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Transnational migration, conflict, and divergent

ideologies of progress

Article  in  Urban anthropology · June 2009

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Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera

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 Transnational Migration, Conflict,
And Divergent Ideologies Of Progress

Lourdes Gutiérrez Nájera

Departments of Anthropology
and Latin American, Latino and Caribbean Studies
Dartmouth College

ABSTRACT: In this essay I draw attention to the relationship

between transnational migration and conflict. Through an ethno-
graphic analysis of a political schism in a rural Mexican community,
I illustrate how migration expands the social field of conflict from
the local to the transnational through the circulation of people,
ideas, and goods. I demonstrate that the relationship between
conflict and migration are interrelated parts of broad historical,
economic, and political processes, which may unfold simultane-
ously within various levels of social space. The case study provides
a particularly clear example of how conflict circulates through
ideologies of progress and community expressed in various forms,
and how conflict is made manifest in the lives of people across
different geographic locations. The story of this town’s ideologi-
cal and political struggle highlights the ways in which conflict can
be instrumental for reproducing transnational social relations. I
demonstrate how definitions of community, and progress, have all
been reshaped, reproduced, and circulated through the processes
of migration and local and transnational conflict.

269
ISSN 0894-6019, © 2009 The Institute, Inc.
270 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

Introduction

On October 11, 1997, several hundred men, women and

children gathered in the main plaza in Yalálag, a Zapotec in-
digenous town in Mexico’s southern state of Oaxaca, for a
communal assembly. They planned to discuss the protection
and maintenance of the town’s woodland and water resourc-
es. However the assembly soon veered in an unexpected di-
rection. A handful of men steered the conversation away from
the issue at hand by questioning the integrity of the munici-
pal president and demanding that a new leader be selected
immediately. In response, others defended the incumbent
municipal leaders. A public debate ensued, wearing into the
afternoon as citizens on opposing sides became increasing-
ly hostile toward one another. Eventually those insisting on
change overpowered the others and a new municipal presi-
dent was selected.1
Yet within days Yalaltecans were questioning the outcome.
The selection of a new president was declared fraudulent, first
by a group of men and women living in Yalálag and later, by
the state legislature in Oaxaca City, the capital. By January
1998, two factions had firmly developed. Each offered a dif-
ferent account of the events surrounding the assembly and
election. The first group, referred to as la Coordinadora, rep-
resented those who felt a new municipal president had been
rightfully elected at the 1997 meeting. The second group, lo-
cally recognized as el Grupo Comunitario, disputed both the
timing and legitimacy of the vote. In May, the Oaxaca state
legislature declared a vacuum of authority in Yalálag, eventu-
ally leaving the village without any economic resources from
the state and without any legally recognized local leadership.
Mounting animosity between the two groups resulted in vio-
lence, including death threats and the dynamiting of a satel-
lite telephone system. The popular press circulated news of
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 271

the conflict at both state and national levels, further fracturing

public opinion.
In contrast to past schisms that had been resolved locally
face to face, this conflict took on a transnational character.
Yalaltecans dispersed through Mexico and the United States
became involved in the factionalized politics. As a result,
throughout 1998, hundreds of Yalaltecans permanently resid-
ing in Oaxaca City, Mexico City, and Los Angeles, returned
to their natal home to assess the situation. One man travelled
between Los Angeles and Yalálag three times in the span of
ten months, equipped with a video camera that he used in
an attempt to capture “the truth,” as he put it. Other “truths”
spread at the same time, through casual conversation, phone
calls, letters and videotapes, all circulating rumors of violence,
corruption, and chaos back home.
This article illustrates how conflict is transnationalized
(through the circulation of people, ideas, and goods) via the
process of migration. I show how the process of Yalaltecan
migration, which began in the 1940s and now involves more
than half the town’s population, reconfigures the basis of
intervillage conflict by relocating it outside systems of local
power, that is, away from political bosses (referred to as ca-
ciques) and toward competing ideas of progress among local
and extra-local actors. Men and women initially described the
conflict as a power struggle between two local leaders they
considered caciques. Yet as I listened to their stories over time,
the discourse shifted in two important ways. First, it moved
toward concepts of development and progress in Yalálag. Sec-
ond, people began questioning the boundaries of their com-
munity, recognizing its transnational character, and revealing
changes in their own subjectivities.
It became clear that one thing at stake in the ongoing con-
versation was the definition of what it meant to be Yalaltecan.
Regional, national, and international migration has deeply
affected this definition. And as new categories of Yalaltecans
272 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

(at home and abroad using various media) claimed a stake in

the ongoing debate, social fissures were created and intensi-
fied.2 Through transnational flows of people, the community
both expanded and factionalized, and was reflected in much
the same ways in Los Angeles as in Yalálag, dividing families
and neighbors along ideological lines. Forms of interpersonal
communication, like rumor and gossip, as well as higher-tech
media, such as photography and video, facilitated the disemi-
nation of conflict. Thus I argue for considering how new loca-
tions and pathways in the study of conflict attend to transna-
tional processes. Further, as local and extra-local actors gain
the mobility and technology to participate in local politics in
new ways, we must develop new conceptions of community
for a globalized era.
As I illustrate, ideologies of progress and development
emerged and were represented by two growing factions.
Though these ideologies are complicated and sometimes even
overlapping, I gloss them here as “cosmopolitan” and “tra-
ditionalist.” The cosmopolitans (composed of migrants and
local villagers affiliated with them) united under the banner
of la Coordinadora. They sought a greater level of engagement
with the world beyond the local. This point of view was also
manifested in a desire to make Yalálag appear more like the
external urban centers with which members of this group
were engaged, by pursuing tourism and formal employment
opportunities and by paving the local dirt roads. These no-
tions of progress, however, clashed with those held by the
traditionalists, el Grupo Comunitario, who argued that tradi-
tional norms and ways of life, including cooperative labor3
and subsistence agriculture, were essential tools to survive in
a rapidly shifting world.
Although migration did not cause the struggle that precip-
itated the year-long political conflict, national and local ideas
of progress and development were being contested and nego-
tiated in a transnational landscape made possible through mi-
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 273

gration. Because of migration individuals were pitted against

each other within and across an enormous expanse of trans-
national space, exacerbating existing tensions that were once
only local or “left behind,” and drastically expanding the so-
cial field of sources for conflict. At stake were the boundaries
of community membership, and key issues of development
and traditional practices that were being reconfigured and
challenged through meta-narratives of progress.

