Blog #7: Migration and Its Lasting Effects on Mexico

Migration and Its Lasting Effects on Mexico

Migration is an enormous piece of Mexican history, and it is one that we have studied heavily throughout the course because of its lasting impact on all aspects of the culture and politics of the country.  Our studies throughout the course have continually come back to the issue of migration because it is seemingly the one constant in Mexico’s history.  Issues of migration have impacted everything from the role of women in indigenous communities, to societal set up.  Our visit to Santa Ana del Vaya embodied this truth, because it is a city where forty-five percent of the households receive remittance payments from family members living in the United States.  This number is so mind boggling it is almost impossible to understand as just a statistic.  Not all communities in Mexico reflect this enormous amount of migrants, but Oaxaca as a state continues to increase its numbers of migrants each year to the United States as well as other states in Mexico. 

Statistically, there is a lot of data regarding migration to the United States as well as internally within Mexico.  According to Jorge Hernandez, the guest speaker, seventy percent of migrants to the U.S. from Santa Ana del Vaya were male, while thirty percent were female.  This coincides with the reading we did concerning migration, which stated that eighty percent were men while twenty were female (Culture of Migration in Southern Mexico pg. 41).  While it was not surprising that most migrants are male, the number that Jorge gave of thirty percent women was a little surprising.  The stereotypical Mexican immigrant is a male worker looking for work, however as the statistics show that a growing proportion of migrants are female as Jorge’s statistics were slightly newer than those used in the article.

As in all things Mexico, the U.S. has a continuous impact on migration in terms of how it is achieved and their rights once they establish themselves within the U.S. border.  United States border policy has been a constantly changing seesaw of leniency and strict enforcement for most of the 21^st century.  Only after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 did the official policy of the border become, for the long foreseeable future, a closed border.  This policy shift has been hard on migrant families whose loved ones can no longer return to Mexico for fear of not being able to cross the border for a second time.  This closing has also resulted in an ever-increasing number of migrants dying on the route to the U.S. either by a greedy coyote or dehydration from wondering in the desert.  However, there is a progressive movement within the U.S. border to establish a workers program or to help legalize those migrants that have made it across the border, both for national security as well as the safety of the migrants themselves.  Without the rights of citizenship there is a great risk that they will be unable to receive the care they need from the hospitals or private physicians. 

            As much as migration is a part of Mexican history, it is as much a part of U.S. history.  Not only do the migrants provide for their families in Mexico but also they provide valuable labor for American industry without which they would not be able to produce nearly as much product.  This relationship is often overlooked because it isn’t like the United States to ever admit that it relies on a foreign country for anything, although it is becoming increasingly more common for our economy to be based on foreign countries.