his permanent residency, thereby annulling his legal possibilities of being a candidate, as he was not a permanent resident of Jerez. By Zacatecan electoral law, he was required to have twelve months of residency prior to the election. He only had eleven months. The electoral controversy not only placed the Mexican political system in a complicated situation, the Tomato King’s participation in the elections also provoked a debate on belonging, membership, and in the end, on citizenship. Again presence: to be there or to be absent, to be here and not there, appear as the factors that determine a person’s belonging to a political community. Regardless of the fact that migrants have over and over demonstrated their interest and investment in México —economic, social, and emotional—they remain excluded from full membership in the imagined community, as was the case with Andrés Bermúdez. “I said I jumped from the tractor to politics, and that is a big mistake, which has to be paid, and I paid.”327 The Tomato King entered politics thinking that he could change things the “American way.” Although he is not explicit in what he understands by this, his perspective on what it means to govern ––to be a gobernante–– is in many ways derived from his own success story. The poor campesino who becomes a successful businessman, is a story very close to the American dream. Bermúdez has a political perspective in which politicians should work closely with entrepreneurs. “In politics, to be successful, a politician has to combine both things, politics and

325

The Federal Electoral Tribunal or TRIFE, is the highest judicial electoral authority in the country where electoral disputes are argued and solved. It is part of the federal government, and it is incorporated to the judicial branch. See www.trife.gob.mx. 326 Ochoa, Jorge Octavio, and Angel Amador Sánchez. 2001. “Anulan el triunfo en Zacatecas del Rey del Tomate. El aspirante perredista no pudo acreditar la residencia de un año que se requiere en contiendas electorales.” El Universal, Friday, September 7, 2001. 327 Interview March 9, 2002. Los Angeles.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 168 business. We need the politician to convince people to buy the produce, and we need the entrepreneur to make the products.”328 This is Andrés Bermúdez’ very pragmatic perspective on politics, what he means by change, and, perhaps, what he is trying to express when he talks about the “American way”. However, this can also be a part of his campesino-farmer ideas and practices. Campesinos have a strong work ethic, and according to the Tomato King, “a campesino does not lie, he does not deceive other people…” Bermúdez strongly believes in these ideas. He thinks that a campesino speaks straight and plainly, and in his view he is a campesino.329 Thus, jumping from the tractor ––the world of straight talking–– to politics ––the world of twisted words and hidden meanings–– was a mistake. Andrés Bermúdez had and still has big dreams. As he stated, he was planning for a government based on ideas from the United States.330 I was going to start change but they didn’t let me…I feel like I could do something for my town…I’ve got connections. I can invest money in México. The Mexican people are hungry for the truth. I was crying, everyone was crying.331 Bermúdez’ encounter with local and national politics showed that he views his bi-local, or transnational position, as a strength. He believes that he should be included in the destiny of the nation while paradoxically he views himself to be more from the U.S. than from México.332 For Bermúdez this is not a contradiction. As he declared at the Laborers International Union Local 652 in Santa Ana, California, “I said I was a candidate of two nations, the Jerez that is here and the Jerez that is there.”333 The story and the words of the Tomato King problematize theoretical efforts to establish clear distinctions between

328

Idem. When the Tomato King speaks of him as a campesino, he mostly refers to being a farmer, more precisely, to be related to agricultural production. Bermúdez owns several agribusinesses. Some of these are nurseries located in Watsonville. 330 Cf. Cano, A. 2001. Op. Cit. 331 Garrison, Jessica. 2002. “Farmer gives up Mexican mayoralty.” L.A. Times, Monday, January 28. 332 Cf. Cano. 2001. Op. Cit. 333 Cf. Mena, J. 2001. Op. Cit. 329

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 169 concepts like transnationalism, translocal, nation, state, or locality.334 For one, his “nation” here and there is Jerez, not precisely México but Jerez. Andrés Bermúdez understands himself as belonging to two nations; he participates in local politics, is immersed in a national controversy and, eventually, as “a candidate of two nations,” poses larger questions to understandings and practices of citizenship. While the need for and presence of migrants at the local level is evident, it is also here that resentments are most visible. For some people in the local government, the role of migrants in the development of the various communities of Jerez is minor in comparison to that of the PRI governments. For the Cargadero municipal delegate ––an elected PRI official–– Andrés Bermúdez is not from there anymore. “He left and comes back forty years later…it is a barbarity that he is killing cows and pigs, giving beer, all to be taking advantage of the need of the people here.”335 Actually, except for the first twelve or so years after he migrated, Andrés came back to Jerez on several occasions, like other migrants do. Nonetheless, what is significant in the municipal delegate’s perception is that someone who does not live in the community cannot have a say in its issues. Others disagree with the delegate’s perspective on the role of migrants, especially taking into consideration their participation in the economy. Without migrants’ contribution to Zacatecas’ economy the situation in each town would be worse. Perhaps what truly appears in the delegate’s words is the resentment that some of the people who stay have toward migrants, especially those who are successful. Likewise, some people, in this case from Jerez, do challenge the idea that Mexicans living in the U.S. have the right to participate in Mexican politics because they lack the knowledge of the current problems that the county —the municipio— the town or the community face.336 The fact that slightly more than half of the population voted for the PRI and Jerez’ resident candidate gives support to this point of view. Under this kind of argument, the notion of right is not defined through legal terms as is done by political parties and state institutions. Here, the right to be a citizen in order to

334

See Fitzgerald, David. 2002. Op. Cit. Cano, Arturo. 2001. Op. Cit. Quote from the Delegate Mario García. My translation. 336 Cf. Sullivan, Kevin. 2001. Op. Cit. 335

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 170 participate in politics derives from the possession of knowledge. For some Jerezianos, their migrant paisanos lack the expert knowledge on the problems of Jerez. Yet, for others, such as the half that voted for the migrant candidates, it is evident that migrants do indeed have this knowledge, and the proof of it is their decision to migrate.337 Likewise, migrants have knowledge of what is happening in Jerez. They communicate with their families, their paisanos, and now they can find out news about Jerez and the Jerezianos in the U.S. through the internet, in Jerez’ web site (www.jerez.com). Migrants demonstrate their commitment to their community through remittances and their investment in local projects, which are usually organized through the hometown associations. In this sense, their knowledge, involvement, and investment earns them the right to be considered as citizens. The story of the Tomato King portrays the many ruptures migrants experience in their life. One rupture would refer to how migrants are well perceived as long as they send remittances and participate in investment projects, what Luin Goldring calls market membership.338 However, their membership does not extend to political participation. Another rupture relates to how migrants, through their memory practices, create an image of their desired homeland, which is distant from the socio-economic reality of the place they left. Likewise, one more rupture emerges when migrants come to their hometown, and they are welcomed at the same time that some are resented by their success and new lifestyle. Indeed, migration brings ruptures. A national, a citizen, a nation, a community are contested terrains where the meaning of citizenship is put at play. As categories blur new distinctions appear to re-enforce meanings. The Tomato King despite the boots, jeans and cowboy hat that marked his belonging to Jerez, was dethroned. His residency in the U.S. and his U.S. citizenship appeared as stronger and more relevant distinctions, which excluded Bermúdez from being considered a member of the community. The