Conflict and Transnational Migration

Conflict is not new in Yalálag. As Yalaltecans often re-

minded me, “Yalálag’s history is a history of conflict.” Locals
described murders from the 1920s through the late 1980s. Don
Miguel, a community elder and former municipal president,
for example, recounted that in 1989 “the elections for munici-
pal officers came to a halt when gunshots ended in blood-
shed.”4 Regional, state, national, and international media,
including the newspapers LA HORA, NOTICIAS, LA JOR-
NADA, and THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE have also reported
on local violence.5 Despite this violent history, contemporary
conflict varies from older forms in several important ways.
Most notably, conflict can no longer be conceptualized as a
purely local process contained within regional boundaries. As
I show, Yalaltecan conflict extends beyond national boundar-
ies and in the process is re-shaped. Yalaltecans today take part
in discussions of the future of community both at home and
abroad. Further, conflict is fueled through the circulation of
new ideas embedded in media (photographs, newspapers,
videos, and volantes 6), and verbal communication (including
gossip), carried by people moving back and forth between Ya-
lálag and Los Angeles.
A transnational perspective broadens our analytical lens
of conflict in Oaxaca. Numerous studies have examined Oax-
274 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

acan indigenous conflict (Dennis 1987; Fuente 1949; Green-

berg 1989; Kearney 1972; Nader 1964, 1990; Parsons 1936;
Spores 1984). To date, however, the focus has been local. Par-
nell (1988) provides a notable example that illustrates how in
varying contexts discord may escalate from local to regional
to national level. Building on his work, I demonstrate how
conflict may escalate even beyond the national level.
Conflict has often been linked to scarcity of resources, es-
pecially of arable land and water (Kearney 1996; Rivera-Sal-
gado 1999). In the Mixtec area for example, migration has
been seen as a strategic response to land shortages (Fox and
Rivera-Salgado 2004; Guidi 1992; Kearney 1996; Klaver 1997).
In his analysis of conflict, Dennis (1987: 3-4) argues that sev-
eral forms of conflict predominate among Oaxacan communi-
ties: litigation over land skirmishes, over village boundaries,
and outright bloodshed. The case of Yalálag demonstrates
that even such local-seeming conflicts, in this case skirmishes
over village boundaries, may need to be reconceptualized to
include the transnational level. Moreover, the high volume
of migration between Oaxaca and the United States has pro-
duced a new trend of reforesting formerly cultivated areas of
Yalálag.7 Thus, I suggest that previous models cannot fully
explain Yalaltecan conflict. I argue that a major source of con-
temporary Yalaltecan strife is rooted in competing visions of
progress and development that are produced by (and only
visible through a consideration of) migration. Additionally,
the escalation of political conflict to a transnational level begs
further examination of migration to better understand how
conflict was transformed from a seemingly local level to one
that spanned across geographic boundaries.
Alhough conflict is often not a central focus of transnational
migration studies, several scholars have provided significant
contributions toward thinking about the ways that migration
may engender various types of conflictive relations. Mahler’s
(1995) work on Salvadoran and Peruvian migration challenges
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 275

myths of ethnic solidarities in the literature as she demonstrates

that economic and social marginalization in the U.S. often pits
Latinos against each other. For Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994), conflict
emerges as a theme in relation to changing attitudes and beliefs
regarding gender norms and behavior among Mexican migrants
living in the U.S. Perez’ (2004) work on Puerto Rican transna-
tional migration between the island and the mainland, on the
other hand, shows how gender forms part of a discourse about
belonging in both ethnographic settings. Perez reveals emerging
tensions that have divided migrants from non-migrants in Puer-
to Rico. Like Mahler, she also points to the ways that marginal-
ization within the U.S. leads to fissions among Latino migrants,
in this case, pitting individual Puerto Ricans against Mexican
migrants. Similarly, Smith’s (2006) ethnographic research on
Mexican transnational life extending between Ticuani, Puebla
and New York provides insight into emerging inequalities that
exist between those with access to resources, directly linked
to migration, and those who cannot depend on them. Finally,
Rouse’s (1989, 1992) analyses of Mexican migration shed light on
conflict within a family life and class trajectory, while highlight-
ing gender differences across generations within a transnational
circuit that exists between Aguililla, in the state of Michoacan,
and Redwood City, California.
This essay builds upon this work and demonstrates that a
focus on conflict is important for several reasons. First, it chal-
lenges notions of migrant group solidarity. I examine a political
schism among Yalaltecan migrants and non-migrants within a
transnational context, rather than a conflict within families or
between individuals. Second, I demonstrate that the relation-
ships between conflict and migration are interrelated parts of
broad historical, economic, and political processes, which may
unfold simultaneously within various levels of social space
(i.e., at a localized or transnational level). The case of Yalálag
provides a particularly clear example of how conflict circulates
through ideologies of progress and community expressed in
various forms, and how conflict is made manifest in the lives of
276 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

people across different geographic locations. Third, this conflict

did not sever ties between Yalálag and migrant settlements;
rather, the story of Yalálag’s ideological and political struggle
highlights the ways in which conflict can be instrumental for
reproducing transnational social relations. The question of
who is or is not a Yalaltecan, the definition of community, and
progress, have all been reshaped, reproduced, and circulated
through the process of migration and local and transnational
conflict.

Ethnographic Setting

Nestled in the Sierra Norte of the Mexican state of Oaxaca,

just 60 kilometers northeast of the state’s capital, lies the Za-
potec town of Yalálag at an elevation of 3,854 feet. The town
comprises the largest municipio (township) in the region. Its
political structure is organized by usos y costumbres (custom-
ary uses and practices). Municipal leaders are elected through
an open assembly rather than through political parties, thus
granting indigenous communities a certain degree of autono-
my. The town’s population of 2,000 is distributed throughout
four quarters.8 Zapotec continues to be the primary language,
spoken by approximately 83% of the population, while Span-
ish and Mixe constitute secondary and tertiary languages spo-
ken there. Throughout most of the 20th century, most Yalalte-
cans labored in subsistence agriculture and the production of
leather goods. Today, they increasingly rely on migration to
supplement their incomes, through remittances or by engag-
ing in wage labor outside of their town. Yalálag has a post of-
fice, a dental clinic, a medical clinic, telephone service which
includes both public phones and private phone lines, and bus
service to and from Oaxaca City several times daily. The vil-
lage currently benefits from electricity, a sewage system, and
a running, potable water system, which delivers water from
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 277

