From Elders’ Wisdom to Brave Migrants

Introduction

The first time I visited the indigenous Zapotec community of San Bartolomé Quialana (Quialana), I was invited to join the health committee meeting at the local health center. The meeting was led by the community nurse and by the committee board. All the members of the board were Quialanense ¹ men and they were sitting in two distinct groups. The most numerous group comprised men who were in their late fifties and dressed with straw hats, modest trousers, shirts, and sandals. Their feet and hands were calloused and grimy with soil from their work in the fields. In contrast, the other smaller group comprised men who were relatively younger and were wearing baggy blue jeans and untucked tartan shirts, worker boots, and baseball caps. Later on, I found out the reason for this contrast: the group of comprised younger men were transnational migrants who had recently come back from the United States.

While many different processes have led to the modification of images and models of masculinities in Mexican indigenous communities, migration is a key process to these changes (Ayala Carrillo 2007; de Keijzer and Rodríguez 2007; Díaz Cervantes 2013). Although indigenous Mexican people have always been on the move (Weber 2008), it was not until the 1980s that a significant number of them started to cross the Mexico–US border to work and find better life opportunities (Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004a; Stephen 2007; Velasco Ortíz 2005). While research on indigenous Mexican migratory movements has already produced important literature in this area, little of this research has been conducted from a gender perspective. Of those who have conducted such research from a gender perspective, they have mainly focused on female migratory movements and issues of settlement in the United States (Cornelius, Fitzgerald, and Fischer 2007; Cornelius et al. 2011; Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004b; Velásquez Cepeda 2004). Furthermore, although migration studies have traditionally focused on men, they have rarely seen men as gendered subjects (Donaldson et al., cited in Alcalde 2011). Even fewer have paid attention to indigenous men. This lacuna might be seen as a result of the limited social and economic opportunities that Mexico—and many other nations around the world—offers to their indigenous groups.

This article offers new insight into the intersection among gender, migration, and ethnicity by exploring how indigenous transnational migration reconstructs expressions of masculinities in the migrants’ communities of origin. Furthermore, this article also explores and analyzes how the workplace environment and community-based organizations that migrants frequent have had a crucial role in the transformation of masculinities. Most indigenous male migrants come from communities where a rigid construction of “masculinity” has been founded on hard agricultural labor, community cooperation, domination over female relatives, prestige, and age–wisdom (de Keijzer and Rodríguez 2007; Díaz Cervantes 2013; Ramirez 2011; see also Benedict 2001). For many years, this kind of masculinity has been seen as the “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell 2002) of indigenous Mexican groups. However due to, in part, transnational migration, working in the fields as peasants is no longer the only means of earning an income and building a masculine identity; rather, participation in the migratory process is now an alternative way in which indigenous men can gain economically and find masculine social validation (Rosas 2007).

In this study, I pose the following questions: among indigenous Mexican migrants, to what extent have transnational migration experiences at work and in community-based organizations (peer interaction) influenced their performances of masculinity/ies? And how have these experiences been “sent back” to their communities of origin? Moreover, do the reconstructed conceptions and expressions of masculinity/ies come into conflict with former and more traditional practices of masculinity/ies back home? And finally, even though “indigenous masculinity” has been seen as a subordinated masculinity (in Mexico and in the United States) due to ethnic and class stratifications, how do indigenous men find spaces to claim their masculinity as hegemonic?

Indigenous groups are not a homogeneous population; every community has its own particular characteristics, customs, and rules (Hernández-Díaz 2007b). Although in Mexico indigenous people are recognized through a particular cultural unit (Hernández-Díaz 2007a, 7), this article does not generalize indigenous Mexican masculinities and recognizes that masculinities are neither uniform across societies nor historically static (Agarwal 1994). In this light, this article uses gender as a lens to analyze the construction of masculinities among the Zapotec people of Quialana, Oaxaca, in connection with ethnicity.

