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WINTER

Volume  51   Number  4 JOURNAL  of  the  SOUTHWEST Winter  2009


THE SOUTHWEST CENTER
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
TUCSON
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Journal of the Southwest, founded in 1959 as Arizona and the West, began
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JOURNAL OF THE
SOUTHWEST
Volume 51, Number 4
Winter 2009

Edited by
Joseph Carleton Wilder

THE SOUTHWEST CENTER


UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
TUCSON

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Assistant Editor
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Production
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University of Arizona University of Arizona
B ernard L. F ontana C harles T atum
Tucson, Arizona University of Arizona
J acques G alinier F rancisco M anzo T aylor
CNRS, Université de Paris X Hermosillo, Sonora
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Migration and Urbanization in Northwest
Mexico’s Border Cities

J e s ú s Á n g e l E n r í q u e z A c o s ta

This essay analyzes the influence of migration in the development of


Northwest Mexico’s border cities, most specifically in Tijuana, Nogales,
and Ciudad Juárez. Northwest Mexico has become one of the most
dynamic regions in the country, not only because of the maquiladora
(assembly-plant) industry established since the 1960s in Tijuana, Mexi-
cali, Nogales, San Luis Río Colorado, Agua Prieta, and Ciudad Juárez,
but also because of the consistently high levels of population growth
and urbanization these dynamic urban areas have sustained since the
mid-twentieth century. Among Mexico’s border cities notable for their
high rates of population growth and urbanization, Tijuana, Nogales,
and Juárez are particularly exemplary. Today’s booming border cities
were, with the exception of Juárez, merely small frontier towns at the
beginning of the twentieth century. It was not until the great post–World
War II economic expansion of the U.S. Southwest that these border
towns really began to take on urban dimensions. In Tijuana’s case, early
development was based on the establishment of dive bars and taverns,
largely for the U.S. market, lending the town legendary status a place
of vice. Nogales, on the other hand, began largely as a port-of-entry for
railroad and other types of cross-border traffic. The destiny of these cities
was, early on, intimately linked to the United States, whose economic
trends directly influenced the border’s demographic dynamics as well as
the flow of goods back and forth across the international boundary.
The powerful and deep transborder relationships established among
cities on opposite sides of the line are characterized by the large structural
differences between the two nations, and by the Mexico’s dependence
on the United States for manufactured goods, merchandise, capital,
and employment. Mexican migration towards these border cities in the
twentieth century was driven by the relatively open possibilities for cross-

J e s ú s Á n g e l E n r í q u e z A c o s ta is professor and researcher at the Universi-


dad de Sonora, Hermosillo.

Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 445–456

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446   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

ing (legally or otherwise) into the United States, and by the access to
relative economic prosperity that those cities offered, including avenues
offered by the burgeoning drug trade. These cities are in many ways as
much or more culturally, socially, and economically articulated with the
United States than with Mexico.
The growth of maquiladora plants drastically altered the border cities’
physiognomy and social dynamics. The industry provided an extreme
shock to the regional (as well as national) economy, producing a huge
boom in spin-off businesses that serve the maquiladoras. Heavy and rapid
population growth brought with it enormous challenges for urban plan-
ning. The pressure on city governments to maintain (much less expand)
basic services, infrastructure, and equipment increased dramatically, while
their capacity remained more or less stagnant. Insecurity and violence
came to characterize large portions of these cities, as so-called irregular
settlements grew seemingly overnight. Competition for urban land grew
fierce, as the real estate market fueling “the city” boomed.
The growth of the maquiladora sector since the implementation of
the 1965 Border Industrialization Program (BIP) thus multiplied border
cities’ attractiveness for internal migration, while also offering a new
type of “urban settlement that did not have to face the contradictions
or obstacles faced elsewhere in Mexico, the old social structures and pre-
modern institutions characteristic of an agricultural and rural society”
(Canales 2003: 163). Mexico’s National Border Program (PRONAF)
was created in 1961 to create the necessary infrastructure to absorb
border-city growth. PRONAF also included a cultural component
that would encourage identity construction amongst the new settlers.
The consequences of maquiladora activity and the related urbanization
processes rendered the border cities extremely fluid environments. By
2000, Baja California contained 85 percent of the population residing
in the border cities; Chihuahua contained 42 percent; while Sonora had
23 percent (SEDESOL 2001).
There are thirty-eight municipalities along the 3,152 kilometers of
the U.S.–Mexico border. Extending the border area 150 kilometers to
the south brings the number of municipalities to eighty. The thirty-eight
municipalities immediately adjacent to the United States represent 8.86
percent of Mexico’s national territory, and 1.56 percent of the nation’s
total number of municipalities. According to the 2000 Mexican census,
those thirty-eight municipalities had a combined population of 5,505,501
inhabitants, or 5.65 percent of the national population.

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Migration and Urbanization   ✜   447

The border states’ total population for 2000 was 16.6 million people,
compared to only 2.1 million in 1930 (see table 1). Hence over these
seventy years, the region’s population grew sevenfold, much faster than
the national average of fivefold. Baja California’s population grew by
a factor of fifty between 1930 and 2005, from 48,327 inhabitants to
2,844,469. The effects of migration are also seen in the average age of
the population. Fifteen- to sixty-four-year-olds make up 61.7 percent
of the border population, compared to 57.5 percent in the rest of the
country. There are relatively fewer women in the border area: 49.8 percent
compared to 51.2 percent for the rest of the nation. This suggests that
more working-age men than women are settling on the border. Another
demographic statistics that indicates the weight of border-city migration
is that 41.4 percent of the inhabitants were born in another state, which
is twice the overall national average of 20.3 percent.
Table 1. Population growth on the northern Mexican Border

Year Border states population

1930 2,054,345
1950 3,762,963
1970 7,848,169
1990 13,246,991
2000 16,642,676

Source: Sedesol, 2001

The border states maintain a low population density of twenty-one


inhabitants per square kilometer (17 percent of the national population),
compared to the national average of fifty. Population densities in Tijuana,
Nogales, and Ciudad Juárez are 1,151, 97, and 251 inhabitants per square
kilometer, respectively acording to the 2000 census. Mexico’s border
population is largely concentrated in a few cities. According to INEGI,
82 percent of the population in border municipalities lives in one of ten
cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants; 60 percent live in the three
largest border cities of Tijuana, Mexicali, and Ciudad Juárez alone.
Such population densities render the border region singular within
the Mexican Republic. It has higher levels of socioeconomic develop-
ment than the rest of the country, resulting in lower mortality and birth
rates. Women’s participation in direct economic activities is higher in
the border cities, and women there are likewise more educated than in

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448   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

the interior. Part of the border’s dynamism, then, derives from a sense
of hope that life will finally provide concrete opportunities.
As mentioned, the border’s economic growth depends in great measure
on the maquiladora industry. These plants pay low salaries comparative
to the United States. The largest maquiladoras, those with the most
costly products and highest number of employees, are in Tijuana and
Ciudad Juárez (see table 2).

Table 2. Border cities with large numbers of maquiladoras

City Number of Maquiladoras Jobs Produced

Juárez 278 196,500


Tijuana 576 156,000
Reynosa 141 71,167
Chihuahua 76 45,932
Torreon 43 21,610
Nuevo Laredo 56 17,997

Source: INEGI 2005b

In 2000 the percentage of the border-states population receiving two


or more times the national minimum wage was 32 percent, compared
to 43 percent nationally. Within border cities, however, this percentage
rises to 61 percent. In other words, border states demonstrate large
internal disparities, which are, moreover, most pronounced within urban
areas. The Gini index shows wide economic inequalities: 50 percent of
border urban households (the lower class) receive only 13.6 percent of
total citywide revenues; in contrast, 10 percent of households (the upper
class) receive 48 percent. Estimates suggest that at least 24.8 percent
of the border urban population lives in poverty. According to Mexican
government, the poorest segment is likely to have migrated from out-
side the border region and have short-term residence in the city. It is a
vulnerable population living in ramshackle housing made from materials
discarded by local industries, working as laborers, and having the lowest
levels of education.
These numbers portray an urban dynamic of ostentatious wealth
alongside utter destitution. Such areas of high vulnerability pressure city
governments to provide basic services, create chaos for urban planning,
diminish the city’s image to outsiders, and often produce extreme pol-

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Migration and Urbanization   ✜   449

lution. Meanwhile, the assembly plants press for more and more land,
reducing the space available for housing. This, combined with heavy real
estate speculation and the border cities’ generally hilly topographies,
inflates land values.
The inability of local governments to regulate urban development,
along with legal loopholes, weak federal institutions (particularly in
terms of environmental regulation), and maquiladoras’ special federal
dispensations to build new plants all combine to create a deteriorating
urban border environment. Tijuana, Nogales, and Ciudad Juárez, for
example, suffer environmental-quality problems related to the lack of
pavement—50 percent of these cities’ streets aren’t paved (SNIM 2003).
Industrial activity, heavy vehicle traffic, inadequate sanitation services,
and poor sewerage or drainage increase the risk of illnesses and devastat-
ing floods in wide sectors of these cities. Uneven urban topographies,
meanwhile, create ample opportunities for clandestine garbage disposal.
Assembly plants contribute to the contamination problem through
their use of highly toxic chemicals in their operations, with little or no
information available to the public for spill-related emergencies. Indeed,
the information on factories’ overall chemical dynamics is imprecise and
scarce.
Potable water presents additional difficulties. Rapid population growth
combined with water use by the maquiladoras has dramatically increased
domestic and industrial water consumption in these border cities. All face
water shortages. Tijuana is supplied by the Colorado River, two hundred
kilometers to the east. Nogales receives its potable water via a forty-
kilometer pipeline from the Magdalena River basin. Ciudad Juárez derives
its water from wells located in the Río Bravo (Rio Grande) basin.
The border cities face serious challenges in providing buildable space
because of their very hilly topographies, the difficulties of privatizing
federal or ejido lands, and skyrocketing property values. Land is fre-
quently colonized or squatted informally and haphazard development
subsequently legalized. But the fast pace and complex dynamics of this
process strain local governments’ abilities to provide even the most
basic services. The fluidity of the border context works against state
efforts to provide citizens any kind of legal certainty regarding property
ownership, which in turn, renders urban planning a highly volatile field.
This uncertainty, moreover, drives up the price of housing: financial
institutions are cautious in their lending practices, construction costs
are inflated, and most of the easily buildable open spaces are now fully

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450   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

developed. These elements combine to create tremendous housing dif-


ficulties for the urban working class on the border, for many of whom
life is precarious. For the middle- and upper-class residents of these cities
the issues are distinct yet related. Their houses are larger and located
in neighborhoods containing other such homes. They, too, pay inflated
land prices and construction costs, though, of course, they have much
more capacity to absorb them.
The border cities are reproducing urban forms that are ever more
fragmented in spatial and social terms. The North American logic of the
urban corridor that tends to concentrate economic and social power in
growth poles divides urban complexes into shopping malls, industrial
parks, and gated communities. In contrast, the border cities maintain a
diversified tertiary sector—in line with processes of globalization more
generally—that is comparable to the maquiladora industry in terms of
income generation. Local trade, tourism, and the service industries—all
quite traditional border activities—lend these cities an image of singular
urban dynamism.
The maquiladora industry has contributed in large measure to the
overall pattern of demographic growth in border cities. Its economy takes
advantage of the border’s peculiar situation both within Mexico and, more
broadly, within the global division of labor. Maquiladoras’ contribution
to gross output of the border cities, particularly of Tijuana and Ciudad
Juárez, is significant, as are their per-capita contribution. Only Monterrey,
Guadalajara, and Mexico City are more dynamic economically.

The Tijuana Case

According to the 2005 census, Tijuana had 1,410,700 inhabitants and


covered an area of 25,000 square hectares, resulting in a population
density of 1,377 inhabitants per square kilometer. For comparison, in
1984 the city covered 10,300 hectares. In other words, its built area
more than doubled in twenty years. Some estimates suggest that the city
grows by 2.25 hectares a day. The city’s population growth rate between
1990 and 1994 was 5.81 percent; from 1995 to 2000, it was 4.072.7
percent (SNIM 2003); and from 2000 to 2005, 3.9 percent (see table
3). Such growth is significantly higher than the 1.85 percent national
average for the same period (INEGI 2005a). Between 1990 and 2000,
Tijuana’s population doubled. This tremendous growth rate illustrates

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Migration and Urbanization   ✜   451

the influence of migration on the city’s demographic dynamics. Accord-


ing to the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (in Tijuana), Tijuana grows at
a rate two times faster than its cross-border neighbor, San Diego. Based
on current population trends, by 2020 these cities together will form a
conglomeration of 7.5 million people. Tijuana represents 48.67 percent
of the total population of Baja California state and 58.2 percent of the
city’s residents migrated from outside the state.

Table 3. Tijuana population growth, 1950–2000

Year Population Growth Rate (%)

1950 65,364 9.74%


1960 165,690 7.76
1970 340,583 2.97
1980 461,257 5.06
1990 747,381 5.13
1995 991,592 5.81
2000 1,210,820 4.07
2005 1,410,700 3.9

Source: INEGI Census: 1950, 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005

The intensive population growth has rendered Tijuana the fastest-


growing metropolitan area in the country (CONAPO 2003). Neigh-
boring cities such as Rosarito and Tecate have now become nearly
coterminous with Tijuana, their populations expanding at a rate of 7.7
percent and 5.2 percent, respectively. Rosarito is expected to double its
population in the next nine years; Tecate will do the same in thirteen
years (IMPLAN 2003).
Tijuana’s employment rate for people of working age is 99.55 percent,
according to the 2000 census (SNIM, 2003). Of this, 40.72 percent work
for the secondary sector, and 52.53 percent for the tertiary. According
to 2004 INEGI data, Tijuana’s unemployment rate is 0.9 percent, the
lowest in the cities under study here, and indeed in the entire nation.
Tijuana ranks first in the nation for the number of industrial parks, with
fifty-one. These parks house 576 facilities, employing 156,098 people
(these data are from May 2005, published by INEGI 2005b).
Tijuana’s drastic population and economic growth, particularly within
the last decade, has created an extremely chaotic demographic scenario

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452   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

for local government. City planners are forced to negotiate between the
constant land and infrastructure demands of a growing population and of
the maquiladoras. These conditions, moreover, are quite propitious for
land speculators and real estate investors, rendering available residential
land ever scarcer. The real estate market thus becomes constitutive of
both economic and political power. Those who control it often have the
capacity decide when, how, and where the city grows, despite the plans
and programs of city government. Tijuana, for example, has an enormous
problem with irregular landholding. Some estimates suggest that of the
city’s approximately 135,000 lots, around 40 percent lack formal titles
for the land or home (La Frontera 2004).

The Nogales Case

Nogales had a population of 193,517 in 2005, or 7.2 percent of the


overall population of Sonora (INEGI 2005a), and 98 percent of the
population of the county of which it is the seat. It ranks sixth in popula-
tion among Sonora’s urban areas. Although it is a relatively small border
city compared with Tijuana, Mexicali, or Ciudad Juárez, between 1990
and 2000, it had a population growth rate of 4.3 percent (INEGI 2000),
one of the highest in the country, and more than two times the national
and regional averages. Almost 27 percent of Nogales’s population was
born outside of Sonora. Another significant percentage was born in other
Sonoran cities. These data thus illustrate migration’s importance for the
city’s demographic transformation.
On the index of human development, Nogales ranks highly, with a
per-capita gross economic product of US$10,920. But, like Tijuana, the
city has its extreme contrasts. Just under 43 percent of its population
lives in cramped shanty towns, and almost 28 percent of Nogalenses
earn less than the equivalent of two times the national minimum wage.
Just over 16 percent of the city’s houses lack potable water; 5.5 percent
lack electrical power; 12 percent have no sewerage; and 8 percent have
dirt floors (SNIM 2003). These percentages are lower than the state
averages, but indicate that neighborhoods have developed so quickly
that basic urban infrastructure has yet to fully serve them. According to
the Nogales Urban Development Plan (revised in 2003), only sixteen
of eighty-six total neighborhoods enjoy all the services typical of basic
urban infrastructure.

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Migration and Urbanization   ✜   453

The Ciudad Juárez Case

According to the 2005 census, Ciudad Juárez had 1,313,000 inhabit-


ants, distributed over 21,630 hectares. In 1960, by contrast, the city’s
population was a mere 276,985 people distributed over 1,984 hectares.
Within forty years the city’s population quadrupled while its surface area
grew by a factor of twelve, growth prompted mostly by the maquila-
dora industry. Ciudad Juárez has been the fastest growing city in the
country over the last twenty years. Ciudad Juárez began to really take
off in the 1950s, when its population expanded at an average rate of 9
percent. During the 1990s, at the height of its expansion, its average
growth was 4.34 percent, significantly faster than the national average
of 1.85 percent (see table 4). The 2000 census shows that 40 percent
of the Chihuahua state population lives in Juárez, versus 28 percent in
1980 (INEGI 2000).

Table 4. Population growth in Ciudad Juárez, 1950–2000

Year Population Growth Rate (%)

1950 131,308 9.09%


1960 276,985 7.72
1970 424,135 4.52
1980 567,365 2.85
1990 798,499 3.56
2000 1,218,817 4.34

Source: INEGI, 2000

At least 41 percent of Juárez’s population is non-native, and 60 percent


of non-native residents have lived in the city less than ten years. Most
migrants have come from the states of Coahuila, Durango, Zacatecas,
and Veracruz. The city’s manufacturing and commercial activities, along
with its role as a stopover point for U.S.-bound migrants have given
the city a youthful population profile. The city’s largest age group is
between the ages of twenty and twenty-four—larger than the birth to
nine-year-old group. Moreover, its masculinity index, 101.1 percent, is
higher than the state and the national rates (INEGI 2000). More men
are migrating to the city.

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454   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

Here again, the data reveal the importance of migration for the
demographic growth of the city, as well as the pressures it creates for
local government. The annual housing deficit, for instance, is estimated
at around 12,000. The real estate market is simply inadequate to handle
the demand. The problem is exacerbated by the inability of the real state
market to provide affordable housing for workers.
The index of human development gives Ciudad Juárez a decent rank-
ing. Nonetheless, nearly 41 percent of its population lives in cramped
housing (CONAPO 2003). The city’s per-capita GDP is US$12,970,
the highest in the state, with 40 percent of the workforce earning less
than two times the minimum wage. Strikingly, 60 percent of population
receives less than five times the national minimum wage while 11.4 per-
cent receives ten or more times the minimum wage. Ciudad Juárez has a
Gini index of 0.5829, one of the highest among the large border cities.
This figure speaks to the extreme disparities of income distribution. The
city’s social and economic polarization has evident spatial expressions in
Juárez, whose western and southeast sides have high levels of poverty.
Estimates are that 15.3 percent of city inhabitants live in conditions of
extreme poverty. In 13 percent of these homes, kitchens serve as bed-
rooms; 30 percent have but a single bedroom and house at least four
people (SNIM 2003).

Conclusions

The urbanization process observed in the relatively young border cit-


ies has produced serious deficiencies. Fast-paced population growth,
without proper urban planning, promotes the development of irregular
settlements. Second, maquiladora activity has profoundly shaped the city
surroundings, forcing the governments to provide infrastructure hastily
without the necessary zoning in place. Third, city governments often
have little control over the design and orchestration of urban policies in
a context of extreme disorder and chaos. Regulations are sorely lacking
or weakly enforced. Such deficiencies promote extreme socio-spatial
polarization with spaces of poverty where the lack of public services,
equipment, infrastructure, and housing only seem to worsen, rendering
those populations increasingly vulnerable. At the same time, the fabulous
wealth of the border cities produces spaces of privilege where services
are reliable and security is tightly controlled. Nonetheless, border cities

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Migration and Urbanization   ✜   455

will remain attractive for Mexican immigrants for many years to come
because they offer the hope of opportunity. <

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acosta.indd 456 1/25/10 12:01:49 PM
Tijuana: Border, Migration, and
Gated Communities

B R I S A V I O L E TA C A R R A S C O G A L L E G O S

Northern Mexico’s border cities have experienced the most acceler-


ated demographic growth of any region in the country as a result of
internal migration. Many among this migrant population arrive at the
border looking for an opportunity to cross into the United States. But,
when faced with the difficulties that this entails, they end up settling
temporarily in border cities, eventually taking on work and other com-
mitments there. What was to be a temporary stay thus becomes perma-
nent. Government initiatives, such as the 1942 Bracero program and
the 1965 Border Industrialization Program (BIP) figure prominently
in the diverse range of factors stimulating the mass migration of work-
ers into northern Mexico (Zenteno 1993: 15–19; Verduzco, Bringas,
and Valenzuela 1995: 88). This paper analyzes the most recent trend
affecting demographic change: Tijuana’s real estate and construction
boom, its effects on the rapid expansion of the city’s surface area, and
the relationship of such expansion to the growth of gated communities.
It takes as a point of reference data generated in a field study conducted
in Tijuana during October 2004 and March 2005.1
Tijuana evinces all of the processes of big border cities: large-scale
population growth and expansion of its urban surface area, increased
opportunities for work, and fast-paced exchange of goods and services.
The city developed much later than many other cities in Northwest
Mexico, but its growth has been explosive. In 1900 Tijuana had 242
inhabitants (Zenteno 1993: 13). By 2005, this number had skyrocketed
to 1,448,944 (CONAPO n.d.). Within these dynamics of population
growth the border city becomes a context of multiple realities and mul-
tiple lifeways, a place expressing the restlessness and fears of its diverse
inhabitants. For many of those residents native to the border cities, or at
least with deeper roots there, the floating population seems dangerous,

B R I S A V I O L E TA C A R R A S C O G A L L E G O S S H I L L I N G is a P H .D. candidate in
social sciences at the Universidad de Guadalajara.

Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 457–476

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458 | J OURNAL OF THE S OUTHWEST

problematic, and harmful. Long-term residents understand the latter as


temporary inhabitants poised at a point of crossing. Migrants are thus
often blamed for the urban problems, traffic jams, apparent misery,
delinquency, and insecurity experienced every day in cities like Tijuana.
This association becomes part of the urban imaginary and, indeed, the
built environment: different social groups struggle to maintain some
semblance of community, creating spaces within which they are able to
identify with and understand their peers. In the border cities, we thus
see a proliferation of restricted or gated housing developments, creating
places only social equals have the right to inhabit. They are based on an
ideal of security within a carefully delimited space.
While the phenomenon of the gated development is not specific to
the border, it nevertheless takes on greater meaning in cities with high
indices of insecurity like the border cities. For residents of gated com-
munities, the car is critical for managing the family’s security and its
property. Social segregation is a characteristic of the border urban zones,
with the housing and service districts characterized by social groups of
similar income levels and ethnic background, among other things. “The
reality of each city, its urban history, has generated both mixed areas and
other areas of homogeneity” Borja and Muxí 2000: 63). The novelty
that this model presents lies in the physical materialization of distinct
boundaries separating peer groups, the meticulous vision of the future
in housing choices, and the tacit limitations to access. As J. Blakely and
M. G. Snyder argue,
Economic and social segregation are not new. In fact, zoning and
city planning were designed, in part, to preserve the position of
the privileged with subtle variances in building and density codes.
But gated communities go further in several aspects than other
means of exclusion. They create physical barriers to access. They
also privatize community space, not merely individual space. Many
gated areas also privatize civic responsibilities like police protection
and communal services such as street maintenance, recreation and
entertainment. The new developments can create a private world
that need share little with its neighbors or with the political system.
(Blakely and Snyder 1999: 8)
The recent wave of home construction in Tijuana has become an
important sector of the urban economy. From 1980 to 1990, Tijuana
saw the construction of 68,408 new homes, compared to 126,474

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Tijuana | 459

between 1990 and 2000 (Instituto Municipal 2003: table 58). This
growth has been stimulated in part by the reorganization of credit and
mortgage schemes for new construction. Large developments of new
housing have thus sprung up since 1990, generating an enormous out-
ward expansion of the urban footprint, towards once-peripheral areas
of the municipality.
The struggle for developable urban space has intensified as “the popu-
lation phenomenon [combined with] industrial and commercial activity
generate a strong demand for lots and infrastructure, causing significant
changes in land use, and [intense] speculation and monopolization”
(Enríquez 2004: 24). Large national and international real estate chains
have located in Tijuana, as the city becomes one of the most profitable
sites in the nation for housing construction. Such companies join a
growing list of local and regional companies.

S U B U R B A N I Z AT I O N AND D E N S I F I C AT I O N P R O C E S S E S
IN TIJUANA

Tijuana real estate development is headed in two distinct directions. First,


we have a process of densification within the already consolidated urban
zone (commercial, residential, and entertainment facilities). Second,
we have a process of industrial and residential suburbanization. Both
processes have had a remarkable impact in terms of the construction of
joint housing developments of the closed or exclusive type oriented to
particular socioeconomic levels. Urbanization in Tijuana is characterized
by the development of three distinct housing zones: Playas de Tijuana to
the west; the exit to Rosarito Beach on the south; and the area of Cerro
Colorado, on the east side of the city. Each one of these zones presents
particular characteristics in terms of land use, economic activities, and
the socioeconomic levels of the population. The densification of the
urban core is related to the construction of gated communities within
the interstitial spaces of the older city center.
Based on data obtained through our fieldwork, figure 1 shows the
clustered locations of exclusive housing developments in Tijuana.
Here we see four major concentrations of gated communities. At
first glance, we see that their location is near other major landmarks:
an international freeway interchange; the airport; and the two ports of
entry. Connectivity with other gated communities is clearly important.

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460 | J OURNAL OF THE S OUTHWEST

Figure 1. Location of Tijuana’s gated community developments. (Elaborated by


author)

Topography likewise conditions development in each zone, and is inter-


twined with particular social layers.

C O N C E N T R AT I O N O F G AT E D C O M M U N I T I E S
I N P L AYA S D E T I J U A N A

Development in the Playas de Tijuana zone has occurred in a linear


fashion to take advantage of Pacific Ocean views, as figure 2 illustrates.
Gated communities are clustered along a fairly steep incline west of the
highway between Tijuana and Rosarito Beach, to the south. Construc-
tion in this area is overwhelmingly residential, and housing prices tend
to range from average to high, depending on topography (i.e., how land
contours affect construction costs) and distance from the beach. Second-
ary land uses in the Playas zone include tourism, educational facilities,
and commercial development. There is also a great variety of interstitial
space throughout the coast where the exclusive housing developments
are located. These developments are targeted towards people from aver-

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Tijuana | 461

Figure 2. Location of gated communities in the Playas de Tijuana area.


(Elaborated by author)

age to high socioeconomic levels, including U.S. citizens looking for


beachfront property.

C O N C E N T R AT I O N O F G AT E D C O M M U N I T I E S
ON THE ROAD TO ROSARITO BEACH

The gated-community development zone located along the Tijuana-


Rosarito highway includes a large number of houses clustered around
narrow social interests and average socioeconomic levels. This is a zone

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Figure 3. Location of gated developments on the route to Rosarito Beach.


(Elaborated by author)

of extremely rough topography, with housing clusters developed around


urban and natural drainage outflows. This feature presents serious prob-
lems for, among other things, traffic flow. The roads that connect the
developments to major arteries are the only access routes, which causes
traffic bottlenecks, especially during the rainy season, when floodwaters
inundate roads.

