Young Tzeltal Migrants from the Ejido to California’s Cities

The Social Conditions of Tzeltales in Chiapas

Historically, Tzeltal people have shown high levels of social integration, cultural adaptation, and ethnic flexibility in terms of their contacts with the Mexican and Chiapaneco nonindigenous people. The Tzeltal population is 258,000, the majority living in the highlands of Chiapas and a minority in the jungle: in Sitalá, Yajalón, Chilón, and Ocosingo, in San Juan Cancuc, Chanal, Oxchuc, and Tenejapa, and in Teopisca, Altamirano, Socoltenango, Tila, the Amatenango Valley, Las Margaritas, and Venustiano Carranza. These municipalities all have basic services, including water, electricity, cell phone coverage, mail, radio and television, schools, and hostels. Communication routes connect outlying communities with the municipal capitals and the main markets where much of local agricultural production is bought and sold. The basis of the Tzeltal economy remains subsistence agriculture (corn, beans, squash, chili peppers, potatoes, chayotes, pears, apples, and peaches) and livestock breeding (cattle, pigs, and horses). Backyard production is also important and consists of poultry rearing (chickens, ducks, and turkeys). The Tzeltales of the highlands, alongside the Tzotziles, have initiated transportation services, while those of the jungle engage in small-scale coffee cultivation to boost their incomes.

Between 1970 and 1990, the agricultural system in Chiapas suffered a series of severe crises. Therefore, rapidly depleting levels of production negatively altered the dynamics of rural livelihoods, especially among the indigenous population (Rus and Collier, 2002; Villafuerte, 2006). The traditional socioeconomic structure of rural indigenous peasant families experienced significant disruptions, one of which was the departure of the xuts, the youngest sons, who were traditionally charged with the responsibility of caring for their parents in their old age and marrying a girl from the ejido, thus preserving the lineage and its customs. The result was soaring international migration among Tzeltal and Tzotzil youth in the late 1990s, influenced by factors such as the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and natural disasters like Hurricane Mitch in 1998 and Hurricane Stan in 2005 (Villafuerte, 2006; Jáuregui, 2007). In the highlands, a wave of migration occurred during the late 1990s, while the most significant migration from the jungle took place between 2000 and 2005 (Villafuerte, 2006; Jáuregui, 2007; Cruz-Salazar, 2015). Since then, migration has been associated with cultural adaptations such as family disintegration, disenchantment with social movements, ¹ increase in school dropout rates, loss of land inheritance, lack of interest among the young in continuing to work the land, replacement of endogamy by exogamy, an increase in the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, a surge in participation in illegal activities (migrant trafficking, assassinations, and smuggling, among others) (Aquino, 2009; Mancina, 2011; Nuñez and Cruz-Salazar, 2021). The migrant experience has become so common that it is now almost viewed as a “rite of passage” (Cruz-Salazar, 2012).

Peasant Farmers in the Chiapas Jungle: Material and Symbolic Resources

The primary mechanism by which the Tzeltal youth interviewed arrived in the United States was with the help of relatives. The typical migrant is a single young man, bilingual, with a high school education, from a rural, lower-middle-class peasant family with 20–30 acres of land. Most young migrants had worked in the fields on their parents’ plots from an early age, and many also have prior interstate (within Mexico) migration experience. The sample consisted of young men born in Chiapas between 1982 and 1993, with an average age of 18 on first crossing the border and 22 when interviewed. All of the respondents came from rural communities of no more than 100 people with higher than average levels of marginalization, poverty, and social exclusion remote from the municipal capitals where markets and schools are concentrated, nearly all in Ocosingo and Palenque—municipalities that played important roles in the Zapatista movement. Ocosingo was populated by the Tzeltales when the Spanish missionaries relocated the indigenous inhabitants of the peripheries of the jungle region (Leyva and Ascencio, 2002; De Vos, 2010). Today the municipality has approximately 200,000 inhabitants. Palenque was founded in the same way, although its inhabitants speak Ch’ol and Lacandon Maya as well as Tzeltal.