a nearby alpine aquifer. During my research in 1998 the road

between Oaxaca and Yalálag was made of packed dirt; today
it is paved, cutting the driving time to three hours from five
or six hours.
This research is based on over two years of ethnographic
fieldwork conducted between 1998 and 2002. I spoke informally
and formally with Yalaltecans, participated in various public
meetings, accompanied people on errands and in their homes,
and surveyed residents to obtain census information. These
conversations allowed me to better assess how they were im-
pacted by local political strife. They also allowed me to derive
people’s understandings and definitions of community. By at-
tending public meetings I could better gauge how discourses
around conflict, development, and progress evolved over time.
I also collected more than 50 migrant histories to glean a better
perspective on the history of the Yalálag-Los Angeles migrant
circuit, how they defined their own place within it, and how
their own subjectivities had changed. I spoke to and interacted
with both migrants and non-migrants in Los Angeles and in
Yalálag. These ethnographic methods combined provided
a fuller understanding of how Yalaltecans understood and
experienced community, conflict, and progress. Census data,
collected among 80% of Yalálag’s households, provided a
foundation for comparing data and generalizing about migra-
tion patterns and socioeconomic indicators. Finally, archival
work in Yalálag’s municipal archive as well as state archives
provided documentation related to economics, migration, and
violence, in order to more accurately portray historical changes
over time.

History of Yalaltecan Transnational Migration

Between 50,000 and 70,000 Zapotecs live in Los Angeles

county alone (Rivera-Salgado 1999). Yalaltecans number
278 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

roughly 2,500.9 Migration between Yalálag and Los Angeles

began in the 1960s as a direct consequence of participation in
the Bracero Program, the contract labor program between the
American and Mexican governments that, from 1942 to 1965,
allowed Mexicans to supplement the U.S. labor force particu-
larly in agriculture and railroad construction. Although only
a handful of Yalaltecans initially participated in this program,
they impressed others when they returned with dollars, bought
land and fixed up homes.10
By the 1970s the achievements of these former braceros,
coupled with the collapse of agricultural prices (see Arizpe
1981), compelled others to labor in the U.S. in hopes of simi-
lar success. Throughout the 1970s, married and single men
continued migrating to California from Yalálag. Unlike other
indigenous groups from Oaxaca who continued to work in
agriculture throughout this time period, Zapotec men worked
primarily as dishwashers and cooks in restaurants, housekeep-
ers in the hotel industry and laborers in factories (c.f. Cohen
2004; López and Runsten 2004; Stephen 2007). Yalaltecans
followed this pattern. As they shifted to the urban economy,
Yalaltecans began to settle in nearby neighborhoods where they
could easily access jobs. They shared apartments, expenses,
and facilitated employment for one another. Eventually small
clusters of paisanos, members of the same community, began
to form. As these men settled, some began new families while
others sought to bring their wives and children to the U.S.
Consequently, by the 1980s, women also began to migrate from
Yalálag. Married women, later followed by younger, single
women, found work in the informal economy of Los Angeles
as nannies and maids. By the late 1990s, migration had intensi-
fied and adolescents also began to move to Los Angeles. Some
matriculated in schools while others found jobs alongside rela-
tives in the informal sector.
The scale of migration to Los Angeles at the turn of the mil-
lennium contributed to growing concern in Yalálag. Despite an
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 279

increase in wealth made possible by remittances, some com-

munity members argued that other changes threatened local
cultural practices. For example, one important consequence of
migration and modernization has been the creation of pueblos
fantasmas (ghost towns). Alhough not to be taken literally, this
expression is often used to express a sense of loss, especially
of younger generations who are in their reproductive years,
a trend that has accelerated since the 1980s.11 Another change
includes the alleged introduction of youth gangs, rendered vis-
ible by spray paint of gang names and symbols on walls in Los
Angeles, and small groups of young men dressed in low-rise
baggy pants imitating styles of inner-city youth culture. More
subtle transformations are also occurring within households
as men and women express changing gender ideologies. As
Hondagneu-Sotelo (1994) and Jennifer Hirsch (2003) have co-
gently demonstrated, migration becomes a way to overcome
patriarchal constraints including the freedom of movement
and choice of marriage partners. At a structural level, the local
economy has been infused with migradolares through sponsor-
ship of fiestas and development projects. Opulent displays of
food (including beef, pork, and turkey) served during town
feasts, and newly painted buildings, for example, attest to
prosperity. However, the benefits have been uneven and certain
individuals and families have gained more than others. These
changes are evident not just in Yalálag but in other parts of
Mexico and communities around the world (c.f. Castellanos
2003; Cohen 2004; Smith 2006).
In Yalálag, some have welcomed these changes, while others
contested or rejected the local transformations brought about
by the exodus. In order to illustrate how people’s daily lives
have been profoundly transformed by migration, I examine
the stories of two people from Yalálag. They are particularly
poignant examples of points of views I encountered again
and again over the course of my fieldwork among hundreds
of Yalaltecans in both Los Angeles and Yalálag. Through these
280 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

examples, we arrive at a better sense of how the experience of

migration has contributed to emerging critiques of progress
and development, which feed political conflict.

Tripping Over Stones: Alma’s Story

I met Alma when she visited Yalálag in October 1998, dur-

ing the town’s celebration of the Virgen del Rosario (Our Lady
of the Rosary). Alma has lived and worked in Los Angeles for
more than 20 years. She offered a point of view common among
Yalaltecans living in the city, in which they position themselves
as different in significant ways from the people in their natal
home. This is expressed externally in terms of dress (women
wearing pants, short dresses, and heels; men wearing nice
slacks and dress shoes); hairstyles (women often cut, dye, and
perm their hair); and the consumption of high-end electronic
goods (digital cameras, computers, camcorders, etc). Yalaltecan
migrants in Los Angeles also differentiated themselves as kinds
of people. In Los Angeles, it was common to hear Yalaltecans
refer to themselves as more civilized, advanced, modern and
progressive than those in their natal home.
In her 1998 visit, Alma brought with her a statue of a saint
she purchased in Spain to donate to the main church.12 Once
in Yalálag, she also bought several head of cattle for sacrifice
in a celebration in honor of the saint who had traveled so
far. Rumors quickly spread of her gift. Several acquaintances
wondered why she had returned after being away for so long.
Like many migrants living in Los Angeles, her visits had been
infrequent over the past 20 years. They concluded that the sole
purpose of Alma’s return was to flaunt her success. Others
surmised that she intended to meddle in the political life of
Yalálag. Alma spent several afternoons with the catechists in
the church. A Catholic, she attended the daily prayer meetings
and adult catechism classes, which had poor male attendance.
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 281