I use the phrase elders’ wisdom to refer to the expression of masculinity that, due to the political economy of indigenous towns ruled under internal normative systems (Hernández-Díaz 2013), is based on customary respect, years of service to the community, honor, and prestige. Furthermore, the term brave migrant makes reference to the archetype that indigenous Mexican migrants construct through work experiences and peer interactions in the United States. While indigenous men in the United States perform precarious and ethnically segregated jobs mainly due to their undocumented status (Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994, 195), at the same time they manage to defend and move beyond their clandestine status and construct their masculinity through the notion of hard work and breadwinners at a distance (Alcalde 2011). As we shall see, this particular version of masculinity has also developed diversified forms of masculinities which are the result of the interplay between migration, ethnic hierarchy and tension between hegemonic masculinities in the United States and in indigenous communities in Mexico.

This article is organized into four main areas. The first one presents the literature review, which situates the research in the various relevant fields of knowledge. The literature review includes that on masculinities studies in general and in Mexico, indigenous masculinities and the role of labor migration and peer interaction in the reconstruction of masculinities. The second area discusses the research methods chosen and introduces the setting: the Zapotec town of San Bartolomé Quialana. The third area focuses on the analysis of the data by exploring how Quialanense masculinities are experiencing a reconstruction from their dominant expression, elders’ wisdom, to give way to masculinities represented by the brave migrant, and also its diversifications. Finally, the fourth area presents the conclusion of the article and makes suggestions for further research.

Thinking about Masculinity and the Experiences of Being a Man in Mexico

Masculinity/ies is not a synonym for “man” but a social process involving structures, culture, and subjectivities with a variety of forms and ambiguities (Amuchástegui and Szasz 2007; Martínez García et al. 2003; Minello Martini 2002). It might be easy to assume that masculinity is innate, residing in the particular biology of the human male or in the simple fact of having a penis (Ayala Carrillo 2007). However, the term masculinities incorporates a set of alterative meanings that are in constant recreation and reconstruction through the relationships men and women establish with themselves and with their surroundings (Connell 2002; Kimmel 1997). Hence, the study of masculinities has tried to understand how male bodies embody gender practices in specific social contexts and how these practices are not presented in a mechanical or unidirectional way (Amuchástegui and Szasz 2007).

As the term masculinities suggests, there is no generally accepted kind of man or “man’s point of view”; rather, there are a set of social practices that emanate from a dominant discourse which form the symbolic domain of the social ideal of manhood or of “being a man” (Núñez Noriega 2007). This dominant discourse is what Connell (2002) calls “hegemonic masculinity,” in which some masculinities are constructed as dominant while others are subordinated and marginalized (Ibid.). In the western world, hegemonic masculinity is represented by a white, heterosexual, economically stable, successful, and married man (Kimmel 1999; Núñez Noriega 2005). Therefore, only a small number of men can embody this particular form of masculinity and usually for very limited periods of time (e.g., the older and incapacitated male body). Nonetheless, representations of this “ideal man” is broadcasted, imported, and imitated around the world, effectively making other ways of being a man less socially valuable. In fact, many men have come to know what it means to be a man by placing their conceptions of manhood in opposition to racially and sexually different “others” (Kimmel 1997). Consequently, while masculinity implies power, it is important to highlight that not every individual man, just for the fact of being a man, is powerful or holds power (Amuchástegui and Szasz 2007, 17). Indeed, men’s individual power is economically, culturally, and socially dependent and men obtain or lose symbolic power ² depending on their race, ethnicity, nationality, socioeconomic status, and religion, among other factors (Salguero Velázquez 2013).

Until the 1980s, the study of masculinities in the Mexican context was widely dominated by the macho (virile/manly) and pelado (scoundrel/cheat/scam artist) concepts (Machillot 2013). At the start of the twentieth century, in his study of men and culture in Mexico, Samuel Ramos (1934, cited in Machillot 2013) describes the Mexican man as a person with an inferiority complex who tries to hide this feeling by acting like a macho. However, an important move was observed when studies such as the one done by Gutmann (1996) refuted these concepts, macho and pelado, by arguing that they were simplistic and essentialist stereotypes that did not represent the reality, diversity, and complexity of Mexican masculinities.