337

Sullivan. 2001. Op. Cit. Goldring, Luin. 1998b. “From Market Membership to Transnational Citizenship: the Changing Politization of Transnational Social Spaces.” In L’Ordinaire Latino Americain, GRAL, University of Toulouse, France, N.173174. November-December. 338

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 171 PRI’s protest of Bermúdez’ candidacy based on questioning his nationality ––which they only put forth at the end of the electoral process after they lost, instead of placing it at the beginning–– seemed to portray an image that Bermúdez not only did not belong in Jerez, neither did he belong in México. The Tomato King’s triumph turned into a bitter experience for him. In Zacatecas he encountered political actors like Governor Ricardo Monreal who promoted his candidacy while having in mind another local candidate. Likewise, he found a PRD that jumped on the Tomato King’s victory bandwagon and later abandoned him. His candidacy and triumph provoked resentments, which portrayed him as another example of corruption.339 In contrast, in the different events and electronic groups where politically active migrants engage in the exchange of ideas as to how to organize for the claim of their political rights, the Tomato King’s story resonated and was interpreted as an affront to the rights of all Mexicans abroad. In this sense, Bermúdez’ story can be read as symbolic of the struggle for the political rights of Mexicans abroad, mainly because it is an example of the multiple obstacles that Mexican migrants have to overcome if they want to participate in Mexican politics. It is as if they are held to a higher standard. In March 2002, in the forum Migrantes Mexicanos y Ciudadanía organized by the Frente Cívico Zacatecano in Los Angeles to discuss a proposal to change the Zacatecan electoral law, The Tomato King’s presence made the event. A popular figure at the time, backed by Zacatecan migrant organizations, he provided a concrete example to argue in favor of migrants’ political rights. Congressmen of Zacatecas’ local legislative body were invited to attend. The purpose was to present a draft for a reform to Zacatecas’ Constitution to allow for the full exercise of migrants’ political rights. Even though this was set up as a Zacatecan event, it ended up being a more inclusive one, with the presence of other Federations, such as Michoacán and Jalisco

339

Some accusations were made that the Tomato King owed money to the Municipio, money that was used for the preparation of his inauguration on September 15, which never took place. See Salazar, Emmanuel. 2001. “Deja Deudas el Rey del Tomate a Jerez. Lo acusan de haber gastado casi 184 mil pesos en los preparativos para su fallida toma de posesión como Alcalde.” Reforma, October 5.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 172 along with other migrant organizations of the area. Through the discussion the impact the Tomato King’s saga has had in the struggle for the political rights of Mexicans abroad was constantly recognized. The Frente Cívico Zacatecano ––a self-proclaimed nonpartisan migrant organization–– turned the elaboration of the initiative over to the scholar Miguel Moctezuma, who specializes in the subject of the vote abroad, and Congressman Carlos Pinto Núñez. Almost a year after the initiative was presented in Los Angeles, a revised version was finally introduced to the LVII Zacatecan state Legislature on January 9, 2003. This initiative, called Ley Migrante, has the specific purpose of creating two proportional representation Congressional seats for the Zacatecan migrants who reside in the United States. The specific legal modification proposes to reduce to one year the residency requirement for political candidates, including the bi-national or simultaneous residency as criteria to determine the one-year residency. The importance of such a proposal cannot be underestimated as it seems that the route for full political citizenship appears to be more achievable at the local level rather than at the national one, as similar proposals are moving forward in Michoacan, Sinaloa, and Oaxaca. Regardless of the fact that migrants are already political actors who impact México’s contemporary politics, it seems that they are still on the edges of being considered full citizens. Their residency in the U.S., their acquisition of U.S. citizenship ––despite the new laws–– makes them vulnerable to political hesitancy. Notwithstanding the 1996 legal changes, conservative notions of nation and citizenship continue to exist. Bermúdez’ ordeal is symbolic of this kind of rejection. The arguments used against him could be used against anyone, and continue to place migrants outside of the political community. Bermúdez’ case is both trans-local and transnational. It is trans-local because it refers to an enlarged Jerez ––the Jerez from here and the Jerez from there–– to which Andrés was constantly appealing, both here and there. It became significant at the national level, at least as it involved the formal intervention of the Federal Electoral Tribunal. It is transnational precisely because from the start it contained a bifocal perspective of politics, by including actors from both nations –– like the entrepreneurs Bermúdez invited–– and especially because after the election he was already calling the attention of Californian politicians.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 173 The Tomato King’s story is not only about him, it reverberates at the national and local level. His story, along with other migrant political organizations, has brought into the language of the law the recognition of migrants’ bi-locality. What this means is that through their grounded practices of citizenship, migrants push the language of the law to open up legal definitions of citizenship. Through their constant trans-local and trans-national political activism, migrants attest to the fact that they are the life of the law. Their practices of engagement with the formal political scenario, in this case of Zacatecas, have permeated the Legislature through an initiative of reform that is almost sure to take place. It is safe to say that the road taken by Zacatecan migrants is not going to end there. It is already moving to other states that depend heavily on migrant remittances and investment projects.340 Through their political actions, migrants are building a citizenship that is carved out from the local, grounded in their sense of identity, but that nonetheless continues to address the larger question of the nation.

Rufino Domínguez, the story of an indigenous leader Today, Rufino Domínguez is part of the leadership of the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional (FIOB) a non-governmental binational organization founded in 1991. Rufino’s story of political participation begins in San Miguel Cuevas, Oaxaca, where he was born in 1965. In Oaxaca, Rufino, the fourth in a family of six, attended a bilingual junior Catholic high school managed by the Hermanos Maristas.341 It is here that Rufino finds the source of inspiration for his later interest in social justice, in particular for indigenous people. He remembers how, with the Maristas, he and his classmates would read the Bible with a social perspective. Liberation theology found in him a true and honest believer and practitioner. Although Rufino does not name it in this manner, the search for social liberation from exploitation and abuse was ingrained in him.