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Tijuana | 463

The neighborhoods have high construction densities and are clones


of Santa Fe, which is the largest development in this zone (figures 4–5).
The predominant land uses here are commercial and residential. It is
a zone of medium to steep slopes. The houses are anchored or carved
into the rough topography and are islands in an otherwise undeveloped
landscape of hills and arroyos.

D E N S I F I C AT I O N OF THE CENTRAL URBAN ZONE

The older city core contains the largest number of gated communities
of the four zones (see figure 6). Unlike in the southern and the eastern
zones, housing in the city center is not characterized by expansive, high-
density developments. Nor is it spatially extensive as in Playas de Tijuana.
Housing in this zone of the city is located in small, interstitial polygons
of urban space that have long been built up.
Land values in the center are also higher than in other areas, and as a
result, most of the housing here is oriented towards the middle and upper
classes. Closely packed housing usually takes the form of condominiums,
a more suitable design for lots smaller than the minimum sizes set forth
in the Regulation for Housing Developments. Housing is appreciating
in this zone, which facilitates the real estate business. Land use in the
center is largely a mix of housing, services, and commercial activities.
Although the cost of land has inflated house prices here, much of this
urban zone is characterized by steep slopes and difficult topographical
conditions, which have deterred developers.

C O N C E N T R AT I O N O F G AT E D C O M M U N I T I E S
IN THE EASTERN ZONE

The eastern part of Tijuana contains more gated communities than any
other area of the city (figure 7). It is one of the most important areas for
our study because of the density of construction, the socioeconomic level
of its population, and the levels of urban growth it has experienced. Most
of Tijuana’s industrial parks are located in areas that were at one time
on the urban periphery. The former periphery has now been overrun by
urban expansion that began as irregular, or shantytown, settlements that
developed around and largely as a result of assembly plants.

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Figure 4. Aerial view of Santa Fe. (Elaborated by author)

Within the invasion (or “self-help”) communities and industrial parks


in this area we see numerous closed developments that present important
variations on the gated community theme when compared to other cit-
ies of northern Mexico. In Tijuana, the gated development affordable
for the poorer social sectors is the condominium, which burdens the
homeowners with maintenance and service costs. The land within these
communities is considered private and thus is not eligible for municipal
services such as policing, garbage collection, and public lighting. Resi-
dents’ low income is simply insufficient to cover these services, however.
Nor is it sufficient for maintenance of the common areas such as parks
and plazas. These developments, therefore, are very dilapidated, and
residents’ displeasure is palpable. A lack of community organization
and disinterest in maintenance contribute to urban deterioration. But
tiny house sizes—averaging around 32 square meters, with front lots
of 3.20 meters—creates a population density at least double that of
other developments in which minimum lot sizes are somewhere in the
120 square-meter range. This is a huge amount of human activity in an
extremely small space.

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Figure 5. a. Panoramic view of Santa Fe, and b. Close-up of its houses.
(Elaborated by author)

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Figure 6. Concentration of gated communities in the downtown area.
(Elaborated by author)

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Tijuana | 467

Figure 7. Concentration of gated communities in the eastern zone.


(Elaborated by author)

The massive number of gated communities located on the eastern


flank of the city has been promoted by major national real estate devel-
opment chains like URBI, which is responsible for developments with
21,000 houses or more.3 Most of these are characterized by homes of
the thirty-two-square-meter type. Other builders, such as Casas Geo,
have built complexes with around 4,750 units. Consorcio ARA, finally,
recently completed a 7,500-unit complex.
The closed-community scheme for low-income residents in Tijuana and
in Mexico more generally is nearly unique in the world. E. J. Blakely and M.
G. Snyder’s classification of closed neighborhoods, for example, describes
them as mostly for the upper- and ascendant middle-class strata:
However, gates are not yet commonplaces for the lower end of the
income spectrum, even in California. We estimate that one-third
of the developments built with gates are luxury developments for
the upper and the upper-middle class, and perhaps another third
are retirement oriented. The remainder are mostly for the middle
class, although there are a growing number of working-class gated
communities. (Blakely and Snyder 1999: 6)

Tijuana thus has one very important characteristic: a large number of


gated neighborhoods available for the working class. A comparison to

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Figure 8. a. Facades of thirty-two-square-meter houses; b. Entrance to Villa
Fontana, a private development of eighty houses. (Elaborated by author)

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Tijuana | 469

the U.S. state of California is useful here, for it is one of the U.S. states
with the highest number of gated communities, in part the result of
high immigration rates. Tijuana has certain similarities with California
cities; namely, a large transient population. Migration along with above-
average land costs are two factors that encourage the gated-community
phenomenon for low-income residents.
Tijuana—with its gated communities for high-, middle-, and low-
income inhabitants—also differs from other major Latin American cit-
ies, such as Santiago, Chile, where most of the urban developments of
this type are for the middle classes Hidalgo, Salazar, and Álvarez 2003).
Likewise M. Svampa (2001: 58) classifies many of Buenos Aires’ pri-
vate neighborhoods (known locally by various names such as countries,
chacras, or mega constructions) are intended for Argentina’s upper and
upper-middle classes.

LOCAL ACTORS

Our analysis of Tijuana’s urban development included interviews with


people involved in the real estate and construction businesses (contrac-
tors, architects, salesmen, advertisers); municipal authorities in charge
of urban planning, management, and development; and residents of
gated communities. Community members’ overall impression of gated
community development is quite positive. This favorable impression,
moreover, lends the local real estate market quite a rosy outlook. As an
overall model of urban growth, it is also quite acceptable to municipal
authorities, who would just as soon leave the responsibility for providing
public services to neighborhoods and homeowners.
Advertisers emphasize a vision of community values; of the exclusivity,
privacy, and security of the complex; and even of the happiness, success,
well-being, and physical beauty that supposedly can be achieved within
gated-community life. Local authorities, we found, are prone to repro-
duce this discourse, ignoring or erasing the urban and social problems
that result from the privatization of urban services.
Tijuana’s official urban planning document, meanwhile, mentions the
pros and cons of gated communities (Instituto Municipal de Planeación
de Tijuana 2003: 45). The problems it lists are far worse than the sup-
posed advantages: crowded spaces, lack of urban services and infrastruc-
ture, social tension, deficient road networks, and the doubling of costs

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residents pay for urban services. These are problems ideally addressed by
city government. However, in Tijuana government takes a backseat to
the ideal of private enterprise. Authorities play down the inaccessibility
of public spaces (made so by private control over access), arguing that
it is a matter of security. When we questioned an IMPLAN (Instituto
Municipal de Planeación de Tijuana) architect about the presence of
private security officers controlling the access to streets and public facili-
ties within gated communities (and stating our disagreement with the
prohibitions) she answered:
We know that legally it’s not right, but the community also exists
and the community also has needs, and in the end we are also
planning for the community, thus you can’t tell the community,
“Don’t hire a policeman to watch over who enters and exits the
neighborhood.” In a neighborhood I visit frequently, there is
always a policeman who belongs to a particular organization, but
he is always watching who comes in or out, because there have
already been stolen cars, because there have been robbed houses,
because they jumped in from the other popular neighborhood.
Then, how do you tell the community not to protect themselves
from insecurity?
Under the justification of “urban insecurity,” then, officials and busi-
ness sectors encourage the privatization of traditionally public functions,
even when doing so clearly goes against urban regulation by limiting
access to otherwise public goods and services. Another problem presented
by the gated community, this time within the condominium scheme,
is that of private streets, which creates loopholes allowing the building
of units that are much smaller than the legally mandated minimum
house size. In Tijuana, the so-called condominium laws for social inter-
est housing have affected many thousands families who have acquired
this type of housing with less than thirty square meters of surface area.
By adhering to the condominium laws, developers need comply with
only very minimal requirements for homes, a practice that was strongly
criticized by Mexico’s College of Architects in a press statement released
in July 2004:
The social interest houses reduced their spaces from 72 to 27 square
meters in ten years, a smaller space than that recommended by the
United Nations Organization (UNO) for two persons. . . . The
legal specifications for the major builders like Casas Geo, Urbi, Ara,

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Tijuana | 471

Beta, and others, according to the Dirección de Administración


Urbana (DAU) of the city council, only specifies that a house must
have one bedroom, [proper] bathroom facilities, and a kitchen. . .
. Houses in neighborhoods like Santa Fe 1 and Villas del Bosque
[in Tijuana], both [built] by Urbi, are only 27.90 square meters,
and recently Casas Beta asked for permission to build 30-square-
meter houses. (La Frontera, July 21, 2004)

Local authorities remain disingenuous in their handling of over-


crowded living conditions in Tijuana’s poorer neighborhoods, justify-
ing the current situation by arguing that the high price of land and
real property elevates housing costs and, therefore, smaller house sizes
are the only option. This line of reasoning, however, allows real estate
developers near carte blanche power to maximize their profits in hous-
ing design. A Casas Beta architect illustrated this in revealing to us the
ways policies and practices intended to create social justice are turned
around to produce private benefits:
In our neighborhoods we build a type of property in condominium
form, which allows us to optimize land use. The major problem
here in Tijuana is the land, it’s very expensive land. The uneven
topography lowers returns on investment if you don’t create a
legal loophole, in this case to lower costs. On the other side, as for
the regulation, here in Tijuana with the minimum lot size of 120
meters, it would be very cost ineffective for us developers to build
houses . . . social interest houses in this case. The investment would
be too high and our returns very little. In a condominium lot—we
are talking of a 1,200- to 1,400-square-meter lot where we can
easily put 60, 80 houses—the tools we use to be able to turn this
land into a profit is by the means of this instrument [legal loop-
holes allowing for more, smaller units per lot]. We normally create
seven-meter-wide roads . . . you know that in seven meters a car can
exit normally, easily . . . then with that we meet the seven-meter
requirement . . . we leave seven meters of arroyo [street width], and
a meter of sidewalk . . . But the city council says “no, it should be
public,” but you can’t have access because it’s private property. In
many companies we use security, more green areas and privacy, and
turn a series of elements that in an open neighborhood we would
hardly be able to offer because you know that in a public road you
cannot put up a fence, you cannot construct a barrier.

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The special dispensations the architect refers to produce direct ben-


efits for the company he represents. The priority is always to increase
profits by decreasing production costs, even if this is to the detriment
of the homebuyers.
A representative of GEO, another important Tijuana builder, a man
with a job similar to the architect we interviewed previously, presented
a contrasting opinion:
We as house promoters, as builders, should also promote a culture
of the condominium, of living in a condominium, of people who
could integrate into this condominium structure, and, on the other
side, into [something of] a more adequate human scale, because
[the problem is that] we have been compacting the condominium
. . . so much . . . and this is a very personal opinion, very aside of
the company . . . that what we are doing . . . and I am not talking
about GEO . . . but what’s been generally going on here in Mexico,
the house we make, instead of welcoming the inhabitant, expels
him. It’s a centrifugal house, isn’t it? It’s like if you were expelled,
pushed out because the spaces are so small, so reduced, that it
pushes you out to the street. Or even worse I think that, yes, [this
type of development] stimulates other types of activities that I don’t
think are very good. I think in this way the [small condominium]
house is not a solution . . . instead of holding its inhabitants, it
pushes them away, from my perspective. The house should be the
opposite, it should be where . . . your roots are, your permanent
place, that’s it, isn’t it? However, I feel it is not like that.

Among the many difficulties gated-community residents face are the


neighborhood associations. Homeowners’ associations seem to con-
stitute a problem regardless of social stratum. People we interviewed
often emphasized that they are not accustomed to living under an
administrative regime that regulates the functions and membership of
the neighborhood. These kinds of problems are particularly recurrent in
social interest housing, because not only do residents lack the so-called
condominium culture, but their low incomes make paying the fees and
dues for maintaining services that traditionally were a municipal respon-
sibility quite burdensome.
Small house sizes are perhaps the most problematic social conse-
quence of Tijuana’s low-income gated communities. We observed in
these developments a deterioration of the commons as well as complete

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Tijuana | 473

abandonment of the security checkpoints that are supposed to guard


against growing urban violence and crime. Such decay implies deep
conceptual deficiencies in the new habitation model that builders and
housing authorities are promoting throughout the country. In Tijuana’s
case, the problems only intensify because of land shortages.
In our analyses of Tijuana’s four gated-community zones, we observed
that private housing plays a critical role as the primary driver of urban
transformation, reorienting infrastructure, services, and even the types
of equipment used by city government and private suppliers. The dual
spatial dynamic of peripheral expansion and land inflation/revaluation
in central zones has occurred in other places, such as in Mexico City,
where growth on the periphery is dominated by closed neighborhoods,
while gentrification of the center concentrates on commercial, cultural,
and leisure activities oriented to the middle and upper classes (Hiernaux
and Lindón 2002). Unlike the outlying urban growth of the 1970s and
1980s, when factories would be located on the periphery, the current
model lacks of clarity in land use. Now, one finds industrial plants in the
midst of high-density housing zones.
The growth of gated communities in both the core and periphery is
commonplace in many cities of the world. Buenos Aires; Mexico City;
and Santiago, Chile, all share this construction and land-boom dynamic.
Tijuana is most like Santiago in terms of the location of its gated neighbor-
hoods. The following quotation, cited in a study of the Chilean capital,
could just as well be referring to Tijuana:
[urbanization includes] housing of this type that has been built in
different places, both in established areas within the city as well
as in spaces on the periphery. . . . Moreover, [some] real estate
developments have been built outside of the city limits . . . [in some
cases constituting] citadels in the metropolis’s suburban spaces. . .
. Some [such developments] expand urban area growth, requiring
the expansion of infrastructure and services, [while] others take
advantage of and make more dense existing spaces within the city.
(Hidalgo, Salazar, and Álvarez 2003)

Comparing the characteristics of Tijuana’s gated communities with


these in other large Latin American cities provides some idea of the social
acceptance that this type of urbanization has in Tijuana. This is the case
even though the former cities are more complex metropolitan areas of
national political importance. The data obtained in our fieldwork show

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unprecedented levels of gated-neighborhood activity in Tijuana. Of all


the city’s new housing, 98 percent is in private neighborhoods, both
social interest and elite developments.4
Tijuana’s geographic conditions are a force promoting socio-spatial
fragmentation. Moreover, the city’s location on the border of Califor-
nia—the richest state in the United States and the one with the largest
population of Mexican nationals—gives the city an economic dynamism
not seen elsewhere in Mexico. The maquiladora industry that for so long
propelled the economy and attracted migrants no longer represents the
most important sector of Tijuana’s economy. Services and exports have
become just as dynamic. In this new context, differentiation and self-
protection act as catalysts in the search for a contained and controlled
community, a place far from the reality of dramatic daily change in what
is a land of none and a land of all: the city. |

NOTES

1. This work is part of a larger research project: “Comunidades cercadas,


experiencia de una arquitectura y urbanismo alternativos. A la luz de la experiencia
en la frontera norte de México 1980–2003,” funded by SEP-CONACYT. Dr.
Eloy Méndez, of El Colegio de Sonora, is primary investigator.
2. Data are from INEGI, “Estadísticas de la industria maquiladora de export-
ación,” 2005.
3. Plano del Plan Maestro de Villa Fontana, Villa del Sol y Villas de Real,
IOSA Ingeniería y Obras, Tijuana, 2000. FUENTE: Dirección de Obras Pública
del Municipio de Tijuana.
4. In publicity pamphlets for new construction collected during the fieldwork
in Tijuana in October 2004 and March 2005, we found that, among the sixty
neighborhoods that were advertising, only one of them was not gated.

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Tijuana | 475

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Blakely, Edward J., and Mary Gail Snyder. 1999. Fortress America. Gated
Communities in the United States. Washington, DC: Brookings
Institution Press.
Borja, Jordi, and Zaida Muxí. 2000. El espacio público: ciudad y ciuda-
danía. Barcelona: Electa Editores.
CONAPO. n.d. Proyecciones de la población de los municipios, edad y
sexo. Retrieved from: www.conapo.gob.mx/micros/proymunloc/
index.htm.
Enríquez, Jesús. 2004. “Reporte sobre Tijuana.” Ph.D. diss., Universidad
Autónoma de México, Political Science Department.
Hidalgo, R., A. Salazar, and L. Álvarez. 2003. “Los condominios y
urbanizaciones cerradas como nuevo modelo de construcción del
espacio residencial en Santiago de Chile (1992–2000).” Scripta
Nova. Revista Electrónica de Geografía y Ciencias Sociales (Uni-
versidad de Barcelona) 7, no. 146 (123), August 1. www.ub.es/
geocrit/sn/sn-146(123).htm.
Hiernaux, Daniel, and Alicia Lindón. 2002. “Modos de vida y utopías
urbanas.” Ciudades (Puebla) 53 (Jan.–Mar.): 26–32.
Instituto Municipal de Planeación de Tijuana. 2003. Plan de desarrollo
urbano centro de población Tijuana, B.C., 2002–2005, Periódico
Oficial, Sept. 13.
Svampa, Maristella. 2001. Los que ganaron: la vida en los countries y
barrios privados. Buenos Aires: Biblos.
Verduzco, Basilio, Nora Bringas, and Basilia Valenzuela. 1995. La ciu-
dad compartida. Desarrollo urbano, comercio y turismo en la región
Tijuana–San Diego. Guadalajara: Universidad de Guadalajara.
Zenteno, René. 1993. Migración hacia la frontera norte de México:
Tijuana, Baja California. Tijuana: El Colegio de la Frontera
Norte.

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gallegos.indd 476 1/25/10 12:03:44 PM
Imaginaries and Migration

Eloy Méndez and Isabel Rodríguez

Mexico’s northern border cities are urban agglomerations constructed


by successive waves of migration during the course of the twentieth
century, growth that continues apace in the twenty-first. Their terrains
reflect the pulsing histories of rapid urbanization resulting from recent
cycles of growth. What follows are excerpts drawn from interviews we
conducted with U.S.–Mexico border residents for a project designed
to investigate how people see themselves in terms of this dynamic built
environment. It includes our own interpretations of and reflections on
images of border cities as well. Our purpose here is to decipher some
of the codes that arise in local imaginaries, the particular qualities that
locals aspire to as they inhabit this borderlands space.1 The desires and
yearnings registered in these interviews are also accompanied by explicit
or implicit dislike. They are fragmentary assertions: contradictory visions
and capricious or conventional perspectives that challenge rigid norma-
tive criteria. But they are also the substrate of a quotidian reality that is
constantly being reconstructed.
Researching this reality requires studying the imaginaries that underlie
people’s practices, because these imaginaries reveal values, fears, suspi-
cions, and ideals. Such practices are, furthermore, rendered concrete
in material expressions of the city’s dynamics. For this study, we use as
common threads the notions of memory city, encounter city, and fictitious
city proposed by Marc Augé in El viaje imposible (1998). These com-
mon threads are, within the study of Mexico’s northern border cities,
a counterpoint to people’s own ideas of territorial construction: the
transitory city, the passing-through city, and the defensive-city, construc-
tions that relate to the spatial ambits of home, neighborhood, and the
entire urban area. The latter become directly interwoven into people’s
narratives of place, which were elicited in semi-structured interviews
with residents.

E l o y M é n d e z is professor and researcher at El Colegio de Sonora, Hermosillo.


I s a b e l R o d r í g u e z is professor in the Department of Geography, Universidad
Autónoma de Madrid.

Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 477–490

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Augé’s point of departure is to study city form in conjunction with


its imaginary form, to substantiate people’s need for a social utopia
alongside the urban imaginary and the city. The city and its imaginaries
are thus interdependent. Augé draws from literature, poetry, and, above
all, novels that bring together dreams and expectations. With these
source materials, he seeks to unmask and liberate the imaginary from
the fiction and artifice that reinforce discourses and practices that tend
to asphyxiate the city.

M e m o r y C i t y /T r a n s i t o r y C i t y

For Augé the memory city is immediately anchored in the testimony


of architecture and landmarks that reflect concrete expressions of dif-
ferent moments lived by the local society. It is also the urban fabric of
many different paths taken; individual and collective memories remain
in relation to people’s everyday trajectories. These paths are reflected in
the particular places people inhabit and their life experiences, and they
ultimately become part of collective memory. Glimmers of modernity’s
ideals, however, emerge in reference to the singular occurrences of dis-
tant and ancient European cities, ideals that have left their stamp upon
the buildings of the past.
The historic language of construction in the border region makes
explicit these connections and signs of durability that have, over time,
given permanency to the territory. The language is rather commonplace,
and one way to read these permanencies is through the vocabulary of ter-
ritorial composition common to engineers: “it is precisely this self-evident
verification that requires and justifies the different scales of analysis of
disciplinary fields and regions of the respective sciences that investigate
reality and that connect particular ones within others, like Russian dolls,
moving through . . . different levels, in increasing order, [from] archi-
tecture (the home), to urbanism (the city), geography (the region), to
ecology (the environment), and economy (globality)” (García-Bellido,
2002: 279). These are the threads that give coherence to common
understandings of the world, reading territory’s constructed landscapes
with the atemporal language of patterns promoted by universal theories.
These threads, often scrutinized by contemporary social groups, have
nonetheless survived historical evolution with more or less success and
have become expressed in built landscapes.

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Imaginaries and Migration   ✜   479

Territory,2 however, is a nonrenewable and limited resource whose


natural characteristics and survival in drawings and sketches, and whose
forms derived from the past, give it its singularity and diversity. But
memories of the city also inevitably combine with a constant bombard-
ment of sensations, of daily experiences. In other words, city form is
maintained in memories seasoned by circumstance and signification.
Circumstance is defined by multiple factors that combine in random
ways, and becomes meaningful by virtue of its socio-historical context.
Still, there exists no map that could register the richness and variety of
the past that is retained in the city imaginary. Indeed, Jorge Luis Borges’s
(2005: 241) admonition about mapping an entire territory holds true
here as well: it is, he says, an exercise in useless cartography.
What, then, is the border’s past and how is it retained in memory and
practice? Without a doubt, the border imaginary is subject to regulations
that are particular to its historical contexts. This suggests the necessity of
rethinking the role of the imaginary as a source of raw material for urban
and territorial histories, now that the border has seen several decades of
destruction of its physical-architectural heritage.3 Because of the brev-
ity of urban border trajectories, we are left with a past largely retained
in memory. Recovering this imaginary is thus a particularly useful and
important method of inquiry, for in doing so we rescue critical human
capital in places of explosive growth, like Mexico’s border cities.
Such cities take on the morphology of transition4 characterized by
(a) the superimposition and adjacency of incomplete urbanisms; (b)
the rapidity of formal surface-level changes covering permanent archi-
tecture; and (c) the constant hybrid and deterritorialized character of
architecture and urbanism. In short, “transitory architecture” is a rap-
prochement with “anti-memory.” It is an imaginary of the ephemeral.
The historical referents expressed in erstwhile solid constructions such as
monuments and buildings—objects giving form to the city that persists
in memory—are paradoxically translated into ephemeral or momentary
constructions. Over the course of the twentieth century, this paradox
spread, particularly during periods of rapid social and political transfor-
mation. The border city of Tijuana is the perfect example. This pioneer
gambling city (until the mid-1930s) was quickly overtaken by nationalist
currents between the late 1930s and the 1960s. Shortly thereafter that
it was again deeply transformed by the dynamism of the maquiladora
industry, beginning in the 1960s, which in recent years has become
combined with the unstoppable proliferation of new shopping and

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commercial centers. Similar to the fast-food industry, rapid change and


the architecture of quickly assembled, stage-like sets mark the rhythm of
occupying the space of shopping centers and residential mega-projects.
The use of recycled material in the construction of ramshackle housing
in successive peripheral rings of immigrant settlement also characterizes
the border’s transitory spatiality.
The weight of planned permanence simply fails in this environment
of architectural levity. Examples of this abound, but two cases are
emblematic here: the Meztitlán Museum in Tijuana, and the Pueblo
Mexicano shopping center in Ciudad Juárez. These were ambitious
projects of supposedly serious architecture, each in its own way founded
on a postmodern historicism. Each, however, was immediately obsolete
and quickly shut down. These are cases of a distinctive architecture of
fiction that tourists simply do not buy into in Mexico, in contrast to
the architecture of consumption in the United States. The challenge
of the border environment thus lies in the general disdain for a sense
of belonging in an environment constantly in flux. The emigrant does
not put down roots, and the immigrant tends to be an involuntary resi-
dent. The permanent international boundary clearly projects an image
of prohibition and permanence. Yet since 2004, in Tijuana it has also
become a favored canvas for the so-called art against walls practiced
by local artists (see Navalón et al. 2005). The past emerges here like a
palimpsest that barely shows the calligraphy of a nationalist toponymy
in celebratory, kitschy replicas of demolished original structures, or in
the vibrant doodles of a dominant urbanization of disorder.
The following excerpts are taken from interviews with residents of
shantytowns lying on the margins of “regular” (i.e., legal) city neigh-
borhoods; from people living in gated communities; and from practic-
ing architects, among other border-city residents. After many decades,
these comments have surfaced from the urban and national interstices
to construct an ambiguous and contradictory discourse. It is a narrative
compressing together different trajectories of neighboring countries, of
cities of origin versus destination, and of neighborhood (us) versus city
(them). They likewise construct interesting and peculiar figures such as
the personalized city, which acquires the outlines of an expectant and
palpable unity in the face of individual attitudes.
[In Ciudad Juárez’s Chaveña neighborhood] right now there are
many [families] from the state of Coahuila, a large number of
families who came here when hurricanes hit the southeast [coast

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Imaginaries and Migration   ✜   481

of Mexico], in Villahermosa, in Tabasco, and in [the states of]


Oaxaca and Campeche. . . . [They came because of] the maqui-
ladora factories, they came seeking new horizons here, because
there is no work down there. They have come and they have failed,
those who made it have stayed, those who did not have gone. . . .
Right now there is so much ruin here in Juárez, so much, but not
just with people who are native to here. Like I told you, we have
people here from many places. . . . People come and even live in
hotels, those who come from different states, from different parts,
because there are no longer enough houses here. If you were to
come here during the day, [you would see that] all of the houses
are also clothes shops, shoe shops—tennis shoes, lots of second-
hand things—people come here to the neighborhood for their
clothes, to dress, you know? . . . [The neighborhood is conflictive]
because of the people who come here from other places, lots of
thieves, muggers, people who sometimes seem strange to us and
who we are afraid of, really, as all of these people who hang out
in the street, they are not from here, they are people who come
only to destroy, spray graffiti, steal cars, and create problems, you
know? (Pers. comm., Profesora Marí Teresa Hernández, Escuela
Revolución de la Colonia Chaveña, February 1999)

Next door, next to where my office is now, there is a house with


a roof made of . . . the man is really strange, he collected Tecate
beer cans and smashed them flat, so he made the roof of his house
from sheets of Tecate cans . . . he was a really good cabinet maker,
and I do not know who told him . . . but he came to me to offer
his house which was built of a few pieces, well, the house was really
small. And he told me—because he was a believer in the spiritual
thing and he had a little altar there, and he said to me, “look, doc-
tor, the spirits told me that if I were to sell this house I should sell
it to you.” Ah, I said, great! And, according to him, that was the
way things went, and he sold it to me cheap, because money was
really worth something back then. (Pers. comm. Dr. Rafael Cano
Ávila, Colonia Buenos Aires, Nogales, Sonora, September 1998)

I went to middle school in Agua Caliente [Tijuana]. . . . You know


more or less where the El Rosal wheat mill is, right? Well, when my
brothers would go over that way to buy flour from the store, they
would have to take lunch with them, because back then that was

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482   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

the other side of the world, it was really far away, and everything
was agricultural fields back then, everything. If you see the Mesa
[Otay Mesa], I started to work there as a teacher in ’62. We were
really poor then and we couldn’t afford two bus fares, so on the
way home I would walk with my students until I reached a bus that
would bring me all the way back here to Colonia [Libertad], and
those were all gape fields back then, all of La Mesa de Otay and
the Tijuana river area were agricultural parcels that ended right at
the city’s edge. All of us who didn’t want to live or couldn’t get
by in other areas came here [to Colonia Libertad]. Unfortunately,
Tijuana has had bad luck with we who came from other places,
almost all of us. . . . well, now there are fewer from outside Tijuana,
because many of the current residents were born here. But in the
beginning—what was it, maybe about twenty years ago?—we
were all sitting there in the living room, about seven of us, when
my mother started talking about how she came to Tijuana from
her family’s ranch [in Mazatlán]. Another woman was dreaming
of her former life back on her farm in [the state of] Jalisco; one of
my students was talking about Ensenada, because that’s where she
was born. And so I sat there watching, and said, “Poor Tijuana,
we all live here because we could not make it in other places, we
came out of necessity, they opened their doors to us, and they gave
us careers, something that we could not have had in the south,
because [in the south] if you’re not rich, you’re a pauper, and they
keep dreaming in the south.” (Pers. comm. Mr. Benítez, teacher,
Colonia Libertad, Tijuana, July 1999)

The Encounter City and the T r a n s i t o ry C i t y

The encounter city is, for Augé (1998), that which is captured in the
senses. It is what the astonished campesino discovers after journeying
from farm country and being quickly overwhelmed by a vast array of
confusing signals. It is also the re-encounter with the city of a person who
returns after an absence and is compelled to reflect on the city through
metonymy, focusing on some rediscovered aspect of personal experience
that is mediated by social life and in this way acquires new meaning. The
imaginary is thus forged in social interaction. To encounter the city is
to find in it another person, an object of the wanderings and properties
of the city’s intricately social world.