The jungle region of Chiapas was an unpopulated territory until 1880. In the following 50 years, it was populated by indigenous peasants seeking work on agricultural, cattle, and coffee fincas established in different areas of the region or for extractive activities such as timber exploitation, rubber, and chewing gum developed by American companies and businessmen from the Mexican Southeast (Leyva and Ascencio, 2002). With the development of the finca system between 1880 and 1910 led by mestizos and foreigners, indigenous people from the highlands of Chiapas were displaced to this region. The fincas were agricultural enterprises with a large ranch plantation operating under a feudal system based on debt peonage (De Vos, 2010; Leyva and Ascencio, 2002). The finca system was generalized throughout the state in 1910 (Alejos, 2004); the workers on these fincas were Tzotziles, Tzeltales, and Choles who began as laborers hooked on debt, recruited and supervised by force, or deceived by teachers, municipal secretaries, superior authorities, and liquor producers through advance payments for future work; these workers lived with their families on the fincas (Ferner, 2022; Durand, 2016: 51). Economic activities in the jungle region focused mainly on agricultural production under the finca production system (Leyva and Ascencio, 2002). Later, these same workers became acasillados, laborers with accommodation on the fincas where they worked permanently. Over time and because of the abolition of debt peonage, these workers stopped living on the fincas and were hired by the day, which led them to search for land to settle near the fincas and continue to be employed on them. From 1930 to 1950 the process of colonization of the jungle region intensified.

In 1915, the Mexican agrarian law reformed and recognized the colonized lands in ejidos or collective lands for communal agrarian use; this reform “was a policy of occupation of space and agricultural expansion” (Leyva and Ascencio, 2002: 182). At this point, the Tzeltal, Tzotzil, and Chol peasants gradually began to establish and register ejidos and have their own land, which transformed the indigenous lifestyle in Chiapas.

In summary, from 1915 to 1942 the Tzeltales and Choles, along with other indigenous people of the region, worked on the estates established by the Spanish friars in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries (De Vos, 2010), while from 1943 to 1980 they were free of chiefs and grouped in ejidos that allowed them to establish their own laws and build their own sociocultural environment. Subsistence agriculture was already their way of life; the vast majority worked their own plots of land and sold the products in Ocosingo and Palenque. When neoliberal policies negatively affected the region in the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, the exodus from the jungle began, first to other parts of Chiapas, then outside the state but within Mexico, and finally to the United States. The first Tzeltales and Tzotziles from the jungle arrived in San Jose and San Francisco, California, in 1998, and the first Choles arrived in Los Angeles in 1995. This early migratory flow was typically made up of young men; women did not move in significant numbers until later.

The Ejido and the Land as Material and Symbolic Resources

One of the youth status’s key elements is the physical environment upon which a young person’s territory is defined; a delineated, symbolic space representing a “land area inhabited by humans and definable groups of different categories, be they local, municipal, regional, national, or supranational . . . a space defined by physical geography and represented cartographically” (Giménez, 1996: 10). Territory, the land, and the eijdo were recurring themes for all of my interview respondents. Land is the most important material and symbolic resource among them and guides every practice related to family, ethnic group, agricultural activity, and rural lifestyle. It is the space most valued emotionally, ecologically, economically, geopolitically, and culturally. Culturally speaking, the ejido is the homeland—the place where they were born, grew up, and formed their identities. Territory as a collective memory (Giménez, 1998) is associated with the landscapes of childhood (Ezequiel, interview, San Jose, 2012):

When we were kids, we had fun together. We went to the rivers and everywhere. We fished for tiny fish and shrimp. We had plastic bottles that we put the dough inside and waited for a while, and they went in and we pulled them out. We repeated this many times; sometimes we stayed there all day. If we caught some, we would bring them home, and my mom would make tortillas and cook the fish and we would eat them.

