From Elders’ Wisdom to Brave Migrants

Abstract

Mexico–US migration studies have become increasingly gender-sensitive in the last two decades. However, few studies have applied a gender analysis to the study of indigenous Mexican migration. Social sciences research that has included a gender and ethnic approach in Mexican–US migration scholarship has mainly focused on women and the transformation of gender relations of those who physically migrate. Those studies have filled an important lacuna and also have made evident the corresponding gap in knowledge about those who do not physically migrate and men. Moreover, because public records assume that men are the norm, the study of men as gendered subjects has been largely obscured. This article presents interdisciplinary work on indigenous Mexican transnational migration from a gender perspective, explores and questions the role of transnational migration in the transformation and emergence of masculinities, and then suggests how research in men’s studies might help to broaden and enrich the study of Mexican indigenous masculinity. Based on fieldwork carried out in a Zapotec indigenous community in Oaxaca, Mexico, and in the cities of Anaheim and Los Angeles, California, this work examines how indigenous masculinities are reconfigured through their migration experiences (work activities and interaction in community-base organizations) and how they have impacted the understandings of masculinities back home. Previous to the present high levels of migration, hegemonic Zapotec indigenous masculinity was based on elderly wisdom power arrangements; however, the particular trajectory of the migratory phenomenon has started to give way to the masculinity represented by the “brave” and experienced migrant.