340

At the Forum “El Derecho al Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior” held at the University of Southern California on February 9th 2003, different participants informed the audience that aside from the Zacatecan proposal that was already introduced to the local legislature, there were proposals in the making for Sinaloa, Oaxaca, and Michoacán. 341 The Hermanos Maristas (Maristas’ Brothers) are a catholic religious semiorder in the sense that the Brothers are not ordained priests.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Rufino’s awakening to the struggle for social justice began when he returned to his town at the age of fifteen. He saw the abuse that his people were suffering at the hands of the cacique, the local boss. “There were many killings and that was painful for me, thus I started with others to organize the people and finish with the abuse of power.” In the 1980’s, in Rufino’s community, migrants were charged an enormous fee for being absent and working elsewhere.342 Those migrants who resisted paying the fee were threatened by the cacique with expulsion from the community, the burning of their homes, or the rape of their women. I was young and nobody was doing anything. I began to organize the people, to have meetings at night in people’s houses. We would go to the mountains to organize and put an end to the injustices. A year went by until we were able to consolidate our strength…We suffered, we lost another compañero, he was killed. Others were put in jail. We had to face the cacique in front of an Assembly and we won. I was tortured for four or five hours for doing this. I was rescued by the community and my father…since that moment until now I have never had a pause in my life.343 After his struggle in Oaxaca, and under death threats, Rufino left to go to Sinaloa in 1984. Later in the year he went to Baja California Norte. During his stay in Sinaloa, Rufino organized with others the first indigenous organization in the area to defend the rights of the indigenous workers. The organization named Organización del Pueblo Explotado y Oprimido, aimed to ending the exploitation of indigenous workers in this area. It was an organization based mainly on ethnicity, and secondly on class. Likewise, in Baja California Norte he formed another organization with the same purposes. For the indigenous from Oaxaca, from the Mixteca to be more precise, conditions to create solidarity among workers were complicated. As Carole Nagengast and Michael Kearney explain, “within the Mixteca, individuals identify themselves as being from a given village. The primary political opposition emerges between villages, and ethnicity is only occasionally 174

342

Indigenous land has traditionally been collectively owned, and indigenous communities have their own set of rules to determine who governs the community and how to maintain membership to the community. 343 Interview, March 2002.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 175 344 salient.” However, “Mixtecs from all over the Mixteca have subsumed their difference to band together in northern locations,” forming associations and joining labor unions thus moving beyond the community-based identification.345 In this case, it was migration what created the space for ethnic identification. The life of Rufino Domínguez is marked by his search for social justice, a search that is rooted in the abuse of power experienced by him and the people of San Miguel Cuevas, as well as from the teachings of the Hermanos Maristas. From Oaxaca, to Sinaloa, to Baja California Norte, to California, Rufino came and went bringing his experience and passion. He formed organizations in every place he has been in and continues to try to make people aware of violations of human and political rights. When I arrived here in 1984, the same people that knew about what happened [back in Oaxaca] requested to have a meeting so that I would give them the information as to how the problem happened back in our town. On the day I arrived here, I already had a meeting for the next day. This was how the organization was formed. It started in Sinaloa, extended to Baja California and was formed here because the majority of the paisanos were very grateful for the end of the injustice [the fee].346 During the meeting the people and Rufino ultimately decided that it was important to have an organization in California because they also had problems here. There were bosses that did not pay well, and migrants suffered from discrimination even from other “Mexican brothers” as Rufino said. “I told them we needed to consolidate the Organization here (the U.S.), and move forward. This is more or less the story of how I became involved in politics.” 347 From a local story of opposition against power abuse, in Rufino’s route lies a strong political component that never leaves him. More than being a political subject within the framework of a political

344

Nagengast, Carole and Michael Keraney. 1990. “Mixtec ethnicity: Social Identity, Political Consciousness, and Political Activism.” Latin American Research Review. V. 25, n.2 (Spring): 61. P.69 345 Nagengast, Carole and Kearney, Michael. 1990. Op. Cit. P. 77. 346 Interview, March 2002. 347 Idem.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 176 party, Rufino is politically active in a broader space, engaging with the nation-state and its institutions across borders, as well as with employers. With a social awareness derived from his contact with the Maristas, and the injustices in his community, Rufino and other indigenous people from Oaxaca have created a series of organizations that exist and connect across local, state, and national borders. As stated in their official web site, the FIOB is a non-governmental association focused on defending the rights of indigenous migrants that is formed by a coalition of organizations, communities, and individuals of indigenous origin in the Mixtec, Zapotec, and Triqui regions of the state of Oaxaca, in the northwest border area (Baja California Norte), and in the State of California. The FIOB started in California with the incorporation of five hometown associations into a larger one, the Frente Mixteco-Zapoteco Binacional.348 Rivera-Salgado explains that “by 1994 the initial group had enlarged its membership and became the Frente Indígena Oaxaqueño Binacional.”349 Although it is primarily a Mixteco organization, it also includes Zapotecas and Triquis from Oaxaca.350 According to Gaspar Rivera, the transnational work of the FIOB is to “institutionalize political practices that allow for collective action in all the different places where the Mixtec migratory network is located (i.e. the transnationalized space sometimes called Oaxacalifornia).”351 Likewise, an institution like the FIOB, through its practices of cultural and political exchange at the community, state, and international levels, thickens and gives meaning to “a political community that transcends many geographical borders.”352

348

Rivera-Salgado, Gaspar. 2000. “Transnational Political Strategies: the Case of Mexican Indigenous Migrants.” P. 141. In Foner, Nancy, Rubén G. Rumbaut and Steven J. Gold, Eds. 2000. Immigration Research for a New Century. Multidisciplinary Perspectives. Rusell Sage Foundation, New York. P. 142. 349 Rivera-Salgado. 2000. Op. Cit. P. 143. 350 See FIOB’s web site at www.laneta.apc.org/fiob/ 351 Rivera-Salgado, Gaspar. 1999. “Mixtec Activism in Oaxacalifornia. Transborder Grassroots Political Struggles.” In American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 42 No. 9 June/July, (Pp.1439-1458). P. 1454. 352 Rivera-Salgado. 1999. Op. Cit. P. 1454.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 177 The FIOB concentrates mostly on indigenous causes. However, the FIOB does participate in other kinds of struggles such as the campaign for the right to vote abroad that was principally ignited by Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ candidacy back in 1988. In March 1999, the FIOB also participated as one of the main organizers in California of the Consulta Popular called by the Zapatistas. The FIOB established four polling tables in California. The non-governmental referendum aimed at the recognition of the rights of indigenous people, and to support the San Andrés agreements signed between the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN) and the Mexican government. In its U.S. version, the referendum also included a fifth question on whether Mexican migrants should have the right to vote abroad.353 The right to vote abroad is a right that we already have as indigenous people, and we have made use of that right since the 1980s. We began to serve in our communities, many of those who live here go there and function as Presidents. Many of us living here continue to cooperate with money, we continue to give our opinions on the life of our communities, of our towns, and there is no problem. On the contrary, everything gets consolidated; it helps the economic growth of the communities.354 In their communities, Mixtecs and members of other indigenous groups, already have this particular experience of practicing citizenship at the local level. As citizens of their communities, that is, as members with rights and obligations, they can participate in the decision-making processes of their communities. Together with their rights come expectations to fulfill certain obligations, cargos. In many cases these cargos require migrants living in the U.S. to return to their communities if they still want to be considered members of them. At the national level, Rufino views the enabling of full citizenship to Mexican migrants as a way in which México can benefit from its citizens. For him it is about giving content to citizenship, about sustaining an interconnected space. However, the people from the Frente ––FIOB–– are skeptical about the recent legal changes, and its leaders are more interested in “pressing to be able to shape policy at the

