As Mexican migrants have found new lives in the United States, the appearance of migrant organizations reflects the revitalization of ancestral community life. One example, the Binational Oaxacan Indigenous Front, includes participants from cities along the border and represents diverse organizations of indigenous migrants from Oaxaca. Its creation reflects the vast changes that have taken place in migrants’ lives in less than thirty years. Mixtec Transnational Identity is the first book to describe in detail the emergence of a wide range of transnational indigenous organizations and communities in the greater Mexico–U.S. border region. It documents and analyzes the construction of novel identities formed within transnational contexts that may not conform to identities in either the “sending” or “receiving” societies. Laura Velasco Ortiz investigates groups located on both sides of the border that have maintained strong links with towns and villages in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca in order to understand how this transformation came about. Through a combination of survey, ethnography, and biography, she examines the formation of ethnic identity under the conditions of international migration, giving special attention to the emergence of organizations and their leaders as collective and individual ethnic agents of change. Velasco Ortiz reconstructs the Mixtec experience through three lines of analysis: the formation of organizations beyond the confines of home communities; the emergence of indigenous migrant leaders; and the shaping of ethnic consciousness that assimilates the experiences of a community straddling the border. Her research brings to light the way in which the dispersion of members of different communities is offset by the formation of migrant networks with family and community ties, while the politicization of these networks enables the formation of both hometown associations and transnational pan-ethnic organizations. An important focus of her analysis is gender differentiation within the ethnic community. There has been little research into the relationship between the process of collective agency and the reconstitution of the migrants’ ethnic identity. Mixtec Transnational Identity should stimulate further study of Latino migration to the U.S. border region and its consequences on ethnic identity.

"Laura Velasco Ortiz investigates groups located on both sides of the border that have maintained strong links with towns and villages in the Mixteca region of Oaxaca in order to understand how this transformation came about. Through a combination of survey, ethnography, and biography, she examines the formation of ethnic identity under the conditions of international migration, giving special attention to the emergence of organizations and their leaders as collective and individual ethnic agents of change."--BOOK JACKET.

In a time of globalization, what does an inclusive feminist politics entail? This accessible volume addresses the key issues in, and most significant challenges for, contemporary transnational feminist politics and political theory. Ideal for courses in Gender and Globalization, Transnational Feminism and Feminist Theory.

Mixtec Evangelicals is a comparative ethnography of four Mixtec communities in Oaxaca, detailing the process by which economic migration and religious conversion combine to change the social and cultural makeup of predominantly folk-Catholic communities. The book describes the effects on the home communities of the Mixtecs who travel to northern Mexico and the United States in search of wage labor and return having converted from their rural Catholic roots to Evangelical Protestant religions. O’Connor identifies globalization as the root cause of this process. She demonstrates the ways that neoliberal policies have forced Mixtecs to migrate and how migration provides the contexts for conversion. Converts challenge the set of customs governing their Mixtec villages by refusing to participate in the Catholic ceremonies and social gatherings that are at the center of traditional village life. The home communities have responded in a number of ways—ranging from expulsion of converts to partial acceptance and adjustments within the village—depending on the circumstances of conversion and number of converts returning. Presenting data and case studies resulting from O’Connor’s ethnographic field research in Oaxaca and various migrant settlements in Mexico and the United States, Mixtec Evangelicals explores this phenomenon of globalization and observes how ancient communities are changed by their own emissaries to the outside world. Students and scholars of anthropology, Latin American studies, and religion will find much in this book to inform their understanding of globalization, modernity, indigeneity, and religious change.

Through interviews with three generations of Yalálag Zapotecs (“Yaláltecos”) in Los Angeles and Yalálag, Oaxaca, this book examines the impact of international migration on this community. It traces five decades of migration to Los Angeles in order to delineate migration patterns, community formation in Los Angeles, and the emergence of transnational identities of the first and second generations of Yalálag Zapotecs in the United States, exploring why these immigrants and their descendents now think of themselves as Mexican, Mexican Indian immigrants, Oaxaqueños, and Latinos—identities they did not claim in Mexico. Based on multi-site fieldwork conducted over a five-year period, Adriana Cruz-Manjarrez analyzes how and why Yalálag Zapotec identity and culture have been reconfigured in the United States, using such cultural practices as music, dance, and religious rituals as a lens to bring this dynamic process into focus. By illustrating the sociocultural, economic, and political practices that link immigrants in Los Angeles to those left behind, the book documents how transnational migration has reflected, shaped, and transformed these practices in both their place of origin and immigration.