According a neighbor, Alma took every opportunity to talk in

the church parish about the political conflict in Yalálag, and
encouraged the other women to align themselves with la Co-
ordinadora faction.
Several days later the statue was to be dedicated in the
church. After a procession and a mass in honor of the saint,
my neighbor Maria, a faithful churchgoer who had known
Alma since childhood, told me the following story: Along
with several other women, Maria left the church to attend a
social gathering with men and women aligned with the other
faction (el Grupo Comunitario) at the palacio municipal (munici-
pal building) across the street. Later in the day, these wom-
en returned to church for a second mass. Immediately after
mass, Alma chastised these women for hanging out at the
municipal building. In her view, that site was not where the
pueblo was truly represented; in her words, “those people in
the municipal building do not want progress.” Rather, Alma
argued, only those affiliated with la Coordinadora were truly
dedicated to bringing progress to Yalálag. Frustrated by Ma-
ria’s insolence, Alma told her, “Look! Since I was a young girl
I have tripped over these stones [indicating the rocks on the
unpaved foot pathway leading from her house to the town’s
centro]. They are the same stones that I trip over whenever
I return to visit our town because there has been no social
change for the benefit and progress of our community.”
Like many other Oaxacan migrants who reside outside
their natal home, Alma considers herself a member of and
maintains strong emotional connections to Yalálag. As some-
one vested in the future of her community, Alma would like
to see progress come to Yalálag. But her notion of progress
reflects the vision of a person who has lived in a city and de-
fines “progress” in terms of the conveniences she experiences
in Los Angeles. According to Alma, Yalálag lacks progress be-
cause it lacks paved streets, modern infrastructure (including
banks, hotels and tourism), and other amenities to which she
282 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

has become accustomed in the U.S. For Alma, evidence of lo-

cal progress can be seen in those migrants who leave Yalálag
in rags and return with fine clothing. They embody visible
change, and she equates Western dress with progress. The fact
that many Yalaltecans have not adopted this style of dress to
her represents their disinterest in progress, and she sees them
as at fault for the lack of progress she sees in Yalálag.

Falling Down in the Streets: Gustavo’s Story

Gustavo, a man in his late 40s, provided a contrasting

sensibility about progress in relation to migration and socio-
economic development, and one that echoed an alternate
perspective I also heard often in the town. Throughout 1998,
I spent time with Gustavo and his family in Yalálag. He liked
to recount stories about people and places he had experienced.
One July afternoon, I listened while he recalled the changes that
had accompanied the construction of the road linking the town
to the capital city. His story was not, as I had expected, about
the progress and prosperity that the highway had brought to
Yalálag. In his view, the highway instead facilitated an exodus
of men and women towards urban destinations, the results of
which were not always positive. Rather than a story highlight-
ing the benefits of migration, Gustavo’s unfolding narrative
focused on its costs. In his own words: “No one wants to talk
about failure, about suffering. They think migration will solve
everything, but it doesn’t solve every problem.”
Gustavo’s unfolding narrative began long ago with the
death of his 19-year-old son, Miguel, a huarachero (sandalmak-
er). Miguel had begun as an apprentice with a local huarachero
while still a student in the town’s middle school. He began
cutting rubber soles, then advanced to sewing the rubber onto
the leather sole, and eventually was able to construct a san-
dal on his own. After graduating from middle school, Miguel
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 283

dedicated himself full-time to his trade and was able to sup-

port Gustavo’s family through his efforts. Despite his success,
Miguel was persuaded to migrate to Los Angeles’ in 1984 by
his uncle, Francisco. Miguel was impressed by his uncle’s
prosperity; on this trip alone he had carried with him many
gifts for his extended family, including clothing, electronic
goods, and many stories of life in the north. By migrating to
Los Angeles, Miguel hoped to be able to save enough money
to secure his own sandal-making business in Yalálag. Upon
arriving, he was able to get a job working with another paisano
in a restaurant and began sending his earnings to his parents.
A dutiful son, he wrote home often, reassuring his parents of
a speedy return. His dreams were short-lived, however. One
day, while waiting on a corner for the bus, he was assaulted
and shot to death. As Gustavo said, “His dreams ended that
day.” He stressed that his son had had a profession in Yalálag,
but had been lured by the prospect of money and commodi-
ties showcased by other migrants upon their return visits to
Yalálag.
While Gustavo was by then at peace with his son’s long-
ago death, the experience evolved into a particular perspec-
tive that fits well into the more general sentiments of migra-
tion as loss expressed by members of el Grupo Comunitario.
For Gustavo, migration promises more than it can actually
produce. Raising hopes of prosperity, it often brings the un-
foreseeable. Gustavo reminded me that his son and other mi-
grants have failed to recognize that commodities (like televi-
sions) are not required to live happily and that money cannot
solve everything. What migration brought, he argued, was “a
competition among migrants to outdo one another. Yet, their
living conditions and their quality of life were not improved.”
He pointed to the inability of many migrants to save mon-
ey despite the multiple jobs and long hours they worked in
the city. “The benefit is minimal,” he said, “and while in Los
Angeles, they work themselves like a machine.” While many
284 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

migrants imagine a life of leisure, they often end up working

six, if not seven, days a week; their days off are dedicated to
maintaining their household (cleaning, buying groceries, etc.)
and when time allows, visiting relatives and friends close by.
One of the most devastating effects migration had on people,
Gustavo said, was that upon return to Yalálag, “They no lon-
ger fit in because they don’t know how to work in the fields
or how to produce local crafts, especially if they went to Los
Angeles when they were youths. In the end they fail.”
For Gustavo, progress is not based on material wealth. His
son’s tragic story functions as proof that material desires can
be destructive, not progressive. Gustavo argued that migrants
want to “associate progress with concrete sidewalks, paved
roads, and material objects but in the end they aren’t satisfied,
they want more and so they are trapped in a continual search
for better things, more things.” According to Gustavo success
requires that individuals be able to perform the traditional
tasks performed by generations before him. While most mi-
grants do not suffer tragic death in pursuit of success, llike his
son, their embrace of Western capitalism and material wealth
itself represents a failure since it turns them into incompetent
versions of traditional Yalaltecans.
Gustavo, like other members of el Grupo Comunitario point-
ed to graffiti on the walls and concrete homes that remained
empty because their owners permanently reside elsewhere as
proof that migration does not necessarily lead to prosperity.
Progress, he said, “is possible through education and self-
sufficiency.” Ultimately, Gustavo, like other members of this
group, believes that community autonomy, based on self-suf-
ficiency, communality, and traditional cultural practices, pro-
vides the appropriate model for development in his home-
town. As he reminded me on more than one occasion, through
migration, individuals accumulate goods but the community
as a whole suffers. Thus he maintained that progress equals
sustainable development, and that this integral component of
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 285

local autonomy models would provide a secure livelihood for

all (c.f. Newling 2003).

