Adolescent migration to cancún

Frontiers

Volumn 28, Issue 3, 2007, Pages 1-27

  Castellanos, M Bianet ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA   (United States)

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EID: 37449012074     PISSN: 01609009     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (94)

1. To protect the privacy of my informants, I use pseudonyms for the places and people I mention in this text, with the exception of large cities like Cancún, Valladolid, and Mérida. All the people I mention here have granted me permission to refer to them and to quote them in this text.
2. See Lourdes Benería and Martha Roldán, The Crossroads of Class and Gender: Industrial Homework, Subcontracting, and Housework in Mexico City (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987);
3. Sylvia Chant, "Tourism in Latin America: Perspectives from Mexico and Costa Rica," in Tourism and Less Developed Countries, ed. David Harrison (London: John Wiley & Sons, 1992), 85-101;
4. Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Dómestica: Immigrant Workers Cleaning and Caring in the Shadows of Affluence (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001);
5. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization: Women, Migration, and Domestic Work (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001).
6. Ibid.
7. Cf. Sharon Stephens, "Introduction: Children and the Politics of Culture in 'Late Capitalism,'" in Children and the Politics of Culture, ed. Sharon Stephens (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 3-48;
8. Janet L. Finn and Lynn Nybell, "Capitalizing on Concern: The Making of Troubled Children and Troubling Youth in Late Capitalism," Childhood 8 (2001): 139-45.
9. I was first introduced to the residents of Kuchmil as an undergraduate student in June 1991. The bulk of my data were collected from September 2000 to September 2001. I also returned to Kuchmil in the summers of 1993, 1994, 1997, 1998, 2001, 2002, and 2006, and in the winters of 2003 and 2004.
10. See Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild, Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002).
11. Arlie Russell Hochschild, "Love and Gold," in Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, ed. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002), 15-30.
12. See June Nash and María Patricia Fernández-Kelly, "Introduction," in Women, Men, and the International Division of Labor, ed. June Nash and Maria Patricia Fernández-Kelly (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983), vii-xv;
13. Salazar Parreñas, Servants of Globalization; Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, ed., Gender and U.S. Immigration: Contemporary Trends (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003);
14. Victoria Malkin, "'We Go to Get Ahead': Gender and Status in Two Mexican Migrant Communities," Latin American Perspectives 31 (2004): 75-99.
15. Nicole Constable, Maid to Order in Hong Kong: Stories of Filipina Workers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997);
16. Ehrenreich and Hochschild, Global Woman.
17. Rhacel Salazar Parreñas, Children of Global Migration: Transnational Families and Gendered Woes (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005);
18. and Michelle Gamburd, "Breadwinner No More," in Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, ed. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002), 190-206.
19. See Patricia Pessar, "Engendering Migration Studies: The Case of New Immigrants in the United States," American Behavioral Scientist 42 (2001): 577-600.
20. See Kevin Bales, "Because She Looks Like a Child," in Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy, ed. Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002), 207-29;
21. David Bacon, The Children of NAFTA: Labor Wars on the U.S./Mexico Border (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004);
22. Norma Iglesias Prieto, Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora: Life Histories of Women Workers in Tijuana (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997).
23. Iglesias Prieto, Beautiful Flowers of the Maquiladora.
24. Aihwa Ong, Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline: Factory Women in Malaysia (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).
25. Mary Beth Mills, Thai Women in the Global Labor Force: Consuming Desires, Contested Selves (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999).
26. Ibid., 165.
27. The case of Mexico provides an example of recent shifts in maquiladora hiring practices. Initially, 90 percent of its workforce was female. Yet, due to labor scarcity, the peso devaluation of 1983, and the arrival of automobile assembly plants, men were soon employed. See Alejandro Lugo, "Cultural Production and Reproduction in Ciudad Júarez, Mexico: Tropes at Play among Maquiladora Workers," Cultural Anthropology 5 (1990): 173-196.
28. In spite of these changes in hiring practices, women continue to occupy the lowest paid jobs. See Kathryn Kopinak, Desert Capitalism: Maquiladoras in North America's Western Industrial Corridor (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1997).
29. For a gender analysis of assembly work that includes both men and women, see also Leslie Salzinger, Genders in Production: Making Workers in Mexico's Global Factories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003).
30. For example, the service industry made up 69 percent of Mexico's gross domestic product in the year 2005. For the case of the United States, see Holly J. McCammon and Larry J. Griffin, "Workers and Their Customers and Clients," Work and Occupations 27 (2000): 278-93.