These childhood scenarios highlight rural and community spaces. The natural environment, large tracts of land, rivers, coffee plantations, cornfields, security, and freedom are the most formative childhood memories (Margulis and Urresti, 1996; Giménez, 1991). It was not only a matter of carrying out essential household chores such as carrying water for the horses but also hunting, fishing, and playing in a natural, green environment. These are the images that define the Tzeltal male identity (Chepe, interview, San Jose, 2011):

We plant beans, corn, squash, watermelon, and chili, and right now my dad is planting coffee; we have five hectares of Garnica coffee that we sell by the kilo in Cuauhtémoc. . . . The people that come to buy are from around Palenque and Ocosingo. They are also planting trees to give the coffee plants shade. When corn is planted, herds of wild boar come. The boars can bite or even kill because they come in packs of 20 or 30. There are also deer; they come in pairs or groups of 4. There used to be many more, but I guess they have been overhunted for meat for the table.

Another experience of childhood was guns in the home. The most common weapons were .22 and .45 rifles. Adults, adolescents, and even children regularly go out with firearms to hunt and defend themselves, because “You have to know how to move in the jungle” (Chilo, interview, San Francisco, 2011). At Chilo’s house, there are several guns to protect the family: “We have a clip that is like an AK-47, just seven shots. We use it to kill squirrels.” Chilo has hunted since childhood and used to go into the mountains: “I went out for six hours with my brother and brought back a boar.”

Respondents share a collective memory associated with the environment where they grew up: “I always carry my town inside me” (Carlos, interview, San Francisco, 2011). Shared experiences make sense of collective identity and the homeland. All respondents associated what they learned through their childhood and community with their own specific gender identity. Along with actual experiences of hunting, there are also myths and legends. The following tale contains a simple message: “Never go hunting alone” (focus group, San Jose, 2012): “A man from the jungle went out one day to hunt wild boar. He killed one and was heading back when he saw the pack ready to attack him. He quickly climbed a tall tree with a thick trunk, but 30 boars surrounded the tree trunk and began crashing hard into it, toppling the tree and quickly devouring the hunter.”

Crabbing is also an important cultural practice. Up to three sacks of crabs are caught on each expedition and are divided among extended families. Three to five men are required, who in advance put pieces of raw chicken in the river or lake as bait and then return at night with flashlights strapped to their foreheads. One of the men enters the water and, squatting, turn on the flashlight to locate the crabs. Once sure they are there taking the bait, he turns off the flashlight, thrusts his hands into the water, and grabs a large crab with each hand. Another man ties each crab’s pincers and throws it into a sack. This is repeated until the sacks are full of live crabs (focus group, San Jose, 2011).

Pheasant hunting also has cultural significance and is carried out by the elders of the family. Two men can normally expect to bring back between 20 and 30 birds. The homeland is essentially seen as an area of natural beauty, inspiring strong feelings of affection: “The river passed by the house. We used to walk there; that is where I lived with Ernesto. It is a nice place . . . very special. . . . The air is fresh, without dirt or smog. Here [in the United States], it is not like that. Here it is full of smoke” (focus group, San Jose, 2012).

However, testimonials sometimes seem magnified to reproduce the dynamics of the community, particularly those most associated with the land. By recalling anecdotes, the young men give life to their cultural identity and magnify the cultural heritage that exists in their ejidos to this day. Taking care of the land is recognized as preserving identity, origin, and territorial affiliation. Therefore, most young migrants who manage to save money while in California buy land back in the ejido, which their parents then tend. However, they generally have no interest in returning home to be farmers; they buy land for their parents so that they themselves can retain a rural peasant identity. Thus, the offspring provide the working capital and become agents of change (Bourdieu, 1990; Giddens, 1991). They are “micro-investors” who can aspire to the status of farmers in their region of origin from a distance (see Cornelius, Fitzgerald, and Fischer, 2007; Cornelius et al., 2009: Stephen, 2007).

