Description
Book SynopsisDrawing on her research of the Mixtec Indians' migration from the southwest of Mexico to Baja California, the author shows that sometimes the push for indigenous labels is more a process of external oppression than it is of minority empowerment. This book is useful to scholars working in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and ethnic studies.
Trade ReviewVirtually all of the scholarship on identity sees it as something that comes from the bottom-up. Martinez Novo recognizes the popular side of identity formation, but also looks at the process from the top down. How do more powerful actors-state institutions, intellectuals, elites, NGOs, etc.-try, in an imperfect and messy way, to mold collective identities? Martinez Novo not only poses this rather interesting problem, but investigates it with an innovative methodology and supports it with sound scholarship.-Steve Striffler, author of in the Shadows of State and Capital
Table of ContentsContents; Acknowledgments; 1 Introduction; 2 Mixtec Communities at the Mexican Border. 3 The Making of Vulnerabilities: Indigenous Day Laborers in Mexico's Neoliberal Agriculture; 4 ""We Are Against the Government, Although We Are the Government."" State Institutions and Indigenous Migrants in Baja California in the 1990s; 5 Representations of Indigenous Women Street Vendors in Tijuana; 6 Race, Maternalism, and Community Development; 7 Conclusion: Cultural Difference and Democracy; Notes; Bibliography; Index.