353 354

See Fox, Jonathan. 2001. Op. Cit. Interview, March 2002.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 178 state and local levels because these are the political institutions that affect indigenous communities the most.”355 Notwithstanding the FIOB’s skepticism, this organization and its leaders have been moving toward building alliances with other migrant organizations in support of the political rights of Mexicans living abroad. For example, they were part of the organization of the Foro Binacional: el Voto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior ––together with the Consejo de Presidentes de Federaciones Mexicanas en Los Angeles–– which took place in Los Angeles on February 9, 2003. Moreover, with their deep commitment to defending the rights of indigenous people, the FIOB has established conjunctural political alliances such as those with the EZLN, or the National Indigenous Congress in México.356 Rufino’s struggle is trans-local and transnational. It is trans-local because it is extended among several communities. It is transnational, as it crosses not only the borders of two nations, but also through its connection with the fight for the rights of indigenous people for autonomy, and for the rights entangled in a global economy. In contrast to the Tomato King, Rufino has been immersed in politics since he was very young. He became a political being as a result of his life experience where race is as much of a factor as class. These determinant factors travel with Rufino everywhere he goes, whether it is Sinaloa, Baja California, California, or Oaxaca. His sense of belonging to a community, an ethnic group, and a class and his awareness of his indigeneity and situation of exploitation, provides Rufino with a rooted notion of membership, of citizenship, of entitlement, that travels with him.

355

Rivera-Salgado. 1999. Op. Cit. As Gaspar Rivera-Salgado explains, “In early 1996, the Zapatista Army of National Liberation invited several indigenous migrant organizations to participate in the first Indigenous National Congress, in San Cristobal de las Casa, Chiapas.” The Frente was “appointed by the general assembly as the group’s official conduit between the Indigenous National Congress and the indigenous migrant population in the U.S.” In Rivera-Salgado. 2000. Op. Cit. P. 141. 356

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging

179

Raúl Ross, el Rojo, the story of a political activist

357

Chicago. There were many jobs in the big city. Raúl Ross crossed the big river in the 1970’s when he was roughly seventeen. Six months later he was back in México because he did not like what he found–– neither the job nor the wage. Ross was born to a working class family in Pánuco, Veracruz on December 24, 1956. He grew up in Tampico and Monterrey together with his nine siblings. In 1986, Raúl went back to the United States where he stayed for three years straight because he lacked the appropriate papers to travel across the border. Eventually, he received his residency papers, and he is now able to return to México and visit his family. In addition, lately he often goes as a participant in the political activities with which he is entangled. Once he arrived in Chicago, where he now lives, Ross worked a series of jobs. He worked in warehouses, in a print shop for eight to ten years, and with the American Friends Service Committee helping to defend migrants’ rights. He has been a freelance journalist, writer, and translator. At the moment he is the editor of Mx Sin Fronteras, which specializes on issues related to Mexican migrants. He has published two books on the issue of the vote abroad for Mexicans, and many articles on the same topic.358 Raúl Ross traces his beginnings in politics to when he was sixteen years old. He started a sporting association that included social activities. His participation with the association led to further involvement with popular political organizations, and during this time he took part in land take-over movements. Through his life and social practice, Ross began to form a progressive, leftist ideology, which led him to participate with political parties in México. Once he migrated North, these ideas traveled with him ––though they took a different shape. Upon his arrival in the U.S., Raúl became a member of the MidWest Coalition in Defense of the Migrant (Coalición del Medio Oeste en Defensa del Migrante). As he says, “For me, it is normal to defend the rights of the migrants, of the people.” This interest has been instilled in him as part of his class origins and his social practice with the popular movements in México.

357

Based on an interview with Raúl Ross Pineda. March 2002. Ross Pineda, Raúl. 1999. Los Mexicanos y el Voto sin Fronteras. Centro de Estudios del Movimiento Obrero y Socialista, México.

358

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants Raúl Ross’ political work in the United States has focused mainly on Mexican issues, though he is also interested in what is happening in his immediate reality. “I do participate in the affairs from here, but I am not as focused as with México. As a journalist I have written and somehow intervened in local struggles…I know I live a reality here and I participate also for reasons of solidarity.” Despite recognizing the reality that he is a migrant, a foreigner in another country, Ross feels more connected to Mexican politics. He considers himself a citizen of México and, as such, he is more compelled to have an opinion on and participate in Mexican affairs. The main issue he is involved in is the rights of Mexicans in the U.S., whether they be in connection to the Mexican state or in relation to the U.S. state and its institutions. In what for him is an almost natural interest in political matters, Raúl Ross began to get involved in the struggle for the right to vote abroad back in 1988 with Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas’ presidential candidacy. At that time he was not an organizer, only a participant. This moment appears over and over in testimonies and in relevant literature, as the turning point in migrants’ political participation.359 In the aftermath of the election, many protests emerged, Los Angeles being the site of one of the biggest one in the U.S. For Mexican migrants living in the U.S., their involvement led them to claim their right to vote abroad. Migrants’ 1988 political awakening and the support they gave to Cárdenas’ candidacy provoked a reaction from the Mexican government that realized it needed to change its policy towards Mexicans living abroad.360 The strategy of the newly elected PRI president, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, was to develop a smoother relation between consulates and migrants. For many, what was developed was more or less “a strategy to co-opt migrants, undermine the growth of opposition forces that had found support during and after the 1988 180

359

See S. Pérez-Godoy, Mara. 1998. “Social Movements and International Migration: the Mexican Diaspora Seeks Inclusion in México’s Political Affairs, 1968-1998.” PhD Dissertation, University of Chicago. Also see Martínez, Jesús. 1998. In Search of Our Lost Citizenship: Mexican Immigrants, the Right to Vote, and the Transition to Democracy in México. Chicano/Latino Research Center-U.C.S.C, Working Paper No. 20. 360 Fitzgerald, David. 2000. Op. Cit. P. 22.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 181 election, and promote the establishment of state-party [read PRI] committees (Comités de Apoyo a Compatriotas) in the U.S.”361 A different politics of citizenship between migrants and the Mexican state was beginning to take shape.362 Within this context Ross became more active. For the 1994 presidential elections, he participated as an organizer of symbolic elections, which took place in Chicago on August 21, 1994. The Coalition of migrants that formed the Consejo “drew the participation of 3,243 voters who were asked to show proof of Mexican citizenship.”363 Even though this was a merely symbolic gesture, it nonetheless challenged enclosed notions of citizenship. As Jesús Martínez explains, these migrants were “assuming the role of transnational political actors.”364 Since then, Ross has continued in the route of reminding the Mexican nation-state that Mexicans living abroad are Mexicans, that is, that they are full citizens who should be able to exercise all their rights as members of the nation. With the approval in 1996 by Congress of the constitutional amendment to Article 36 and the nationality law ––a partial victory that came as a result of the lobbying of many Mexicans living abroad including Raúl–– the Coalición Nuestro Voto 2000 was formed. The Coalition grouped many Mexican migrants and organizations, and its goal was to push for the implementation of the Constitutional amendment of Article 36. This amendment contained certain legal obstacles, such as the organization of a Commission of Experts to study