In agrarian Chiapas, “peasant” and “farmer” are categories differentiated by class and type of labor (Nuñez and Cruz-Salazar, 2021). Farmers possess the land and hire peasants to work it (see Farr, 2006). They own cattle and other animals and hire peasants to tend to them. Young Tzeltal migrants learned how to work the land from their grandparents, fathers, and uncles, and this knowledge initially led them to find temporary jobs in the California fields when they first migrated. However, because of the low wages offered in agriculture (in both California and Chiapas) and rising employment expectations over time, the Tzeltal youth I interviewed no longer consider this type of work worthwhile. They pursue other jobs to confirm that they are doing better than they were back home.

The Social Conditions of Tzeltales in California

The Mission District of San Francisco has the largest and most heterogeneous group of Tzeltales in California, with members of different ejidos from Ocosingo and Palenque and strong cohesion. Los Angeles has a medium-sized group primarily made up of Chol-speakers from Palenque. The smallest group is in San Jose, with Tzeltal-speaking members from the Las Cañadas region of Ocosingo. In addition to their native languages, the migrants interviewed also speak Spanish, Tzeltalspanglish, and some English. They reported having a variety of different jobs, as cooks or waiters in restaurants, janitors, gardeners, and, when other work was scarce, bricklayers. The average salary at the time of the interviews was US$4,000 a month, and respondents claimed to send between US$200–$500 home to Chiapas monthly during the first two or three years and significantly less thereafter. Most of them lived crammed into small apartments and shared bunk beds or mats on the floor. Migrants who are now married and have children have more stability; they often rent apartments and sublease extra rooms to their Tzeltal acquaintances. Just one of the 108 respondents was applying for permanent residency.

Once in California and employed, the migrants paid off any outstanding debt they had incurred during their trips and then began saving money and sending remittances to be invested in land back in Chiapas. In this way, they ensured their territorial belonging—albeit symbolically. They assumed responsibility for continuing a peasant identity indirectly, via their parents, sending them money to invest in land and cattle and build small farms that they themselves would eventually inherit. Although the aim of the migration project was to save money, build a house, get married, and start a family while also perhaps financing the studies of younger siblings, the yearning for consumption, fun, and adventure in the North was also very much in evidence. Even though Tzeltal and Chol youth’s participation in the regional market economy is apparent in their investments in land, education, and basics for their relatives back home, they improve their youth condition while working in the United States (Aquino, 2009; Urteaga, 2011; Mancina, 2011).

Migration as a Strategy for Improving the Status of Youth

The status of youth can be particularly hard while living in poverty, and migration is an option for remedying material deficiencies in basic resources such as education, work, wages, food, housing, and health care (Bourdieu, 1990; Margulis and Urresti, 1996). The immaterial goods associated with nonprimary needs and oriented by conspicuous consumption are needs beyond basic survival and well-being and related to symbolic creativity or cultural production (Bourdieu, 1990; Willis, 1998). The new conditions of migrant life allow young Tzeltal migrants access not only to a basic level of material consumption but also to the kinds of cultural and symbolic consumption that permit them to develop new youth identities (Featherstone, 1991). This consumption requires their dedicating both money and time to producing and maintaining their youth style (Featherstone, 1991). Thus, they improve their socioeconomic status and gain access to specific material and symbolic goods (Margulis and Urresti, 1996).

Arriving in California opens the way for a whole world of possibilities: work-pay-rest-fun-consumption-enjoyment. Everyone recounts his arrival with great emotion as the realization of a dream. “When I arrived, I saw the lights of Los Angeles. It was early morning, a big city” (Lucas, interview, Los Angeles, 2011). The first positive impressions of the arrival are mainly associated with urban real estate: “What most caught my attention were the crossing buttons on traffic lights, the buildings, the trucks with lifts. Everything is different here, more developed” (Lauro, interview, Los Angeles, 2011). Mariano says, “Here it is more civilized, there is everything. The highways are large, the cars are newer, and the garbage is separated.” Later they talk about their achievements: “I learned Spanish and English here,” “I learned to drive here,” “I learned to work here,” “I learned to dance quebradita here” (Cirilo, Amadeo, Isaías, and Luis, interviews, San Francisco, 2012). This stage lets them experience their capacity for decision making as they free themselves from more traditional commitments (Giddens, 1991).