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Imaginaries and Migration   ✜   483

The experience of the passing-through city5 (the border), on the other


hand, is distinctive; it promotes a kind of anti-encounter. We understand
the passing-through city as that which is situated along a swath of highly
intensive movement between two nations; that is, it functions largely as
a passageway (as opposed to final destination) of goods and people. As
a result, its primary elements come together to form a kind of customs
port city. Architecture and urbanism thus come to reflect the inevitable
markings of this passageway society and therefore, as a general rule,
restrict public spaces.
[In the gated community where I live], the green areas are very
important. If you could visualize them, they are the best of Ciu-
dad Juárez. We have a corridor of pines, a pathway where we can
exercise below the pines that is beneficial, aside from the large
size of the park, it’s beneficial because with the trees the neigh-
bors can’t see you, they only see the fences and the pine trees. .
. . They say this was a golf course and all of the lots were filled
with pines, which were eliminated because part of the security
approach here was to eliminate places where people could hide,
people who can do damage. It’s easy to have thirty pine trees
here and to stand behind one and hide, so we cut them down to
avoid this type of risk. . . . The biggest [advantage of the housing
development] is that it is walled in, and to begin construction
here within the fenced-in area we are able to avoid the petty theft
problem [robo de hormiga]. . . . The second advantage is that
you can see that my kids’ bikes are visible from here and I don’t
have to be watching them. Sometimes I see them over there [in
another area], but we’ve never lost anything, so the fact that this
wall is there gives us security, and it is not just security against
the homeless, no, it is simply against the occasional robbery.
The other thing is that we do not permit door-to-door vendors
in here. We don’t let in the tamale lady, we don’t let in . . .
I don’t know . . . we don’t let in anyone. . . . Well, the drinking-
water man comes right to the door. If I ask for a jug of water, they
come right to my house, they provide the service, and they leave.
So, we don’t have the type of people in here who could do harm
and occasional robbery. The other thing is that it is very peaceful
here . . . and when I lived in an open housing development, well, I
only knew the people who lived opposite and next to me, and that
was it, and then they came and robbed me, twice. [Migration] isn’t

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simply a problem, it is a phenomenon, nothing more. It brings


with it certain requirements, [like] schools for some children who
come from [the migrant] population, modes of transportation,
housing areas and, well, services like water, electricity, propane,
telephone, but this doesn’t mean that this is really a problem,
and I think that it is actually a blessing. They come to work, they
generate resources, and some part of that wealth remains here,
while the rest is sent back home. . . . There are people who utilize
Ciudad Juárez as a trampoline, or a way to get into the United
States. And if for some reason you lose your money, the easiest
thing to do is to steal to make money and achieve your goal [of
getting into the United States]. So, yes, there is a certain level of
robbery and delinquency here because of this (Pers. comm., Dr.
León, Ciudad Juárez, September 2005)

Before coming to Nogales, for me it was a shock when my hus-


band said they had given him a good job offer [there]. That was
good, but my idea of Nogales was like when one comes through
on a trip. Calle Obregón was the only street I knew, and it’s dirty,
stuff strewn everywhere, and filthy, and I said “How can we live
there?” That was my initial impression . . . and now, as I’ve seen
other people and lots of families in the same situation, looking for
work, looking for opportunities, well, I’ve had to look for space
here, taking great deal of care in choosing who I associate with,
who my children associate with, who we talk to, and of course,
much greater care in who I let in the house, and making space
accordingly. . . . There is some hypocrisy with people here, when
we meet people for the first time and then we don’t see them again.
I see that this is repeated; . . .that is, it is a city where one has to be
very cautious [where] you are constantly seeing migrants getting
returned [deported from the United States. Sometimes [the area]
outside the supermarket is full of people that you can tell are from
the south [of Mexico], trying to get some food for lunch, because
they have these kinds of problems in all of the streets, everywhere.
The other day I stopped by to buy a piñata and there you see people
asking for money they need to buy food so that they can get back
home. But the surprise is that then you see the same person again
and again, and it’s a lie [that they’re returning to where they came
from], and so we don’t pay attention to them anymore, we don’t

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Imaginaries and Migration   ✜   485

give them anything, and when we do, it is because at that moment


one has something to give. (Pers. comm., Mrs. Córdova, Nogales,
Sonora, October 2004)

The lifestyle here [in Tijuana] is faster paced. Here there’s more
crime. Here you can’t move around in the house without worry,
and there are more robberies of houses. You can’t leave peacefully.
You see, even in the neighborhood shops, at eight or nine o’clock
they put up the bars . . . [they say], “If you want something I can
sell it to you until 9:00 p.m., but only through the iron bars.” In
[my home state of Sinaloa] you just don’t see that. It is really rare
that in Sinaloa a store puts up its iron bars. No, this is life here.
[There] a girl, a young girl, can go out to a dance near home, at
twelve or eleven, go and come, sometimes on foot, and here you
can’t. Why? Because they’ll mug you just around the corner from
your house. You take a walk, and they’ll attack you and take your
purse, or they’ll corner you. This is what happens, and not just in
this area, in many areas. (Pers. comm., female resident of Villa del
Real neighborhood, Tijuana, October 2004)

The language of these interviews reflects a metonymic perception


of the city. According to our field notes, residents interpret the urban
agglomeration through the lens of everyday life, through the customs
they tie to sites that synthesize the environment. Neighbors take on an
attitude of vigilance, they constantly judge people’s trustworthiness, and
they buy into the binomials of exclusion: observer-observed, resident-
migrant, secure-insecure, possessor-burglar, peaceful-threatening. Over
time, the border guard/customs dynamic—constant surveillance—has
congealed along the border, and has surfaced in housing complexes,
public spaces, and city works in general, creating the “customs city”
perspective. This perspective emerges not just as a response to the pro-
liferation of sites of control in the customs city; it also emerges because
the dominant function of the city is as a passageway, a channel for
transport. It is also a perception of buildings of symbolic relevance and
of strategic functions, as well as an abundance of vagabond terrains, like
the yunques (dumpsites) and varied accidents of topography. In general,
the relationship between an individual and the social context produces
a surplus of frustration. The city is an unfriendly place where one sees
in a tree a location where a criminal could hide.

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Fictitious City and Defensive City

According to Augé (1998), we appropriate the fictitious city through


images that we capture and produce. It also provides images along the
lines of spectacle in both areas of urban expansion and the interstices
of the well-established, complex urban fabric: the non-places where the
city form vanishes. The author points to the 1990s as a period—most
pronouncedly in Latin America—during which urban fragmentation
became consolidated through the growing distance between the fortified
neighborhoods of the rich and the ghettos of the poor. This connection,
moreover, emerges in the spectacle of television and the media. Augé
also observes in the big cities of centralized economies the paradox of
a reality inspired by fiction and with it a preview of the decline of the
interdependent worlds of the imaginary and the city. Similarly, he sees in
cinema the vital signs of the reinvention of space lying “in fallow terrains,
in the margins, in the transitory deserts” (1998: 130).
On the other hand, for us the defensive city (see Méndez in press)
is that which provides distinction and security by setting itself apart
from “other” spaces.” The characteristics of the defensive city are: (a)
the predominance of a closed, private urbanism oriented toward the
entrenchment of planned residential communities, outside of whose
purview everything else becomes interstitial space; (b) the proliferation of
an “imagineering” that promotes and simulates traditional lifestyles; (c)
the naturalization of devices of control and exclusion meant to guarantee
the permanence of internalized borders; and (d) public and, in general,
architectural spaces subordinated to a regime of monitored sociality.
Because Infonavit [Mexico’s federal housing authority] no longer
regulates anything but rather [operates] solely as financier, the
expectation of developers now is that the project is simply about
free enterprise and free design and the open-ended expectation that
housing developments are built according to people’s demands,
and the people want closed communities, so they build closed
communities . . . and now the norm or the rule—in order to
compete in the market—is security, fencing, control over enter-
ing and leaving, and that “you live in peace here,” which is also a
myth, because there are two things that have exploded this myth
of security with walls, that is, the lack of social interaction provokes
more violence and more risk than a more balanced development,
[than a development that encourages] interaction. And now there

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Imaginaries and Migration   ✜   487

are two alternatives: one is the sophistication of groups of assailants


who arrive in little tanks or Humvees and launch an assault on the
entire unit and entirely clean it out; that is, they rob an entire block
of houses. . . . This has happened two or three times here. And the
other way in which the myth [of security] is interrupted, where
there is no security, is when you have people buying up houses for
money laundering, or for safe houses, or for [street] monitoring
activities, so that you never know who you have as a neighbor. So
developers only have control over the first families that arrive, but
after they sell the house, then the mix of new inhabitants and the
unfamiliarity with the people who live in the area creates insecurity
from within. A teacher and her daughter who had lived here for
a few months were just murdered. It was in a development with
private security and who knows what else, and it was the security
guards who assaulted them, murdered them, the very security
guards for the development . . . so, these risks have disrupted the
utopia that “gated communities are a [viable] security option.”
Nevertheless, their marketing has been really efficient because they
sell, they hook in people, and [they say] “here you can live safely.
Your children can walk around here. You can leave and put your
key under the mat, and you don’t have to worry.” And this is what
we believe . . . but I think that neither here in [Ciudad] Juárez nor
in any part of the country can you live in that kind of tranquility
. . . or maybe in Cuchillo Parado [a small town in Chihuahua] or
in some place in the mountains is where you can find that idyllic
small town. (Pers. comm., Architect Argomedo, Ciudad Juárez,
September 2005)

When you see a lot of housing developments, yes, you see that the
place is pretty, and it’s next to an area that’s, well, really rundown
or poor, well, I used to say, “Wow! how will I sell this place if I
grow out of it . . . ?” When I was first taken to a shopping center
here called Interlomas—it was my sister-in-law who took me—and
when I got there I said, “maybe she made a mistake, because, well,
this doesn’t look like Las Lomas [a wealthy area of Mexico City],
right?” [Then] I saw . . . BMWs, Mercedes Benzes, and these
Porsches going by . . . and then it was, you know, “I think we’re on
the right road.” But the area was really ugly. And suddenly you’d
arrive and say, “Well, oh well, I’m going to have to go through

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a little ugly area and then I arrive in my little paradise . . . then I


lock the gate and I forget it all, I forget about it all.” (Pers. comm.,
Virginia Lara, architect, Tijuana, October 2004)

I [would] describe my housing development, in terms of security


as, well, a catastrophe. I [would] describe it, from 1 to 100, as
maybe an 80 or a 90, because we are living in the middle of the
most dangerous wash of Nogales, which is the Nogales Wash.
They never told us [about the arroyo]. They didn’t exactly trick
us, it’s just that they never let us know where it was that we were
going to live. So they settled us here, and built the development
right in the middle of the wash. So now they are forecasting a
flood here, and this is one of the [city’s] areas of high flood risk,
of imminent flooding, here, in this development. . . . For me,
Nogales was nothing more than my house or Avenida Obregón,
and then I realized how immense Nogales really is, and the urban
disorder that prevails here. Here there’s no order of any type,
no zoning rules, no order of any sort. Lex talionis prevails here
in Nogales. Here, everybody does what they want and lives by
their own force. . . . They sold us with a mockup of a completely
walled-in housing development, that was the idea [that it was
walled in] and that’s the way they sold the house to us. When I
went and saw the model I said, “How beautiful!” I had already
lived in Hermosillo in a gated community. . . . I’m talking the
1970s, ’70-something . . . and in another closed community in
León, Guanajuato, and that one was strictly private, walled off,
with its pretty little swimming pool. (Pers. comm., Mrs. Clarisa,
Nogales, Sonora, October 2004).

In the border one can clearly observe the fragmentation of the Latin
American city. The open spaces of developed-world cities are attractive
for the possibilities they offer to revitalize existing areas in ways oriented
toward spectacle. They are a terrain vague, “external and strange places
that remain outside the circuits and structures of production” (Solá-
Morales 2002: 187). They are blemishes on the urban fabric, places to
be recovered by virtue of an alternative vision. These blemishes are the
rule rather than the exception in the border city, where there are an
abundance of irregular, insecure, and unproductive interstices combined
with very large bands of precarious development set against normalized
areas of self-segregation and homogenization that simulate security

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Imaginaries and Migration   ✜   489

and a community lifestyle. Within these spaces emerge alternative rep-


resentations and uses that in general are poorly articulated and isolated,
and that also are highly anomalous. Around all of this swirls a battle to
incorporate these spaces into the push to homogenize, either as part of a
precarious appropriation or as en effort to revitalize. But the alternative
experience does not move against an urbanism of spectacle, but rather
against misery and uniformity.

Conclusion

The border city is built along opposing axes wherein the urban imaginary
has yet to become completely overwhelmed by images of simulation.
The transitory nature of the border imprints on its cities rapid change
and uncertainty that can only become registered in ephemeral refer-
ents. Spaces of passing-through tend to restrict possibilities for friendly
encounters to the realm of selective friendship. The growing apparatus
of urban defense is subsumed in a labyrinth of shimmering self-images
of what constitutes a satisfactory experience. This triple binary dislocates
the city onto two social spheres and two territories of dis-encounter.
Nonetheless, such territories remain rich with opportunity for building
alternative, incomplete urbanisms. <

Notes

1. The borderland is a very singular space that registers the problematic evolu-
tion and varied rhythms of distinct types of cities. The cases under consideration
here illustrate the dynamics of new cities that in Mexico are representative of
the territorial and urban reconfiguration linked to tourism development and, of
course, to the maquiladora industry, as it generated new poles and corridors of
growth (Méndez 2000; Quiróz 2004).
2. This includes, of course, the urban agglomerations of the northern border,
some of whose values and features coincide with those set forth in the “Manifesto
for a New Culture of Territory,” on the website of the Asociación de Geógrafos
Españoles (http://age.ieg.csic.es/).
3. Ironically, our fixation with the past—or with certain understandings of
it—perhaps because of the weight of the ancient European cities, has actually
become a kind of parasite on our thinking that makes possible the constant
devouring of the physical space of historic cities; it has invaded the minds of
intellectuals. Thinking in the past has failed not only to impede the destruction
of the material present, but also the past that is retained in the imaginary.

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490   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

4. This notion is based on Méndez’s (2002) “transitory architecture” (arqui-


tectura transitoria).
5. The idea of the passing-through city (or arquitectura de paso) is developed
in Méndez (2002).

Bibliography

Augé, M. 1998. El viaje imposible: El turismo y sus imágenes. Barcelona:


Gedisa.
Borges, J. L. 2005. “Del rigor en la ciencia.” In Obras completas, vol. 2,
241. Buenos Aires: Emecé Editores.
García-Bellido, J. 2002. “La cuestión rural: patología urbanística del
espacio rústico.” CyT-ET 34(132): 277–323.
Méndez, E. 2000. MISSING REFERENCE
_______. 2002. Arquitectura transitoria: espacios de paso y simulación
en la frontera México–Estados Unidos. Hermosillo: El Colegio de
Sonora-Itesca-Itesm.
_______. In press. Arquitectura simulacro. Guadalajara: Universidad de
Guadalajara.
Navalón, A. et al. 2005. “Tijuana, la tercera nación: grito creativo.”
Arte contra los muros, Santillana-Telefónica MoviStar-El País-
Conaculta/Cecut-SEE Baja California. XEWT Channel 12 Tele-
visión, Tijuana.
Solá-Morales, I. de. 2002. Territorios. Foreword by Saskia Sassen. Bar-
celona: G.G.

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Institutional Overflow: Tales from Deported
Children along the Border

Eugenia Hernández Sánchez

In Michoacán, chatting with a young boy from Nuevo San Juan Paran-
garacutiro, I asked, “What would you like to be when you grow up?”
To my surprise, he answered, “A doctor or a migrant.”1

T h e D e p o r tat i o n of Children and Teens

Children are constantly being deported from the United States to cit-
ies across northern Mexico. A study by UNICEF-DIF reported that
during 2003, 5,457 minors were deported without the company of an
adult family member. In 2006, estimates were that 3,000 children were
deported unaccompanied to Ciudad Juárez.2 Such complexity, of course,
has deep implications for U.S.–Mexico relations. But, more specifically,
it presents enormous challenges for the institutions accountable for
managing children’s deportation, and in turn, directly impacts families,
as they are divided and their children undergo tremendous stress while
they wait in government shelters for their cases to be resolved. Even
though the present work is based on recent and contemporary research,
the analysis of child deportation is part of longer historical processes of
social inequality that take shape in everyday encounters between children
and institutions. These encounters constitute the process of deportation
enforced by both the United States and Mexico.
Here, I argue that deportation is a process best understood as three
interlinked elements: (1) the event (detention); (2) the sites (multiple
institutions); and (3) institutional practices generated over time. Rather
than describing what seems to be a formal-legal process (matters of
citizenship), and an informal one (migrants’ lack of documents and
networks of support), what I describe and interpret here is how informal

M a r í a E u g e n i a is professor and researcher at the Universidad


Iberoamericana, Puebla.

Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 491–502

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and formal elements constitute the process of migration. The story of


deportation presented here is based on participant-observation at Casa
YMCA de Menores Migrantes de Ciudad Juárez, and research conducted
in the archives of the Mexican Consulate in Tucson.

Initial Displacement (Somewhere in Mexico)

When a minor is detained and interrogated for the first time, he or she
is usually en route from his or her place of residence to the detention
point. On average, deportees will have traveled from one to fifteen days
to the border. There, they reach a threshold where they must decide
when and where to cross, as well as make the first payment to the pol-
lero (slang for one who smuggles people into the United States.) The
balance is paid on the U.S. side.
“I left from Veracruz, in a bus organized only for people from my
town.” (Pablo, 13 years, personal interview, June 2004)

Children have various different reasons for crossing into the United
States. What most caught my attention, however, was that, for many
young people there’s simply nothing to do where they live.
“I don’t do anything, I work all day. I like my work and if I have
time I listen to the radio.” (Ana, 15 years, personal interview, June
2004)

In some ways, such boredom suggests that there is probably just no


adequate means for children and teens to identify or insert themselves
into the present national project. Minors thus leave their urban or rural
areas to find something else or to try something new. Sometimes, the
event of crossing is a new experience—even if they are returned to
Mexico.

Crossing: Mexico to the United States

In general terms, the children detained and later deported were often
found in scrubby fields and desolate areas contiguous with the Río Bravo
(Rio Grande). Most were apprehended at night and they rarely recall the
exact names of places on the crossing. But by their descriptions of the

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Institutional Overflow   ✜   493

environment, they probably crossed at or near the area called Caseta,


in Guadalupe County bordering Fabens, Texas (about one hour from
downtown Ciudad Juárez). Another route is to cross over the bridge
directly into El Paso, riding in vehicles and pretending to be the children
or relatives of those who accompany them. In these cases, they cross with
legitimate documents that do not belong to them. A third option is to
arrive at the bridge with the pollero. At this time the smuggler gives
the child valid documents that belong to another person, and he or she
crosses alone, on foot. If the migrant crosses the bridge successfully, he
or she meets the pollero on the other side in order to return the docu-
ments and proceed to the final destination. In this scenario, the minor
takes on all the risk since the pollero generally has documents and risks
nothing when crossing in a vehicle. Meanwhile, the minor must face off
with immigration authorities.
When minors are detained, this draws them into a new world of
classifications and representational structures. When these children are
identified as minors and as being undocumented they are immediately
isolated from the group in which they were found, even if they are in
the company of relatives or friends. Migrants in general tend not to
carry any documents that would facilitate identification and processing
by the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Nevertheless,
this is a delicate problem for minors since the inability to verify their
family relationships leads to their extraction from the group and from
others their age.
There is a second reason why minors end up alone in this process:
even if they show documents that establish a familial tie with other
detainees, the adult relatives are often detained in the United States as
material witnesses. During this detention, adults negotiate with Border
Patrol agents, and if they can positively identify the pollero, there’s a
chance that charges will be dropped. This is not simply an option, but
rather part of a difficult negotiation at the end of which children, once
again, find themselves alone.3
Border Patrol agents have a crucial role to play in the administration
of immigration since they have the double task of enforcing (surveillance,
control, detention), and administering (classification, documentation).
One Border Patrol agent mentioned that officers are trained to analyze
how people walk (including tracking footprints), to differentiate Mexicans
from other Latin American nationals, and to distinguish the movements

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of animals from people. The officer went on to talk about the cultural
aspects of border monitoring, and I was reminded of Clifford Geertz’s
(2000: 30) suggestion that anthropologists not lose sight of concrete
events when studying symbolic forms. The officer explained, “If some-
body does not look at you in the eyes, he or she is not necessarily lying.
In Mexico, the people see authority like that, with fear, hence they turn
their glance to one side.” The practice of identifying, classifying, and,
subsequently, processing, focuses on a person not as an individual, but
rather as someone belonging to a cultural group or ideal type.

Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS)/Immigration


and Customs Enforcement (ICE)

Minors who are detained at a Border Patrol station are transferred to


the ICE offices4 on the Santa Fe Bridge between El Paso and Ciudad
Juarez, where they often spend the night. The first thing the minors face
is an “interview” conducted by an immigration officer. This interview
is actually more like an interrogation, from which the agent constructs
a profile of the minor. In the office, minors are seated in front of a desk
and repeatedly asked the same questions they’ve been asked since the
first moment they were apprehended in the field. After having one’s
fingerprints processed; providing one’s name, age, place of origin, par-
ents’ names; and if possible, describing the smuggler/pollero, detainees
are placed in a small room where they await deportation. Mexico lies
just a few meters away, but to migrants awaiting deportation it is often
represented as quite distant. Such disorientation may seem surprising,
but I found that it’s actually part of an official strategy:
“They [officials] said to me that [I was in] in Texas . . . in a place
very far from Mexico, and that the following day they would send
me to Mexico.”
When children tell of their experiences in this phase of apprehension
and questioning, the bathroom is consistent theme. They fear using the
facilities because the only structure separating the toilet from public view
is a low wall. The children feel exposed. Some report feeling annoyed,
even shouting during our conversations: “There’s no door!” This is an
important sentiment, because migrants are often stereotyped as willing
to put up with anything. Still, even under official pressure, the majority
resists using the toilet in the presence of others. Children, of course,

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Institutional Overflow   ✜   495

have their limits, but even in these places of surveillance and extreme
duress, one observes resistance.

The Mexican Consulate

Once the Mexican Consulate is notified of the detention of a Mexican


minor, consular officials begin documenting the Border Patrol’s inter-
vention and establishing contact with institutions on both sides of the
border. In figure 1, one sees that in most cases, the Border Patrol deports
minors expeditiously and only informs the consulate of the incident
after the fact. Here, the consulate is notified, consular officials contact
the Nogales Consulate, whose agents, in turn, accompany children to
the border and establish contact with Desarrollo Integral de la Familia
(DIF)—the Mexican agency equivalent to Child Protective Services.
For some minors, the process is quite slow, yet these cases are more
effectively and definitively resolved than rapid deportations. When the
deportation process is followed correctly, the consulate must undertake,
as an official priority, a search for relatives in the United States and
Mexico. Authorities then attempt to reunite the minor with his or her
family, sometimes in the United States before deportation. During the
search, relatives who are legal U.S. residents may be located, and they may
request guardianship of the minor to prevent his or her deportation. If
relatives are slow to respond or fail to show up altogether, the consulate
requests custody of the minor from the Border Patrol, custody which it
may subsequently transfer to a relative. There are some minors whose
entire family resides in the United States, and for them, deportation is a
terrible fate. Nor is there any kind of follow-up to evaluate the process
itself in terms of the minors’ safety.
If I could describe the situation at the Mexican Consulate using one
image, it would be of a very wide desk, every single inch of which is occu-
pied by towering piles of folders, with Post-It notes stuck on just about
every flat surface and, in one corner, a telephone that rings constantly.
Behind each desk is a chalkboard listing the most urgent cases. Most of
these occur in the month of July, the hottest in the desert borderlands.
The role of the consulate may also be summed up in a word: information.
The Mexican Consulate is the place that can connect institutions in the
two countries. Nevertheless, most minors do not want their help: they
reach a point where they reject any encounter with authority figures.

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Mexico’s National Institute of Immigration and the Office


of Child Advocacy7

The National Institute of Immigration (INM) is the fifth station, or stage,


through which all deportees from the United States pass. In spite of the
significant number of people undergoing deportation, the INM is of
relatively little consequence as far as helping deported minors. Institute
personnel basically receive people as they return over the bridge, and
separate minors from adults, transferring minors to the Procuraduría
de la Defensa del Menor (PDM, or Office of Child Advocacy) or to the
municipal DIF office. The INM is thus merely one minor stop within the
complex institutional landscape that deported children must pass through.
And yet, given the seriousness of the children’s situation, it is rather odd to
see that, on any given day, INM offices are largely empty spaces occupied
mostly by the legions of uniformed personnel who work in them.
In the PDM, minors’ cases are addressed at an administrative/legal
level. It is here where relatives must request the release of their children
from shelters. For the families, it is quite difficult to contact this office,
since both the shelters that serve the deported children are near down-
town, whereas the PDM offices are located in an industrial zone west
of the city. Traveling by bus between the shelters and the PDM office
takes at least half an hour and involves changing bus lines. Moreover,
the offices close at three o’clock, sharp. If the necessary documents have
not been submitted by this hour, the families must wait another day at
least, meaning, of course, that they incur added expenses for lodging
and meals. Most importantly, for the detained child this means one more
day in the shelter.