In general, research has agreed that “Mexican masculinity” is characterized by independence, power, and control over female family members (Alcalde 2011; Szasz 1998), but some studies have shown that younger and more educated generations tend to express more equal family relationships (see García and de Oliveira 2005; Martínez García et al. 2003). The notion of the economic “provider” has been highlighted as an important aspect in the formation of the Mexican male identity. The study presented by García and de Oliveira (2005) shows that this role continues to be crucial for men even when the family income comes from other sources (i.e., wives’ and daughters’ work). Being recognized as the “economic provider” implies a great deal in terms of exercising power an authority over others.

Moreover, the notion of masculinity in Mexico is strongly linked to the body; Mexican men learn that being a man is associated with physical and mental strength. A man should not show tender feelings among other men; he might be able to show his feeling among women, but this should be done privately (Seidler 2006, cited in Mino 2006). Sexual prowess is also a way of proving masculinity, especially among Mexican men who lack economic resources (Szasz 1998). In the study done by Szasz (1998), she argues that in rural contexts and working-class areas, men prove themselves by showing exaggerated knowledge about sex, through the so-called albur (double entendre), and tales about their sexual encounters (p. 98). Albur is a form of expression that requires mastery of the cultural codes of sexuality and masculinity, and a way to boast about male power among men; hence, one of men’s biggest fears is not knowing the codes and being imaginarily penetrated by his peers. Mexican men perceive sexual relations with several partners as a mandate to show their virility. Prieur (2008) and Szasz (1998) agree that sexual activity, especially among working-class men, with another man do not compromise masculinity as long as they are the ones who penetrate the other man, anally. Penetration of another man is a way of dominating him by treating him like a woman, which affirms masculinity.

Studies on indigenous masculinities in Mexico are still in its infancy; and in some cases, indigenous men have been misgrouped in the study of rural men (see Ayala Carrillo 2007). However, what is understood as indigenous in the Mexican context should be situated not only in the rural context but also in relation with its complex ethnic subjectivation processes (Díaz Cervantes 2013).

Indigenous Masculinities

Given the stratification of Mexican society, some ways of being a Mexican man are less socially valuable and indigenous Mexican men ³ are one of the groups at the bottom of the stratification ladder (Wade 2005). Hegemonic masculinity in Mexico is performed by mestizos, especially white mestizos. The exclusion of indigenous people, and the subordination of indigenous “Mexican masculinity,” has its origin in European colonization and in the construction of mestizaje ⁴ as an official discourse of nation formation in Mexico, which tends to deny and repress indigeneity (and blackness; Bartolomé [1997] 2006). Although indigenous masculinities are often socially perceived as subordinated (Díaz Cervantes 2013), indigenous men have found ways to preserve and demand masculine identities (see Kimmel 1997). While not all indigenous groups construct masculinities in the same way, some parallels can be drawn. As well as among mestizo men, Ramos Padilla (2004) and Pérez Castro Vázquez (n.d.) argue that fatherhood—especially the procreation of male children—control over women and the fulfillment of the breadwinner role are perhaps the biggest mandates of indigenous dominant masculinity. However, an important difference is that all these roles are performed within institutions legitimized as indigenous such as the patriarchal family, the community, and kinship and compadrazgo ⁵ networks (Cohen 1999; Díaz Cervantes 2013).