This is also apparent in the reduction of remittances after two or three years in the United States: “After paying for and building my house in Chiapas, now I said, ‘It’s my money, I should spend it on myself’” (Romeo, interview, Los Angeles, 2011). “When I receive my pay, I go dancing and drinking, I can’t help it, sometimes I spend US$800 in a weekend or even more” (Essau, interview, San Francisco, 2013). Most of the migrants interviewed said that they had stopped sending remittances not only because of California’s economic crisis of 2005 but also because it was only fair for them to enjoy their income while they were still young and single. Enjoyment emerged as the key characteristic of their agency and economic status in the host society. The importance of the individual project began to overshadow the previous collective agreement established back in Chiapas regarding their return (as noted by Aquino, 2009; Nuñez and Cruz-Salazar, 2021).

Tzeltales learn to live in the immigrant Latino, Mexican-American, and United States worlds (see Gonzales, 2011; Gomberg-Muñoz, 2011). They are inaugurated into trades that they did not know before. They begin to navigate their young lives in the irregular or clandestine world of the undocumented, since not having papers places them necessarily in informal learning spaces (Gonzales, 2011). The street and their jobs teach them to live as undocumented people— in secrecy, invisibility, and vulnerability (Gonzales, 2011). “When the chilangos [people born in Mexico] came, they sold me my first chueca [false ID]. When I did not have a job, I sold IDs with them. Here we do everything” (Ricardo, interview, San Jose, 2011). “I have friends from Puebla who are friends of my girlfriend. They supply us with movies and DVDs. We have to be a diver [attentive] with your parents [the police] because if they catch us, they run us out” (Chelo, interview, San Jose, 2012). Learning to be undocumented is a reality that has formed them (Gonzáles, 2011), and far from feeling targets of anti-immigrant laws, they struggle to be a part of the larger Latino community and abide by the law.

Their undocumented status is reflected in the very low wages they earn and the strenuous working hours imposed on them: “The problem is that we have no papers, so we cannot complain if the boss pays us little or does not pay us at all” (Beto, interview, Los Angeles, 2011). Like other Chiapaneco migrants (Nuñez and Cruz-Salazar, 2021), they are labor nomads, moving from one job to another depending on flexible capital accumulation (see Aquino, 2009). They experience daily exploitation and discrimination due to their migratory status and ethnicity. Their jobs are informal and changing, and they can be fired without notice. The boss figure, previously experienced in Chiapas, is reproduced in the United States by Mexican mestizo bosses who mistreat them. Interviewees said that they were treated best by their white bosses, followed by the Mexican-American and finally by the Mexican mestizos. ²

In Chiapas these young men had learned to navigate between indigenous life and mestizo logic, whereas after migrating they learned to navigate between the Latino, Mexican immigrant, and American communities, developing highly flexible cultural repertoires with which they cross from one culture to another. Hvostoff (2009) describes the contemporary urban indigenous migrant as well prepared for business, with strong leadership skills and multilingual. Unlike the paternalistic image of the indigenes of the 1970s, this image speaks of an actor who conquers spaces by perpetuating the will to belong (Urteaga, 2011) as these young people do by transforming their identities and continuing to be themselves (Cruz-Salazar, 2017). As Leandro (interview, San Jose, 2011) put it,

Look, being here has changed my life. Besides having enough money, I have achieved my objectives. I dress well and do my own thing. For example, right now I’m starting to build my house. I talked to my dad and told him that that’s what I want to do. I’m fashionable, too. I buy cool clothes with zippers—my pants, for example, have zippers on both sides—and my shirts are cool. I go to the shops to buy all this stuff. A shirt maybe costs me US$80–$90, pants US$100 . . . and then there are my shoes!