Desarrollo Integral de la Familia (DIF)

Ciudad Juárez’s Bolivia Street Shelter, run by the DIF, generally admits
children younger than eight years because they are not accepted at other
shelters. This shelter accepts children separated from their relatives for
reasons ranging from deportation to drug use, neglect or abuse. It is
a complex environment. Only a few of the minors I interviewed had
arrived at this shelter first and then been transferred to the Casa YMCA
for migrant children. Most of the minors I interviewed were immedi-
ately referred from the PDM offices to the Casa YMCA. There is a close
relationship between the Bolivia Shelter and Casa YMCA.

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Institutional Overflow   ✜   497

Casa YMCA for Migrant Children

The Casa YMCA, the only nongovernmental institution caring for


deported minors, has been in operation in Ciudad Juárez for more
than ten years. The shelter is small, and as one enters, it is clear that
the children’s space overlaps with the office area, which is more or less
a single desk. There is also a kitchen and dining area. The shelter has a
maximum capacity of twenty minors and is operated by a relatively small
team of people working full, flexible shifts. It’s important to emphasize
that the shelter has a resident couple who lives there with their son
from Monday through Friday, and this is not by chance: the director
emphasizes that minors must be made to feel at home. The couple’s son
spends much of the day in the playroom, watching cartoons with the
rest of the children and teens.
The Casa YMCA maintains schedules and has specific rules, but these
are flexible. The minors are under no obligation to participate in activities,
and it is assumed that they are exhausted physically and emotionally. At
the Casa YMCA, the first action officials take is to interview the minor,
just as in the other institutional settings. But here, the emphasis is on
locating relatives. At this point, the children have answered the same set
of questions at least six times: What is your name? Where are you from?
Who brought you across? How old are you? Where are your parents? The
director mentions that under these circumstances, it is better to allow
the children to rest, eat, and play all day, since waiting for their parents
is a stressful and solitary experience.

The Institutional Route from El Paso, Texas,


to Cd Juárez, Chihuahua

Michel Foucault (1975:105) wrote that “in effect, nothing is more


material, more physical, and more corporal than the exercise of power.”
The administrative route illustrated in figure 2 shows how deportation
becomes a rite of passage through which government and police officials
interact with children in a way that both immobilizes and mobilizes
them as they move from one office to the next. Through it all, they may
internalize the process of being monitored because the power wielded
over them is direct and rarely subtle. Thus, the relationship between the
children’s bodies and institutions is reflected in what Foucault called the

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3. CPS

3. INS
1. Initial 2. BP 6. DIF
displacement
5. INM
4. MX
Consul
6. CA

7. YMCA

microphysics of power; that is, the social body becomes stressed as power
is exerted over individual wills.
Most children interviewed have family members in both countries, and
some indicated that they had lived for a long time in the United States,
as well as in Mexico. Migration thus begins to look less like a matter of
simple, linear departure from one country (Mexico) for another (United
States), but rather is a circular movement between countries. This, in
turn, connects families and places. It is also important to note that sup-
port networks are often challenged by this circularity. In each network
the movement produces fractures. Azaola and Estes (2003), for example,
write that minors caught up in such a movement are in a clearly delicate
situation, one that shares some similarities to the traffic of minors for
sexual commerce. They note, “Unlike other goods, human beings can
be repeatedly used . . . because it is an activity that does not require of
great investment of capital” (2003: 27).

Final Thoughts

Deportation of minors can be understood in terms of the interaction


between the event, the multiple spaces, and the enduring characteristics
of institutions. Nevertheless, the practice of interrogation is not car-
ried out in the same way in all places. In the United States, particularly
where children are involved, agencies tend to place a heavy emphasis
on classification: age, sex, place of last residence, diseases, etc. In my
interviews, however, agencies such as Child Protective Services con-
ducted such queries more as interviews than as interrogations. The same
questions are asked in México, but in a different tone. Mexico’s process

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Institutional Overflow   ✜   499

is bureaucratic and legalistic, though in the case of nongovernmental


shelters, also quite dynamic. Although the same questions are asked,
the emphasis is on the search for relatives instead of the child’s personal
details (since in order for the child to leave the shelter, a close relative
needs to take custody).
Nongovernmental shelters occupy a special and paradoxical position.
They are the minors’ custodians, but at the same time they are not, since
they are constantly monitored by the same government agencies whose
mandates technically give them primary responsibility for children’s
welfare. Thus, the shelters take the responsibility yet enjoy none of the
rights. The state, through institutions such as DIF, acts in loco parentis.
Such institutions do not have the capacity to absorb the cost of child
care, however, particularly because the dynamics of taking care of chil-
dren remain outside the logic of state programs, which are based on a
fixed program design for predetermined populations of people within a
particular territorial framework, and usually for short periods of time.
NGOs, on the other hand, operate with limited resources, but are
comparatively better suited for the job because of their particular struc-
tural dynamics. They are supported largely by volunteers, including
academics, and maintain flexible operating procedures. Their schedules
are flexible and fit well with the uncertainties of deportation, which may
happen at any hour. The basic operation of many of these organiza-
tions involves planning projects within a logic of uncertainty that is not
unlike the world of many children. Minors arrive in detention feeling
frightened, not understanding what is happening and what the future
brings. Because every minor represents a different dilemma, each requires
a flexible solution.
Iain Chambers (1994) states that “in order to understand new social
movements it is necessary to think in a way that is neither fixed nor
stable, but that is open to the probability of a continuous returning to
certain events, to their re-elaboration and revision.” The present and the
past, the childhood, the family, and work are subjects often separated
for analytical purposes. On the other hand, migration is quite clearly a
relational process that goes from individual experience to entire social
groups made vulnerable by decisions of nation-states. States manifest
themselves in border detention, but often in rather vague ways. Child
detainees, for example, normally carry no documents at all to enter the
United States, and to them, the questions they are asked seem out of
context (e.g., “How much do you weigh?”). On only a few occasions

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500   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

are they told why they were detained. In this first encounter, authori-
ties usually give no clarification of the process. Thus, children will not
request water or aspirin, for instance, even when they are in dire need.
The context of interrogation is just too aggressive and overwhelming.
Meanwhile, in every institution I visited, there are expectations on both
sides: public servants anticipate certain behaviors, while the minors wait
for certain questions to be asked. This is precisely the moment when we
observed true communication. We can thus say that there is a mutual
construction occurring here between “legal” and “illegal,” between the
authority and the detainee, and finally, between the adult and the child.
In such everyday encounters, in places filled with children, migration is
shaping the future of nations. <

Notes

1. This young Purépecha boy, with no apparent economic problems, made


me confront one of my assumptions about migration as a phenomenon driven
only by economics (pers. comm., teen, 7/03). By 2006 this teen was living in
the United States. The conversation took place as part of the project Cliff Paint-
ings of Parangaracutiro, Michoacán, México, under the direction of Dr. Tricia
Gabany-Guerrero during 2003.
2. This work is based on research as part of the thesis “Niños deportados en
Ciudad Juárez,” ENAH CIESAS CONACYT, 2008. It must be noted that in
2004–-2006 we observed that most children were apprehended and deported
while trying to cross into the United States, whereas by 2007 most deportations
were a result of raids in the U.S. interior, which requires further research.
3. Within the deportation process, the minors have many different ideas about
what it means to be underage. Two teens (ages 17 and 16) mentioned that there
was no problem with being documented because “as you grow up, your finger-
prints change over time,” and when they crossed again into the United States
as adults (age 18) no one would be able to identify them. (personal interview,
August 5, 2005).
4. 2003 was an important year to study migration. After the 9/11/01 attacks,
U.S. institutions were drastically rearranged, and we observed a lot more bureau-
cratic procedures and difficulty in identifying which institution was responsible
for what. The INS was renamed ICE and now reports to the Department of
Homeland Security, which also oversees CBP (Customs and Border Patrol) and
the USCG (U.S. Coast Guard).

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Institutional Overflow   ✜   501

Bibliography
Archives Consulted

Mexican Consulate in Tucson, Arizona. Database on the detention of


minors repatriated between 2001–2005 by the Mexican Consulate
in Tucson, Arizona, July 2004.
U.S. Department of Immigration and Naturalization Service. “Records of
the Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1906–1930: Detention
of minors under 16.” Universidad Autónoma de Ciudad Juárez,
Special Collections.
Secondary Sources

Azaola, Elena, and J. Richard Estes. 2003. La infancia como mercancía


sexual. Mexico City: Siglo XXI.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection. About CBP. www.cbp.gov/xp/
cgov/about (accessed November 18, 2009).
Chambers, Iain. 1994. Migrancy, culture, identity. London and New
York: Routledge.
DIF-UNICEF. 2004. Niñez migrante en la frontera norte: legislación y
procesos, Mexico: Author.
Foucault, Michel. 1975. “Poder y cuerpo.” In Microfísica del poder.
Madrid: La Piqueta.
Geertz, Clifford. 2000. The interpretation of cultures. New York: Basic
Books.
Hernández Sánchez, Eugenia. 2008. Niños deportados en Ciudad Juárez.
Mexico City: ENAH-INAH-CONACYT.

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eugenia.indd 502 1/25/10 12:02:40 PM
Siblings by Telephone: Experiences of Mexican
Children in Long-Distance Childrearing
Arrangements

Gail Mummert

As the proportion of children involved in migrant flows of Mexicans


headed north to the United States and the number of youngsters left
behind by migrant parents have increased during the 1990s and the
start of the twenty-first century,1 a new phenomenon has emerged that
merits the attention of family specialists: siblings separated by interna-
tional borders who do not live together on a daily basis. In fact, as our
title suggests, some of these siblings “know” each other only through
technological means—photographs, videos, or telephone. The youngsters
have been left behind in home villages, towns, and cities in Mexico, or
sent back to their parents´ homeland, because the parents consider that
move to be in the children’s best interest. Lacking daily face-to-face
contact and shared experiences, these siblings find themselves “trapped”
on opposite sides of an international border. From these different loca-
tions and understandings of their place in the world, they tend to forge
dissimilar life trajectories in terms of educational, work, and residential
choices. In some cases, the siblings face additional linguistic and cultural
barriers to communication, having been raised by one or both biological
parents or alternate caregivers in radically different family settings. When
this occurs, feelings of alienation, personal sacrifice for the common
good, parental favoritism, envy, and outright resentment may surface,
distancing the siblings even more.
Unlike most literature on children and migration, which basically
concerns those who travel alongside their families as supposedly pas-
sive followers of their parents, this article focuses on the viewpoints
and life experiences of a little-studied subgroup of children involved
in the migratory phenomenon: those separated from their brothers
and sisters by the U.S.–Mexican border (as a result of separation from

G a i l M u m m e r t is professor and researcher at El Colegio de Michoacán,


Zamora, Michoacán.

Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 503–522

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504   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

father or mother or both). It deals with children belonging to transna-


tional families whose members are geographically dispersed across the
territories of two nation-states due to their participation in migratory
processes; it includes both migrants themselves and others who have
remained behind and never migrated. These children are being raised
in long-distance arrangements based upon patterns of reorganization
of productive and reproductive tasks across international borders and
among several family members.2
Our anthropological gaze on the life experiences of siblings in long-
distance relationships is through a transnational and gendered lens. Emerg-
ing around 1990, the burgeoning field of transnational studies posits the
notion of a geographically discontinuous social field in which migrants,
their families, and neighbors live out their lives.3 While simultaneously
constrained and enabled by the power structures of two (or more) nation-
states, members of transnational families establish social relationships and
networks, set goals, make decisions, and attempt to prosper.
The specific child-rearing practices to be studied here are judged and
justified within gendered and ideological parameters which social actors
dispute in the same transnational social field. We understand the family to
be a unit that is hierarchically organized along gendered and generational
lines; that is to say, access to resources and participation in decision-making
processes is different for men versus women, young versus old, and is
therefore constantly being negotiated. We draw on Stack and Burton´s
(1994: 33) concept of kinscripts as “a framework for examining how
individuals and families as multigenerational collectives work out family
responsibilities” and in particular “how work and responsibility concerning
the care of children is delegated.” Thus, we will be concerned with how
kinship and gender ideologies are interwoven and inform the behavior
of family members involved in child care over time.
In order to analyze the experiences of the children themselves, we
conducted ethnographic fieldwork in 1999, 2005, and 2006 with eight
transnational families hailing from an agricultural valley nestled in the
central-western Mexican state of Michoacán (see table 1).4 During
multiple visits to their homes, we listened to the children’s voices and
collected narratives from six boys and five girls whose siblings lived far
away in the United States. In all eight families an effort was made to
gather and document the (sometimes conflicting) viewpoints of other
members; whenever possible we spoke to caregivers and other relatives
involved more marginally in the child-rearing arrangement.5

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mummert.indd 505
Table 1. Case Study Children in Transnational Families

Child’s Pseudonym Primary Substitute Caregiver Marital Status of Biological Parents

Ana and her four Eldest sister (Ana) Married, illegal U.S. residents younger siblings
José and María Paternal grandmother Divorced; father’s allegations of mother’s neglect of the children prompted
him to send the children to Mexico to be cared for by his mother
Dalia Unmarried maternal aunt Separated due to father’s ongoing problems with alcoholism Mother
working illegally.
Gabriel and Leonardo Paternal grandmother Married, both parents working in the United States Grandmother cares
for grandchildren along with her own daughter of roughly same age.
Mario and Celia Maternal grandmother Abandoned by her migrant husband, the mother went to the United
States. She later sent her children to Mexico in order to be able to work.
Adrián Maternal grandmother Single mother has made a new life in the United States and partnered
with a man with whom she has two other children. Oldest child refuses
to live with her or to recognize her as his mother.
Damián Maternal aunt and uncle Single mother accepted legal adoption of her son by her sister and
brother-in-law when child was eight. He lives with them and visits his
mother on weekends and vacations.
Julia and her Paternal grandparents Divorced; allegations of child neglect and abuse by mother led to a court
four sisters case in which custody of all five daughters was awarded to the father. The
older girls live with their father in Chicago, while the younger ones visit
there during summer vacations.

Source: 26 interviews with members of eight transnational families in the Ecuandureo Valley, Michoacán, Mexico, 1999, 2005, 2006.
Siblings by Telephone   ✜   505

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In addition to this fieldwork, in an attempt to understand the experi-


ences of these eight families as part of a global phenomenon, we reviewed
a body of sociological and anthropological literature dealing with trans-
national parenting around the world. This scholarship includes several
pathbreaking studies on transnational maternity (e.g., Hondagneu-Sotelo
and Ávila 1997 in Los Angeles) and paternity (Dreby 2006) among
Mexican migrants. In general, extant studies tend to focus only on the
viewpoints of either mothers from poor, third world countries who
migrate to global cities where there is a demand for cheap female labor
for housework and caregiving to children and the elderly, or fathers who
“naturally” left their children in the wife’s care. The children living in
long-distance child-rearing arrangements range from infants to teenagers,6
yet unfortunately, their complex life experiences and viewpoints have
been largely neglected.
By combining ethnographic and bibliographic sources, we are able to
identify certain mechanisms of global political economy that have fostered
an increase in the numbers of Mexican children—as well as children of
other nationalities—who experience long-term physical separation from
siblings and one or both parents. Canadian researchers Barndt (2002)
and Preibisch (2000), as well as the U.S.–based Smith-Nonini (2002) and
the Mexican research team of Vidal et al. (2002) detail specific programs
and practices of female Mexican labor recruitment that actually enforce
the separation of mothers from their children across borders during the
term of a temporary work permit.
Building upon the literature that has placed the plight of transna-
tional working-class families in the public eye, this article pursues a
twofold objective. First, we document the life experiences of children
in transnational families separated from their siblings and explore the
future implications of a family dynamic without coresidence. We show
how transnational families frequently must cope with complications due
to the mixed legal status of family members: U.S. or Mexican national,
and legal or illegal resident alien—categories assigned to them by two
nation-states. We summarize four paradigmatic cases and include par-
ticularly revealing statements made by the children themselves in order
to illustrate dilemmas that arise in long-distance child rearing as seen
through their eyes and those of their caregivers and parents.7 Second,
we discuss certain aspects of the transnational lives of non-coresident
siblings that have been insufficiently studied, especially from a gendered
and transnational viewpoint, and propose a research agenda.

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Siblings by Telephone   ✜   507

A preliminary disclaimer is in order given the highly politicized nature


of this phenomenon dealing with a cornerstone of the social order: the
adequate rearing of future generations of citizens. When long-distance
child rearing in transnational families is portrayed in the media, in film,
and even by academics, one typically finds two opposing positions.8 One
view expresses little criticism of the parents who place their offspring with
alternate caregivers, since the close relatives who agree to take on the
parenting responsibility temporarily are assumed to act in the children’s
best interest. More frequently, however, family separation is framed in
terms of the abandonment of defenseless youngsters by neglectful third
world parents who are misguided in their priorities and blinded by their
pursuit of higher wages in the first world.9 In this article, we avoid judg-
ing the practices of transnational parenthood that give rise to “siblings by
telephone”; rather, we hope to contribute to an understanding of such
practices as alternate forms of organizing child rearing, in principle as
valid as the model of intensive maternity that has prevailed not only as
the apparent norm but also as an ideal.10 We show that these practices
are the outcome of tenuous understandings and negotiations among
parents, children, substitute caregivers, and other relatives. In the midst of
tense and often heartbreaking decisions, mothers, fathers, grandmothers,
grandfathers, aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces, sons and daughters,
and grandchildren find themselves caught up in a maelstrom of emo-
tions, responsibilities, and reciprocities intertwined with gendered and
generational hierarchies and ideologies. We now turn to four issues that
surfaced repeatedly in the eight transnational families studied: siblings of
mixed legal status; half-siblings and stepparents; barriers to communica-
tion between siblings; and adoption.

Siblings of M i x e d L e g a l S tat u s

Amelia is a spinster aunt who has developed a close relationship with her
niece, Dalia, since the girl was born in the Ecuandureo Valley of Micho-
acán in 1994.11 Given that emotional bond, the biological mother chose
her sister Amelia as caregiver for Dalia and a younger infant sister when
she and her husband decided to migrate illegally together to the United
States in 1999. In fact, over time she has come to recognize Amelia as
“Dalia’s real mother.” The maternal grandfather, a remarried widower in
his sixties and seasonal migrant to Chicago, has supported Dalia and Amelia

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economically because remittances from the girl’s parents have not been
steady or reliable. The grandfather has openly criticized his daughter and
son-in-law for their irresponsibility as Dalia’s parents. Since the grandfather
is a U.S. legal resident, at one point he explored the possibility of adopting
his granddaughter, a solution that might have led to a reunification of the
girl with her biological parents, but this fell through. (The second daughter
was reunited with the parents through the use of borrowed documents
to cross the border when she was a few years old.)
When Dalia´s parents, who were residing in Chicago, separated in
2005 as a result of the father’s ongoing problems with alcoholism, her
mother invited Amelia to come to live in Chicago with Dalia (then a
preadolescent). There, she said, Amelia could care for the three nieces
(Dalia, her younger reunited sister, and a sister born in the United States
whom Dalia has never met) while the biological mother worked. Amelia
faced a difficult decision: she preferred living in Mexico, but felt torn by
her very close sisterly relationship and desire to come to her sister’s aid
by being nanny to her nieces. Yet, neither she nor Dalia could enter the
United States legally, which would make the journey across the border
a dangerous and costly affair. If, on the other hand (as Amelia suggested
to Dalia), the three sisters were reunited in Mexico and cared for by
their aunt there, the two younger U.S.–raised sisters would miss their
biological mother and their lives in Chicago. Amelia finally declined her
sister’s invitation and continues to care for her niece Dalia in Michoacán,
as if she were her own daughter. Dalia continues to call her aunt by her
first name (rather than using “aunt”), to interact with her sisters and
parents by telephone and through letters, and to dream of being a flight
attendant (ever since the day she saw one in the airport when her baby
sister was sent to the United States).
This transnational family of mixed legal status lives a heart-wrenching
drama in which family reunification looms unattainable, complicated
by the father’s irresponsibility. As the physical separation has become
long-term, the three sisters are moving along life trajectories that differ
greatly in terms of Spanish and English language acquisition, schooling
opportunities, medical attention, government support, and of course,
caregiving arrangements. Dalia’s case starkly illustrates the complexity
of decision-making processes in transnational families in which relatives
criticize or praise loyalties and mobilize resources for their kin in need
of assistance by invoking moral norms. As Dalia’s grandfather explained
his support: “How could I not help my family?”

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Siblings by Telephone   ✜   509

H a l f -S i b l i n g s and S t e p pa r e n t s

In following the lives of eight transnational families over an eight-year


period, we have become aware of the contingent and volatile nature of
transnational motherhood and fatherhood, often the product of rifts in
conjugal relationships. Among migrant couples, separation, divorce, or
abandonment may lead to the formation of new unions (that may or
may not be formalized in marriage) and eventually to the birth of steps-
iblings. These half-brothers and half-sisters may also become “siblings
by telephone” who have never lived together and feel separated by a
physical and emotional gulf.
When one of the biological parents forms a new relationship, the child
may feel left out and his or her extended family may be concerned about
possible mistreatment by a stepparent. The story of Adrián is a case in
point. The child of an adolescent single mother, Adrián was raised from
infancy by his maternal grandmother, whom he addresses as “Mama
Luisa”;12 she is the only caretaker he has known on a regular basis. The
boy has adamantly refused to recognize his biological mother, who is
currently living in Chicago with a Mexican man, with whom she has
two other children. An attempt by Mama Luisa to reunite Adrián and
his mother in Chicago failed miserably. The grandmother cum mother
is reluctant to turn Adrián over to her daughter anyway, since she has
personally witnessed the physical punishment her “son-in-law” perpetrates
on his own children, Adrián´s half-siblings. The grandmother fears that
Adrián—who already suffers from emotional problems—might easily
bear the brunt of the stepfather’s physical abuse.

Barriers to C o m m u n i c at i o n among Siblings

The physical separation of siblings on opposite sides of the U.S.–Mexican


border tends to place them on heterogeneous life paths since their
upbringing, schooling and job opportunities are radically different.
One of the most obvious markers of differential trajectories is language
acquisition at school and in the home. Among “siblings by telephone,”
lack of language mastery often becomes a formidable obstacle to com-
munication, already hampered by the physical distance separating them.
This has been the case with Ana and her siblings. When she finished the
ninth grade at the age of fifteen, Ana planned to continue her studies

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by attending the senior high school located in the county seat several
miles down the highway from her home village. But her fate was changed
when her mother made a pivotal decision to join the migrant father in
Chicago with the goal of building a bigger house for the family of seven.
The mother left with only her youngest son, Roberto (then age seven),
leaving Ana in charge of herself and the other three children (then ages
fourteen, thirteen, and ten)—all of them students. The paternal grand-
mother, who lives next door, had adamantly expressed her disapproval of
her daughter-in-law´s decision to “abandon her offspring” and refused
to take on the responsibility of caring for her grandchildren. Therefore,
an unmarried paternal aunt (living with the grandparents next door) was
designated the children’s tutor, in charge of the remittances and school
matters, while Ana was expected to feed her two younger brothers and
one sister, as well as organize household chores. These responsibilities
precluded school attendance for Ana.
Although Ana recounts that she did not oppose her mother’s decision
because she understood the family’s economic needs, it is clear from her
discourse that she immediately faced enormous challenges as a sister-
mother; in hindsight she views these years as a sacrifice that she made
to the family. In fact, Ana feels that she was subtly forced by her mother
to sacrifice three years of her life to rear her siblings.13 One by one, the
two teenage boys migrated illegally to Chicago, where they live and
work with their parents. When the youngest sister entered senior high
school, Ana did too; both girls completed their twelve years of study and
eventually migrated to the United States to join the family.
During the six years Ana and her sister were separated from their
parents, communication with Roberto, the youngest sibling who from
the viewpoint of the others lived a privileged life in Chicago, became
difficult since he preferred to speak in English: “He hardly speaks like us,
only English,” reports the grandmother. When the parents in Chicago
encouraged Roberto to talk to his siblings in Michoacán, he confessed
that he hardly remembered them. The elder sisters are well aware of the
different lifestyle that Roberto has in comparison to the rest who were
raised in Mexico: while watching a home video of the boy at a soccer
match, they pointed out that he has material possessions and opportu-
nities that they lacked, and most important, their parents´ undivided
attention. In their narratives, one can detect resentment at the parents’
apparent favoritism and a sense of being treated unfairly. These feelings
are clearly expressed by Ana who, ironically, cared for Roberto as an

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Siblings by Telephone   ✜   511

infant while their mother sold cosmetics door-to-door in the village. The
young Roberto used to call his sister “Mama” and the next-door aunts
liked to tease Ana when she asked them for advice on diapering or milk
formulas: “Why did you go and get married?”
Although Ana benefited from the support of her extended family on
her father’s side (given their residential proximity) to lighten her load,
she and the other children faced their paternal grandmother’s constant
criticism of their biological mother for not loving them. Undeniably,
Ana faced adult family and financial responsibilities at a very early age
and experienced difficult situations (including sexual harassment at high
school) while her parents were far away.

Adoption

As we have seen in the life experiences of these children in transnational


families, long-distance child-rearing practices are fluid and contingent,
tending to become faits accomplis when they drag on indefinitely. Since
many family members are involved as substitute caregivers or tutors, some-
times against their will (as in the case of Ana´s paternal grandmother),
disputes arise among them as to what is best for the youngsters. In view
of the fact that transnational families are often composed of members
with different legal statuses and nationalities, having legitimate docu-
ments becomes a resource that can be leveraged (offered, lent) or not
(denied) to a relative (usually a son or daughter) in order to “solve”
their predicament, or at least improve the situation. When these transac-
tions occur between blood relatives, the resource is placed at the needy
relative’s disposal; when they take place between acquaintances, the
resource is commodified and a price tag is attached to the documents.
Though risky,14 the lending of valid documents is a ruse commonly used
for transporting very young children (whose photographic appearance
changes quickly and dramatically) across the border.
The ultimate “sharing” of migratory statuses among family members
is legal adoption of a nonbiological child.15 Within the eight transna-
tional families we followed, this option had been discussed in two cases
and carried out in a third. Damián, like Adrián, is the son of a single
mother from a small village in the Ecuandureo Valley who never knew
his father. At the age of eight, Damián was legally adopted by his uncle
(his mother’s sister’s husband) who has legal U.S. residency, where he

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lives with his wife and three daughters. Damián entered this household
as a brother to his cousins; he calls his uncle “father,” his aunt “aunt,”
and his biological mother “mother.” He visits his mother, an illegal
immigrant living several hours away in the United States, on weekends
and during summer vacation; she partially supports him. Damián’s
extended family considers this to be a win-win solution since—along with
a new surname—it opened up a pathway of opportunities for Damián:
legal residency in the United States, the chance to learn both English
and Spanish (a future employment asset), and a sense of belonging in
two nuclear families.
Adrián’s case is a long-term informal adoption16 by his maternal
grandparents—a situation accepted by his biological mother since his
birth, but less so by other family members, who continue to take sides in
the protracted matter. Several think that the burden on the grandmother
is too great and that the biological mother should belatedly assume her
responsibilities. One of Adrián’s maternal uncles and his wife (who reside
legally in California) have offered to legally adopt him on one condition:
that neither the grandparents nor the biological mother make any future
claims on the boy. The other aunts and uncles consider this condition
unfair, believing that the grandmother has acquired certain rights through
her many years of caregiving. Although the youngster spent several
months living with this aunt and uncle and attending school in Los
Angeles prior to entering adolescence, he is most accustomed to living
with his grandparents in Mexico and they are very emotionally attached
to him. When asked where he would like to live, Adrián answered: “with
Mama Luisa and Papa Lalo”—the grandparents. Hence, at least during
the grandparents’ lifetime, it would appear that Adrián will remain with
them; alternative options involving a transfer of parental rights have been
put on hold. Yet since both grandparents are in their seventies, Adrián is
well aware that they may die before he reaches the age of eighteen (legal
adulthood in Mexico); imagining that scenario, he adds despondently:
“Then we’ll see who wants me.”