361

Martínez, Jesús.1998. Op. Cit. P. 2 For example, the government created the Program for Mexican Communities Abroad in 1990. This office would “coordinate efforts by different government agencies to tighten ties with people of Mexican ancestry living abroad….to raise awareness that the ’Mexican Nation extends beyond the territory contained by its borders’ and to implement international cooperation projects offered by México to benefit its diaspora.” González Gutiérrez, Carlos. 2001. “Fostering Identities with its Diaspora.” Journal of American History. September , Vol 88, No. 2. P.1. More important were the hometown investment projects 2 x 1, and 3 x 1, where the hometown association invested two or three parts of the project for one that the government would provide. See Goldring. 1998b. Op. Cit. 363 Martínez, Jesús. 1998. Op. Cit. P. 7 364 Martínez, Jesús. 1998. Idem. 362

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 182 the viability of the vote abroad (already accomplished), and the creation of the National Citizens Registry (RENACI) handled by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, which goes against the principle of an independent electoral system. Although many initiatives have entered Congress since 1996, it took nine years for the approval of the mechanisms for the implementation of the vote abroad. Notwithstanding a long campaign and lobbying efforts conducted in México by Raúl Ross and other members of the Coalition, the Mexican political system, which was still very much dominated by the PRI, proved to be stronger than its foes, and blocked any possibility for migrants to vote in the year 2000. Despite the setback that, on July 1, 1999, the Senate gave to the initiative to implement the vote abroad by pre-empting any discussion of it, Ross continued to campaign for the political rights of Mexicans living abroad, and formed the Coalition for the Political Rights of Mexicans Abroad (Coalicion por los Derechos Politicos de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero, CDPME). His leadership role in the CDPME projected him as one of the central actors in the struggle for political rights. He has divided his political activities between organizing and promoting the political rights of Mexican migrants, as well as writing about it and studying the laws involved, which provide Ross with a clear grasp of what the laws allow for and what they preclude. At the end of 1999, Ross reviewed the relevant electoral law and concluded that it was possible to be a candidate while living outside of the country as long as Mexican citizenship was held. As a result of this, and through his relations with Lázaro Cárdenas Batel –– who at that time coordinated the PRD Relations in the U.S.–– Raúl went to the PRD Convention and was chosen as an external candidate for a proportional representation candidacy. This type of candidacy does not necessarily require residency. He represented a multi-sited electoral district that, among other states, included the state of Veracruz, where Raúl was born.365 He was the first Mexican living abroad to become a political candidate. Later, before the registration of candidacies was closed, another migrant candidate ––José Jacques

365

The PRD accepts and promotes candidacies from members of the civil society, that is, civilians that are politically active but are not members of any other political party. These are called external candidacies. Also see Fox, Jonathan. 2001. Op. Cit. P. 242.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 183 Medina–– appeared in the PRD list. Likewise, the PRI registered a candidate, Eddie Barón Levy, who was living in Los Angeles and is a México City native. Because the candidacies depended on the proportion of votes the political party received and the PRI received more than the PRD, the first Mexican migrant to be elected was Eddie Barón, who since then resides in México City although his family still lives in Los Angeles. The PRD received a low percentage of votes in the election and neither Raúl Ross nor José Jacques Medina became congressmen. However, the crucial step was taken. Migrants participated formally in Mexican elections––as candidates, if not as voters. It was possible, it should be possible. After 2000, Raúl Ross continued to work to make the political rights of Mexicans living abroad a prominent part of the national political agenda, one that is always present in the news, in the political debates, and in Congress. He constantly finds new venues to keep the debate alive. In the past years Ross has organized electronic groups to discuss the political rights of Mexicans living abroad. One of the early political results of the electronic groups was the organization of a meeting in Zacatecas, at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, in December 2001. As a consequence of the Zacatecan Forum, a new Coalition was formed, the Coalición por los Derechos Políticos de los Mexicanos en el Extranjero (CDPME). The CDPME organized a visit to México City from March 13th to the 16th 2002. The visit was baptized as the Migrantour, and its purpose was to meet with different political sectors in México to address the issue of Mexican migrants’ political rights. According to organizers and participants, among whom Raúl Ross was one of many, the delegation was very successful. They met with the President of México Vicente Fox, the Minister of the Interior Santiago Creel, and with Juan Hernández who then was in charge of the Office of the Presidency for Migrants. Likewise, the Migrantour met with the Junta de Coordinación Política de la Cámara de Diputados, the Junta de Coordinación Política de la Cámara de Senadores, and with the Federal Electoral Institute President, José Woldenberg.366 Moreover, the Migrantour met with leaders of the three main national political parties, PRI, PAN and PRD. They were able to convince some congressmen to include the

366

Lower House Political Commission, Senate Political Commission.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 184 issue of political rights in the 2002 Congressional agenda for the session that opened on March 15, and to approve a Commission exclusively dedicated to develop the necessary legislative reforms to materialize migrants’ electoral rights. A second Migrantour held another series of activities from the 18th to the 22nd of March. This group, organized mainly by MUSA, Mexicanos in the United States, structured its agenda around the PRD National Convention. In their version of the Migrantour, they also met with members of Congress and presented through PRD Congressman Ramón León Morales a new initiative which proposed the formation of a sixth electoral circumscription. The fact that two Migrantours with slightly different political agendas were organized, undermined the impact of the tour, as it split the attention of politicians in México opening the door for a diffuse response from Congress. Another important point to underscore here is that members of both Migrantours participated in the PRD Convention on March 17, 2002. Along with them, many PRD members in California, Illinois, Texas, New York, Washington, and Paris were also able to participate in the party electoral process that took place.367 With this act, the PRD engaged in a more institutionalized form of transnational politics, while at the same time it was reshaping its own understanding of citizenship. Some of the participants of the second Migrantour were founding members of the CDPME, but left this group because of political and personal differences, disagreements that continually appear in the various lobbying efforts that have taken place. The main distinction between these two groups rests upon the approach to how migrants’ political rights should be addressed. For the CDPME the efforts are focused on the implementation of the vote abroad, although political representation is also a relevant and significant factor in this groups’ struggle. The second group focuses more on political representation, and places less emphasis on the legal changes for the vote abroad. Raúl Ross sustains his connection to México. “I like Mexican politics more than U.S. politics. I think I can bring in more of my experience.” As in Rufino’s story, in Raúl’s life there has not been a

367

See Vega, Miguel Angel. 2002. “Perredistas de L.A. votan en elecciones internas de su partido. Los afiliados del PRD en varios estados participaron en la elección de un dirigente nacional y otros cargos.” La Opinión. March 18.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 185 pause in the way he views his commitment to the causes of the marginalized. He has been involved in the defense of migrants’ rights facing the U.S. state, immigration laws, and issues of discrimination. Nonetheless, he considers of vital importance the defense of migrants’ rights in relation to the Mexican nation-state. Even though he has been living in Chicago for the past eighteen years, for him the main issues to address relate to México, therefore his deep belief in the importance of being able to have a concrete presence through the vote. The vote is a political right but it is also the marker of belonging to the nation-state, in a way, of cultural citizenship. Raúl Ross, el Rojo, has inserted himself in a quest that confronts the Mexican nation-state and challenges conservative and restrictive notions of citizenship, of membership. Politically active migrants like Ross’ campaign in México and in the U.S. to become visible, to be included in the reformulation of the nation that is taking place. Mainly, these politically active migrants want to be recognized, together with the rest of Mexican migrants, as the always already present cultural and economic force that has never left the nation despite the fact that the nation seems to have abandoned them.