Fatherhood is an important affair. Becoming a father not only brings public recognition as an adult man (Ramos Padilla 2004, 7), it is also a demonstration of virility and a way of investing in paternal retirement and familial survival (e.g., manpower, economic support, and continuity of the family name). Age hierarchy, or seniority, is also an important part of “indigenous masculinity” especially when elderly men show that they were able to preserve and support a family, a wife, and a job during their lives. Fulfilling the role of the main household provider is an important achievement. Even when families in indigenous communities need an extra income, men would not jeopardize their stratus as head of the family by letting their wives work outside the household (Puga Aguirre-Sulem and Hernández-Diaz 2014). Playing the responsible father figure, even when violent or indifferent, is key to their masculine social legitimacy (Ramos Padilla 2004, 8).

The importance of the community in the construction of “indigenous masculinity” lies in the organization and conception of the community itself. Hernández-Díaz (2013) claims that although every indigenous community has its own unique characteristics, these ones share core aspects, such as communal decision-making processes in terms of government, justice, organization of their social and productive life and aspect of their culture (p. 9). Thus, participation in and for the community is a key aspect in the construction of masculinity. In most Oaxacan communities, local citizens fill public offices as a requirement for membership in the community. Participation in public activities is required for all male citizens who have achieved the coming of age (eighteen years old in Mexico) or are married (Kearney and Besserer 2004). This participation is carried out through the so-called cargo system (not-paid duty system) which is based on the committed participation of inhabitants for the well-being of their town through cargo activities such as police officer (topil), government officers, and as committee members. Although recently many Oaxacan communities have made their rules more flexible, lack or denial of participation could bring dishonor to the entire family but overall to the head of the family (see Velásquez Cepeda 2004).

Finally, the figures of compadrazo and guelaguezta among indigenous people are part of what Cohen (1999) calls “community based and cooperation structures” which start at the household level. The compadrazgo figure is a system that creates safe networks within the community (Ibid., p. 94). To become someone’s compadre (close friend) is a great honor, meaning that the person who has asked someone to become his compadre believes that the person holds an important degree of responsibility. Guelaguetza, on the other hand, is a formal system of reciprocity and cooperation (Stephen 1991); it creates networks and gives prestige in the community to those who participate in it. Compadrazgo and guelaguetza relationships influence the position and status one holds in the community hierarchy and although the entire family participates in these activities, the prestige is bestowed on the male head of the household.

More recently, in several Mexican indigenous communities, indigenous men have found a way of claiming their masculinity through migration experiences. In fact, having a migration experience is now considered to be an important step toward manhood (Rosas 2007). Mexican immigrants men might arrive at their destination communities adhering to a specific kind of masculinity (e.g., macho) but by moving through and living and working in different social/cultural contexts, their previous conceptualizations of masculinity are likely to mutate (Ramirez 2011).

Labor Migration and Peer Interaction in the Reconstruction of Masculinities

Workplaces and peer interaction are important spaces where gender regimes and gender identities are questioned and reconstructed (McKay 2007; Ramirez 2011; Salzinger 2003; Wolkowitz 2006). In fact, workplaces are the environments in which immigrants spend most of their time and interact not only with conationals but also with other immigrants and, in some cases, with the general public of the destination community. In the United States, indigenous Mexican migrants are situated at the bottom of the social hierarchy—even more segregated than Mexican mestizo immigrants (see Hondagneu-Sotelo 1994)—and perform segregated jobs. Actually there are a series of US jobs that are commonly seen as the domain of indigenous Mexicans, including agricultural work, gardening, and restaurant services (López and Rusten 2004). In her study of Latinos in Kentucky, Alcalde (2011) describes the ways in which Mexican, and Latino men in general, can perform masculinity—through being hard workers, by using their physical strength, by playing the roles as transnational breadwinners, and through their ability to endure hardship. They take pride in their work and despite the often harsh working conditions they continue to view their jobs in masculine terms. However, at the same time, Alcalde (2011), McKay (2007), and Ramirez (2011) note that migrant workers are conscious that their source of masculinity—hard work—is a precarious one because they know that their employers can lay them of at any moment.