In the Child’s Best Interest: Discussion

This study of “siblings by telephone” has attempted to understand the


emergence of long-distance childrearing and its increasing frequency
among transnational families hailing from Mexico as part of global labor

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Siblings by Telephone   ✜   513

recruitment practices and transnational ties. We have avoided judging


these practices, rather framing them within a paradox that a growing
number of parents in Mexico and around the globe face: feeling trapped
by the perceived need to physically distance themselves from one, some,
or all of their children in order to assure a better future for them. The
biological parents make the difficult choice of which child or children
(if any) they are able to take along, and which are best left behind or
sent back to the homeland to be looked after by alternate caregivers.
This paradox creates family relationships without coresidence for some
siblings; and as we have argued, understanding how families experience
this paradox requires listening to a polyphony of voices.
We have explored some of the life experiences and dilemmas of siblings
separated, either temporarily or indefinitely, by the U.S.–Mexican bor-
der: juggling the advantages and disadvantages of being a mixed-status
transnational family; handling relationships with half-siblings and step-
parents; dealing with differential impacts of long-distance child rearing on
language and learning opportunities as well as future work; and debating
over possible “resolutions” such as adoption. While the children studied
have not been abandoned by their biological parents, many clearly face
complex psychological problems and feelings of estrangement from their
siblings, whom they may view as enjoying better living conditions and
care. It would appear that the future of some siblings is assured, while
others live adrift in uncertainty.
We have shown how—in response to parental absence—kin rela-
tionships are reinvented and resources are channeled toward relatives.
Hybrid figures such as grandmother/mother, sister/mother, aunt/
mother, uncle/father, and cousin/sister emerge. Such dual roles may
in the long run become confusing to the child and difficult to maintain
indefinitely. As the extended family knits a safety net around the young-
ster separated from his or her parent(s), one individual’s legal migratory
status may be transformed into a family resource to be requested from,
offered to, or denied to the others. The cases of informal or formal
adoption by a close relative dramatically illustrate this type of pooling
of valuable social capital in the interests of changing the child’s destiny
for the better. Adoptions may be experienced by the child and his or
her relatives as simply paperwork in a win-win situation (as in the case
of Damián) or, in other cases, polarize the entire kin group when its
members cannot agree on what is in the child’s best interest (as in the
case of Adrián).

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Directions for Future Research

This exploratory study suggests a vast research agenda that will require
the collaboration of experts willing to avail themselves of insights from
a number of fields (such as family history, psychology, anthropology,
demography, family sociology, and law) and to close the gap among
these disciplines. It will also test the theoretical legitimacy and method-
ological creativity of family specialists as they crack open the black box
of interpersonal relationships in transnational families living out their
existence in transnational social fields.
We must better understand the implications of increasing numbers
of mixed-status transnational families for kinship ties and household
dynamics. We need to delve into the particularities and emotional chal-
lenges of relationships between half-siblings and stepparents. We must
reflect upon the considerable hurdles to effective communication and
to the forging of emotional ties between siblings who are separated by
international borders, even as communication technologies multiply.
Attention should be given to the safety net constructed by caregivers as
they specialize in specific child-rearing tasks, e.g., relatives designated
as tutors for children attending school far from their parents. It is also
essential to gauge the potential consequences of children assuming family
responsibilities at an early age, well before their peers do.
It is important to further probe the gendered nature of caregiving in
different cultural contexts. In our study region and in Mexico as a whole,
the physical care and nurturing of human beings in sickness and in health
is normalized as being a traditionally female terrain. Accordingly, substitute
mothers are preferably sought out within the maternal kin group. Yet, as
we have seen in this case study, male figures are not completely absent;
rather they appear as emergency or substitute providers and as candidates
for sharing legal documents, since they (more often than women) have
acquired legal status to live and work in the United States.
Finally, there is a pressing need to conduct comparative historical and
cross-cultural research on long-distance child-rearing arrangements. As
massive migrations mobilize hundreds of millions of persons worldwide,
the phenomenon of parent-child separation is definitely on the rise around
the globe and has only begun to be documented on various continents
and regions as diverse as the Americas, the Caribbean, Asia, and the Mid-
dle East.17 While it may have similar causes rooted in political economy,
its meanings and lived experiences vary in different contexts.

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Siblings by Telephone   ✜   515

By examining who cares for the children in the (temporary or pro-


tracted) absence of their biological parents in a cross-cultural perspective,
we can begin to scratch the surface of a complex family matter deeply
rooted in political economy. If, as Bras and van Tilburg (2007: 297)
suggest, “the idea of the inherent quality or naturalness of kinship” is in
fact under siege, then the study of sibling relationships should be a vital
part of probing “how kinship, or better relatedness, is constructed and
functions in various contexts.” We can profitably do so from a gendered
and transnational stance. For example, how is kin solidarity generated?
How do men and women participate in it in different ways? How are
commitments enforced or overlooked? Which legitimizing discourses are
(or are not) invoked when material resources or kin-work are mobilized?
How are alternate caregivers selected and recruited? Why do we find that
women (preferably a maternal grandmother, a spinster aunt, or an elder
sister) are the first choices among Mexicans and certain other ethnic or
national groups? Why are transnational paternity and maternity valued
differently?
This article has illustrated how persons immersed in transnational
lives, who face continuing challenges to their social reproduction, are
extremely resilient; they close ranks, take risks, pool resources, and seem
to strengthen their resolve in the face of common danger and formi-
dable obstacles. They act in what they consider to be the children’s best
interests—though that in itself is a disputed terrain. In doing so, parents,
children, and other relatives fashion new understandings of kin and kin-
work by questioning and reworking shared schemas and interpretive
frameworks. Thus, they reshape the family. <

Notes

1. Unfortunately, we have no reliable figures on the number of child migrants


nor those who stay behind, since both groups go largely undetected in surveys
and censuses. Rather we must draw upon partial evidence from a variety of sources
that point to a surge in this young population. With regard to the first group,
migration specialist Rodolfo Tuirán (2006: 24) recently estimated that of more
than 6.5 million undocumented Mexicans in the United Status, one million are
under the age of eighteen. A 2003 study conducted by the Mexican government
agency DIF (Desarrollo Integral de la Familia) and UNICEF confirmed that the
United States Immigration and Naturalization Service was annually detaining
and deporting thousands of children attempting to cross the border, some of
them accompanied but an increasing number unaccompanied by family members

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(see Hernández Sánchez 2007: 1). Using data generated by the Mexican agency
Instituto Nacional de Migración for 2003–2006, García, Molina, and López
(2007: 13) reported that the annual number of child deportation cases reached
the 40,000 to 50,000 range. López and Díaz (2003: 150–52), analyzing data on
return migrants from a national demographic survey (ENADID) conducted in
1992 and again in 1997, reported that the 0–17-year age group was the fastest
growing one. With regard to the second group of youngsters, those left behind
by parents, their teachers and alternate caretakers are the principal informants
interviewed in ethnographic research. See, for example, the methodological dis-
cussion in Mummert (2006) and Triano’s (2006) study of “donut households” in
rural Mexico composed of grandparents and grandchildren while the “missing”
intermediate generation migrated to work elsewhere.
2. Wilson (2000) makes a cogent case for interpreting the current nativist
upsurge in the United States as an attempt to enforce anew a separation of
production and reproduction among Mexican immigrants, leaving the labor
force “unencumbered” by family responsibilities and therefore able to be over-
exploited.
Some researchers have referred to this pattern of family reproduction across
borders as split or divided households (see López 1986; Kanaiaupuni 2000: 1–2),
while others have stressed the importance of women-centered networks in kin-
work and caring work across the transnational social field. (Also see Alicea 1997
for the case of Puerto Rican women moving between the home island and the
continental United States.)
3. Nina Glick Schiller, one of the pioneer proponents of a transnational
framework for studying contemporary migrants, specifies that this field has
“examined transnational flows of culture, idea, capital and people.” She goes on
to distinguish between globalization and transnational studies: “Transnational
Studies highlight processes and connections across specific state borders. State
actors and institutions are understood to be important participants in shaping
but not limiting the social, cultural, economic, and political linkages of people”
(2005: 439–40).
4. The eight transnational families we followed longitudinally are presented
in table 1. One child with siblings in the United Status was identified at school,
but the others were identified in the course of interviews conducted as part of a
larger study dealing with transformations in rural families in migratory settings.
This study began in 1991 and has involved multi-site fieldwork with Mexican
migrant and nonmigrant families in the Ecuandureo Valley of northwestern
Michoacán, California’s Central Valley, and suburban Chicago by a team of
researchers headed by the primary author. Data were collected by means of
household surveys, archival searches, and hundreds of in-depth and open-ended
interviews with men and women of different generations (see Mummert 1999).
We acknowledge the vital contribution made by the following research assistants
in the interviews, transcriptions of taped interviews and field notes, and data
processing: Alejandra Camarena Ortiz, Alberto Flores Hernández, and Eduardo
Santiago Nabor.

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Siblings by Telephone   ✜   517

5. We embrace the position of Bluebond-Langner and Korbin (2007: 242) in


their recent introduction to an overview of childhood studies in anthropology:
“rather than privileging children’s voices above all others, it is more productive
to integrate children into a more multivocal, multiperspective view of culture
and society.”
6. For example, Hagan (1994: xv) reports on Mayan parents in Houston
sending a newborn baby with friends to be raised in the Mayan tradition by grand-
parents in Guatemala, while Levitt (2001) observed many cases of adolescents
sent back to the Dominican Republic from Boston to stay with relatives there.
7. In all cases pseudonyms are used to protect the privacy of the families who
shared their life stories.
8. A notable exception to these two extremes is the prize-winning film Al
otro lado directed by Gustavo Loza in 2005. This Mexican filmmaker portrays
the odysseys of three children—a Mexican boy from the Lake Zirahuén region
of Michoacán, a Moroccan girl from a rural village, and a Cuban youngster from
Havana—as they search for their migrant fathers. Each child attempts to make sense
of the ways the father’s absence affects the family unit and shapes its future.
9. In a recent study of transnational adoptions, Briggs (2006: 49) documents
precisely this position being voiced by adoptive parents and lawyers involved in
illegal adoptions who believe they are “saving” the children from a worse fate.
10. Intensive maternity refers to an ideology widespread in the West positing
that the biological mother cares naturally and exclusively for her child. She is
judged to be the most appropriate caregiver because that role supposedly springs
from the maternal instinct (see Solé and Parella 2005: 5).
11. Unmarried and in her forties, Amelia is considered a spinster in rural
Mexico—a woman who has few possibilities of finding a husband. In a transna-
tional family, she is an ideal candidate to be a substitute mother.
12. In rural mestizo communities such as the one where Adrián lives, it is not
uncommon to address a grandparent in this fashion, although the diminutive of
grandmother or grandfather (abuelita/abuelito) is more usual.
13. Although parents in many cultures delegate to older siblings some respon-
sibilities for caretaking and socializing their younger siblings (see Cicirelli 1994),
Ana’s full-time responsibilities far exceeded such custodial roles. To use Stack and
Burton´s terminology (1994: 37), Ana was kin-scripted to care for her younger
siblings. As these authors explain, “It is important to understand how power is
brought into play within the context of kin-time and kin-work. The question
this raises is summed up in the tension reflected in kin-scription. Rather than
accept the attempts of individuals to set their own personal agendas, families are
continually rounding up, summoning, or recruiting individuals for kin-work.
Some kin, namely women and children, are easily recruited.”
14. If the perpetrators are caught by immigration officials, the documents
are confiscated.
15. Briggs (2006) argues that, in the current age of neoliberalism and
globalization, transnational adoptions of children from the South and East by
parents in the North and West are linked to a range of illegal activities built

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518   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

upon transnational networks (kidnapping, forced prostitution, and human organ


trafficking)—all of which have been documented as occurring in Mexico.
16. Briggs (2006: 55–56) makes a useful distinction between formal and
informal adoption, showing how both practices have historical roots in cultural
matrixes.
17. Ye, Murray, and Yihuan (2005) conducted a study of rural children left
behind in relatives’ care by parents migrating to the cities of Midwest China.
The migration of Philippine women to Rome and Los Angeles has been studied
by Salazar-Parreñas (2000), and to Taiwan by Lan (2003), while most recently
cases of South American women working in Europe and leaving children in their
homelands have been documented by Solé and Parella (2005) for Barcelona,
and by Raijman, Schammah-Gesser, and Kemp (2003) for Israel.

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mummert.indd 522 1/25/10 12:04:26 PM
Mujeres en el Cruce: Remapping Border
Security through Migrant Mobility

A n n a O c h o a O’L e a r y

There is little doubt that the migration of women out of Latin America
has been steadily increasing since the 1980s. Their increased participation
in the labor market is best understood in the context of global restructur-
ing in what been referred to as the feminization of international migration
(Ramírez, García Domínguez, and Miguez Morais 2005). Yet, little is
known about their actual migration experiences. We know, for example,
that migration for women is becoming increasingly hazardous. Recent
research on human remains recovered in the Tucson sector since 1991
by researchers at the Binational Migration Institute at the University of
Arizona1 has not only determined that migrant deaths due to exposure
have increased since 1994, when harsher measures to enforce the bor-
der between the United States and Mexico border were implemented,
but also that women migrants, when controlling for age (younger than
18 years of age), are 2.70 times more likely to die of exposure than all
other causes when compared to men (Rubio-Goldsmith et al. 2006).
The hazards inherent in the migration process were also brought to
public attention in March 2007 with an outbreak of armed violence
in Arizona, allegedly between rival bands of human smugglers. Five
undocumented immigrants, two of them women, were killed in these
incidents (Quinn and McCombs 2007). Other types of risks including
greater reliance on coyotes (Donato et al. 2008), abandonment in the
desert (O’Leary 2008, 2009a) have also only recently become more
visible. Since 1993 there have been several high-profile cases of sexual
assault against migrant women by Border Patrol agents (Cieslak 2000;
Falcon 2001; Steller 2001; Urquijo-Ruiz 2004). These highly publicized
cases have been instrumental in raising public questions about the risks
migrant women face and how common they are. These issues inspired
the research project “Women at the Intersection: Immigration Enforce-

A n n a O’L e a r y O c h o a is assistant professor in the Department of


Mexican American and Raza Studies, University of Arizona.

Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 523–542

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524   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

ment and Transnational Migration on the U.S.–Mexico Border.” In the


spring of 2006, this study began systematically to document migrant
women’s border-crossing experiences. Interviews with migrant women
have provided greater understanding not only of migrants’ encounters
with U.S. immigration enforcement agents, but also of the broader eco-
nomic and social environments in which migration takes place.2 These
experiences have been analyzed in order to render as complete a portrait
as possible of migrant women who are temporarily suspended in a global
“intersection” of diametrically opposed processes on the U.S.–Mexico
border: immigration enforcement and transnational movement.
After summaries of the political and historical bases for the research
and the research itself, I highlight portions of some of the narratives of
migrant women that provide insight into how oppositional forces are
reworked at this conceptual intersection. Toward this end, I focus on the
tension between family separation and family reunification as perhaps the
most salient of the issues brought up by migrant women. By focusing
on these related but contradictory processes, I flesh out a prominent
feature of the intersection, following a relational thinking approach
that incorporates subjects and subjectivity into discussions about more
abstract processes and concepts such the state and markets (Marchand
and Runyan 2000). Multiple accounts suggest that family separation is
inextricable from its opposite, family reunification. Indeed, they can be
considered as opposite sides of the same coin, so to speak: the result of
both poverty and the involuntary migration that can help relieve that
poverty. The maintenance of such oppositional categories is further
problematized by global actors who simultaneously represent both cat-
egories via transnational family forms: the extension of family relations
and support networks across households and international boundaries
(Hondagneu-Sotelo 2002). Emergent transnational family forms provide
the basis of cross-border social networks upon which migrant mobility
and settlement ultimately depend (Donato et al 2008). This process by
which mobility and settlement are facilitated opens migration oppor-
tunities for still more people, until it becomes a generalized social and
economic practice (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994: 96). As migrant mobility
is facilitated, however, oppositional border enforcement systems are cor-
respondingly challenged. The intersection, as an analytical tool, is like
a window into how contradictory categories are thus brought together
and destabilized. Indeed, the intersection thus reveals the historically
entrenched relationship between capital, gender, and migration (Meil-

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Mujeres en el Cruce   ✜   525

lassoux 1981), and makes visible the role of essential social processes,
such as women’s roles in the reproduction of the labor force, which
are ignored when only economic and border enforcement policies are
designed (Wilson 2000). A focus on how contradictions are reworked
moves us from looking at the effects of macro-structural processes on
subjects—a growing number of which are women—to an examination
of how subjects impact the macrostructure.

B a c k g r o u n d t o I m m i g r at i o n E n f o r c e m e n t i n
t h e A g e o f I n c r e a s e d B o r d e r (I n )S e c u r i t y

Since the implementation of the Southwest Border Strategy3 and the


adoption of measures to seal the border were implemented beginning in
1993, Nogales, like other Arizona-Sonora border cities, has experienced
exponential growth in migration-related activities due to the “rechan-
nelling” or “funneling” of migration traffic through Sonora that these
measures produced (Cornelius 2001; Rubio-Goldsmith et. al 2006). To
date, many undocumented migrants who are apprehended in Arizona
are “voluntarily” removed4 from the United States at the Nogales, Ari-
zona, port-of-entry. According to the Department of Homeland Security
website5 the Tucson Border Patrol sector, which includes Nogales, led
all other sectors with 439,090 apprehensions in 2005. The Tucson sec-
tor was three times busier than the second busiest Border Patrol sector,
Yuma, which is adjacent to the west. The process of removal varies. Some
migrants are removed from the United States without appearing before
a judge, a procedure known as “voluntary departure.” Arizona also had
the most voluntary departures when all field offices were considered:
395,597 out of a total of 887,115 reported by all field offices for 2003.
Other migrants are deported after an immigration court hearing or after
having served time in any of Arizona’s immigration detention centers.
Of those migrants who are removed or deported, it is estimated that
more than one-third reenter the United States without authorization.6
Undocumented migrants who illegally reenter the United States fol-
lowing voluntary departure and are re-apprehended are charged with
illegal entry after removal, and depending on the number of times they
have been charged with this violation, serve progressively longer prison
terms in Arizona’s immigration detention centers (Alvarado 2004). The
high recidivism rate attests to the economic imperatives that outweigh

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526   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

the risk of serving progressively longer prison terms if reapprehended.


In Arizona, about 31,000 individuals—the vast majority of whom are
Mexican nationals—were imprisoned in 2004, and the number is grow-
ing (Abramsky 2004).

The Research

The present research was conducted at a migrant shelter, Albergue San


Juan Bosco, in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico. Nogales, Sonora, a Mexican
border city fifty-five miles south of Tucson, Arizona, lies within the funnel,
or channel, created by the Southwest Border Strategy. Like many other
border cities along the Arizona-Sonora border, Nogales is experiencing
rapid growth due to the high influx of migrants (Castro Luque, Miranda,
and Zepeda Bracamonte 2006). Up to 48 percent of all migrants mov-
ing to or through Nogales are estimated to be women (Castro Luque,
Miranda, and Zepeda Bracamonte 2006; Monteverde García 2004).7
Many studies suggest that gendered migration patterns, those in which
the initial movement of unaccompanied men is followed by that of wives
and other family members, are undergoing change (Cerrutti and Massey
2001; Donato 1993). These studies suggest that recent female migration
is less likely to follow a “stages” pattern, where the husband migrates
first (initial stage) and women migrate later. Instead it is more likely to
resemble patterns established by unaccompanied males (Hondagneu-
Sotelo 1994). For example, the growing research on domestics, one of
the fastest growing labor sectors and one that undocumented women are
most likely to engage in, shows that more Latina women are leaving their
own children behind to take care of the families of others in the United
States (Hondagneu-Sotelo 2002; Ibarra 2003). Indeed, Castro Luque and
her colleagues (2006) have documented a dramatic increase of 32 percent
in the percentage of women migrating through Nogales, Sonora: from
4.9 in 1994 to 37.1 in 1998. It can be argued that this dramatic rise in
female migration is related to the neoliberal structural adjustment policies
introduced by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in
1994, which is similar to policies that have resulted in the feminization
of poverty in many other developing countries (Sadasivam 1997). In
addition, like their male counterparts, once women begin migrating,
it is virtually assured that they will migrate again (Donato 1994). The
increase in the migration of women unaccompanied by spouses and fam-

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Mujeres en el Cruce   ✜   527

ily, and the cyclical nature of migration, also increase the chances that
women will experience multiple apprehensions and detentions and will
be victims of violence (Monteverde García 2004).

Methods

Like other migrant shelters that have sprouted up along the U.S.–Mexico
line, Albergue San Juan Bosco aids repatriated migrants who, upon their
release from the custody of U.S. immigration enforcement authorities,
find themselves without a support system in the area. Albergue San Juan
Bosco is a nongovernmental organization that accommodates both male
and female migrants.8 Guests at the shelter typically stay only one to two
days before attempting either to reenter the United States or to return
to their communities of origin.
Because of this, a rapid appraisal (RA) method was chosen for the
research. RA emerged initially from development research (Carruthers
and Chambers 1981), but it has increasingly been used in the design and
assessment of public health interventions.9 Consistent with RA methods,
a topic guide was used to interview migrant women who arrived at the
shelter and to help document more fully the various systems that facilitate
and encourage migration, such as social networks, employer-employee
relationships, and the arrangements for the unauthorized crossing of the
U.S.–Mexico border (O’Leary 2009b). The topic guide was also designed
to investigate the enforcement system and, in particular, the trajectory of
women migrants as it intersects with immigration enforcement systems,
how this experience affected the women, and how it influenced their
decisions either to cross again or return to their communities of origin.
In this way, the decision to migrate and the migration experience were
situated within broader social and economic processes.
Between February 2006 and June 2007, I interviewed one hundred
women at the shelter. The shelter managers, volunteers, and migrants
allowed me to gather data through in-depth interviews (the majority of
which were tape recorded), informal conversations, and other shared
activities such eating or assisting with shelter tasks. Interviewing subjects
was challenging due to the limited time that I had to solicit their vol-
untary cooperation and establish a measure of trust. However, I found
nearly all of the potential respondents willing to talk to me about their
border-crossing experiences. The shelter opens its doors at 7:00 p.m. every

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528   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

evening, and during a span of about three hours, migrants register, eat,
wash, and bed down for the night. Few stayed beyond one night. A few
respondents were reluctant to be tape-recorded, in which case I wrote
notes during the interviews and attempted to capture as many quota-
tions as possible. Beginning in September of 2006, I visited the shelter
every two weeks, which provided for the systematic data collection that
was a goal of the research. With more visits to the shelter, I fell into the
shelter’s rhythm, and gained rapport with the managers and volunteers.
My being of Mexican heritage, while not a guarantee that I could be
trusted, was, I believe, also helpful in projecting myself as trustworthy
(de confianza) among shelter guests.

M a p p i n g O u t F a m i l y S e pa r at i o n /F a m i l y
R e u n i f i c at i o n

Cunningham and Heyman (2004) argue that national borders are par-
ticularly well suited for empirically examining the diametrically opposed
processes of enclosure and mobility. “Horizontal” processes of enclosure
are better understood by the challenges that impede their implementa-
tion. Conversely, “vertical” processes, understood as the various mobil-
ity systems that facilitate the movement of people, jobs, trade, goods,
information, culture, and language, are better understood in the context
of the barriers that restrict them. I have reworked this framework to help
me map out the intersection of the “horizontal” enforcement mechanisms
that embody U.S. “enclosure” (for example, the Border Patrol, barri-
ers, policing, surveillance), and “vertical” mobility systems (figure 1).
This approach also follows Hannerz’s (1998) suggestion for organizing
transnational research. Instead of the conventional community study of
migrants at the end or beginning of their migration journey, migrants are
viewed as somewhere in between two points: temporarily suspended in an
interstitial space represented by the “O” in figure 1, where systems that
regulate or impede mobility intersect with transnational movements.
Interviews with women at the shelter advance our understanding
of the border as a place where opposite processes converge, not only
theoretically but in concrete terms as well. For example, the processes
by which families are separated, processes that can fall under the broader
immigration enforcement rubric, converge with the process by which its
opposite, family reunification, is realized (Wilson 2009). The salience

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Mujeres en el Cruce   ✜   529

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of the family separation-reunification issue is not surprising given that


for decades, the notion of “family reunification” has been central to
determining quotas under U.S. immigration policies. Quotas for dif-
ferent sending countries have reflected the value of family reunification
in that immigration laws have accommodated the fundamental desire of
residents to be reunited with nonresident family members (Ngai 2004;
Zolberg 2006). The United Nations Convention for the Protection of
Migrants and Their Families and a 2004 protocol jointly adopted by the
U.S. Border Patrol and Mexico’s Instituto Nacional de Migración (INM),
“Procedures for the Safe and Orderly Removal of Mexican Nationals”
also reflect a universal respect for family unity. The latter agreement
also specifies that officials will take measures to ensure that families
who are arrested and later deported remain together. If we follow the
logic upon which guidelines have been founded, we recognize family
reunification as a fundamental right and its antithesis, family separation,
as objectionable. Indeed, both are part and parcel of powerful trans-
national mobility systems that are revealed at the intersection and can
be used to understand more fully the entrenched relationship between
mobility and enforcement. As an analytical tool, the intersection can be

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530   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

thought of as a window into how contradictions are worked out. The


transformative quality that migrant women impart, on both the migra-
tion process and the enforcement paradigm, consists of challenging the
distinction between these binaries and recognizing that the force by
which one is implemented (e.g., mobility) is contingent on the other
(enforcement). In other words, by increasing enforcement, the likelihood
of family separation is intensified, which in turn, invites the emergence
of supportive familial relations. The expansion of transnational familial
relations facilitates transnational mobility of family members through
transnational exchanges of valuable information and resources. The
facilitation of migrant mobility challenges the development of a culture
of national security (Sadasivam 1997), which in turn reacts by becoming
invigorated, resulting in the increased potential for family separation.