31. Anthropologists Mary Elmendorf and Alicia Re Cruz conclude their works with this assessment. See Mary Elmendorf, Nine Mayan Women: A Village Faces Change (New York: Schenkman, 1976),
32. and Alicia Re Cruz, The Two Milpas of Chan Kom: A Study of Socioeconomic and Political Transformation in a Maya Community (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996).
33. See Mary Elmendorf, Nine Mayan Women; Alicia Re Cruz, "Maya Women, Gender Dynamics, and Modes of Production," Sex Roles 39 (1998): 573-87;
34. Ellen Kintz, "The Yucatec Maya Frontier"; Betty Bernice Faust, "Cacao Beans and Chile Peppers: Gender Socialization in the Cosmology of a Yucatec Maya Curing Ceremony," Sex Roles 39, nos. 7/8 (1998): 603-42;
35. and Ana María Juárez, "Four Generations of Maya Marriages: What's Love Got to Do with It?" Frontiers 22 (2001): 131-53. Faust's essay focuses on adolescent girls who have yet to migrate.
36. Alison C. Greene, "Working Girls, Cancun Style: Reconfiguring Private and Public Domains in Practice," Anthropology of Work Review 22 (2001): 7-13.
37. In 1969, the Yucatán Peninsula was selected as the site for the construction of Mexico's first modern tourist city, Cancún. While construction had already begun with the support of Mexican investors, the Inter-American Development Bank provided the funds to support the bulk of the development of Cancún in 1972. The first hotel, Playa Blanca, opened for business in 1974, the same year Quintana Roo became a state. This national plan for tourism development included the construction of four other tourist cities in the states of Oaxaca, Guerrero, and Baja California Sur. See Fernando Martí, Cancún, Fantasy of Bankers: The Construction of a Tourism City from Base Zero, trans. Jule Siegel (Mexico: Litho Offset Andina, 1991).
38. See Nash and Fernández Kelly, "Introduction"; Lugo, "Cultural Production"; and Susan Tiano, Patriarchy on the Line: Labor, Gender, and Ideology in the Mexican Maquila Industry (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).
39. Cited in John Madeley, Trade and the Poor: The Impact of International Trade on Developing Countries (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992), 79.
40. Rebecca Maria Torres and Janet D. Momsen, "Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space in Mexico," Annals of the Association of American Geographers 95 (2005): 314-35.
41. Michael Clancy, "Tourism Development: Evidence from Mexico," Annals of Tourism Research 26 (1999):1-20.
42. These statistics are derived from my interviews with the migrant community in Cancún.
43. Only 75 percent of female migrants were employed. The remaining stayed at home and chose not to work.
44. Rachel Sherman, "Producing the Superior Self: Strategic Comparison and Symbolic Boundaries among Luxury Hotel Workers," Ethnography 6 (2005): 131-58. Workers in luxury hotels are hired and trained based on their physical appearance and personality.
45. See M. Bianet Castellanos, "Gustos and Gender: Yucatec Maya Migration to the Mexican Riviera," (PhD diss., Department of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 2003).
46. Salzinger, Genders in Production, 15.
47. Interview with hotel supervisor, Juan Robles Terán, February 15, 2001.
48. Cf. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Doméstica.
49. This desire for particular bodies, however, did not erase negative stereotypes of indigenous women among elite Mexicans. Praise was accompanied by racist commentaries. For example, one employer told me that her maid Nereida was very honest, but later on during the conversation, she complained that Yucatecos, like Nereida, "did not have any culture" because they did not know how to speak Spanish correctly or clean properly. Thus, Maya domestic workers underwent a civilizing process, in which their employers taught them to speak Spanish, to maintain a certain level of cleanliness, to perform work in a particular fashion, and to adopt an attitude of submissiveness and a willingness to work long hours. These observations are based on my experiences living with and befriending Mexican middle-class families in Mérida and Cancún. I overheard and engaged in many conversations with them about their live-in and live-out servants. They were eager to talk to me because many considered me a great conduit by which to gain access to indigenous maids. I was granted permission to quote these employers as long as I erased all identifying markers.
50. Ellen Kintz, "The Yucatec Maya Frontier and Maya Women: Tenacity of Tradition and Tragedy of Transformation," Sex Roles 39 (Nov. 7/8, 1998): 589-601.
51. Nancy Farriss, Maya Society under Colonial Rule: The Collective Enterprise of Survival (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984);
52. and Terry Rugeley, Yucatán's Maya Peasantry and the Origins of the Caste War (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996).
53. My observations regarding Maya gender roles during adolescence are based on formal interviews I conducted with nine adolescent girls and on conversations I had with the married women of Kuchmil during the summers of 1991 and 1992. See also Robert Redfield and Alfonso Villa Rojas, Chan Kom: A Maya Village (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press, 1990);
54. Elmendorf, Nine Mayan Women;
55. and Alicia Re Cruz, The Two Milpas of Chan Kom.
56. Cf. Suzanne Gaskins, "From Corn to Cash: Change and Continuity within Mayan Families," Ethos 31 (2003): 248-73.