Political belonging Mexican migrants, who are interested in being considered a part of México, and whose sense of belonging has turned them into political actors, want to be recognized as legal, valuable citizens of México. Through their political practices they are weaving a culture of citizenship that is continuously demanding attention and responses from the two nation-states they inhabit. As citizens, they establish their belonging and their right to have their voice heard. The three stories introduced in this chapter refer to democracy and identity, to belonging, to who can participate in the decision process of a community, and to who is included or excluded from it. The stories also reflect the dynamics of a culture of politics that takes place at different levels and scenarios. Raúl and Rufino recognize the importance of their past experiences as their basis for their own culture of politics, mainly derived from class in Raúl’s case, and ethnicity and class in Rufino’s life. Despite the Tomato King’s self-identification as a campesino, the introduction of the Tomato King to politics was due more as a consequence of his present economic success, achieved through his migrant experience, than to any constant participation in

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 186 migrant civic organizations. Class plays a role here, but not a factor that is recognized by the Tomato King. However, his story sets off a politics of citizenship that very concretely addresses the legal system. In the Tomato King’s case, he practices a politics of citizenship where belonging to the polity is negotiable, it is situational depending on whether one’s gaze is aquí or is allá, and where migrants’ membership is as embraced as it is rejected. The Tomato King feels more American than Mexican. However, he also states “he acquired the foreign citizenship ‘por beneficio’ ––convenience–– but insists that he is Mexican by birth.”368 Likewise, he chooses to be, or better yet, he becomes an active political subject in connection to issues that pertain to México and Mexicans. Andrés Bermúdez, belongs and makes equal claims of citizenship to the United States and México, to the Jerez that is here and to the Jerez that is there. Aside from asserting this claim, he acts upon it by participating in formal politics and, in doing so he puts at play many of the contradictions migrants’ experience. Andrés is a citizen from below, and through his practice he is defining the content of the citizenship he embodies, which includes participation in formal politics. Andrés is also a citizen from below inasmuch as the Jerezianos and other Zacatecans who granted him the right to be there, supported him. Despite this, questions about his citizenship arouse, of his right to be there, in Jerez, although he is a part of the extended Jerez. The objections come mainly from within the political class, but there are also some Jerezianos who reject the right of the Tomato King to be there, in Jerez. In contrast to the Tomato King, Rufino Domínguez enters the political sphere at an early age, as a result of the subjection of his community to the constant abuse of power by authorities. He brings this experience with him in his migratory route. Rufino’ Domínguez’ class-consciousness and racial discrimination awareness sustain his desire to be a part of the political sphere. The politics of citizenship that Rufino practices centers on understanding the place one lives and works as a connected one, as an extension of previous social relations. It is a space where unequal power relations take place, inequalities that in Rufino’s eyes people have to contest and change. Rufino practices a politics of citizenship that is embedded in the transnational sphere

368

Amador Sánchez, Angel. 2001b. Op. Cit. September 6.

Building citizenship: practices of nationhood and belonging 187 where two cultures of politics ––perhaps even more–– conflict with each other. Rufino practices a politics of citizenship where belonging is assumed, and the struggle is for dignity, and respect. One could argue though, going beyond Rufino’s words that there is indeed a search for being included, for being considered a part of the nation, and a subject with rights. Finally, Raúl Ross’ experience contains elements of both the Tomato King and Rufino Dominguez’s stories, although, in contrast to these two leaders, his approach is transnational without being translocal. Ross’ practices a politics of citizenship strongly based in the formal political sphere yet this interest expresses a rooted practice of membership. México, the nation, is where Raúl belongs; it is his community. His is a struggle framed in terms of democracy and making the Mexican state expand its notion of rights. While his quest is for political rights already included in the Constitution, an expansion of rights takes place through the recognition of migrants as political actors to whom the nation-state also has to respond. Through their claims, migrants like Raúl Ross, Rufino Domínguez, and the Tomato King are participating in the definition of a different society that includes them. Their practices engage the nation-state in a culture of citizenship where rights and belonging have to go beyond uninational visions of citizenship. Mexicans who live in different parts of the United States connect with each other not only through practices of identity but also through political practices that have called upon the Mexican nation-state to open its traditionally enclosed notions of nation, nationality, and citizenship. Mexican migrants living in the U.S. are bearers of rights and practitioners of a substantive citizenship that acquires content through their daily practices, and their interactions to nation-state power structures. Migrants’ practices of belonging –––like those of Aguilillans in Redwood City–– or their more openly political ones such as those of the Tomato King, Rufino Domínguez, and Raúl Ross, contribute to a larger re-definition of citizenship while at the same time are partaking of a traditional notion of citizenship as bearers of political rights.

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CHAPTER 8

Conclusion

This book aimed at bridging the divide between a critique of a statecentered notion of citizenship and the recognition of Mexican migrants as political actors, as well as subjects of the law. Likewise, these pages underscore how migrants’ stories and the transnational space they inhabit is always already political. In this space, struggles for belonging, for citizenship ––whether legal or cultural or both–– are taking place in migrants’ everyday lives. This work thus sustains that citizenship is a site of political struggle, a struggle that takes place in everyday interactions and in the relation between state and people. Three domains of citizenship ––law, belonging, and politics–– are reviewed as well as the culture of citizenship that their interaction produces. In this sense, the present work can be viewed as an ethnography of belonging, an ethnography of law, and/or an ethnography of politics of citizenship. Throughout these pages I have shown how the three realms are inextricably related when migrants become the agents that articulate them. Likewise, the book argues that Mexican migrants inhabit a discursive borderland framed by laws ––which I understand as moving texts––thus defining migrants’ status in México and in the U.S. The work presents the sociopolitical context that gave way to the legal changes that occurred in the 1990’s. Moreover, I claim that these changes reshaped Mexican migrants’ relationship to the nation-states they encounter. An important aspect to underscore is that the work pays close attention to migrants’ interpretation of these laws, to how they affect their everyday lives, and to migrants’ responses to them. Despite appearing as a top to bottom scenario, when the lenses are turned to politically involved migrants, it is possible to see how their proactive stands have played a significant role in the legal changes 189