Women Migrating to Join Their Husbands: The Case of Azucena

Recent studies have suggested that gendered migration patterns, those


in which the movement of unaccompanied men is generally followed by
that of their wives and family members, are undergoing change (Cerrutti
and Massey 2001; Donato 1993; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). The findings
of the present research bear this out. Of the forty women interviewed
between September and December 2006, only three reflected the tradi-
tional migration pattern, where women’s migration is motivated by the
need or desire to join their husbands. In fact, almost all women who had
children considered themselves mothers made single by the abandonment
of their partners (madres solteras). Even for those few whose motive for
migrating to the United States was to join their husbands, however,
their stories revealed more complex realities. First, it is important to
note that women who migrate to reunite with their husbands most often
leave other family members behind, including children (Wilson 2000).
Thus, as women embark on the journey to spousal reunification, they are
simultaneously being separated from other family members by migrating.
Family reunification and family separation are thus often simultaneous
experiences. The case of Azucena shows the relationship of these two
contradictory processes.10
Azucena (age twenty-five) set off from her hometown in Guanajuato
with a friend from her community who was also en route to join her
husband in the United States. Others accompanied the two women,
including Azucena’s uncle, an aunt (his sister), another friend (Jorge),

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Mujeres en el Cruce   ✜   531

and Azucena’s mother-in-law. They were all part of the larger group of
about sixty migrants who were apprehended by the Border Patrol the
night before I met them at the shelter. Azucena had hoped to reach
Ventura, California, where her husband worked. This was Azucena’s
second trip to the United States. On the first trip north, she had not
encountered any problems.
This time, however, was different. The encounter with immigration
enforcement authorities began shortly after they were detected and
detained by a helicopter that flew down low over their heads and began
shining a light on the group. It was night and they were in a grassy area.
As the helicopter approached, their guide11 shouted for everyone to lie
flat and to pull the grass over themselves and to cover their faces, but this
advice had been nearly impossible to follow. The helicopter thundered
overhead too quickly, shining light, blowing debris, and instructing
them in Spanish over a loudspeaker to come out from hiding. When
the helicopter flew over their heads, it seemed so close that they feared
it would hit them.
When the helicopter descended, everyone fled in a panic. According
to Azucena, the children traveling with the group scattered and were
not found. The uncle of these children disappeared into the night in an
obvious attempt to keep the children from getting lost. When Border
Patrol agents arrived in vehicles and on horseback minutes later, the
children’s mother notified them that her children had scattered into the
desert and asked them for help. The Border Patrol searched the imme-
diate area but did not find anyone. No one knew if the children were
eventually found. In addition, Azucena’s mother-in-law had tripped in
the dark during the scuffle and been injured, quite possibly suffering a
sprain. The Border Patrol might have taken her to a hospital, but at that
time no one knew of her condition or whereabouts.
During the detention phase, Azucena had become separated from
those she knew. She nervously tired to discern where her file was relative
to the others in the stack that was accumulating on the agent’s desk.
She grew nervous as she saw the agents casually sitting around talking
or eating. Another woman in the cell with her protested because her
companion had been released but she had not. Because she complained,
the agent yelled at her and threatened to take longer to process her
release. Azucena did not want her own release delayed, so she did not
protest, even through she felt the same separation anxiety as the other
woman in the cell.

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532   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

In retrospect, Azucena thought that by provoking this anxiety, the


Border Patrol was sending a clear message: “a esto se atienen al cruzar”
(this is what is in store for you on crossing). What’s more, she had already
learned that not only are companions released at different times, but they
may be dropped off at different locations along the line.12 This makes it
even more difficult for them to find each other after their release. After
their release and before arriving at the shelter that night, Azucena and
Jorge spent the better part of that day looking for her mother-in-law.
They had gone to the bus terminal when someone told them that many
repatriated migrants—many of them injured—took shelter there at night.
They found the bus station, but did not find her mother-in-law nor her
friend from Guanajuato.
The interview provided a space in which Azucena reflected on her
agency and subjectivity. When asked if she would try again to enter the
United States, Azucena said yes. She was uncertain as to when because
she was still looking for her mother-in-law. However, her husband was
waiting for her and she had not been able to notify him of her delay.
She insisted that she was not afraid: “Yo no tengo miedo,” now that the
agent’s strategy to evoke fear had somehow become transparent to her.
She recalled critically the fear of her friend, whom she said had cried on
the bus ride north from Guanajuato. Then she had wept uncontrollably
on the trip to the detention center. She said that now she was disgusted
by her friend’s lack of courage.
This experience illustrates how family reunification efforts are com-
plicated by simultaneous family separation events as women move
through the intersection. Azucena’s case supports claims that once
women begin migrating, they may migrate multiple times between the
United States and their native communities. The nature of the cyclical
movement of women is still under-researched, as is the number of repa-
triations women will tolerate before succeeding or deciding to return
to their home community. The length of the stay in the intersection
of movement and enforcement also appears to be a function of the
delays caused by family separation in the course of migrating, in terms
of the time it takes for family members to try to relocate their travel-
ing companions who have become separated. If successful, a migrant
woman’s efforts at reunification may in fact create separations of other
kinds, as did Azucena’s separation from her children, whom she left
with her parents in Guanajuato. The following narrative illustrates this
process further.

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Mujeres en el Cruce   ✜   533

Women Migrating to Join their Parents: The Case of Rosita

Rosita (age eighteen) is one of several women interviewed who were


migrating to rejoin parents who left them when they were small to migrate
to the United States. She, her husband and her child were at the shelter
on a cold February night after being repatriated. Rosita’s mother and
father had left their children in Paracho, Michoacán, about ten years
earlier when they migrated to the United States. At that time, Rosita was
nine and the eldest of four children. The children were left with Rosita’s
grandmother and aunts, and Rosita helped raise her younger siblings,
the youngest of whom was a little over one year old at the time. Over
the years, Rosita’s parents had arranged for the children to journey to
the United States, one at a time, to be reunited with them. This process
illustrates a “stage” approach to migration in which the initial migration
of men is followed later by more permanent settlement of their wives and
children (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). Rosita was the last of the siblings
to make the journey. At eighteen, she now had an infant child of her
own, which complicated the journey north.
In the preceding few months, Rosita’s father had phoned her and her
husband, urging them to make the journey to Oregon because there
was much work there. Rosita’s father worked in the agricultural sector,
routinely working the potato harvest. In an all-too-common pattern, the
couple’s decision to follow her parents to the United States was based on
economic need. She stated, “A veces ni de comer teníamos” (At times
we did not have anything to eat). Rosita’s father borrowed the neces-
sary money and arranged for the coyote to help them make the journey.
Because he was a friend of the family, they were charged only $1,10013
and because she would be bringing her baby, he agreed to arrange for
the shortest route possible. They had managed to cross into the United
States without being apprehended and had been hiding in a safe house
waiting for their ride to Oregon when they were discovered by a police
officer. Rosita thought that they had been discovered when another
coyote who had placed his group of migrants in a room across the hall
had been followed by the police back to the safe house. The coyote
had apparently attracted the attention of a police officer who saw him
enter a nearby bank covered with dust. The official followed the coyote
back to the safe house, and when he stopped by the door to the room
where Rosita’s group were harbored, the officer apprehended him then
proceeded to arrest the group hiding in the room.

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534   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

Rosita’s reunification with her father and mother was thus indefinitely
postponed. Rosita recounted that on their trip from the detention center
to Nogales there were two young girls on the Department of Homeland
Security bus who could not stop crying because their guide had separated
them from their parents and they did not know where they were. For
Rosita, the trauma of her fellow passengers forced her to consider the
danger of separation from her own child, which in part convinced her
not to reattempt to cross. Her mother-in-law had offered to keep the
baby but Rosita had refused. Her parents had long before left her and her
siblings to go to the United States, and this experience might have had
some bearing on her decision. She said that many others had left their
chiquitos behind, but she could not bring herself to be separated from
her little one. Like the other women, Rosita’s story further illustrates
how the separation/reunification binary might be made less distinct over
the years, leaving in its wake a transnational family form that facilitates
movement between sending and receiving communities.

Women Leaving Family Behind: The Case of Araceli

There are indications that women are assuming the role of primary
providers for their households, resulting in the feminization of migra-
tion (Ramirez, García Domínguez, and Miguez Morais 2005). Araceli
and Yudi Dalia (both eighteen) were cousins on their way to the United
State in October of 2006 with Araceli’s mother (who was not present)
and her maternal aunt, Esperanza (forty-two). All four women had been
apprehended by the Border Patrol but had been released at different
times. They feared that because Araceli’s mother had been apprehended
on a prior occasion, she would have to serve additional detention time
before being released. They hoped that she would show up at the shelter
soon. The four women had come from the state of Guerrero and, like
the majority of the women who came through the shelter, they had left
a primarily agriculturally based community. Consistent with other com-
plaints about the agricultural economy in Mexico, they stated that they
were migrating because there were unable to subsist in that economy.
The work there was seasonal, “por temporada,” and poorly paid. Esper-
anza explained, “Mucha gente pues, se muere de hambre. No hay nada.
No tienen dinero. Allá mucho niño anda descalzo. . . .” (Many people,
well, they die of hunger. There is nothing. They have no money. Over
there, many children go barefoot.) Yudi Dalia added, “Muchos no van

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Mujeres en el Cruce   ✜   535

a la escuela.” (Many do not go to school). Araceli then elaborated, “Y


aunque uno quiere trabajar, no hay trabajo.” (Even if one wants to
work, there is no work.) Esperanza further explained, “Siembra maíz
pero no alcanza. Está muy barato el maíz. Lo venden por la necesidad
que tienen, y luego se acaba y allí se quedan.” (One plants corn, but it
is not enough. The corn is too cheap. They sell it because they need to,
but then it is gone, and they are left [with nothing].)
Also consistent with other accounts of agricultural economies in
Mexico, the women reported there are virtually no economic opportu-
nities for women. Women with families and husbands are responsible
for preparing meals for their family’s consumption. For women with
husbands, this work includes taking meals twice a day to their husbands
at work in the fields. At times, all families have to eat is tortillas with
nothing else. Some women may make tortillas to sell to the men in the
fields who do not have women to do this for them. For women who do
not have husbands, such as Esperanza, there were only poorly paid jobs,
such as taking in laundry.
Before coming north, Araceli had begun to take courses in English
until she was forced to help support her family. The third oldest of seven
siblings, she had been in the first semester of a two-year program. Then
her father became disabled after suffering two gunshot wounds, one in
his eye and one in his leg. He had refused to tell his family why he had
been shot for fear that any information he divulged might jeopardize
his family’s safety. Because he was unable to work, Araceli took on the
responsibility of coming north in search of employment. She was on her
way to Florida to join other relatives when she was apprehended. She
said women have increasingly left their communities to search for work
in the United States for the same reason. Now, they suffer here, she said,
as well as over there, “No hay trabajo allá . . . y ahora estamos sufriendo
aquí.” (There is no work there, so now we suffer here.) At the time of
the interview, the women were in the process of calling family members
to borrow money to pay for their return home. Although Esperanza and
Yudi Dalia no longer wanted to attempt the crossing, they agreed to wait
a few days to see if Araceli’s mother would find her way to the shelter.
Thus, the separation of these women, previously united through family
ties and mutual suffering, seemed inevitable. As Araceli’s case illustrates,
the intersection is full of anxiety as family members become separated,
temporarily suspended in time as they relocate each other and decide
what their next step will be. Similar to Azucena’s case, their stay in the

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536   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

intersection was prolonged due to family separation upon repatriation.


On the other hand, Araceli, Yudi Dalia, and Esperanza might also be
considered representative of a growing number of women without male
partners who have been incorporated into a culture of northbound
migration, once considered a primarily male rite of passage (Hondagneu-
Sotelo 1994: 191).

T h e I n t e r s e c t i o n a s S pa c e o f C o n v e r g e n c e
of Oppositional Forces

The conceptual intersection helps map out how an apparent contradic-


tion, family separation and family reunification, is no contradiction for
migrants who find themselves simultaneously in both states. As the
distinction is blurred, the power it holds over the decision to migrate is
weakened. The vacillating and changing positionalities of women within
this hybridized sphere of social interaction are both indicative of and a
means of greater independence from the strictures of conventional family
forms (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994). Thus, increased international interac-
tions within families not only facilitates the migration of women but also
aids in the transmission of ideas and discourses that call into question
traditional ideas of gendered practices and transform them (O’Leary,
González, and Valdez Gardea 2008). In effort to move beyond the
extensive research already done in this area, I submit that in contributing
to emergent cultural practices that facilitate migrant mobility, women
migrants also actively challenge the culture of border security. Focusing
on emergent cultural practices in this way moves us from looking at
migration as a mechanical response to macrostructural processes to an
examination of how subjects impact the macrostructure.
We begin by examining the idea of enclosure (Cunningham and
Heyman 2004): how a culture of security dictates U.S. border enforce-
ment measures and how this culture counters mobility processes, one
of which is migration. Although enclosure and mobility appear to be
opposite forces, the processes that each embodies are complimentary
when examined under the lens of global economic restructuring. The
border enforcement system along the U.S.–Mexican border complements
a global restructuring process by helping select for—through family
separation—individual workers who can be mobilized or discharged
quickly in response to market trends. The steady increase in the num-

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Mujeres en el Cruce   ✜   537

ber of migrants that cross international boundaries in search for work


is best understood within this context. The intersection thus allows us
to view all migrants as simultaneously situated within the flow of these
two macrostructural and seemingly oppositional forces, enforcement and
global restructuring. However, such macrostructural schemes ignore the
role of micro-level relations key to the reproduction and maintenance of
labor power. Household reproductive (childbirth and child care, shop-
ping, cooking, and housework), maintenance (material, ideological, or
symbolic), and distribution processes that make a labor force possible are
thus rendered invisible (Sadasivam 1997). In this regard the intersection
is particularly useful because it helps more accurately reveal the effects
of macro-level schemes on micro-level relations. At the intersection, the
power sources that produce family separation are circumvented by social
mechanisms—the very ones through which labor power is reproduced. In
a process that then comes full circle, transnational family forms—which
facilitate migration by providing members valuable information, loans,
and contacts—counter efforts to enforce national boundaries, which in
turn increase the probability that migrant family members will become
separated.
The intersection is thus a window into a space where contrasting cul-
tural ideas are made visible as they are reformulated (Gupta and Ferguson
1997). The growing importance of transnational family forms suggests
that their relationship to immigration enforcement policies is deeply
entrenched, so much so in fact that the intensity of one may provoke
matching intensity in the other. By examining the intersection of funda-
mentally contradictory processes: enclosure (immigration enforcement)
and movement (transnational mobility), family reunification and family
separation, we consider women migrants as more than mere reflections
of the macrostructural economy but rather as instrumental in contesting
the relations of power and dominion that impinge on their lives.<+>

Notes

1. The Binational Migration Institute at the Mexican American Studies and


Research Center (MASRC) at the University of Arizona seeks to comprehen-
sively document and analyze the interaction between migrants and immigration
enforcement authorities.
2. Support for the initial pilot study for this research was provided by a Social
and Behavioral Science Research Institute (SBSRI) Small Grant at the University

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538   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

of Arizona. The research subsequently was made possible by a Fulbright Grant


awarded for 2006–2007.
3. This strategy involved the intensification of border enforcement known as
Operation Hold the Line (1993), Operation Gatekeeper (1994), and Operation
Safeguard (1995).
4. Not all migrants who are apprehended are charged with a crime; some are
simply “removed” from the United States; “removal” is thus differentiated from
“deportation.” Migrants may be apprehended and released several times before
being charged with “illegal reentry after removal.” Migrants found guilty of this
charge serve a jail sentence, after which they are deported. The vast majority
of the detainees in Arizona, roughly 75–90 percent, are serving sentences for
illegal reentry after removal.
5. Yearbook of Immigration Statistics: 2005, Data on Enforcement Actions,
Table 36, available at www.dhs.gov/ximgtn/statistics (accessed 3/11/07).
6. This figure is taken from a June 9, 2005, article in the Tucson Arizona
Daily Star.
7. This figure is consistent with the percentage of female migrants in Latin
America and North America (Zlotnik 2003).
8. Albergue Plan Retorno, a governmental organization discontinued in the
spring of 2007, sheltered only men, and Albergue Menores Repatriados typi-
cally only shelters unaccompanied minors under the age of eighteen, although
on occasion, women may also be sheltered there.
9. Robert Chambers might be the scholar most commonly associated with
pioneering “rapid rural appraisal” techniques. Beebe (2001) provides a com-
prehensive history of the adoption of the method in a wide range of disciplines.
Although known by various names, RA remains consistent with the early pro-
cedures advanced by Chambers and others.
10. This name, like all the other women’s names, are pseudonyms.
11. Guides are individuals who help migrants navigate the desert to their
pick-up point. They are often referred to as polleros, and also often (although
erroneously) as coyotes, although the latter are usually the individuals who negoti-
ate the terms of the crossing.
12. Nogales has three gates through which pedestrians can enter or exit
Mexico. The Department of Homeland Security buses generally unload repa-
triated migrants at Garita 3, the Mariposa Port-of-Entry, although on occasion
they will unload them at Garita 1, the main port of entry near the Nogales city
center.
13. By most standards, this is a discounted price, especially in light of the fact
that the traveling party includes a small child who would normally be considered
a liability, and accordingly, increase the fee.

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Mujeres en el Cruce   ✜   539

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_______. 2000. Anti-immigrant sentiment and the problem of reproduc-


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Women, Migration, and Sexually
Transmitted Diseases in the Migration
Process of Altar, Sonora: Agency in the
Midst of Multiple Vulnerabilities

K at h e r i n e C a r e a g a

Sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and, in particular, transmission of


HIV, have come to the forefront of public health agendas focused on
the border and migration. This priority has been articulated in binational
arenas, with one of the principal and longstanding activities being the red
ribbon parades held annually on both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border
(Avilés and Jiménez Cruz n.d.), the Border 2010 objectives, and newer
initiatives funded by USAID (http://ihccm.ucsd.edu/ties/index.html)
and CONASIDA (www.salud.gob.mx/conasida).
In Mexico, the first cases of HIV/AIDS were in men who had spent
time working in the United States, and the second highest prevalence
of the disease is reported in the border state of Baja California, with
other border states experiencing rising prevalence as well. Albeit spotty,
prevention efforts that specifically target border localities and migrant
populations have long been in place, reflecting the rationale that the
disease is being “brought” to Mexico via (internationally) “mobile
populations.” In Sonora in recent years, the secretary of health reports
an important epidemiological change in what had been a relatively stable
rate: Between 2000 and 2005, the number of new cases increased from
80 to 115, an increase of approximately 40 percent (Pacheco 2005). This
coincides with the state’s increasing prominence as a stopping point in
the flow of undocumented migrants to the United States and particularly
the rise of the Altar–El Sásabe corridor. Until very recently, however,
Sonora has not been a focus of national prevention efforts.
Finally, prevention efforts in Mexico have fallen into two broadly
defined gender-based categories: one targeted at male migrants and the
other targeted at women as a vulnerable group due to the presumed

K at h e r i n e C a r e a g a bio to come…

Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 543–562

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544   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

infidelity of their husbands (and there is possibly a third category, tar-


geted at sex workers). In relation to the migration process, this has led
to stereotypes of the mobile male migrant, women as sex workers in the
stopping points and receiving communities, and the “women that stay
behind” as spouses in the sending communities. These categories also
imply an exclusive geographical distribution of different types of women
that reflects widespread stereotypes about the Mexican side of the bor-
der (Vila 2003). These stereotypes do not however reflect the empirical
realities that women from the sending communities are joining the flow
of undocumented migrants to the United States in ever-increasing pro-
portions, and that their participation has changed qualitatively in that
they are migrating, sometimes alone, not necessarily as wives seeking
reunification with their spouses, but rather in search of their own work
opportunities and with varying goals (Valdéz Gardea 2006).
Despite these facts of the migration process and of HIV/AIDS pre-
vention, women continue to be painted as passive victims, as vulnerable
due to actions and processes beyond their control. It is well known in
both expert and popular circles that undocumented women migrants
face the threat of rape1 and involvement in sex work, albeit temporary,
in exchange for trafficking or other goods and services along the migra-
tion route. Similar to the reasons given for male migrant “vulnerability”
(Bronfman 1995; Gayet and Magis-Rodríguez 2004), women migrants
also face feelings of loneliness, possibly with different subjective con-
notations. Little work has been done to address the specific concerns
and needs of women migrants during migration, nor to explore how
their STD risk/vulnerability fluctuates with their changing participation
in the migration process. Even less is known about how these women
understand their own changing risk/vulnerability and, in turn, how they
respond to and negotiate it.
The purpose of my investigation was to reintroduce the agency of
women migrants into the STD prevention picture, first, by recogniz-
ing their diverse and active roles in the migration process and treating
them as worthy research subjects; second, by highlighting their voices
and accounts of a limited but dynamic agency; and finally, by focus-
ing on that agency and its facilitation in the migration process, rather
than examining only the limitations. This is not to deny the very real
limitations and threats to their integrity and health that women face in
the migration process, but rather to examine the topic from a different
angle, a reflexive one that not only gives voice to the constructions of

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Women, Migration, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases   ✜   545

the women, but also questions how we relate to them in public health
prevention efforts.

Theoretical Approach

Vulnerability is a relatively new concept that has emerged, particularly in


the context of developing nations, in protest to an individualistic, bio-
medical approach to risk. Rather than a focus on risk behaviors as personal
decisions and responsibilities, vulnerability attempts to understand the
situated risk of epidemiological groups as a result of structural factors; in
other words, their social context and the power relations within it.
From a critical perspective, Scheper Hughes (1990) emphasizes the
role of medical anthropology in highlighting diversity or “otherness”
and in giving voice to the constructions of the actors themselves, rather
than focusing exclusively on the generalizing priorities of biomedically
oriented public health practice. She advocates the application of the
theoretical insights of Foucault in the creation of a “critically applied
medical anthropology” that treats biomedicine as a hegemonic discourse,
directing this critical perspective towards not only biomedicine, but also
the relationship between medical anthropology and biomedicine and
the role of medical anthropology in that relationship. The agency of
the actors, both as individuals and as a group, is what accounts for the
diversity of responses to this discourse.
Although vulnerability is applied in a variety of technical and academic
fields, its linking of social factors, and particularly of power relations, with
the human body make it a rich terrain for medical anthropology. In his
discussion of vulnerability and agency, Nichter (2003) uses Foucault to
define a hegemonic discourse of risk, and the resistant agency of vulner-
ability as alternative ways of understanding the practices associated with
risk. These practices he terms “harm reduction” and, he notes, they do
not always coincide with (indeed, sometimes they contradict) public
health prevention information. Similarly, Denman (2001) also explores
agency in terms of “(self-)care” practices (prácticas de atención) in a
group that most academic literature recognizes as vulnerable: female
maquiladora workers.
Here, I focus on migrant women’s representations of some specific
STD self-care practices that they use during migration, concerning
myself not only with what they do or do not do, but also with how they

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546   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

understand and construct their own actions as agents in relation with


their changing context during the migration process. Their understand-
ing and definition of what are “prevention” practices are what define my
own parameters, rather than the biomedically defined “risk and protec-
tive factors” associated with STDs. Thus, their representations speak to
alternate constructions of the threats they face and alternate models of
causality, which sometimes reflect the experts’ constructions of vulner-
ability, but other times do not.

Methodology

I followed a qualitative ethnographic methodology that reflects the


constructionist theoretical framework, integrating informal interviews of
key informants with participant-observation and in-depth interviews of
women between the ages of eighteen and forty-five in Altar. Almost all of
the women interviewed were directly involved in the migration process,
while a few residents of Altar had only indirect contact with migrants.2
Two phases of interviews were conducted: first, an exploratory stage in
which key informants and women representing all types of residency/
immigration status were interviewed (from permanent, lifelong residents
to recent arrivals and commuting workers and to migrants in transit);
second, in-depth interviews exclusively with women migrants en route
to the United States. The initial interviews helped to contextualize and
inform the interviews with the migrant women.
Although no a priori decision was made to interview only Mexican
women, they were the only ones who agreed to do the interviews.3 This
actually had very important (positive) implications for the analysis, as
I was able to speak to hegemonic discourses coming from the national
level and applicable to all interviewees.
From October 2006 to April 2007 I conducted a total of forty-
two in-depth interviews during three fieldwork visits. Twenty-one of
the interviews were with migrant women in transit. Interviews lasted
approximately 1.5 hours, but the length varied greatly from interview to
interview. Every effort was made to find a quiet setting that permitted
confidentiality. Occasionally, some women opted to do group interviews,
valuing the support of their peers over confidentiality. Interviewees were
recruited primarily at places where migrants frequent, such as comedores,
the town plaza, hotels, and guesthouses.

