From August to November 2007, I lived and volunteered in San Isidro Arenal, a Chinanteco indigenous community in the Mexican state of Oaxaca. The community is located in a beautiful and geographically variant area in northeastern Oaxaca- the tropical foothills of the Sierra Madre called the Chinantla.  

With the support of CASA Chapulín and the Oaxacan organization COPIL (the Council of Indigenous Pueblos of Lalana), my friend Frazer and I taught computer skills to children and adults.  Our goal was to build a web-based space where the community could use their newly acquired computer skills to share news, art, culture, and ideas with the international community online. In the course of our time in the community, four students out of forty-eight migrated north in search of work. 

My experience has been educating and enlightening in regards to the largely untold story of the Chinanteco people and indigenous Mexican migration. My reflections on our experience with the Chinanteco follow. 

Every family in San Isidro Arenal has at least one family member living and working in the barrios of Mexico City or the United States, such as the Bronx and Mexico City’s Santa Ursula district.  As with all indigenous immigrants, Chinanteco migrants encounter racism outside of their homeland, and many quickly shed any sign of their indigenous identity. 

In some families, only the young and old remain in San Isidro. Most people rely on family members abroad to pay for things like television, clothing, and home repairs. The amount that one family member can send home - an average of 100 to 200 US dollars a month - doubles or even triples most families’ yearly income.  

Several factors contribute to migration from San Isidro Arenal.  These include plummeting prices for agricultural products, the recent rise in poverty, and the lack of education and job opportunities for young people in the community.  

The US media and politicians use words like “illegals” to describe immigrants, even when referring to individuals who can trace their bloodlines to before European colonization. This disrespect and ignorance must be confronted if we are to begin to remedy the poverty faced by indigenous and immigrant Mexicans.    

An Indigenous Identity

Although in the United States, we would simply refer to them as “Mexican,” and Mestizo Mexicans often derogatorily call them “Indio” or “Oaxaco,” the people of San Isidro Arenal identify themselves as “Chinanteco.”  The Chinanteco are an indigenous group with over 90,000 speakers, the thirteenth most populous indigenous group in Mexico. Nearly everyone in San Isidro speaks Chinanteco, and some of the older community members only speak the language.  

The Chinanteco people continue to follow a solar agricultural calendar and frequently visit curanderos or healers to divine the future, ask for good fortune, or to cure an illness.  In San Isidro, Chinanteco culture is also visible in the older women’s traditional white huipil dress.  The San Isidro huipil has a thin line of alternating colors embroidered down the front, back, and sides, corresponding to each of the cardinal directions. The green, red, blue, yellow and purple color lines symbolize the unity of all the pueblos.  

San Isidro is governed by a traditional community assembly in which all men above the age of seventeen participate.  All males must serve various positions in the town- police, school grounds manager, community cattle rancher, community store manager, church grounds manager, or simply just a voice of wisdom as an elder. If a man is named to serve in the community’s council and he is away in the United States or Mexico City, he must return to serve his one year term or get another family member to serve in his place. 

Chinanteco culture is especially vibrant on holidays and special occasions such as weddings.  Most people do not celebrate Catholic weddings, and we were fortunate to be invited to a traditional wedding ceremony.  The ceremony took place in the kitchen of the bride’s family, and the bulk of the ceremony was spent with the bride and groom’s parents and grandparents giving advice on how the newlyweds should treat one another.

A look at the differences between two important holidays celebrated in San Isidro- Mexican Independence Day (El Grito) and the Day of the Dead (Todos Santos)- highlights how the Chinantecos’ indigenous identity remains much stronger than their national identity as Mexicans.  

In many places, El Grito consists of a lively fair with food and bands, but in San Isidro it is much different. The school teachers organize the festivities, drilling their students all week in national dances. On the day of the festivities, the school director leads all of the neatly dressed children in perfect rows through empty streets. Instead of watching the fair pass, the adults stay at home or work. Then the mayor, who can barely speak Spanish, recites with much difficulty “El Grito de Dolores,” Miguel Hidalgo’s freedom declaration. As government employees, the teachers are required to organize the festival in order to propagate Mexican nationalism.  That doesn’t mean that the people of San Isidro have bought the message. 

Todos Santos was much different; the government does not need to enforce this holiday. One might argue that this is a Catholic holiday, but despite the name and the saints on the altars, the older, non-Catholic aspects of the holiday shine through. Todos Santos flows smoothly all-week long, beginning with bells and music played at dawn each day to call the dead from the cemetery into town. All week, people harvest items for their altars and the ingredients for making mountains of tamales and gallons of chocolate atole. The week ends with a march to the cemetery to light candles and play music, to call the dead back to their graves.  