The North American and Latino immigrant communities are interactive, and the kind of urban space encountered in California cities is a completely new terrain for these young migrants. Access to parks, technology, clubs, restaurants, and other cultural offerings, along with their newfound disposable income, means that they now have previously unattainable cultural consumption possibilities that they are eager to grasp. (There are also some that take advantage of educational facilities, schools, colleges, etc., but to a much lesser extent.) ³ Gerardo (interview, San Francisco, 2011) reported:

I love San Francisco! Day and night, there is always something to do. We hang out in bars and anywhere, really; on Folsom and 24th there is always a load of people. Here in Malibu, it’s pretty cool. There’s dancing, they come from all around. Nearly always on the weekend we eat in restaurants because we have cousins working in the kitchens or as waiters in these places. We have also gotten to know San Pancho and La Mission well. They are great, cool places, but expensive! On the weekends we also play basketball.

Whereas the rural framework back home is defined by a cyclical and generally slow rhythm and heavily influenced by customs and festivities, the activities of young Tzeltal migrants are guided by the typical intensity and transience of big cities.

The Tzeltal Jungle Cowboy Youth Style

A recent social change among indigenous people has created a generation gap between older and younger adults, with the latter no longer blindly submitting to social mandates or cultural prescriptions but negotiating to live in a way in which they are freer as individuals while maintaining and nurturing the collective bond. Young people consciously decide to build and live their youth outside normative systems of age and gender; they consider themselves oppressed and restricted by these systems. The right to have a boyfriend or girlfriend, to choose a partner, to exercise one’s sexuality, to enjoy leisure, and to consume culturally are some of the demands of this new generation. Illustrating how identity is built by ethnicity, migration, and consumption is key to understanding the youth worldview among Tzeltales from Chiapas in California.

Feixa (1998: 12) defines the youth style as the symbolic manifestation of identity. While groups of young people share fashions, this does not mean that other identity elements such as language or collective memory fall away. Generally, however, the “look” is very flexible and adaptable. The aesthetics of these indigenous migrants are directly linked to two consolidated and widespread youth styles in California: the Norteño (Northern) cowboy and the Cholo-Chicano. The unique clothing of the Norteño is modern cowboy from head to toe: hat, plaid shirt, jeans or Topeka pants, leather belts with large rectangular or oval silver or gold buckles, pointed-toed boots or cowboy boots made of crocodile leather or snakeskin, thick chains, bracelets, and rings. The very fashionable haircut at the time of the investigation was the Mohican. The spoken accent is Norteño, including Mexico City slang such as morra (girlfriend), troca (van), and chueca (fake ID). The Cholo-Chicano look is complete with baggy clothes, tennis shoes, baseball caps, and official baseball or basketball team shirts. This style is most visible among Tzeltales newly settled in San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The Norteño migrant cowboy style in California is one of the most accessible to Tzeltal migrants because it is part of the largest Latino youth scene. It is reminiscent of that of the Mexican ranchers of northern Mexico and the fincas of 1880–1930, when the grandfathers of these people colonized the jungle region. Ordinary ranchers were considered stubborn and uneducated, while those who owned large ranches were recognized and respected for their social and economic positions. In Chiapas, being a rancher is associated with miscegenation and economic power. Ranchers are regularly distinguished for being Catholic and traditional, dressing and speaking in a particular way, and having an accent in Spanish known as Norteño (Farr, 2006).

For indigenous Chiapas migrants, the Norteño cowboy style is an adaptation of the Mexican rancher look and the U.S. Latino cowboy. It is the undocumented Mexican youth living in California and the Mexican American youth born in California who wear cowboy clothes to rodeos, fairs, and concerts. Girls also like boots, plaid blouses, and hats for dancing to the Norteño rhythms. For indigenous Chiapas migrants, looking like mestizos, ranchers, or Latinos in the United States is attractive because it provides them with a higher status: that of undocumented Mexican migrants with a long migratory history and strong even transnational communities such as Oaxacans, Poblano, or Zacatecans (Zavella, 2011; De Genova, 2011). “In the realm of style and fashion, an important amount of work is involved in constructing personal appearance. No two people look the same, and shopping can be arduous. You must window-shop to decide what you like” (Willis, 1998: 166). It is built around specific elements of brotherhood, companionship, migrant status, and practices oriented by consumption and cultural production that allow members to be part of the collective.