After work, immigrants tend to spend their time in recreational activities that involve peer interaction. One of the most common places of peer interaction is at community-based organizations, which can be religious, civic, and/or cultural based (Hernández-Díaz 2013). These organizations are also important spaces where immigrants, apart from establishing a connection with their communities of origin, obtain and exchange new ideas which, at the same time, are important in the reconstruction and understanding of gender relations and masculinities (Agarwal 1994). However, most of those migrants come back to their communities with the “successful migrant” story concealing their lowly workplace status, and/or exploitative and possible emasculating experiences that they might have had in the United States (see McKay 2007).

The Setting: Research Methods

The Zapotec town of San Bartolomé Quialana is located around twenty miles from Oaxaca City in the valles centrales (central valley). Quialana has 2,470 inhabitants who belong to and identify with the Zapotec ethnic group. ⁶ The town elects its representatives through a general assembly by the system known as internal normative systems, ⁷ commonly called customary law (see Hernández-Díaz 2013; Vázquez García 2011). This system has undergone important transformative processes in recent years, leading the assembly to elect a female health officer for the very first time in 2010. Labor opportunities are scarce in Quialana. The majority of its inhabitants are peasants who cultivate for self-consumption and for sale in the nearest market town of Tlacolula. Opportunities unrelated with agriculture are even scarcer. Quialanense’s main source of income comes from the immigrants who work in the United States, who are overwhelmingly undocumented men ⁸ (Cohen, Rios, and Byais 2009; Escuela Primaria Rural Matutina 2005). After having first migrated largely within Mexican territory (mainly to Chiapas, urban areas, and the northwestern parts of Mexico), Quialanense joined the important 1980s stream of Oaxacan migration to the United States (Fox and Rivera-Salgado 2004a). The first Quialanense migrants to the United States worked in the agriculture sector, but no more than a decade later, following the rising labor demands of the service industry in the US cities at the end of the last century, Quialanense moved into the restaurant and gardening industries.

From August 2010 to September 2011, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Quialana and in the US cities of Anaheim and greater Los Angeles. ⁹ During this period, I spent a little more than three months living in Quialana with the family of the first female officer in the town. In preparation for the fieldwork, I took Zapotec lessons, which I continued while living in the community. The fact that I could sustain a basic conversation in their language facilitated my acceptance in the community and reduced my status as outsider. I spent the first month of fieldwork as a participant observer taking copious field notes, building my confidence and starting to choose my interviewees. As one of my strategies of integration and as a means of engaging in reciprocal contribution, I enrolled in different community activities and helped the town secondary school with free afternoon English lessons. In the last two months of my fieldwork, I did seventeen in-depth informal interviews with men and women from different age ranges and had several informal “chats.” Following the routes of many Quialanense, I also spent three months in Anaheim and in greater Los Angeles. Before going to the United States, a group of Quialanense were already waiting for me; they knew about my work in their community and they heard about me through their relatives back home. I accompanied some of the gardeners to their work and regularly attended their community-based organizations’ meetings. In this part of my field research, I carried out six more in-depth interviews and had several informal conversations. All the interviews were digitally recorded under previous agreement and consent of the participants. In addition, all the interviews were transcribed for further data analysis. With this in mind, in the following sections, I present an analysis of the data on which this article draws.

The Ascent of the Brave Migrant

Experiences Sent Back to Quialana

When Quialanense migrants go back to their community of origin, the experiences encountered in the United States play an important role in the ways in which men understand their masculinity. Once back in Quialana, men are no longer living a clandestine life and neither are they the subjects of discrimination by US society and by other Mexican mestizo immigrants. Furthermore, they are no longer located at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. Thus, returnees and circular migrants find a place, in Quialana, where their “masculinity” is not subordinated.

The masculinities performed by returnees or circular migrants is based on the social, economic, and personal “success” that they (supposedly) obtained in the United States and in the risk faced by crossing the border. As Vicente recounts:

They [circular migrants] came back and told us that everything was fucking good…they would boast about their money and they were wearing very nice clothes and they would tell us that everything was fucking good. And I believed what they said, I saw them spending money without remorse and could treat themselves, so I was wooowww…I must go!