Todos Santos altars are set up to make offerings to the dead.  A typical altar is decorated with lush purple coxcombs and orange marigolds, pictures of the deceased family member, and various saint idols.  Candles and copal incense are lit. Some people sacrifice a turkey or chicken and hang it at the altar, although the Catholic priests in San Isidro frown upon this practice. 

Corn, Coffee, and Cattle

An ear of corn adorns the Chinanteco shield, and every family has a plot to grow their own corn. However, in 1994, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) went into effect, causing the market for locally-grown corn to bottom out.  Mexico cut all tariffs, opening markets for cheaper, government-subsidized corn from the United States. These reforms put an end to almost all agricultural exports and severely reduced the price for locally-grown corn. The economic impact has made it so people now only grow enough corn for their own sustenance.  

Around the same time as NAFTA went into effect, world coffee prices also fell. Until that time, coffee was the big export from the region, and coffee grew in abundance on the hillsides surrounding San Isidro. However, due to the middlemen needed to bring the coffee to the market from the isolated indigenous farmers, the region cannot compete with the low coffee prices of the world market. In response to these economic changes, most coffee crops were vastly reduced or the land converted to cattle pasture. 

No longer able to sell corn or coffee, the only option for people who had the land and money was to switch to cattle. Productive lands surrounding the town were converted to pasture.  This switch prompted imports of animal feeds, benefitting agribusiness and US consumers.  Nevertheless, steak was rarely on the menu at our students’ homes. 

It is now many people’s dream to earn enough money in the United States to build a house and buy ten cows.  However, cattle earn very little money and require more land than coffee or corn. Five hectares of coffee or corn could once support a family; five hectares of cattle will not.  Each spring, community members sell calves, requiring a major investment of medicine, vaccines, corn feed, grass, and herbicides. The average net income is roughly $1,600 dollars pesos annually, a very meager sum.   

In San Isidro, there is pasture as far as the eye can see in every direction. However, only about fifteen of the fifty families in the community raise cattle, and on average, each family has ten cows. Most of the land being grazed does not belong to the Chinanteco but rather to the caciques- the large landlords who live in the cities and hire people to raise their cattle.  The caciques either slash and burn the forests themselves or take indigenous lands.  The indigenous people must seek other areas to farm or leave the region entirely.  

Although Chinanteco agricultural practices are quite harmonious, the area has experienced detrimental deforestation as a result of the mass-scale cattle-grazing.  The deforestation has changed the climate and severely impacted farming.  
 

Migration

Faced with a failing farm and a lack of other economic opportunities, many Chinanteco people decide to leave the community in search for work.  The first destination is often Mexico City, where a woman can earn one hundred pesos ($10 US dollars) a day sewing clothes.  However, many quickly learn that this is still not enough to support the family and find themselves on the most dangerous journey of their lives- through the Sonoran desert, past thieves, rapists, and the US Border Patrol. Many die during the crossing to the US. We witnessed the panic of one family who waited for weeks to hear from their daughter who was making the crossing. Luckily, they eventually got the call.  

Like all immigrants, this journey takes the Chinanteco people to wherever they can find work- a restaurant, a farm, building houses, cleaning hotels. Most search out friends and family who have already established themselves. Then they work and send money home and continue to do this as long as they can. In fear of another border crossing, most won’t return to San Isidro unless they have secured a US visa or have earned enough money to reestablish themselves at home.  

When a family member dies in the United States, his or her body is shipped home. The relatives will chip in to pay for this cost. For most, this will be the only time they have ever flown in a plane. They probably have not lived in San Isidro for five, ten or even twenty years. In that span of time, they may have built their family a new house, purchased cattle, or helped start a small store.  

Our Responsibility

Solving the problems of immigration and poverty should be as easy as creating opportunities for young people and reinstating land reforms and tariffs on agricultural products to protect Mexican farmers. These things would help, but the problem is far more embedded. NAFTA was in no way the beginning of the exploitation of the poor and indigenous.  

When we left San Isidro Arenal, our new friends treated us as if we were family members heading to the United States for work.  The only difference is that there is no wall preventing us from returning. Living with the Chinanteco, I found that not only do we need to correct violent policies, but we must also become accountable. Creating solid bonds of friendship fosters a commitment to the struggle. When it is your friends that are the victims, the struggle becomes personal. While staying true to this commitment is no easy task, it is much easier than walking days through the desert to seek a better life. This is what I learned in the three months I lived and taught in San Isidro Arenal.