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Women, Migration, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases   ✜   547

P r e l i m i n a r y R e s u lt s

Probably the self-care practice most predominant among the women


during migration is that of (temporary) abstinence from sexual activity.
Although the demographics of my interviewees reveal significant numbers
of single and divorced women migrating, some of whom even have a
quite critical attitude towards the institution of marriage, they continue
to uphold the ideals of a long-term relationship and an initial period of
getting to know the partner before initiating sexual activity. One of the
principal self-care practices mentioned by the women was “conocer a la
persona.” When I probed, asking what that entailed or what they were
looking for during this process of getting to know the person, interviewees
were unable to be specific, suggesting that the purpose of the time spent
“getting to know each other” is not so much to inform a decision about
whether to continue with the relationship and initiate sexual activity, but
rather, the time itself is what sanctions the sexual relationship.
Given this information, and in contrast to what is suggested in the
literature about their male counterparts, amongst women of all marital
statuses casual sexual encounters are uncommon, especially in the context
of the migration process in Altar, where not only is the women’s status
transitory, but so is that of everyone around them. One could suggest a
bias, in that women may be ashamed to admit to casual sexual encounters
in the interview; however, I made an effort to depersonalize the ques-
tions, asking only about normative behavior, and separately, about how
many partners each woman had had without asking too much detail.
The latter question was asked at the end of the interview, and more or
less reflected the flow of information the women had provided in the
preceding narrative, in that most women reported having had relatively
few lifetime sexual partners in the context of relatively long-term rela-
tionships. Additionally, some women were clearly not intimidated by the
interview, revealing very personal and potentially stigmatizing experiences
that in some cases they had never before disclosed. For this reason, there
were several noteworthy exceptions to the aforementioned generalization
of bias, which I will discuss as cases later in the article.
Given that the primary self-care practice of women during migration is
temporary abstinence, the primary vulnerability to STDs that the women
face is rape. Women are confident in their ability to navigate, ignore, and
reject the sexual proposals they commonly receive from fellow migrants,
guides,4 and other men they encounter en route; however, many are

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548   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

acutely aware of the threat of rape. Some talk about the possibility of rape
by the bajadores who wait in the desert to steal the money and dignity of
the migrants. Some view this threat as more acute at the border or even
in Altar than in other places, while others view it as equally present in
their places of origin or in certain family situations. Some report having
never heard of rapes occurring in Altar or during crossing, knowing of
such cases only in their places of origin. In fact, many arrive knowing
nothing about Altar or the U.S.–Mexico border.
Ironically, a heightened sense of vulnerability to rape and other gen-
dered mistreatment of women migrants leads to what would best be called
a practice of harm reduction, one that is not an expert-recommended or
failsafe prevention technique, but rather, is a folk technique that opts for
what is viewed as the lesser of two evils: the seeking of a male companion
as a “protector.” It is within this relationship, which indeed has a variety
of faces, that some of my interviewees had sexual relations.
Unlike prevention messages about STDs outside of migration, which
are primarily initiated by public health and development efforts, a vul-
nerability discourse about the sexual risks women face during migration
is propagated by other actors in the migration process. Although it is a
lay discourse and does not coincide with that of biomedical experts, this
discourse is also hegemonic in that it represents a patriarchal control of
women’s movement and sexuality. In this sense, hegemonic discourses
about vulnerability coincide with the interests of an elite group in the
migration process: male migrants, “migration-related service-workers”
(e.g., men who work in hotels or as guides and polleros), and others with
access to resources.
Women receive different messages from spouses, parents, other family
members, and friends: “Go but it’s dangerous”; “You need protection,
and I’ll protect you”’ or “You left, you’re tainted, and now you can’t
come back”;5 or “I forbid you to go.”6 Thus, the sexuality associated
with migration represents diverse threats for women, both social and
physical. The discourse of the sexual vulnerability of women to rape is
used to further limit the potential agency that migration represents for
women in terms of economic opportunity.
Some of the women I interviewed commented that their male partners
also expressed concern about STDs, demanding that the women go for
exams before they initiated a sexual relationship or when they suspected
that the woman had been with someone else. They use vulnerability
discourse to control female sexuality and reinforce patriarchal values of

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Women, Migration, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases   ✜   549

female fidelity. Some men apparently seek women migrants as partners


instead of sex workers, perhaps because they too are conscious of the
risks involved, associating STDs primarily with sex workers (which is an
implication of targeted public health interventions), or to avoid having
to use a condom, one of the requirements of sex workers. Compounding
the situation, the majority of sex workers in Altar do not work there full-
time, but rather commute from Caborca, where they find more stable and
secure work in the zona, the tolerance zone where prostitution is allowed,
concentrated, and controlled. One sex worker who had moved to Altar
from Caborca for personal reasons stated that she preferred to work in
Caborca because it had this zona, where she felt safer, her insistence on
condom use was backed up and enforced by public health authorities,
and she did not have to be constantly on the move, walking the streets
in search of clients, as she did in Altar.
The combination of women’s acute sense of vulnerability to rape
and unwelcome sexual advances during migration, men’s own sense of
vulnerability to STDs or dislike of intercourse with sex workers, and sex
workers’ dislike of working in Altar ironically leads to corresponding
care practices that may render women more vulnerable to STDs in a
different way. Amongst my interviewees, there were two women who
had had sexual relations with men involved in facilitating their migra-
tion. Although in my opinion these were coercive relationships that
accentuated their vulnerability, the narratives of the women themselves
also emphasize their agency

Julia

Julia was the first migrant woman I interviewed, in a pilot interview.7


She had come from San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, with her male
companion, whom she immediately clarified was neither her husband
nor her boyfriend. First, when asked her marital status, she responded,
“No casada. Soy madre soltera.” (Not married. I’m a single mother).
Then she went on to talk about her “first husband,” at which point I
asked her to explain how an “unmarried, single mother” could have a
“first” and presumably a “second” husband:
My first husband is a drunk, irresponsible and womanizing. My
family told me he was irresponsible and when I went with him
they turned their backs on me. . . . I met the person with whom

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550   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

I’m traveling; I met him in La Concordia. There I earned twenty


to twenty-five pesos a day. It wasn’t enough. He helped me. He
rented an apartment and we lived there. We lived there together
for two months. He convinced me to come. He told me that I
could do more, that he wanted me to do more with my life. He
had crossed his wife [into the United States], and he told me that
he would take me. I’m his friend; he’s not my husband, but he
told me that we had to act like we were spouses because if they see
us [women] alone, they abuse us. If I cry he hits me and he tells
me that he will leave me to die in the desert. Do you see all these
women? They don’t go out. They don’t look at anyone. Because
they have all of us like that. They’re scared. [Even] before, he used
to hit me. He also hit my son with a cable. But I thought about
what he said, and I decided to go with him, just for the sake of my
children. He was happy for a while and stopped hitting me. But as
soon as we left, it started again. It’s my first time trying [to cross
the border] and I’m scared . . . of him, that he might kill me or
leave me in the desert.8

As she tells the story, it appears that Julia’s “friend” traveled to Chiapas
in search of a woman he could persuade not only to migrate, but also
that, as a migrant, she was so vulnerable that she could not do so with-
out his “protection.” This in turn has resulted in her entering into yet
another womanizing and abusive relationship. However, Julia emphasizes
her agency in both her questioning of patriarchal norms while at the
same time strategically and conscientiously accepting them as temporary
conditions and a means to a more liberated future: “I know that what
he’s doing is not right. I’m putting up with a lot, just to get to ‘the
other side.’ I try to go with the flow. I have to be strong. I know that
he won’t change. He says he wants to have two women. But there I can
do something else: work and leave him.”9 In participating as a migrant,
she is accepting a certain degree of vulnerability and is attempting to
reduce it by having a companion, for the sake of what she believes will
be a more empowered position in the future.

Andrea

Andrea, from a town near the Pacific coast of Chiapas, had left her home-
town as a virgin. She had traveled to Altar with an acquaintance who

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Women, Migration, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases   ✜   551

had connected them with their guide. In a previous attempt to cross the
border, she had walked through the desert for three days with a group,
but her feet were in such bad shape that when the Border Patrol came,
she could not run like the others and was left behind. Once deported,
she returned to Altar and at the time I interviewed her, she was unac-
companied.
Andrea had returned to the same guesthouse as before and found
another guide who said he would help her cross, but first she had to
wait for her feet to heal (her toenails had fallen off). She was frank and
forthcoming about her sexual experiences, which were fresh on her mind
and a source of some angst. As soon as she was asked about her general
health, she responded:
Andrea: I have problems with my menstrual cycle. Six months
ago I was bleeding a lot, and sometimes I didn’t bleed at all. I
hadn’t had sexual relations, but they gave me the contraceptive pill
and it’s been five months that I haven’t had a period. . . . I don’t
remember, like five or four months.
Interviewer: Have you had [sexual] relations recently?
Andrea: Yes, two times here in Altar, in the guesthouse three days
ago. First with the guide—he says he’s my marido [husband]. He’s
twenty-seven. Then with ‘el chavito’ [the kid] who’s nineteen. He
respects me. I’m a little scared that I might end up pregnant.
Interviewer: Why did you do it with the guide? I mean, was it so
that he would help you?
Andrea: I did it because I wanted to. It was my first time. I didn’t
do it like I would have liked to. He says he didn’t put in his part
like you’re supposed to.
The night watchman also wanted to. We kissed. He wanted sex
but I told him no. Others wanted to but I didn’t like them. One
of them gave me a blanket.10

Both in her accounts of her recent sexual encounters and in terms


of her participation in the migration process, Andrea emphasized her
agency:
“In Chiapas, a man is attended to and he takes care of them
[women]. You don’t know how to work. But we have had almost
no contact with my dad [in Los Angeles]. I don’t need a man. I

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552   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

can take care of myself. In the United States you can leave them if
you want to because you can work.”11

Andrea remained in the guesthouse for weeks. The guide had left his
backpack with her while taking another group across the border, saying
he would come back and pay for her board there. She waited. The last
time I saw her, nearly a month after the interview, she told me that she
had heard a rumor she was going to be raped as compensation for her
time at the guesthouse.

Discussion

In both Mexico and the United States, STD prevention has been in some
ways reduced to a discussion of personal choices in terms of condom use
and monogamy. Medical anthropologists suggest that an understanding
of relationship ideals is of utmost importance in explaining acceptance
of and resistance to both strategies (Hirsch 2003; Hirsch et al. 2002).
The authors do this by researching married Mexican migrant women.
Their findings include that in both Mexico and the United States, these
women have more egalitarian expectations of their marital relationships,
which Hirsch terms “companionate marriage,” than previous generations
did, but that this ironically makes condom use unthinkable in marriage,
as monogamy is required of both spouses.
Like Hirsch and others, I believe that in order to understand Mexi-
can women migrants’ vulnerability to STDs, an exploration of their
changing relationship ideals is essential. However, in research design
it is important to recognize, as her own interviewees indicate, that the
modern Mexican migrant woman is more likely than previous genera-
tions were to avoid or exit a marital relationship that does not meet her
ideals before, during, or after migration. Therefore, it is also important
to understand the symbolic significance of their sexual encounters, not
only within marriage, but also outside of it.
I would argue that the “changes” in ideals that Hirsch documents
are not necessarily qualitative, but rather are in the degree of idealism
towards marriage, which actually results in the rejection of the reali-
ties of marriage. In order to understand the mechanisms behind these
cultural changes, it is important to take a critical look at two forces that
are molding contemporary Mexican society: the hegemonic discourse
of women’s rights and empowerment generated by international and

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Women, Migration, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases   ✜   553

national development projects, and in particular, the public health sector;


and the very real material conditions for women created by the migra-
tion phenomenon. The former operates on an ideological level, while
the latter works on a pragmatic one.
As Salgado de Snyder (1998) indicates, women left alone in sending
communities take on more empowered roles, although often tempo-
rarily—if and when the man comes home, the woman returns to her
subordinate role. My interviews indicate that although such women may
indeed choose to subordinate themselves once again in certain circum-
stances, their ideals for themselves and their relationships have indeed
changed as a result of their experiences. They have seen the possibility
of being independent, and they aspire to be just that.
In their places of origin, women who are left behind (along with other
single and abandoned women) are faced with tremendous pressure to
acquire another partner or face the threat of being seen as “public prop-
erty” (Salgado de Snyder 1998). This situation continues as they leave
their sending communities and make their way north. In such contexts,
the male lover acquires a dual significance, not only as someone who
threatens the sexual health of women through his probable infidelities,
but also as someone who cares for and protects her (as his own) from
becoming preyed upon as public sexual property.
In addition to the role migration has played in molding the social
context, hegemonic discourses contradict each other and the material
conditions in which women find themselves. Empowerment has been
posed by applied social scientists as the preventive “cure” for vulnerability.
In Mexico, part of the empowerment strategy takes the form of a juridi-
cal discourse on women’s sexual and reproductive rights that exhorts
women to be informed of their rights, to see themselves as having rights,
and to exercise their rights within their relationships. This empowerment
discourse, which is conceptually linked with sexual health, is diffused via
public schools, the Oportunidades Program of the Secretariat of Social
Development (SEDESOL), and governmental and nongovernmental
STD prevention campaigns. Both the idea of women’s vulnerability to
STDs and the implicit agenda of empowering them enjoy wider diffu-
sion in the popular media, in anecdotal accounts contained in newspaper
articles (Galindo 2005) and in television shows, such as an episode of
Lo que callamos las mujeres in which a young women is unknowingly
infected with HIV and then abandoned by her migrant partner when
he finds out she is pregnant.

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554   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

At the same time, some authors criticize the empowerment efforts as


being psychologically rather than socially focused, aimed at increasing
self-esteem and overstating the agency of individual women to negotiate
condom use one-on-one with their sexual partners (Herrera and Campero
2002; Hirsch et al. 2002). Indeed, empowerment discourse represents a
discourse that is resistant and alternative to other hegemonic ones, namely
patriarchal discourse (in which women’s agency is not recognized nor
promoted) and biomedical risk discourse (in which women’s individual
agency is inflated), and thus is inherently contradictory. It continues
to be, however, a construction of experts and a coercive and seductive
effort to control populations and enforce existing (class) power relations,
making it hegemonic nonetheless.
Within and between these hegemonic discourses, men, and particularly
the marriage-style model of relationships with men, are also portrayed
simultaneously as dangerous and unnecessary to women and as protective.
This dual significance offers a potential explanation for why the initiation
of a sexual relationship becomes an important harm-reduction practice
for women during migration, and in my view, is at the crux of migrant
women’s vulnerability to STDs.
Jackson, Allum, and Gaskell (2006) suggest that vulnerability pro-
vides an opportunity to explore linkages between psychology and the
social sciences. In a similar vein, perhaps STD vulnerability provides a
thematic medium through which to critically explore the gender-specific
and possibly perverse effects and affects of hegemonic public health
discourse. Does vulnerability discourse without the corresponding con-
ditions promote empowerment, or does it reinforce disempowerment?
Does a sense of vulnerability, of being unprotected, exposed to danger,
and structurally rendered helpless lead women to take action to protect
themselves, or does it, combined with gender norms and conditions that
instruct women to seek protection with men, lead women to engage in
other types of risky behavior? And, by denouncing as a myth the ideal of
the male protector, are we as experts and authorities paradoxically and
paternalistically trying to fill his patriarchal shoes?

Conclusions and R e c o mm e n d at i o n s

Research on vulnerability has emphasized the limiting qualities of struc-


ture on women’s agency in STD prevention. Medical anthropologists

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Women, Migration, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases   ✜   555

and feminists alike have demonstrated how patriarchal control of women


is internalized, naturalized, and participated in by women themselves.
Troutner and Smith (2004) stress the importance of exploring the
diverse local faces of patriarchy and empowerment, while Hirsch (2003)
demonstrates a historical transformation. It may seem that in the name
of representing “traditional” or “alternative” voices, anthropologists
continue to give voice to diverse patriarchal ideals, which they re-present
in application to public health.
In her doctoral thesis, Hirsch demonstrates how new but nonetheless
still patriarchal ideals have been naturalized in women’s schemas, and
Salazar (2007) makes a similar observation in her work with women
migrant farmworkers in Sonora. The dilemma is how to represent the
voices of twice-subjugated actors who moreover have to a large degree
naturalized their own subjugation, without reinforcing it. In one public-
health-oriented article Hirsch and colleagues (2002) advocate a structural
(and male-oriented) approach to the empowerment of Mexican migrant
women, which takes the burden and consequently the responsibility
and blame off women. Herrera and Campero (2002) advocate a similar
approach. There is apparently little concern for whether the women
themselves recognize and wish to change the structural features that
limit their agency and their personal responsibility.
Several authors have found Foucault to be a useful starting point for
further theorization of agency (Lock and Kaufert 1998; McNay 2000).
McNay advocates going beyond subjectification to look at how women
participate in social transformation. Lock and Kaufert (1998) propose
that the existence of multiple hegemonic discourses provides an oppor-
tunity for women’s agency. Hirsch rejects an individualistic approach to
empowerment, instead focusing solely on generalizing an ideological and
normative discourse. We are left wondering, What do women actually
do in confronting the realities of their relationships? Those women who
have confronted them by leaving or avoiding a marital relationship are
simply not included in her sample. Comaroff and Comaroff (1992: 77)
insist on the importance of including action in agency: “As active forces,
power as well as agency should be ‘sought in the active body, a body that
lives in time and moves in space’” (Denman 2001).12 In summarizing
these complementary arguments, I propose that the empirical expres-
sion of women’s agency, their actions, are best explained by their agile
navigation among multiple hegemonic discourses, guided and informed
by their material contexts.

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556   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

As social science researchers and public health practitioners we have


agency. We have the power and the responsibility to represent both the
voices and the interests of our constituents; these are not always in agree-
ment. As medical anthropologists, we are taught to look critically upon
power relationships, but often we do not recognize our own participation
in the construction of hegemonic discourse. Maybe this fact would be
easier to face if we considered that even Foucault did not pass valorative
judgment on the exercise of power. Being critical of the union between
medical anthropology and public health and its hegemonic discourse of
vulnerability and agency does not mean being negative. It only means
recognizing and questioning our own hegemonic participation and its
limitations. As Lock and Kaufert (1998) and the results of my research
indicate, the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse of vulnerability
and empowerment limits and facilitates women’s agency in new ways,
precisely because it is not the only nor the most powerful discourse.
Recognizing the subjugating aspects of hegemonic discourse, I make
two recommendations for public health and development efforts in both
the United States and Mexico, in order to prevent STDs in Mexican
women migrants. First, hegemonic discourse functions by creating a
consensus between dominant and subjugated groups. We must strive
for more egalitarian forms of consensus building among programs and
institutions, experts and authorities, and the people we are trying to
serve by avoiding forcing hegemonic values of feminist liberation on
women without caring that they do not share them; yet at the same
time, we must not abandon these values either. As my findings show,
the hegemonic discourse of empowerment is already changing women’s
values and ideals. In order to avoid repeating aspects of patriarchal hege-
mony, it is important that women be included in the negotiations over
vulnerability and empowerment, but not just in terms of their voices
being heard, but also in that they are spoken to and allowed to hear
alternative “voices.”
Second, Mexican migrant women’s voices have an important contri-
bution to make in this negotiation, and we must pause the hegemonic
discourse on empowerment long enough to listen: they tell us how they
can and want to be empowered, what their priorities are, and what
is working for them and what is not. What women have told me in
the course of our interviews is that they do share the vision of a more
empowered future for themselves as an ideal, but that material conditions
in Mexico do not enable them to realize this. Differences in empower-

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Women, Migration, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases   ✜   557

ment observed between Mexican women living in the United States and
in Mexico (Salgado de Snyder 1998; Hirsch 2003) do not necessarily
reflect an acculturation process that occurs after migration,13 but rather
reflect a trajectory of cultural change, fueled in part by public health
and development discourses, that includes migration as an outcome and
agential strategy. Therefore, empowerment efforts in Mexico must over-
come paternalistic tendencies14 and transcend ideological discourses, in
order to create real conditions that support women’s efforts to empower
themselves.
Through their migration from Mexico to the United States, these
women are speaking out. They are seeking increased economic oppor-
tunities so that they can support their families. They are seeking an
environment where public insecurity and gender attitudes do not force
them into relationships with men in order to avoid being victims of crime.
They are seeking better access to medical services.15
Although this is not a formalized political movement like feminist
struggles we have seen in the past, the increasing migration of Mexican
women seeking greater independence in the United States (regardless
of whether or not they find it), is what I consider a collective resistance
that has significant political, economic, and cultural implications for
both countries. In this sense, women’s migration is not only an act
of individual agency in which each woman makes decisions about her
own destiny within a set of options, exchanging one structural context
for another; it also a transformative agency that impacts schema and
structures. This agency will not be determined solely by the hegemonic
discourse of their vulnerability and empowerment, although it is a factor.
And although empowerment does change the nature of their “vulner-
ability,” achieving empowerment is not a guarantee of protection from
STDs or of quantifiable public health outcomes. It is time to divorce
empowerment from the public health agenda and support it for what it
is: the moral imperative of social justice. <

Notes

1. The threat of rape is even publicized by the rapists themselves, in the form
of the “árbol de los calzones,” a tree where rapists hang the underwear of their
victims as trophies. See Marroni and Meneses (2006).
2. It is important to note that no one living in or visiting Altar is untouched
by the pronounced flow of undocumented workers from Mexico and other parts

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558   ✜   J ournal of the S outhwest

of Central America to the United States. It is common for residents to have


relatives that are polleros, have been incarcerated in the United States, or work
in hotels and restaurants that serve the transient migrant population.
3. I started interviewing one Guatemalan who was very reluctant and turned
out to be under age eighteen, so I made the decision to discontinue the interview.
She seemed very relieved.
4. The people who lead groups of undocumented migrants through the des-
ert are called guías and polleros, with subtle distinctions made between the two.
Although some of these people are indeed women, the vast majority are men.
5. In some rural communities of Chiapas, young women who leave and
then come back are stigmatized. They are automatically assumed to have lost
their virginity and thus are called viudas (widows). See Evangelista García and
Tuñón Pablos (2004).
6. After she was forbidden to go join her brothers in the United States, one
eighteen-year-old interviewee told her parents she was going on a class trip for
the weekend. Instead she took a bus from Chiapas to Altar, Sonora, with two
female friends. She said she planned to call her parents once she arrived. She
expressed feeling very fearful of being raped while crossing the border.
7. All interviewees were given the option of giving their real first name or a
fictional one. Since these are being presented as cases rather than as summarized
data, I have assigned different pseudonyms to protect their anonymity.
8. “Mi primer esposo es muy borracho, irresponsable y mujeriego. Mi familia
me decía que era un irresponsable y cuando yo me junté con él me dio la espalda.
. . . Conocí a la persona con quien viajo. Lo conocí en La Concordia. Allá ganaba
yo 20–25 pesos al día. No me alcanzaba. Él me ayudó. Rentó un departamento
y allí vivíamos. Vivíamos dos meses juntos allá. Él me convenció a venir. Me
decía que yo podía hacer más, que quería que hiciera más con mi vida. El pasó
su esposa y me decía que él me llevaría. Soy amiga de él, no es mi esposo, pero
él me decía que tenía que actuar como si fuéramos esposos, porque si nos ven
solas, se abusan de nosotras. Si lloro me pega o me dice que me va a dejar a
morir en el desierto. ¿Ves todas estas mujeres? No salen. No le miran a nadie.
Porque a todas las traen así. Tienen miedo. Antes me pegaba. También pegó a
mi hijo con un cable. Pero pensé lo que decía y acepté ir con él, solo para salir
adelante por mis hijos. El estaba contento por un rato y dejó de pegarme. Pero
ya el momento que salimos empezó de nuevo. Es mi primera vez intentando y
tengo miedo, de él, que me mate o me deje en el desierto.”
9. “Yo sé que no está bien lo que hace. Estoy aguantando mucho, sólo para
llegar al otro lado. Trato de seguir la corriente. Tengo que ser fuerte. Yo sé que
él no va a cambiar. Dice que quiere tener dos mujeres. Pero allá puedo hacer
otra cosa, trabajar y dejarlo.”
10. “Tengo problemas con mi menstruación. Hace seis meses estaba sangrando
mucho, y a veces no me bajaba. No había tenido relaciones sexuales, pero me
dieron la pastilla de anticonceptivos y tengo cinco meses que no se me ha bajado
. . . no me acuerdo de nada, como cinco o cuatro meses.”
“¿Has tenido relaciones últimamente?”
“Sí, dos veces aquí en Altar, en la casa de huéspedes hace tres días. Primero

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Women, Migration, and Sexually Transmitted Diseases   ✜   559

con el guía—dice que es mi marido. El tiene 27. Luego con el “chavito” que
tiene 19. El me respeta. Estoy con un poco de miedo que vaya a quedarme
embarazada.”
“¿Con el guía por qué lo hiciste? ¿Digo, es para que te ayude?”
“Lo hice por gusto. Fue mi primera vez. No lo hice como yo lo quisiera
hacerlo.” (Expresa dudas sobre si realmente era ”sexo” porque el dice que no
metió “su parte” así como se debe.)
“El velador también quería. Nos dimos besitos. El quería sexo pero le dije que
no. Otros querían pero no me gustaban. Uno que me regaló una cobija.”
11. “En Chiapas se atiende a un hombre y las mantiene. No sabes trabajar.
Pero contacto con mi papá casi no hemos tenido. Yo no necesito de un hombre.
Me puedo mantener yo sola. En Estados Unidos, si quieres los dejas porque
puedes trabajar.”
12. Back translated from Denman’s translation: “Como son fuerzas activas,
tanto el poder, como la agencia deben ‘buscarse en el cuerpo activo, un cuerpo
que vive en el tiempo y se mueve en el espacio (Comaroff y Comaroff 1992:
77).’”
13. The concept of acculturation as an explanatory mechanism for cultural
change has been highly criticized and basically discounted by medical anthro-
pologists (see Hunt, Schneider, and Comer 2004).
14. In the interviews, some women commented that they refused to participate
in Oportunidades due to the fact that they had to work or simply because they
were required to attend pláticas. One website documents a collective resistance
to Oportunidades by women in Chiapas, who argue that the program came into
being at the cost of collectivized landownership and by taking time away from
efforts they had initiated to form women’s cooperatives (www.laneta.apc.org/
ciepac/boletines/chiapas_en.php?id=444).
15. Interviewees who had previously lived in the United States reported receiv-
ing more detailed information about STDs there than in Mexico, as well as better
access to reproductive health care despite policies that discourage such access.

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careaga.indd 562 1/25/10 12:02:17 PM
Current Trends in Mexican Migration:
The Altar-Sásabe Corridor, Taking the Lead
on the Border’s Periphery

G L O R I A C I R I A V A L D E Z -G A R D E A

In the summer of 2005, with the Immigration and Naturalization Ser-


vice’s (INS) Voluntary Repatriation Program in full swing,1 the U.S.
Border Patrol operating in the Arizona desert detained 20,590 people,
all of whom were deported to their places of origin. Of this total,
15,051 were men, 3,017 were women, and 2,522 were under the age
of eighteen (Román 2005). According to Mexico’s National Migration
Institute (INM), most of these deportees were from the states of Chiapas,
Veracruz, Oaxaca, and Puebla. This information captures many of the
current trends in Mexican migration, which, according to scholars, is
characterized by the diversification of migration demographics and by a
shift in flows towards the Sonora-Arizona border. Migrants, moreover,
are now likely to co me from states that previously were fairly stable
demographically, such as Veracruz, on Mexico’s Gulf coast. Finally,
although the data remain somewhat unclear, women seem to represent
a major component in the migratory phenomenon.
Today’s Mexican migrant population is far more socially and cultur-
ally heterogeneous than in the past, and represents a greater diversity
of circumstances leading up to the decision to move north. Such dif-
ferences are strongly rooted in regional practices and bring changes in
the cultural dynamics of host communities in both northwest Mexico
and the United States. The current era of migration has its origins in
rising levels of unemployment; 2 in the ongoing crisis in the agricultural
sector—e.g., the abrupt downturn in Veracruz’s coffee and sugarcane
sectors, and drought in several states, such as Zacatecas;3 as well as in
generally increasing poverty levels.
The dynamics of migration should, therefore, be assessed from a
broader perspective, because we know that its effects now reach a much

G L O R I A C I R I A V A L D É Z is a professor and researcher at El Colegio


de Sonora, Hermosillo.

Journal of the Southwest 51, 4 (Winter 2009) : 563–584

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564 | J OURNAL OF THE S OUTHWEST

wider spectrum of society in the United States and Mexico. Demographic


displacement does not affect only individuals; families, sending and
receiving communities, and towns located along primary transit routes
are all experiencing heavy impacts of migration, producing broad shifts in
social organization (Santibañez 2004: 12). This dynamic is exacerbated
by an utter lack of clarity in public policy, particularly when it comes to
urban development and meeting the needs of a growing population in
northwest Mexico’s cities and towns. On the one hand, we have large
shortfalls in the provision of basic services for migrants in transit. On
the other, migration combined with poor urban policy have produced
sprawling informal sectors in communities that “nobody controls, nobody
governs, and nobody orders” (Santibañez 2004: 5). Secrecy and illicit
activity often characterize these receiving communities.
In this paper I describe the contemporary characteristics of Mexican
migration and examine some of its effects in terms of urban growth on
the Mexico–U.S. border. Specifically, I illustrate the crucial role small
communities such as Altar and Sasabe4—located in the mining, cattle-
ranching, and agricultural region of northwest Sonora—play within cur-
rent migratory dynamics. While clearly not an exhaustive survey of the
topic, the paper does provide an overview necessary for contextualizing
the migrant flows towards the northwest’s border towns and cities, which
according to some authors, since the second decade of the 1990s have
tended to retain far more migrants than in previous periods (Canales
1999; Mendoza 2004; Córdova 2005).