The jungle cowboy style among Tzeltal migrants is a product of symbolic work, created and extended through what they are learning and demonstrating the new forms of agency that come about through the experience of migration. Taste, discrimination, and consumption are simply pathways for expressing social conversion in terms of dressing, speaking, and socializing (Willis, 1998). The unique blend of images and remade meanings that guides migrants’ identities, those of rural indigenous communities in Chiapas (Farr, 2006), northern Mexico, and Latino immigrants to the United States (Gonzales, 2011; Gomberg-Muñoz, 2011), allows these migrants to transform their collective youth identity (Giménez, 1998) and reveals their belonging to a specific community of origin as well as to a host community.

The young Tzeltal migrants also show this style through communication, using creative forms of slang involving nicknames, metaphors, borrowings, and double meanings and employing Tzeltal, Spanish, and English. This plays a significant role in keeping youth separate from adult and non-Tzeltal migrants, who cannot decipher these codes. Although this slang has many similarities to the language of the California Latino community, it is also significantly different because of the large percentage of words and phrases in Tzeltal and the occasional borrowed word or phrase in English. Its structure can guard the identity of ejido members, a relative, a network of relatives, or even a community. ⁴

The dance clubs where young Tzeltales tend to go are mainly frequented by young undocumented immigrants originating from northern and western Mexico—Monterrey, Sinaloa, Sonora, Zacatecas, San Luis Potosi, Guadalajara, Michoacán, Querétaro, and Jalisco—and these outfits are indispensable for a night out. However, new clothes are expensive; a complete cowboy-style outfit like the ones described above will cost around US$500. The flea market is an attractive and altogether much cheaper option. An array of funky secondhand clothes options, fake-skin boots, and imitation-leather belts can also be found for around US$20. According to Willis (1998: 167),

Style and fashion also offer rich fields where symbolic material can be appropriated for personal meanings and for the development of meanings in everyday life. It isn’t just a question of choosing a whole outfit from a shop. It’s increasingly important now for young people to go through the symbolic creativity of selecting, combining and recombining different clothing elements: shoes from a sportswear shop perhaps, taking men’s jackets from a second-hand market for women, taking smart items from Next. Nor is this simply a synchronic choice from what exists now, it’s also a choice from 40 years or so of youth cultural history.

Willis (1998) talks about building up a particular style that results from the acquired knowledge of the whole world of youth identities and urban cultures. The choice and blend of particular items are never random but guided by personal statements of identity.

Final Considerations

The anthropology of youth has focused on young people as agents who create cultural practices in order to belong to a youth collective (Bucholtz, 2002). Migration as an experience of transformation has produced cross-cultural agents and ethnically inclusive groups in order to survive and adapt to the receiving communities (Gonzáles, 2011). This study shows that while young people maintain ties to their hometowns (investing, cooperating, and participating from a distance), they create other life expectations in the host location, entering modern Western youth worlds with autonomy and independence (Pérez, 2011; Urteaga, 2008). This exploratory study provides innovative findings about the process by which indigenous youth respond to their home and community environments through migration, how the new life experiences they encounter alter their behavior, and how this matters in building their personal and collective identities (Giddens, 1991).

These reflections provide valuable insight into the centrality of land to their memories and the way they construct a cross-cultural sense of indigenous identity—maintaining their ethnicity while extending it to other ethnic groups living in the destination cities (Giménez, 1996). Thinking about land provides them with a place of belonging. The ejido represents memory even though it is linked to harsh living conditions with little hope of advancement. As migrants they become agents of change and send remittances to help their parents buy land so that they can farm. The idea of returning to a farming life themselves becomes ever more distant.

Transdisciplinary discussions in cultural studies serve to contextualize and clarify the mobility of these youth groups—what they seek upon leaving their communities, their refusal to follow a traditional lifestyle in the fields, and the cultural adaptations and innovations required to live in cities and interact with other cultural groups, which serve as survival strategies and a basis for cultural continuity.