Burin and Meler (2000) confirm what Vicente’s statement implies, that the generation of money becomes an essential component in the configuration of masculinity. Being economically self-sufficient is a powerful masculine emblem, and masculinity is measured largely according to the money generated. Economic success is fairly visible among Quialanense returnees. Most of them were able to send enough money home for the construction of a house, purchase additional pieces of land to cultivate and boast about the money they earned, as Vicente mentioned above. Some of them established businesses, like the current taxi service or the first mini-market in the community, and others were able to support their children to further their education.

After coming back from el norte (the north, United States), Quialanense behave differently. First of all, most of them come back in pickup trucks or sport cars that are driven around the roads of the village with loud music and US number plates. As Jorge states, “Before going [to the US] I was around in a donkey but now look, I have a Meche [Mercedes Benz].” They also dress differently; the use of sandals and hats is replaced by closed shoes or branded trainers and baseball caps. Tattoos are also another way of showing that they have been in the United States: all the returnees and circular migrants that I met in Quialana had tattooed their bodies as a memento of their time as migrants. Language has also been affected by migratory experiences. Now it is common to hear a mixture of Zapotec, Spanish, and English when they speak and in some cases young returnees use English to converse with other former migrants. The greater the demonstration of material, social, and personal success, the greater the possibility to be seen as “a real man” and as a “model husband, son, brother and father.”

On one occasion, I accompanied a group of Quialanense who took a young girl to have a medical check at the nearest city hospital. While waiting, I had a conversation with two returnees who were, respectively, at that time working as a municipal police officer and as an officer in Quialana’s government. They knew that I had been traveling around California meeting their paisanos and suddenly our conversation turned into a boasting competition to impress each other and show off the places they had visited in the United States and the work experience they had obtained.

I traveled everywhere [in the US]! I know the entire state of California, Washington, Seattle…everywhere. (Mundo)

 Yes! The coffee shop called Yom Yom is in a corner [in Anaheim], opposite it there is a petrol station and next to it there is an Eco-shop [corner shop] and behind the petrol station there is a launderette and a supermarket. I remember very well. (Mario)

Moreover, returnees, and their performance of masculinity, seem to be more attractive to young Quialanense women, who tend to prefer men with migrant experience as potential husband candidates. Although open courtship is not yet accepted in Quialana, during casual conversations with young single women outside the government building I realized that the most popular single men were those who have been or are in the United States. The young women refer to them as “more modern,” with “more future” and “brave” because of their migratory experiences.

In many cases, the brave migrant style of masculinity is seen as something to aspire for those men who are still too young to migrate and for the few men who have not (yet) migrated. This is mainly reflected in the way of dressing, the style of music, the way of expressing themselves, and in the kind of hope and desire they manifest. Returnees, circular migrants, and current immigrants are seen as “bien chingones” (really awesome) as those who have been brave enough to travel outside the community, crossed a dangerous border, and found a job which has given their relatives unthinkable opportunities. ²⁰

Moreover, within the performance of the brave migrant masculinity, two derivatives were observed. These other ways of understanding and performing masculinity have also been strongly influenced by the social remittances sent by Quialanense migrants in the United States. The first one observed is performed by los pelones (the skinheads). Los pelones are young returnees or deported men who spent an important number of years in the United States and belonged—or were involved in one sense or another—to the famous gangs of Los Angeles, such as the “18th Street Gang” or the “MS-13” (Marasalvatrucha). These men came back and brought the gang culture to the town and after six o’clock they meet in the central street of Quialana to hang around and listen to loud music. Los pelones have become a problematic group of young men for the community; they have painted the town’s walls with graffiti logos of Los Angeles gangs and have made drugs more easily available to the rest of the inhabitants. Their mode of dress depicts the attire used by gang members in the United States: wide loose jeans, oversized shirts, branded trainers, baseball caps, big gold chains, visible tattoos, and shaved heads. Along with having a visibly different way of dressing and speaking (a mixture of English and Spanish, and a particular intonation) to the rest of the Quialanense men, los pelones refuse to be associated with traditional activities, such as agriculture, and most of them work as taxi drivers or outside the community.