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 190 that have taken place in México. As migrants embody these laws, as migrants act upon them and attempt to change them, as they become the juncture where two nation-states encounter each other, migrants are the life of the law. Moreover, the stories presented in this work aimed at understanding what a politics of citizenship is, and how it functions. A politics of citizenship can be understood as the different strategies and practices that people and nation-states use to handle issues of inclusions and exclusion, of recognition, respect, and the struggle over rights. Through their practices, Mexican migrants and the nation-states they inhabit, configure a politics of citizenship where belonging to the nation, to the community, is a constant question. Likewise, in this politics of citizenship belonging is an everyday practice as migrants encounter a social context that questions their situated cultural practices. Thus, a politics of citizenship has to be understood as a twoway movement between nation-states and, in this case, migrants. Even more, it is the site where citizenship is being contested, where membership, belonging, and the struggle for rights is taking place. These pages share the idea that law is connected to power relations and, while being a hegemonic tool, within its field of influences spaces for resistance are opened. Migrants’ stories and testimonies show how their citizenship is marked by institutional regulatory processes to which they are subjected, and which tend to alienate them from the national community. The legal frameworks developed by México and the U.S. include and exclude migrants as members of the nation-state. Laws categorize people, a categorization that is materialized through the institutions migrants face in their everyday practices. However, migrants develop strategies to maneuver through the interstices of the law and thus manifest their agency. Different scenarios emerged throughout this work. They attempt to understand how migration influences practices and definitions of citizenship, how migration impacts state institutions and regulations in the definition of citizenship, and in the policies that are applied to people which include or exclude them from the polity. By reviewing specific laws––reform to Article 36, non-loss of nationality law, 1996 U.S. Immigration laws, California’s Proposition 187, welfare reform legislation, IRCA, Arizona´s Proposition 200––it was possible to observe: a) how laws define the contours of what citizenship is from the perspective of the nation-state; b) how migration has become a

Conclusion 191 point of contention and a source of debate over the meaning of citizenship; and finally c) how migrants make sense and interact with the laws that affect their everyday lives. In the interplay of the legal structures that surrounds migrants, they are confronted with the question of what it means to be a citizen. A first response derives from migrant’s own situated cultural practices of building and sustaining a connected transnational social space, as in the case of Aguililla-Redwood City. A second answer stems from the legal field where citizenship and nationality refer to the link between state and individuals that “translates into certain reciprocal rights and responsibilities.”369 An example of migrants’ encounter with a structure of laws is Daniel and his decision to apply for U.S. citizenship. His decision was strongly based on the fact that the Mexican nationality law changed. The interaction of the two sets of laws that come from two different state formations allowed Daniel to acquire another citizenship without feeling that he was less Mexican. This is a concrete site where a politics of citizenship can be observed, when two legal structures encounter each other and in doing so begin to redefine their borders. Another scenario that appears in the book refers to the connection migration, citizenship, and race. Although this work does not focuses on the issue of race, many of the stories presented throughout the different chapters made evident the relevance of this dimension in migrants’ lives and their possibilities of claiming citizenship. When citizenship is understood as a site of struggle, race becomes a factor that gives substance to this point of contention. Different experiences of race establish different strategies of relation to the social context that surrounds migrants. Rufino would be the clearest example of the connection race-migration-citizenship. Rufino defines his citizenship mainly through his ethnic origins, which for him are also closely connected to class. Migration enhances his identity, his sense of belonging, which he roots in political practices. In comparison to indigenous migrants, the mestizo migrant population faces race from a different experience. Being more aware of

369

Becerra Ramírez, Manuel. 2000. “Nationality in México.” In Alexander Aleinikoff and Douglas Klusmeyer, eds. From Migrants to Citizens. Membership in a Changing World. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington D.C. P. 313.

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 192 class than race, when mestizo migrants cross the border they are confronted with an immediate shift in their subjectivity, culture is naturalized, and class and issues of economic marginalization are translated into aspects intrinsic to Mexicans. Because the racial context has been translated into discriminatory laws ––such as proposition 187 or IIRAIRA–– migrants develop their own strategies to stop or circumvent the effects of these laws. While some of these strategies are effective, the question of the racial context and cultural citizenship is still pending in migrants’ lives in the U.S. Cultural citizenship, according to William Flores, implies the definition of a community, claims of space in society, and claims of rights. Cultural citizenship is about the right to retain difference while attaining membership to the society.370 As shown with the case of Aguililla-Redwood City, migrants are creating a space that contains their situated cultural practices. However, their citizenship is a pending question inasmuch as they are exposed to policies that limit their rights, and to fellow citizens that do not fully accept them, as seen in the support Proposition 187 received from the majority of California voters. An analysis of citizenship through the lenses of migration underlines the fact that citizenship is a category that is being reformulated both in the legal field as well as in the socio-cultural realm. The presence of millions of Mexican migrants in the U.S. produces a strong response of rejection in many sectors of U.S. society. In part, it is a consequence of a long history of migration, and the complex relationship these two countries have beginning with the large shared border. The continuous presence of Mexican in the U.S. has produced different changes in U.S. immigration laws. Some of these legal scenarios are explored in this work namely as a corpus of laws that in their interaction regiment migrants’ mobility and possibilities of being included or excluded from the society they are contributing to shape. Following Aihwa Ong, I look at modalities of governmentality practiced upon migrants by the nation-state.371

370

Cf. Flores, William. 1997. “Citizen vs Citizenry: Undocumented Immigrants and Latino Cultural Citizenship.” In William Flores, Rina Benmayor, Eds. Latino Cultural Citizenship. Claiming Identity, Space, and Rights. Beacon Press, Boston. P.262 371 Cf. Ong, Aihwa. 1999. Flexible Citizenship. The Cultural Logics of Transnationality. Duke University Press, Durham/London. P. 113.

Conclusion 193 Another scenario presented in the work refers to the different layers of interaction that can be seen in the Mexican migration case between the cultural, the economic, and political levels. Through these pages I have presented many moments of these interactions, such as when groups of migrants campaign for the vote abroad basing their claims in legal rights, but also using economic arguments ––as the remittances they send–– and their sense of culturally belonging to México. Migrants stay connected to México, to their states, and their hometowns. An example is Doña Carmen and her memory practices. Through their transnational practices migrants construct a social space and give content to their citizenship. Moreover, their migrant experience provides migrants with a distinct quality: a simultaneous perspective of their world, of their existence, as in the case of Faviola, or José, who are both Here and There. Because they constantly face their simultaneity, they are at the same time building a dual citizenship, dual beyond legal definitions, dual as in having two perspectives, and having to come to terms with both. In analyzing transnational processes, legal frameworks that appear as the voice of the nation-state, and people’s rooted practices of belonging, this work shows that an anthropology of transnational practices of citizenship is still very much about the nation, at least in the case of Mexican migrants. The nation is never far from view when doing a transnational anthropology, it is not a transcended category, and it still holds profound meaning in migrants’ lives. A very material example of this is the border, which is policed with the latest technology, and is ran under the premise that the U.S. is dealing with criminals. The border is the line where migrants shift categories and become illegal, therefore, criminals. The nation is meaningful because borders are visible. Likewise, this work argues that citizenship is not a given universal right but rather it is a site of contestation, of who is included or excluded from the community, and the nation. Because of their situated cultural practices, migrants appear as a threat to enclosed notions of citizenship. Concrete responses in the U.S. to migrants’ practices are seen in the approval of Proposition 187, IIRAIRA, the 1996 welfare reform act, and Arizona’s Proposition 200. Simultaneously, these same situated cultural practices and the context migrants’ face in the U.S. prompted other legal responses, this time, however, emerging from México. The 1996 non-loss of nationality law