Alternative Developments

The conflict in Yalálag during 1998 had immediate roots in

the divergent ways that different segments of the population
responded to mounting economic crisis, particularly since the
mid-twentieth century. While Mexico had a diverse export
base and was largely self-sufficient in staple food crops and
most consumer goods by the 1970s, the apparent success of
national modernization strategies and economic policies ap-
peared to have “bypassed or negatively affected” Oaxacan
settlements (Klaver 1997: 74). Oaxaca’s campesinos (rural farm-
ers) were not guaranteed access to credit, seeds, fertilizers,
and irrigation because government subsidies were directed
at large-scale agribusinesses rather than rural farmers. More-
over, the production of staple commodities, including corn,
stagnated and then declined after 1965, making it harder for
campesinos to increase their incomes. By the 1970s, it was clear
that the government’s import substitution strategy had failed
to develop the nation. Many of Oaxaca’s indigenous people
were expelled from the countryside into urban centers, but
they could not all be absorbed by the industrial sector (Arizpe
1981). With the collapse of world oil prices and the devalua-
tion of the peso in the 1980s, many indigenous people began
to migrate to the United States.
At a local level, Yalaltecans responded to mounting eco-
nomic crises with alternative strategies for development and
progress. One strategy of development embraced integration
into the global economy, while a second pursued an alternative
route informed by autochthonous forms of development. Pro-
ponents of the first strategy integrated themselves into national
and international markets directly through labor migration,
286 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

especially to the United States, and indirectly through the use

of dollar remittances to foster commercial development in the
municipio. Those who agitated for the second strategy pursued
an approach towards indigenous autonomy that included new
forms of local self-sufficiency and a program for cultural educa-
tion and revalorization, with the hopes of reducing pressure to
migrate. With time, proponents of these strategies (and their
followers) grew apart, while strengthening their own ideologies
regarding the definition and achievement of “progress.”
In 1998 the two groups surfaced publicly in factionalized
politics in the form of la Coordinadora and el Grupo Comunitario.
The differences between the two groups were revealed in the
way that each group argued for el progreso del pueblo (progress
for the community). As I demonstrate below, transnational con-
nections between Yalálag and Los Angeles influenced both the
definition and the promotion of these contending aspirations
for the future of community.

Migration as an Alternative Narrative for Progress

As Yalaltecans became increasingly involved in national

and international migration in response to economic condi-
tions, their purchasing power also increased, and many of
these migrants contributed remittances to their households
in their natal home. In Yalálag, homes built with remittance
money tend to be made of cement, often have more than one
story, and are furnished with appliances and electronics pur-
chased in the United States. In contrast, conventional homes
are predominantly single-story homes made of adobe, they
generally have latrines rather than flush toilets, lack showers
and water heaters, and are sparsely furnished.
Ideological changes accompanied the material ones. As
Rouse (1991) demonstrates in his work among Aguilillans in
northern Mexico, experience with wage work in California
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 287

was accompanied by shifts in class position, changes in pat-

terns of consumption and an ideology of the “good worker”
that included a spatial organization that differentiated be-
tween workplace and home. The patterns, established in the
North, differed considerably from those practiced in Mexico
and consequently produced tensions among family members
when migrants returned.
Yalaltecans in Los Angeles also experienced shifts in class
position as they engaged in wage work. As with Aguilillans,
shifts in Yalaltecan class position resulted in changing con-
sumption patterns and ideologies. To some extent these pat-
terns were gendered; men purchased electronics, cell phones,
and other types of durable goods while women often bought
more make-up, clothing, linens, and other items for the fam-
ily and home. In Yalálag women wore clothes made by local
seamstresses made from locally available fabric; in Los An-
geles, Yalaltecas were as label-conscious as other Angelinos.
During the time I spent in Los Angeles, I noted that among
family and friends, women often remark on the quality of each
other’s clothing by introducing where they bought goods. For
example, on a summer evening in 1999 I spent with my friend
Daniela and her cousin Patricia, Daniela complimented Pa-
tricia’s outfit. Patricia immediately replied, “It is from Nord-
strom’s” and added that her daughter only wore clothes from
the “Baby GAP.”
A transnational social field provided the context and re-
sources for the reconfiguration of subjectivity and construc-
tion of new ideologies (like those of progress and develop-
ment) that allowed Yalaltecans in Los Angeles to imagine
themselves differently in comparison to those still living in
Yalálag.13 Thus migrants like Alma spoke of a lack of progress,
of backwardness, and a need for “civilization.” Others, like
Daniela described Yalálag as if frozen in time. Upon return
from her first trip in five years, I called her to ask about her
family and friends back home. “How was Yalálag?” I asked.
288 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