The second derivative observed is the born-again or evangelical Christian masculinity. ²¹ Due to the establishment of non-Roman Catholic churches (Evangelic, Mormons, Messianic, and Jehovah Witnesses) by Quialanense transnational migrants and returnees, and more diverse faith practices within the Roman Catholic Church (i.e., the Charismatic movement), some men have found alternative ways of “being men”. The evangelical Christian man focuses his life and actions on venerating and loving God, which, as a consequence, requires a specific kind of behavior; they do not consume alcohol or drugs, they do not beat their wives and they take their wives’ opinions into account. Evangelical Christian men participate in community affairs but do not tend to get involved in practices that venerate Roman Catholic saints, such as community festivals. In addition, some of them have ceased to migrate because leaving behind their families is seen as a sin.

Alfonso, a returnee, worked for more than eight years in greater Los Angeles and during that time he converted to Pentecostal Christianity. Before moving to the Pentecostal church, Alfonso left his wife Cecilia in Quialana, used to drink a lot, and admits that he beat Cecilia on several occasions. Before his last trip to California, Alfonso had the opportunity to regularize his “papers” (working permit) through one of his employers, but he refused this prospect because he wanted to come back to his town to spread the Gospel. Currently, apart from cultivating his piece of land, Alfonso is one of the elders of the evangelical church in Quialana; he is also an evangelizer in neighboring towns and twice a week he helps his wife Cecilia to sell their harvest in Tlacolula market. He is the only Quialanense man (without being accompanied by his wife) who sells in the market and a return to the United States does not figure in his plans. Masculinities are defined and constructed by historic and social contexts (Connell 2002), and in San Bartolomé Quialana, migration has been an important catalyst in the understanding and expression of masculinity. The brave migrant version of masculinity and its derivatives—pelones and born again or evangelical Christians—constitute different ways of perform masculinity. However, those alternatives have not come without a cost; the community’s traditional and customary systems are dependent upon the elders’ wisdom version of masculinity and, consequently, the elders are struggling to retain these systems’ social and symbolic power within the community.

Tension, Clashes, and Conflict between Elders and Brave Migrants

Due to the political economy of the town—internal normative systems—traditional masculinity represented by the elders’ wisdom finds itself in conflict with that represented by brave migrants and with other ways of performing “indigenous Quialanense masculinity.”

Traditionally, in Mexican rural communities, most men transit from childhood to manhood by getting married and through paternity. However, the recently introduced notion of “enjoying life”—through various ways (e.g., educational system, TV, and tourism)—seems to be a new alternative to early marriage and responsibilities (de Keijzer and Rodríguez 2007). For many Quialanense men, migration represents the possibility to undergo experiences that are not accessible in the village, such as to “go out with women,” to “enjoy their youth,” to “have fun,” and to “obtain experience from life.”

In his youth, Benito, a forty-five-year-old returnee, served as a topil (police officer) in Quialana for four years without receiving any payment. He recalls walking around the community in the middle of the night to watch for intruders with his topil colleagues. Benito and the others did not have uniforms, and their only weapons were machetes; however, they were fulfilling their responsibility with their community. Nowadays, “things have changed,” says Benito. He told me that on one occasion when he was very drunk, he went to the government officer to complain about the introduction of a police force in the town. ²²

I went to shout to the mother fuckers…you know what? ‘you police officers should work’ […], he [police officer] just came back from California and he never gave his service [in the internal normative system] and he just entered as a police officer. And I told him ‘Do you know that one should give service in the town? You as a topil [police officer], you should give service. Let me tell you how things work here, it is not like you just arrive [back from Califonia] and become a police officer with a salary. I have served my community, I have given service.