57. Stephens, Children and the Politics of Culture. However, according to Betty Bernice Faust, Maya children are considered to be complete persons and "more balanced, androgynous, than persons in their reproductive years, who need a partner to balance a more strongly one-sided sexual essence." Betty Bernice Faust, "Cacao Beans and Chile Peppers," 624. While I do not question her assessment of the asexual depiction of Maya children, I do question the idea that Maya children and the elderly are considered to be complete persons.
58. In spite of these ideals, the age at marriage varied. During my visit in 1991, parents informed me that they frowned upon marriage for young women before their eighteenth birthday because they were still muchachas and were not mature enough to care for their own household. Although women who remained single past their mid-twenties were considered caducadas (expired or left on the shelf), they were encouraged to marry regardless of their age. For example, in 1992, I arrived to celebrate the marriage of a woman who was thirty-two years old to a gentleman a few years older from a neighboring town. But this case was the exception. While men were expected to marry in their mid-twenties, they were not subject to pejorative comments if they delayed marriage.
59. Elizabeth Jelin, "Migration and the Labor Force Participation of Latin American Women: The Domestic Servants in the Cities," Signs 3 (1977): 129-41.
60. Ximena Bunster and Elsa M. Chaney, Sellers and Servants: Working Women in Lima, Peru (Granby, MA: Bergin and Garvey, 1989).
61. Jelin, "Migration and Labor Force Participation."
62. Mary Kay Vaughan, The State, Education, and Social Class in Mexico, 1880-1928 (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1982);
63. and Augusto Santiago Sierra, Las Misiones Culturales (1923-1973) (Mexico: Secretaría de Educación Publica, Setentas, 1973).
64. From September 2000 to September 2001, I conducted a household survey in Kuchmil that included questions regarding the educational background of each household member. I had heard about the internados during previous visits, but this survey gave me the opportunity to track all of the students who attended the internados and the location of these schools. I subsequently interviewed eight of the students (seven males and one female) who attended internados.
65. Cf. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Gendered Transitions.
66. Re Cruz, "Maya Women," 585; and Kintz, "The Yucatec Maya Frontier."
67. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Doméstica.
68. For further discussion of escapándose, see M. Bianet Castellanos, "Las muchachas que se escaparon: Changing Conceptions of Gender Behavior in a Yucatec Maya Village," (Honors Thesis, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University, 1993).
69. In the village of Chan Kom, keeping women from migrating was considered an important way to sustain Maya culture. See Re Cruz, "Maya Women."
70. Cf. Greene, "Working Girls, Cancun Style."
71. Hondagneu-Sotelo, Doméstica; and Bunster and Chaney, Sellers and Servants.
72. Adriana Estill, "The Mexican Telenovela's Tidy Nation" Chasqui 29, no. 1 (2000): 75-87.
73. For a discussion of the relationship between Guadalupe and indigenous goddesses, see Jacques Lafaye, Quetzalcoátl and Guadalupe: The Formation of Mexican National Consciousness, 1531-1813 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974);
74. and Irene Lara, "Fleshing the Spirit/Spiriting the Flesh: Re-membering Tonantzin-Guadalupe" (unpublished paper).
75. Eric R. Wolf, "The Virgin of Guadalupe: A Mexican National Symbol," Journal of American Folklore 71 (1958): 34-39.
76. According to Adriana Estill, Mexican telenovelas promote mestizaje as a way to unify the nation; thus nationalism hinges on the erasure of an indigenous past. See Estill, "The Mexican Telenovela's Tidy Nation."
77. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).
78. A secundaria includes seventh through ninth grade and is equivalent to a junior high school or middle school in the United States.
79. In 1999, all of the school age children (ages four through nineteen for a total of forty) in Kuchmil were enrolled in school. Sixteen of these children attended primary school and twelve attended the combined preschool and kindergarten class. These statistics are derived from the household survey I conducted during the 1999 academic year.
80. In 2001, thirteen of the school age children (total of forty-four) were girls.
81. Cf. Kintz, "The Yucatec Maya Frontier." According to Suzanne Gaskins, young Maya boys have always been encouraged to participate in modest wage work within the village. See Gaskins, "From Corn to Cash."
82. The other half of the households did not include children old enough to migrate.
83. Cf. Greene, "Working Girls, Cancun Style."
84. Kintz, "The Yucatec Maya Frontier."
85. Cf. Richard Wilk, "Houses as Consumer Goods: Social Processes and Allocation Decisions," in The Social Economy of Consumption: Monographs in Economic Anthropology, no. 6, ed. Henry J. Rutz and Benjamin S. Orlove (Boulder: Westview Press, 1989), 297-322.
86. In contrast, married children remitted between $15 and $30 every few months to their natal families. Migrant remittances were equivalent to the income generated by rural households. But government subsidies constituted nearly two-thirds of a household's income. These numbers are based on averages and are derived from interviews with twenty migrants and with each head of household in Kuchmil.
87. Castellanos, "Gustos and Gender."
88. Cf. Gaskins, "From Corn to Cash," 253-54.
89. Cited in Elmendorf, Nine Mayan Women.
90. Also, see Rugeley, Yucatán's Maya Peasantry, 11.
91. Elmendorf, Nine Mayan Women.
92. This age is culled from a household census and interviews I conducted regarding marriage practices in Kuchmil in 1991 and 1992.
93. Juárez, "Four Generations of Maya Marriages," 147.
94. Greene, "Working Girls, Cancun Style."