CURRENT TRENDS IN M E X I C A N M I G R AT I O N

This section highlights four important features that, based on recent


research, I think define Mexican migration in the current context: (1) the
redirection of flows to nontraditional crossing points; (2) the emergence
of new sending states; (3) the feminization of migrant flows; and (4)
government inefficiency in safeguarding migrants’ rights.
One of the main characteristics of what some people call ”modern”
migration is the change in migratory flows whereby the largest cities
have become generally less attractive to migrants, while medium- and
small-sized cities have become preferred destinations (Enríquez 2002;
Canales 1999). One reason for this that the INS has effectively sealed off
traditional crossing points in San Diego and El Paso, shifting the flow

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Current Trends in Mexican Migration | 565

towards Arizona (Escobar 2005: 37) and turning the state of Sonora
into the main crossing point for international migration. A report
drafted by Sonora’s State Commission for Migrant Assistance—based
on information provided by the National Institute of Migration’s Sonora
office—about ninety thousand migrants arrive in the state each month,
traveling mainly through the communities of Altar and Sasabe. Sasabe
alone receives about 1,500 migrants a day, all of whom line up to cross
into U.S. territory. Reports from the National Institute of Immigration’s
Sonora office show that these numbers increase dramatically during April
and May, when migrants return to the United States after spending the
winter holidays with their families in Mexico and the daily crossing rate
reaches seven thousand people (Flores López 2004).
The second prominent trend in immigration is the incorporation of
nontraditional sending states, such as Veracruz. Current dynamics call
into question researchers’ earlier efforts to analyze the geography of
migratory flows (Bustamante 1997; Durand 1998; Lozano 2001). For
example, the regionalization suggested by Durand (1998)5 ignores these
new sending states, such as south and central Veracruz,6 that since the
mid-1990s have become major contributors to undocumented migra-
tion to both traditional and new destinations in the United States (Pérez
2001; Anguiano 2005). This flow has grown substantially in recent years
because of the abrupt downturn in the sugarcane and coffee sectors.
The participation of regions considered nontraditional in the migra-
tory phenomenon and the heterogeneity of the migratory flows have
increased since the early eighties, as Cornelius (1990: 123) points out,
“the erosion of the stereotype that we had of migration has intensified
as a result of economic crises and the implementation of United States
laws that regulate [migratory] flows.”7
The emergence of new sending regions, whether rural or urban,
therefore, “compel[s] us modify the stereotype of the migrant from tra-
ditional regions” (Goldring 1992: 318). Consequently, Lozano (2001)
presented a new regionalization of the migratory phenomenon, dividing
the nation into the following two major regions characterized by dif-
ferent levels of out-migration. The traditional region includes the states
of Aguascalientes, Colima, Durango, Guanajuato, Jalisco, Michoacán,
Nayarit, San Luis Potosí and Zacatecas. The remaining twenty-two states
constitute the nontraditional region. Remarkably, in 2004, in Lozano’s
nontraditional region, the states with the largest out-migrations were
Tabasco with 36.1 percent; Campeche 32.5 percent; Coahuila 32.0

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566 | J OURNAL OF THE S OUTHWEST

percent; and Chiapas, Durango, and Sonora, with 26.6 percent. These
data from the nontraditional region provide a general idea of other
states’ contributions and, indeed, of the difficulties involved in making
general statements about Mexican immigration. We must, therefore, be
specific when describing these newly emergent sending states. As Pérez
(2001: 142) points out, they are the result of “flows from areas that had
previously not been a part of long-distance, extended-stay migration.
Emerging migrations refer to the maturation of this [relatively new]
phenomenon over short periods of time, to the processes of mobility
that form and reflect the existence of short- and medium-distance local
and regional migratory patterns that have preceded demographic shifts
of an international nature and that now are so prolific.”
The third significant element in current trends is the feminization of
Mexican migratory flows, reflecting an increase in the participation of
women from rural and urban areas alike.8 Women’s migration has, of
course, always been critically important; but it was not until the 1980s
(specifically, the passage of U.S. immigration legislation such as the
Simpson-Rodino Act, which prompted entire families to move to the
United States) that we began to see serious research on female migration.
These early studies revealed an immigrant woman tied to her husband
and children, working for the family often at her own expense; that is,
most of these studies focused largely on men’s economic activities in
receiving communities. More recent empirical evidence, however, shows
that female migration is now more independent of family and of men’s
economic activities. Single women’s migration is increasing relative to
the total female out-migration from Mexico and Central America. Single
women leave their countries with several objectives in mind and under
vastly different social and economic conditions than in previous genera-
tions. They have higher levels of education, come from many different
nations, and are from varied socioeconomic strata (Smith and Tarallo
1993; Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994, 2001; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ávila
1997a, 1997b; Bustamante 2004; O’Leary, Valdez-Gardea, and González
2005; Valdez-Gardea 2006). Studies also suggest that the proportion of
migrating women relative to the whole migratory group is rising (Castles
and Miller 1993; Ibarra 2001; Marcelli and Cornelius 2001). Neverthe-
less, several scholars share the opinion that the data are still quite poor and
that study results remain contradictory (Álvarez 2004; González 2004;
Velasco 2004). For instance, INEGI data on female migration show little

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Current Trends in Mexican Migration | 567

or no change since 1987, whereas a recent study from the Colegio de


la Frontera Norte (COLEF) in Ciudad Juárez shows that over the last
decade the number of migrant women who pass through Juárez on their
way to the United States has increased (Rubio 2005). Similarly, a study
conducted by the Universidad de Guadalajara shows that the percentage
of women deported from the United States has increased in recent years:
from 4 percent in 1995 to 8 percent in 1996, 11 percent in 1998, and
14 percent in 2004 (Woo 2005). Another interesting datum is the grow-
ing number of female minors who try to cross into the United States.
In 2003, 35 percent of the deported women were minors. In 2004, the
percentage fell to 28 percent (Villaseñor 2005). The National Institute
of Migration’s Sonora office reported that from January to October
2004, 168,973 repatriations were recorded in the Sonoran municipalities
of Nogales, Agua Prieta, Naco, San Luis Río Colorado, Plutarco Elías
Calles, and Sasabe, of which 2,127 were adult women and 654 teenage
girls. Another study, the multiphase Survey on Mexican Migration to
the Northern Border (EMIF)9 produced the following results: in phase
1 of the survey, given to 639 participants in Nogales during 1993–1994,
8.1 percent of migrating women had come from southern Mexico; in
phase 2 (1994–1995) 9.6 percent of women from a sample-size of 345
informants were from southern states; in phase 3 (1996–1997), of 351
people interviewed, 21.1 percent were women from south of Mexico.
In phase 4 (1996–97), of 531 people interviewed, 33.0 percent were
women who came from southern Mexico.
Yet although the survey demonstrates an overall rise in the number
of migrant women from southern Mexico, there are some problems
with the study’s design and implementation. The sample size across
the four separate phases varied, for example. The survey, moreover, was
given only in Nogales, Sonora, even though the Altar-Sasabe corridor
is, at present, the most important crossing point. The questionnaire also
excluded other sites that would have provided a clearer picture, such as
the Hermosillo International Airport, which each day receives hundreds
of migrants from southern Mexico. Moreover, researchers should have
included the multitude of vans carrying immigrants from Altar northward,
through the dry Sonoran Desert, to the border town of Sasabe.10 Other
important dimensions not included in the survey are modifications in
crossing strategies to the United States; return traffic to Mexico; and
variations in traffic by season.11

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Such shortcomings drive home the tremendous need for studies that
are flexible enough to capture the dynamism of Mexican migration,
and more important, for information that informs the construction of
sensible public policy. The problem here is that not only are we forced
to make decisions with enormous gaps in our data, but the information
we do have is often vague and therefore of little use.
Movies, folk ballads, and tales based on traditional migratory dynamics
convey an image of the migrant as a poor campesino with little educa-
tion, a man with calloused hands and few skills outside of farming. The
contemporary profile, however, is about greater numbers of women from
rural and urban areas, from different social strata and schooling levels,
who migrate with different objectives and under different conditions
(Castells and Millas 1993; Smith and Tarallo 1993; Hondagneu-Sotelo
1994, 2001; Hondagneu-Sotelo and Ávila 1997a, 1997b; Durand
1998; Bustamante 2004; Santibañez 2004; O’Leary, Valdez-Gardea,
and González 2005; Valdez-Gardea 2006).
The shift in flows towards Sonora’s border communities has pushed
migrants into dangerous desert areas such as those around Altar and
Sasabe. Thousands of Mexicans have perished in those deserts,12 while
many others have been robbed and beaten, assaulted and raped. Some
authors suggest that risks to migrants have increased (Monteverde 2004),
as they constantly face the threat of death, assault, and other abuses by
polleros (human smugglers), the dragnets of the U.S. Border Patrol, and
traps set by border vigilantes like the self-styled Minuteman. Research-
ers concerned with migrants’ rights, such as the Colegio de Sonora’s
Leopoldo Santos (2004), have thus begun to highlight the fourth cur-
rent trend in northward migration: the increasing inability on the part
of the Mexican government to safeguard the migrants’ basic human
rights. As U.S. policy grows more absurd and, indeed, dangerous for
border crossers—e.g., the so-called border wall—the Mexican govern-
ment has done very little to address its immigration problems. There
have been some efforts, such as the government’s Beta Group and the
Paisano (countrymen/women) and Voluntary Repatriation programs.
Some social linking mechanisms have been developed between the two
nations, such as the Institute of Mexicans Abroad. Politicians have also
taken positions on immigration in highly visible national debates; but
they have had little success in putting this issue on the national policy
agenda (Santibañez 2005: 67).

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Current Trends in Mexican Migration | 569

EFFECTS ON MEXICO’S NORTHERN BORDER

Domestic and international migration are certainly some of the most dis-
turbing consequences of economic policies implemented by the Mexican
government, policies that have produced enormous social and economic
disparities, job insecurity, and generally increased social vulnerability.
Mexico’s erratic economic policies in the context of globalization have
pushed people to seek out cities where there is more hope,13 such as
those on the northern border. Such cities have, for several decades now,
represented a viable alternative for migrants.
A primary feature of contemporary northwest Mexico is the constant
flow of migrants who move to the region permanently or move through
it en route to the United States (and, more recently, during seasonal
return visits to Mexico). The constant movement of people in this part
of Mexico has become a critical part of the region’s overall demographic
picture. Likewise, it is a dynamic that economic and urban planning
ignores at the region’s peril (Rubio 2005). This explosive growth brings
with it a number of serious problems in terms of lack of infrastructure
in the new urban centers, shortages of potable water, a lack of quality
housing, inadequate garbage disposal services, air and water pollution,
and numerous other environmental impacts (Canales 1999: 1).
Demographic growth in the northwestern border cities (Tijuana,
Mexicali, Ciudad Juárez, Nogales, etc.) has historically been rooted
largely in migration. The overall dynamics of Mexico’s labor markets
has, for the past thirty years, combined with the border’s maquiladora
industry as primary triggers of growth. Workers from economically
depressed regions of the country continue to meet the maquiladora
industry’s demands for low-cost labor (Rubio 2005). All of this migra-
tion has brought to northern Mexico the cultural beliefs and practices
of the nation’s diverse regions. Several studies have examined the estab-
lishment of so-called twin, or satellite, communities, wherein migrants
transform their neighborhoods in the newly adopted host cities into
microcosms of their former communities. Tijuana, for example, has a
Colonia Mixteca, where Mixtec Indians from Oaxaca state have settled.
Nogales, likewise, has a Colonia Oaxaca. The agricultural areas of Baja
California, such as San Quintín, and the town of Miguel Alemán in
Sonora are made up primarily of indigenous groups from Oaxaca and
Chiapas, among other states.

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The maquiladora industry has experienced economic decline over


the past few years, as countries such as China pay even lower wages
than Mexico, attracting factories overseas.14 Ciudad Juárez alone lost
about 100,000 jobs between 2001 and 2002 (Rubio 2005: 192). Yet,
despite such heavy job losses, border cities such as Tijuana, Ciudad
Juárez, and Nogales continue to provide the most manufacturing jobs
in the country.
On the other hand, northern Mexico’s cities have been historically
characterized as transitory places for migrants moving between the
two countries. Until few years ago, the Tijuana–San Diego and Ciudad
Juárez–El Paso corridors were the main crossing points for migrants
entering the United States. This group of people is part of a continu-
ously floating population whose dynamics have in many ways become
embedded in the city’s everyday functioning. Such demographic fluidity,
however, is exacerbated by the sheer quantity of in-migration which,
according to some authors, has in many cases become permanent since
the late 1990s (Canales 1999; Mendoza 2004; Córdova 2005). An
outgrowth of this permanence are the so-called irregular urban settle-
ments in border cities like Ciudad Juárez. That city’s southwest side has
seen fast-paced growth and, as a result, is also one of the Juárez’s most
socially problematic areas. Gustavo Córdova Bojórquez, a researcher at
COLEF in Ciudad Juárez, notes that:
Since the nineties migrants from other states like Veracruz, Oaxaca
and Chiapas have arrived in Ciudad Juárez to form a new mosaic.
The recruiters promised them they were going to be housed, but
when they arrived in the city they stayed in warehouses and slept
on floors. People looked for spaces and formed migrant support
networks. We have, therefore, the west side as the city’s bedroom
community. The migrants settle in irregular settlements, where the
social solidarity and networks have helped them to survive. (Pers.
comm., April 2006)

The irregular settlements are a characteristic of contemporary urban-


ization in Mexico. According to some authors, the factors that have
determined the increasing formation of an illegal land market are a lack
of housing programs, the ongoing economic crisis, the failure of the
government program designed to provide low-cost land for the poorest
sectors, the economic weakness in the agricultural sector, the absence of
effective mechanisms of public control over the land markets, and the

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Current Trends in Mexican Migration | 571

willingness of government authorities to incorporate land into the illegal


market (Cruz 2001: 184).
The profitability of the maquiladora industry—the primary source of
work for the migrant population—has relied heavily on low-wage labor
and the benefits derived from its location on the U.S.–Mexico border,
which significantly reduces transportation, communication, and plant-
installation costs. Although wages earned in the maquiladoras may be
higher than in the other sectors of the Mexican economy, they do not
reflect the often quite large profits that maquila companies have realized
over the years. Border cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez experi-
ence social precariousness and levels of poverty that belie their high
levels of economic activity and industrial development. According to
the National Survey of Household Income and Expenses, more than 50
percent of Tijuana households fall below the poverty line while another
40 percent fall on what is known as the poverty threshold, meaning that
they can barely meet their basic needs and only with considerable effort
(Canales 1999: 4). This situation becomes even more starkly appar-
ent when one looks at the contrast between the border cities’ highly
luxurious residential areas oftentimes situated almost directly next to
irregular settlements where homes are built with waste material from
the maquiladora industry.
In short, if the migratory phenomenon is a result of the implementa-
tion of economic policies in the context of globalization, the growth of
irregular settlements in the border cities can, in part, be analyzed as a
local expression of survival strategies employed by the most vulnerable
populations.

T H E A R I Z O N A -S O N O R A B O R D E R Z O N E

The border between Sonora and Arizona covers 550 kilometers. Arizona
has the sixth largest Hispanic population in the United States, after Cali-
fornia, New York, Texas, Florida, and Illinois. Approximately one million
people from Mexico reside in the state, representing more than 20 percent
of the total population (Voluntary Repatriation Program 2004).
As I mentioned previously, one of the major features of Mexican
migration is the growing importance of medium- and small-size cities as
major destinations. This, again, has much to do with U.S. immigration
policy since the late 1990s, which has exerted tighter federal control over

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traditional crossing areas such as Tijuana–San Diego and Ciudad Juárez–El


Paso, redirecting traffic towards the high-risk desert areas of Sonora and
Arizona. The most critical of the new official Border Patrol sectors are
the desert and high-desert terrains of southern Arizona, between Douglas
on the east, and Ajo on the west. This area is now characterized by vio-
lence and large numbers of border-crosser deaths. The principal migrant
routes in these areas are through the relatively unpopulated corridors of:
Naco-Douglas; Lukeville-Sonoyta; and Puerto de San Miguel, El Sasabe,
Altar, La Ladrillera, Tinajas, El Bajío, and the southern boundaries of the
Tohono O’Odham Nation. Recently, Santa Cruz County, where Nogales,
Arizona, is located, has become a more prominent part of the migrant
route (Voluntary Repatriation Program 2004).
The state of Sonora, therefore, has become the main crossing point
for U.S.-bound migration, as well as an endpoint for those who move
into the state with the objective of permanently settling there. The latter
group includes hundreds of Mexicans coming from Mexico’s southern
states who are pushed from home by stagnant southern-state economies
and enticed northward by Sonora’s better job prospects.
For several months in 2007, I teamed up with other researchers from
the Colegio de Sonora to conduct exploratory research trips into the
Altar–El Sasabe corridor. Since the beginning of Operation Guardian in
October of 1994, this area has been taking shape as one of the most impor-
tant in the country for international migration. At the same time, Altar,
Sonora, has also become a primary magnet for domestic migration.
When we arrived in Altar early one April morning, we immediately
spotted a large number of paisanos (countrymen and women) in scattered
groups around the main town plaza. They waited, sitting patiently on
the park benches or standing around with their ball caps and gallon jugs
of water lying on the ground around them. Some were wearing small
backpacks. Around one hundred people were gathered there, mostly
men of different ages. The square was surrounded by food stands and
little carts piled with the kinds of articles migrants might need along the
harsh desert trails that awaited. We talked with Pedro, a thirty-four-year-
old married man with six children, from Ixtapan de la Sal, in the state of
Mexico. Pedro, like other four of his compatriots, had arrived in Altar
after a thirty-six-hour journey on the Estrella Blanca bus line:

We arrived at 6:00 in the morning, alone, with no contacts.


This is my second time trying to cross into the United States.
The first time was earlier this year; I tried to cross at Nogales.

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Current Trends in Mexican Migration | 573

I spent more than twenty-five days stuck in Nogales. I had to


return home. I had been in almost all the hotels in Nogales,
moving from one hotel to another. My brother, who lives in
Phoenix, sent me money to support myself, until I got tired and
just returned home. Life in Ixtapan is tough. I worked in the
fields for eighty pesos a day; not enough to buy anything. Let’s
hope that this time we have better luck, because we left a lot of
pimpilitos [children] back home.

Pedro’s situation is similar to that of so many people who pass through


Altar; it also illustrates an important complexity of migration, which
cannot be reduced to a simple round-trip process. The family networks,
the contacts, and the experiences of attempted crossings through other
border cities give Pedro, like many migrants, the possibility to build
numerous relationships in different social arenas, networks that transcend
national boundaries.
The dynamism we observed in Altar contrasts sharply with the rather
flat demographic data taken from the 2005 census: Altar was said to have
a population of 8,357 (INEGI 2005). However, according to the State
Commission for Migrant Support and based on our own observations,
Altar’s population during that peak season period was probably double the
census figure, swelling to more than 16,000, with high-season arrivals at
2,500 people per day. Before 1999, Altar had two hotels; now there are
ten, with three more under construction at the time of our visit (Von der
Borch and Pastrana 2004). There are also five money-exchange booths,
one bank, a fleet of taxis and vans to carry passengers north to Sasabe,
numerous restaurants and supermarkets, and several bars with round-
the-clock prostitutes. Some municipal-level counts show that between
70 and 80 percent of Altar residents earn their living from immigration
(Urrutia 2004).
Informal or cottage industries are also thriving in Altar, including con-
struction, particularly the remodeling of private dwellings into boarding
houses to accommodate migrants. Estimates are that there are about two
hundred boarding houses in Altar (Von and Pastrana 2005).
The unrelenting waves of migrants arriving in this area have rendered
it attractive to entrepreneurs from all over the country. Aside from human
traffickers, people have moved in to set up small regional food markets
in different parts of town. Small carts and stands are seen everywhere,
selling basic necessities for desert crossing: caps, gloves, jackets, sweaters,
backpacks, boots, socks, flashlights, and the like.

valdez.indd 573 1/25/10 12:05:08 PM


Makeshift Casa de Huéspedes in Altar. (Photograph by author)

Eating in the Plaza, Altar. (Photograph by author)

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Current Trends in Mexican Migration | 575

Items for sale, Altar. (Photograph by author)

The demographic and related economic and urban growth in the


Altar–El Sasabe corridor is almost completely unregulated. Its negative
effects become particularly apparent in summertime, when the extremely
high temperatures of the Sonoran Desert strain government services,
such as water, drainage, and garbage collection. A 2004 report drafted by
the Voluntary Repatriation Program described the situation in the Altar-
Sasabe corridor thusly: an unusual increase in the flow of undocumented
migrants; the development of human-trafficking infrastructure; the need
to drastically increase the presence and resources of federal authorities
in preventive functions of crime deterrence and mitigating the effects of
extreme weather conditions; an increase in organized crime, such as drug
and people trafficking; the presence along the border of radical, xenopho-
bic anti-immigrant vigilante organizations from the United States.
On our trip through the Altar-Sasabe corridor, we noted the presence
of six different government agencies: State Judicial Police, Customs and
Tax Inspection, Municipal Preventive Police, members of the Beta Group,

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Crosses representing the deaths of migrants—Altar-Sasabe corridor. (Photograph


by author)

the Mexican Army, and the Federal Agency of Investigation (AFI). This
heavy law-enforcement presence speaks volumes about the social climate
that prevails in this region. Thirty-three-year-old Mario, also from Ixtapan
de la Sal, in Mexico state, summed up the situation:
Things are really tough here when you’re trying to get across [the
border]. They spot you right away, the bajadores [crooks and petty
conmen], and immediately try to get your money. We want these
bajadores to stop. They’re just a bunch of fuckin’ pot-smokers
[pinches mariguanos], waiting around to shake us down in the
desert.

FINAL REFLECTIONS

In this paper I described some of the fundamental current trends in


Mexican migration, and the impact of the migratory flow, both domestic

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Current Trends in Mexican Migration | 577

and international, in the host cities of northwest Mexico, which accord-


ing to some authors, have retained a rather sizable migrant population
since the late 1990s. Analysis of present migratory dynamics enables us
to contextualize the urban growth in the northwest Mexico’s cities and
its impacts. The fast-paced growth of so-called irregular settlements on
the periphery of cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez is an expression
of the survival strategies that the migrant population implements in the
face of social dislocation and marginalization. International and domestic
economic policies and dynamics have historically disadvantaged these
groups and left them with little choice but to migrate northward.
On the other hand, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, scholars
of migration were focused on the actual dynamics of crossing and the
impacts of migratory flows on cities such as Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez,
then the most important crossing points between Mexico and the United
States. Many of these studies were based on a center-periphery analytic,
and tended to reduce migration to a linear movement of people from
less developed areas/states to those with higher degrees of economic
development, such as Baja California and Chihuahua. At that time, the
migration dynamics of small border communities were such that they did
not capture researchers’ attention. But whereas the core areas that were
once most important for migration are, at least empirically, no longer as
dynamic, they still command scholarly attention at the expense of other
areas that are now at least as or even more critical. This partly explains
the lack of studies on communities such as Altar.
In terms of regional development, the border indeed exhibits a divide
between a center (the more industrialized cities such as Tijuana and Ciu-
dad Juárez) and a periphery, which includes rural areas. This asymmetry
affects the entire field of sociocultural relations, leading to a situation
in which academic research and public policies tend to give priority to
developed cities of the “border center.” Despite Sonora’s importance
for international immigration, particularly within the last decade, it has
received relatively little scholarly attention in the critical areas of public
policy implementation, and above all, distribution of both symbolic power
and specific resources in the new institutionalized binational framework
(Denman, Monk, and Ojeda 2004). Along the Sonora-Arizona border,
the sister cities—Nogales-Nogales, etc.—seem to garner most of the
attention when it comes to migration. The relative invisibility of the
border periphery has led to a pronounced irony: the periphery is now
the focal point of migration and related “border” phenomena, including

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578 | J OURNAL OF THE S OUTHWEST

mushrooming populations, lack of infrastructure, and a spike in illicit


activities, such as drug- and human-trafficking (including trafficking in
minors), drug abuse, and prostitution. In short, current information
shows an extremely complex and, indeed, precarious reality. Researchers
and authorities alike need to turn their attention to both the migratory
phenomenon and, more important, to the dynamics of small border
communities, such as those in the Altar–El Sasabe corridor. |

NOTES

1. This program was initiated in the summer of 2004 and is carried out
in association with Mexican authorities. It consists of the voluntary return of
undocumented migrants; the U.S. government pays transportation costs. At the
time of this study, Aeromexico was charging slightly less than $1,000 for airfare
from Tucson, Arizona, to Mexico City.
2. According to INEGI (National Institute of Statistics, Geography and Data
Processing), during the first quarter of 2005 almost 515,000 people joined the
ranks of the unemployed. This represents a 171 percent increase in the unem-
ployment rate from the year 2000.
Over the last few years the number of professionals educated in Mexican
universities and holding master’s or doctoral degrees who migrate to the United
States has steadily grown. Simultaneously, because of the lackluster labor market,
many Mexican students receiving Mexican government funds for postgraduate
study abroad have opted not to return. This drain of valuable human capital
represents a great loss for Mexico and has forced institutions such as the National
Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) to carry out repatriation
programs whereby student debt is cancelled and students are invited to return
to Mexico through retention programs implemented by higher education
institutions.
3. The National Confederation of Agricultural Corn Producers recently con-
firmed that in the last two years almost half a million hectares went unplanted, and
400,000 farmers stopped cultivating basic grains (La Jornada, June 6, 2005).
4. Information on the Altar–El Sasabe corridor cited here comes from site
visits in 2005 and 2006; conversations with migrants; the review of more than
three hundred newspaper articles on migration collected in September–December
2005; and data taken from official organizations, such as INEGI and the Sonoran
State Commission for Migrant Assistance.
5. Durand (1998: 106–9) suggested dividing Mexico into three migratory
regions: (1) the historic region (western and central plateau): Jalisco, Michoacán,
Guanajuato, Zacatecas, Durango, Nayarit, San Luis Potosí, and two states mak-
ing smaller contributions: Colima and Aguascalientes; (2) the border region:
Tamaulipas, Coahuila, Nuevo León, Chihuahua, Sonora, and Baja California, as
well as Baja California Sur and Sinaloa, which despite not being border states,

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Current Trends in Mexican Migration | 579

are tied to the border region in terms of migration and social geography; (3)
new regions and migratory destinations: the Federal District, Querétaro, Puebla,
Tlaxcala, Hidalgo, México, Guerrero, Morelos, and Oaxaca.
6. According to the 2000 census, of a total two million households containing
migrants, almost ninety thousand are in the state of Veracruz. This is equivalent
to around 381,000 people who receive money from or have an immediate rela-
tive residing in the United States (INEGI 2000).
7. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (1986) and the Illegal Immi-
gration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (1996).
8. A recent study by the Urban Institute’s Immigration Studies Program
showed that undocumented women living in the United States represent 41
percent of the migrant population. There are about 4.5 million men and 3.2
million women over the age of eighteen without legal documentation.
9. The EMIF is a survey carried out since 1993 in coordination with the
National Population Council (CONAPO), the Ministry of Work and Social
Welfare (STPS), and the Colegio de la Frontera Norte, in the main border
cities of Tijuana, Mexicali, Nogales, Ciudad Juárez, Piedras Negras, Nuevo
Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros. EMIF groups together four questionnaires
that characterize four types of migratory flow according to place of origin: the
south, the northern border cities, the United States, and migrants deported by
the U.S. Border Patrol.
10. On a recent, hour-long trip from Altar to Sasabe, we counted twenty-one
vans, all of them nearly full with fifteen to eighteen passengers, including a few
children. All, of course, were en route to Sasabe.
11. Valdez-Gardea’s 2004 interviews in San Diego showed that people such
as Central Americans, with even more precarious status often seek out riskier
crossing points, putting them at greater risk of being assaulted or abused.
12. Mexico’s Ministry of External Relations (SRE) reported that sixty-three
migrants had died trying to cross into the United States within the Altar-Sasabe
corridor during the first quarter of 2005.
13. Juan Carrasco refers to the population that looks for exact forms to be
absorbed by and consumed in the city.
14. According to the statistical annexes of the third government report,
between 2000 and 2003 the maquiladora export industry lost 205,000 jobs.
The report points out that this decrease has continued since the beginning of the
Calderón administration in 2007. Mexico has therefore lost significant dynamism
in this sectors (La Jornada, August, 7, 2005).

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Volume  51   Number  4 JOURNAL  of  the  SOUTHWEST Winter  2009


THE SOUTHWEST CENTER
UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA
TUCSON

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