The Politics of Citizenship of Mexican Migrants 194 and the reform to Article 36 that opened the discussion of migrants’ political rights, were a first step towards an acceptance of migrants as part of the nation. Nevertheless, despite the fact that México’s traditionally conservative notion of nationality was opened, voices can still be heard arguing against the right of Mexicans abroad to be considered Mexican and, as such, hold full citizenship rights. Migrants perform their rooted practices of belonging with or without these laws, but they need certain legal frameworks to be formally included in the polity. This is one of several scenarios where the politics of citizenship produced by and because of migrants is enacted. To be precise, the work concentrates in two strategies of building citizenship and of practicing a politics of citizenship. The first has to do with migrants’ practices of belonging. Here, the book delves on how a transnational social space is lived and constructed, as well as the different layers it contains. The second, which is also a practice of belonging, is more connected to the formal political sphere. As some migrants have become active political subjects they engage their citizenship as a struggle for the recognition of their rights, and or, the redefinition of those rights. Many Mexican migrants, individually or through their organizations, are participating in the effort for the acknowledgment of their existence as political subjects, as citizens with rights. Raúl, Rufino, and the Tomato King, and those who have been part of the campaign for the vote abroad are examples of this strategy of building citizenship. When migrants configure a culture and a politics of citizenship, they deal with spatial-temporal dimensions of Here and There. Their practices provide meaning to these dimensions. Here, there, spaces, places, and memories, together they give content to migrants’ practices of belonging, and provide the basis for their culture and politics of citizenship, one that departs, following Pat Zavella, from a peripheral perspective which nonetheless is never transparent.372 Moreover, the politics of citizenship migrants experience is framed by a structure of institutions and laws from two different nation-states. This structure, while it does regiments their lives, also provides for new routes. Rather, it should be understood as a web of possibilities and impossibilities through which migrants move. Finally, some migrants

372

Cf. Zavella, Pat. 2003. Op. Cit.

Conclusion 195 do produce a politics of citizenship that addresses the state face to face, in the formal political arena, in order to reshape the relation between the nation-state and its citizens. In understanding the interaction between migrants and laws as a privileged ethnographic site, the concrete relation between state and people can be observed, that is, the way the state regiments peoples lives, but also the manners in which people deal with state institutions and regulations by not letting themselves be overwhelmed by their power. From the relation among laws and migrants emerges a politics of citizenship, where citizenship becomes the site of political struggle over rights, over belonging, but also over recognition, and dignity.

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Index

political citizenship: 6 migrant: 7 rights: 6,7, 113, 121, 138141, 145, 149, 157, 164, 167 cultural citizenship: 7, 8, 59, 103, 117 flexible citizenship: 9, 10 Citizen: 5, 110, 130 U.S.: 8, 65, 66, 97, 99, 101, 103, 104, 115, 116, 137, 138 México: 110, 119, 130, 133 actions: 85, 116 and migrants: 97, 10, 101, 103, 104, 115, 137 Democracy: 163, 164 Diaspora: 11 Gender: 48 Governmentality: 9, 192 Globalization: 165 Global: arenas: 9 space: 13 economy: 189 Hobsbawn: 14 Hometown associations: 169 Identity: 3, 4, 48, 69, 97, 109 indigenous: 163 migrant: 165

Aguililla: 2, 3, 20, 21, 23, 2544, 53, 54, 57-59, 62, 68, 70, 74, 93, 191, 192 and U.S. citizenship: 91 Belonging: 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 13, 21, 23, 24, 69, 70, 97, 99, 138, 150, 158, practices of: 1,3, 25-73, 138, 158, 169, 171, 198, 203, 204 senses of: 2,3,7, 16, 22, 138, 163 migrant: 2, 8 Citizenship: 1-9, 11, 13,14, 20, 56, 62, 110, 118, 119, 130, 139-141, 145, 155, 158, 161, 163-165, 167, 168, 190-193 practices of: 1-3, 22, 70, 75, 76, 99, 138, 157, 161, 163-165, 168, 170, 179, 183, 203 cultures of: 1, 2, 4, 7, 138, 158,161, 162, 196, 198, 199 politics of: 1-5, 20-23, 75, 77, 138-140, 158, 163, 190, 194, 196, 199, 200, 201, 204, 205 substantive: 168, 169 theory of: 5-10 and law: 2-6,120 213

214 Law: 1-5, 8, 21, 23, 24, 76, 79, 104, 118, 138 definitions: 5 as practice: 158 embodiment of: 101, 106 experience of: 138, 139 immigration: 79, 82-95, 97, 98, 104, 107, 158, 193 nationality law (Mexican): 21,109-117, 131-133, 138157 reform Article 36 (México): 21, 119, 120, 131-133 immigration initiatives: 77 Memory 15, 44, 47 practices: 46, 61, 65, 6769, 170, 192-194 Migration: 11 theory of: 1, 10 transnational: 2, 11, 12, 69 immigration: 11 Migrants: 1-5, 9, 10,11, 25, 28, 70, 111, 138, 158 as actors: 1, 12, 158, 163 indigenous: 163 membership: 138-141, 145 and law: 158 political subjectivity: 8 political practices: 2, 120 transnational: 13, 158 situated cultural practices: 1, 4, 21, 22, 139, 169 Nation: 11, 14, 62, 130 theories of: 14 building of: 157 territory: 158 nationality: 146

Index nationalism: 165 Nation-state: 1-5, 7, 9-11, 2224, 70, 76, 109, 138, 163 theory of: 14-17 and citizens: 9 relation México-U.S.: 2, 4, 9, 14-17, 158 and displacement: 10 Politics: 9, 21, 25 Cultural: 99 and law: 76 political practices: 138 culture of: 9, 158, 161 civil society: 165 political rights: 4, 7, 121, 130, 133 transnational: 162 Political culture: 161 Redwood City: 2, 3, 5, 20-23, 27-30, 37, 38, 42-48, 51-53 Ranger: 14 Race: 7, 46, 47, 61, 63, 69, 84, 156-158, 191, 192 Remittances: 157 Spatial dimensions: 11 territory: 4 location: 4 multilocational: 11 locality: 12 State: 4, 5, 7, 8, 138, 193 theory of: 17-20 Transnational: 9, 21 social space: 2, 8, 21, 23, 28-73 social communities: 12 social movements: 170 transnationalism: 166 translocal: 161, 162, 166