“It is as if nothing has changed,” she said. “Well, sure there are
changes, but it is still so poor. It lacks modernity. It made me
sad.” On another occasion, I interviewed a 40-year-old man
named Oscar who had been living in Los Angeles for almost
twenty years. Originally from Yalálag, he stressed that he did
not like to hang out with paisanos, nor did he desire to return
permanently to his hometown, because he believed most
Yalaltecans did not share the values he held toward education
and family. When I asked Oscar about what he thought about
the future of Yalálag, he said, “What Yalálag needs is civiliza-
tion or progress.” Such comments were common in the late
1990s and illustrated that Yalaltecans living in Los Angeles
saw themselves as embodying progress, while viewing their
counterparts in Yalálag as their antithesis.
These ideologies of progress, while predominantly asso-
ciated with migrants in Los Angeles, are also expressed by
Yalaltecans in the natal home. In 1998, the emerging Coordina-
dora faction expressed progress in similar terms. Significantly,
it comprised largely returned migrants, merchants, and arti-
sans. Many Yalaltecans from Oaxaca City, Mexico City, and
Los Angeles returned throughout the year (by the busloads
on several occasions) to rally behind la Coordinadora for “el
progreso del pueblo.” On one occasion, while I was conducting
a census in Yalálag, I came to the house of a former migrant,
Eric. After asking about my research, he told me, “Yalálag is in
a state of poverty and needs progress. It needs infrastructure
to create jobs. It is hard to make a living here because there is
hardly any wage labor.” Eric was frustrated by what he saw
as the lack of waged labor positions and the seeming abun-
dance of opportunities for non-remunerated public service
and labor. He was convinced that “no work should be done
without wages.” Eric suggested that it was the responsibility
of the state to provide sources of employment or compensa-
tion for any type of labor that contributed to the building of
public works.14 Another prosperous merchant also told me
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 289

that it was time for Yalálag to change and give up “antiquated

ideas,” such as tequio (a form of non-waged communal labor).
Rather than “cling to tradition,” he suggested that Yalálag’s
residents should embrace progress and modernity.
While la Coordinadora saw integration into state, national,
and international markets as a solution to local problems, mi-
gration provided the context in which such economic integra-
tion has remained possible. Migration has certainly provided
economic funds to make integration possible by sponsoring
development projects at home, as various scholars have ar-
gued (see Bada 2004; Rivera-Salgado 1999; Rouse 1992), but
it has also contributed to changing conditions in Yalálag
which have made Yalaltecans more dependent on the state
over time. Further, through transnational migration, emerg-
ing subjectivities and ideologies have also intensified social
fissures at home and abroad as Yalaltecans pit themselves
against each other, both at the individual and at the collective
level, through direct comparisons that tend to malign some
individuals and groups over others based on newly acquired
ideologies and subjectivities, some of which are thought to
represent “progress” and others its absence or opposite.

Autonomy as an Alternative Strategy for Progress

The Grupo Comunitario pursued a different strategy for

development; one that focused on local autonomy. This local
autonomy movement was not driven by a desire to create a
separatist movement. Rather, like other indigenous autonomy
movements in Mexico, it was based on the right to self-suf-
ficiency and self-determination at the local level (e.g., Cleary
2008; Newling 2003; Speed and Collier 2000; Stavenhagen
2000). The ideology guiding Yalálag’s autonomy movement
was premised on a belief that the future of Yalálag depended
on its ability to carry out sustainable agriculture and other
290 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

cultural practices (including communal labor and municipal

service). Practicing self-sufficiency by producing their own ba-
sic foods, determining what local development projects should
be undertaken and providing their labor, would allow them
more autonomy in determining their local affairs; relying in-
creasingly on migration would give the state cause to interfere
in their local affairs.15 Indeed, leaders of el Grupo Comunitario
often pointed out higher rates of migration and the resulting
decrease in agricultural productivity contributed to a growing
demand for imported corn into the town, provided through
state-run storehouses in Yalálag.
A strategy for sustainable development emerged slowly,
over several decades. In part it was in response to deteriorat-
ing economic, political, and social conditions at the local level.
But it was also linked to cacicazgo (local system of political
bossism) and to efforts to curb increasing migration to the
United States, through a revalorization of indigenous practices,
customs, and beliefs. I was frequently reminded, “Caciques
are not interested in the community’s progress.” 16 El Grupo
Comunitario first emerged in response to local caciques (political
bosses) that controlled local politics from the 1940s through the
1970s. Largely associated with the merchant class, in Yalálag,
rather than a campesino base, local caciques promoted ideas
of progress espoused by the ruling party that ultimately in-
creased cleavages between the wealthy and poor in Yalálag.
Throughout this time period, political bossism was marked
by heightened episodes of violence towards campesino men
who were often at the mercy of local caciques. Yalaltecans I
interviewed described lynchings, machetazos (violent blows to
their bodies with machetes), gunshots, threats, and rampant
corruption under reigning systems of cacicazgo. As one woman
named Marta recalled, “I remember my father would tell us
stories about the caciques who governed Yalálag beforehand.
My father was afraid of them because if you didn’t do as they
asked, they would shoot you or harm you. They would do this
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 291

in plain sight since everyone lived in fear.” Like Marta, other

Yalaltecans lived in fear not only for their own lives but also
for the well-being of their families, and consequently, numer-
ous individuals and their families fled/migrated to escape the
violence.17
In the mid-1970s, local attitudes began to shift as campesinos
became increasingly dissatisfied with the poor material condi-
tions under cacique rule (Equipo Pueblo 1988: 200). The town
plaza and central buildings, for example, had fallen into a
state of decay. According to Yalaltecans I interviewed in 1998,
the walls of the municipal building were severely cracked due
to water damage. People described how the smell of urine, al-
cohol and feces overwhelmed the place. The perimeter of the
plaza was littered with trash. Don Felipe, an elder town coun-
cil member, told me: “The municipal building was a disgrace.
The offices leaked when it rained, there was paper strewn
about and the walls and ceiling were crumbling inside. At the
same time, we lived in a state of fear and our labor was used
for the cacique’s individual advancement, not for the pueblo.”
In addition to the poor state of Yalálag’s public buildings, the
town lacked basic sewage, potable water, and communication
systems.
In response to deteriorating conditions in Yalálag, a group
of young men and women (who in 1998 led el Grupo Comuni-
tario) banded together to put an end to the reigning system of
political bosses. As the group intensified its efforts to oust the
caciques from power through the 1970s, they took their struggle
to the state’s capital. Men and women traveled to Oaxaca City
to meet with state representatives in the capital, speaking with
governors, judges, and deputies of congress as they sought to
bring about fair and safe political changes in Yalálag. After a
decade of negotiating it became clear that state representatives
were not interested in local matters. The group, now backed
by a substantial portion of Yalaltecans, took matters into their
own hands. As my hostess told me: “Those were exciting days,
292 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

when the pueblo held hands together to fight against cacicazgo

and reclaim what was ours [the pueblo].” In 1980, the group’s
struggle culminated in the defeat of local cacicazgo when they
physically took over the municipal building, signaling a new
chapter in Yalálag’s history.
Since 1980, this group organized itself around a struggle for
local autonomy based on self-sufficiency through the produc-
tion of basic foods, and a revalorization of Zapotec language
and customs. Working together throughout the 1980s, the group
promoted customary norms and practices by enforcing a system
of servicio (public service) within the local municipality, host-
ing public communal assemblies to determine what projects
should be pursued and how they would manage them, orga-
nizing communal labor parties where the men would provide
free labor for the benefit of everyone, and promoting gotzona
(a system of mutual aid) to help one another with productive
activities centered around agriculture. Jaime, a member of the
group, described the work of the group in the 1980s:

In 1981, we could finally count on leaders who were

working for the general welfare of the community. At that
time, municipalities in Oaxaca and the rest of the country
received very insignificant resources from the state. This
meant that the welfare of the community had to be built
on the basis of tequio and servicio. During that era we
came together to weave a 10-year program for communal
development.

As a result of these efforts, the municipal building was

rebuilt over a period of several years, a sewage system was
installed throughout the town, and the school buildings were
restored and refurbished. These communal norms are part of a
larger set of guidelines outlined by the group, which form the
basis of their program for development based on historically
constituted practices.
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 293

This movement for autonomy was strengthened by links

to a growing regional, state, and national indigenous move-
ment in the 1980s demanding the right to the self-determina-
tion of indigenous people to decide how they should govern
themselves as indigenous people within their own towns and
villages. To a large extent, indigenous Mexican people were
responding to worsening rural conditions and to the intrusion
of the state in local towns via party politics, nationalist educa-
tion, and failed development policies and projects, many of
the same conditions that were driving indigenous people to
migrate elsewhere. Yalálag’s autonomy project leaders sought
to curb these negative forces:
The ideology behind the local autonomy movement
was based on a conviction that without self-sufficiency and
communal practices, Yalálag would become completely
dependent on the state, thus infringing on people’s ability
to determine “progress” in Yalálag for themselves.

Practicing self-sufficiency by producing their own basic

foods, determining what local development projects should be
built, and providing their labor has enabled indigenous people
to stand up to the state’s efforts to interfere in their local affairs.
By asserting their right to self-determination and autonomy,
el Grupo Comunitario invoked tradition and culture as instru-
ments of struggle against the state. As Jaime, a member of the
group once confided:

When we defeated the caciques, we entered the

process of revalorizing our own culture. We were able to
understand the value of Zapotec language. We were able
to see the importance of tequio and community service
as instruments, which have facilitated advances in the
welfare of indigenous towns. We were to see that through
tequio, community service, Zapotec language, communal
assemblies, and our council of elders, that our traditions
were a political instrument with which we could confront
the state.
294 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

By asserting local autonomy and a right to self-determina-

tion, el Grupo Comunitario could claim not only ownership of
their natural resources, language, and customs; they could also
decide their own terms for development, while asserting their
voice in regional, state, and national politics.

Conclusion

The two narratives presented at the beginning of this es-

say, that of Alma and Gustavo, offer divergent constructions
of “progress” both at home in Yalálag and in other parts of
the wider transnational social field. These perspectives are re-
peated in the stories and gossip, and are enacted in the aspira-
tions and choices of Yalaltecans on a transnational level. Alma
and Gustavo used their experiences in and with Los Angeles
to comment on progress in Yalálag. Their views about the re-
lationship of migration to development and progress reflect
the divergent ideologies of Yalálag’s contending factions. Yet
two points are necessary to acknowledge: first, transnational
migration has made both these views possible; and second,
these migration-generated positions formed the basis of a
new kind of Yalaltecan conflict.
Migration has reconfigured Yalálag’s social field into a
transnational landscape spanning places like Chicago, Los
Angeles, Mexico City, and Yalálag. Accompanying a steady
increase in migration over the last five decades, a significant
change in class structure has occurred in the natal home.
Whereas wealth was limited to the merchant class of yester-
year, migration has made the accumulation of wealth possible
for members of any class. Thus class divides now oppose not
only merchants with peasants but migrants with non-mi-
grants. The changes are both material and ideological. Most
important here are ideological changes surrounding notions
of development and progress. Overall, Yalaltecans expressed
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 295

divided opinions over whether or not migration had contrib-

uted to overall improved conditions at the local level.
Gustavo’s comments on the tragic death of his son (re-
gardless of one’s perspective on the desire to consume West-
ern goods) remind us of the tragic failures of migration. Gus-
tavo provides a critique of the claim that migration is the path
to development, a way to achieve progress. As he stressed,
despite the concrete homes and electronic and other goods
many families enjoyed, migration had not improved general
living conditions in Yalálag; nor had it created new infrastruc-
ture. For Alma, working and living in Los Angeles provided
a context for new ideas about progress, based on her experi-
ences of urbanization and wage labor, and the resulting con-
sumption practices they engender (or “enable” if you want
a positive spin, as Alma would probably see it). Alma rep-
resents Yalaltecans for whom migration equals development.
In their words, they left Yalálag to better themselves, para me-
jorarse, or to improve their situation, and they express their
movement towards progress as unilinear: fromYalálag to Los
Angeles, from ignorance (“de la ignorancia”) to openness (be-
ing abiertos). Indeed, members of la Coordinadora believed
that el Grupo Comunitario was keeping Yalaltecans from pro-
gressing through its revitalization of Zapotec language and
culture. As I was told by a member of la Coordinadora: “They
fail to see that Zapotec language signifies backwardness.” As
I have argued in this essay, rather than a mere struggle over
power among caciques, Yalaltecan conflict, in 1998, was more
deeply about competing ideologies of progress and develop-
ment fundamentally shaped by the transnational movement
of people. Rather than viewing Yalaltecan dissent based on
narratives of cacicazgo as the root cause of conflict, the essay
provides an historic account of economic changes and migra-
tion to offer a more nuanced understanding of local conflict.
Yalaltecan conflict viewed through the lens of cacicazgo may
appear static, with individuals and classes pitted against each
296 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

other. But if we open our analytical lens wider, factionalized

discord is better understood as a set of ongoing debates about
progress, development, and the future of Yalálag.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank the many Yalaltecans in both Los Angeles and
California who have made this work possible. I remain indebted to Do-
nato Ramos Pioquinto at the Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de
Oaxaca for his advice and sponsorship of my ethnographic research in
Oaxaca. Research for this article was supported by the National Science
Foundation’s Dissertation Improvement Grant, a Fulbright/Garcia Robles
Grant, University of Michigan’s Rackham Graduate School, and the Social
Science Research Council. Follow-up research and writing was supported
by Dartmouth College, the University of Michigan’s Labor Institute, and
Yale University’s Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program, and Mac Millan
Center. I am grateful to Bianet Castellanos, Randy La Hote, Erica Lehrer,
Ellen Moodie, William Orchard, Terry Woronov, and the anonymous re-
viewers for their critical comments. All translations and any subsequent
errors are my own.

NOTES

1 This communal assembly took place two months before my ar-

rival in Yalálag. The observations I make here are based on video,
photographs, and other documentary sources made available to
me. The number of attendants is an approximation based on the
video I viewed.
2 The ways that migrants strategically employ various media (includ-
ing video, photography, and print) to make claims to membership
and belonging as Yalaltecans, while beyond the scope of the pres-
ent discussion, is a matter I address in my doctoral dissertation
(Gutiérrez Nájera 2007).
3 Jeffrey Cohen (1999; 2004) provides a comprehensive discussion
of tequio and servicio, two indigenous practices that provide labor
for the construction of public works and political administration,
respectively.
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 297

4 Scholars of Yalálag have also commented on the presence of local

conflict during their research (Fuente 1949; Macgill 1970; Rocque
1990).
5 Oaxacan newspaper examples include: Noticias stories such as:
“Por lío politico excluyen a la delegación yalalteca,” July 15, 1998;
“Sangre en las votaciones de Yalálag en agosto de 1989,” July 8,
1998; and “Despótico y racista, el fallo del Congreso contra Yalálag,”
July 15, 1998; Marca’s headline on October 21, 1998 read “Intran-
quilidad en Yalálag; and El Gráfico, on November18, 1998, printed
an article with the headline, “Agitador professional en Yalálag: el
director del SER.” At the national level, La Jornada, Mexico’s lead-
ing newspaper, has printed articles on the conflict also including:
an article by Blanche Petrich, “Yalálag: desgobierno y violencia,”
March 9, 2000; “Qué Pasa en Yalálag: El Consejo de Ancianos tras
las rejas,” April 12, 2000; La Crónica de Hoy, also has printed articles
and commentaries such as Teresa Jardi’s commentary “Yalálag: un
pueblo acosado,” July 30, 1998. In the United States, news about
Yalaltecan conflict has including Laurie Goering’s articles in the
Chicago Tribune: For example, “In Mexico, a quest for autonomy:
Indigenous groups seek greater say in local affairs,” June 15, 2001;
“Mexico’s two very different views of democracy,” June 2001.
6 Volantes are anonymously written, mimeographed or photocopied
tracts distributed throughout the community. In Yalálag, they are
dispersed along footpaths and into people’s yards. In Los Angeles,
they are often placed in people’s mailboxes, if not stuffed into their
doorways.
7 Such is the case in many other migrant-sending regions.
8 Yalálag is divided into four barrios or residential areas: Santa Rosa,
Santa Catalina, San Juan, and San Antonio. This form of social
organization is reminiscent of the pre-hispanic altepetl system of
sociopolitical organization that divided communities into four
sections to facilitate redistribution systems managed by the state.
See James Lockhart (1992) for a further discussion of altepetls and
their functions within a larger Nahua cosmogony.
9 This number is based on census material I collected in both Los
Angeles and Yalálag between 1998 and 1999.
10 The extent to which these early braceros impacted local economies,
cultural practices and beliefs varies from place to place along the Si-
erra Norte of Oaxaca. This situation in Yalálag appears to be similar
to that described by Berg (1974) in relation to the economic impact
that early braceros left on Zoogocho, a town in close proximity to
Yalálag. But Hirabayashi (1993: 64) argues that in other locations
298 URBAN ANTHROPOLOGY VOL. 38(2-4), 2009

like the ones he studied, early braceros had little to no impact upon
return to their towns. Despite differences, there is clear evidence
that the program propelled migration to the U.S. For example,
Marilyn Davis (1990: 3) argues that “When braceros returned home
with money in their pockets and stories of even more where that
came from, the numbers of job seekers heading north doubled.”
11 This pattern of migration is similar to that uncovered by Hulshof
(1991) in the Zapotec town of San Lucas Quiavani, where transna-
tional migration skyrocketed in the 1980s.
12 Yalálag has several churches distributed among its barrios; each
contains a statue of a patron saint within their walls. The church,
located in the center of the town, is home to Yalálag’s patron saint,
San Juan, and serves as the main place of worship among Catho-
lics.
13 Perez’ (2004) discussion of “los de afuera,” a reference to Puerto
Ricans, who were born and/or have made a life outside the island,
provides a poignant analysis of the ways transnational migration in-
fluences shifting subjectivities. In this case, transnational migration
provides a context through Puerto Ricans on the mainland come to
see themselves as separate from los de afuera who are maligned as
corrupt. Perez also finds that notions of progress are being recon-
figured across transnational space. Among indigenous migrants,
Guidi (1992) also finds that migration provides a context whereby
migrants are able to create new identities while eliminating those
stigmatizing elements.
14 However, it is unlikely that the state will contribute more money
to local economies in light of recent trends in which the Mexican
state turns increasingly toward migrants to develop their own
local infrastructures, while reducing local spending. Oaxacan mi-
grants living in the U.S. are being asked to take responsibility for
the development of their natal villages. Programs like Dos por Uno
and Tres por Uno, match each migrant dollar with federal and state
monies to contribute to infrastructural development projects such
as paving roads, building schools, etc.
15 Clearly expressed in a document outlining bylaws for cultural
conservation and revitalization entitled “Las Leyes de Conservación
de las Tradiciones Zapotecas en Yalálag,” leaders of el Grupo Comuni-
tario lay out local demands for autonomy and self-determination.
As pithily expressed in the document, “The state has no right to
impose its customs, values and products, nor its juridical, politi-
cal and economic systems. Only we have the right to decide our
future.”
Gutiérrez Najera: DIVERGENT IDEOLOGIES OF PROGRESS 299

16 “A los caciques no les interesa el progreso del pueblo.” While pueblo

can be interpreted as nation, people, or community, here the latter
connotation is most appropriate.
17 It is not certain how many people fled to Oaxaca in response to
violence. But in collecting migration narratives among Yalaltecans
who had settled in Oaxaca, many offered oppressive conditions
under cacicazgo or personal acts of violence suffered by parents or
family members as a primary reason for their family relocation. In
1998, one Yalaltecan told me he could not recount the violence that
had forced his family to relocate to Oaxaca because he still lived in
fear.

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