Moreover, Benito argues that the police officers are pretenders that just stand under a tree or stay inside the police car. He states, “That is why I argued that one should be fair, every mother fucker who comes back [from the US] must give service: potable water committee, electricity committee, parents committee […].” In Benito’s view, the point could not be clearer: current returnees are not fulfilling their duties to the traditional political organization of the town and therefore they are weak, they are not “real” Quialanense men. This is further confirmed when Benito uses the gender derogative term “mother fuckers” to describe police officers. Notice how in Benito’s narrative an activity that used to be seen as rather masculine (topil or currently police officer) is nowadays emasculated by the executer—the returnee—and not by the nature of the activity.

In fact, Benito depicts the fault line and tensions between the masculinities developed in Quialana, and he himself is caught between the two Quialanense masculinities competing to be hegemonic. Although he was a migrant in his youth and “enjoyed” the benefits of being outside his hometown, having explored the mythical el norte and came back to Quialana with enough money to build a house and buy his yunta (beast of burden for agricultural work), he seems to, nonetheless, subscribe in some aspects to the elders’ wisdom masculinity. This may be attributed to his life cycle; now that he is not that young anymore to migrate, he has got more to gain from elders’ wisdom masculinity and more to lose from the performance of masculinity execute by younger migrant men.

Another example of tension between Quialanense masculinities is in the ceremonial activities of the community. Only men can be part of the Roman Catholic Church committee (encargados del templo) and to join, committee members are obliged to contribute approximately US$1,000. A former municipal president decided to waive the monetary contribution, as this significant amount of money puts many of the members into debt. However, a group of elderly people complained about the change and campaigned to keep the tradition, arguing that “when we were young we gave lots of money and at that time the money was not as abundant as nowadays” (Ismael). Ismael, an elderly peasant who was against the change, believes that young people should not complain because “this new generation should give even more money, that is why they migrate, don’t they?” Ismael’s arguments depict the tension in the performance of masculinities. Let us not forget that some elderly people also migrated within Mexico and to the United States but in different circumstances and with less economic return—due to their work in agriculture—than the current transnational migrants.

However, by protesting in favor of keeping the tradition, elderly people challenge one of the main axes of the brave migrant masculinity: economic success. By trying to protect traditions, elders not only show their symbolic power in the community but also try to reassert their masculinity as hegemonic. On the other hand, elders’ wisdom masculinity is challenge by the brave migrant masculinity in every aspect of Quialana’s life. Institutions like the government and the Roman Catholic Church as well as inhabitants in general know that, thanks to the migration of many Quialanense men, the town has prospered: “[t]he town has changed a lot, now we have brick houses and many other things. But these changes are not because of the [Mexican federal] government, it is because of the migrants who have done a lot for the town” (Francisco).

Conclusion

It is clear that migration, the type of labor migration (from agriculture to service), workplaces, and peer interaction are only a few of the elements that are involved in the construction and negotiation of masculinity. However, given the fact that indigenous men in San Bartolomé Quialana are socially assumed to migrate to the United States to find a job, it is important to study the impacts of their migratory experiences on the reconstruction, understanding, and expression of masculinity. In this article, I have explored different areas (workplaces and peer interaction) that serve as opportunities not only to question, but to reconstruct the masculinity that is practiced in their communities of origin. Quialanense men identify migration as a source of both increased work opportunities and increased feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness when they are in the United States. In many ways, migration is one of several social phenomena that destabilize expected forms of masculinity/ies and men felt some of the changes associated with migration to be emasculating. As Rigoberto mentioned “I have to cook my own food in el norte [US] but when I came back here [Quialana] I am treated like a king. No more cooking or laundry to do!”

I have also explored how through hard work and their status as breadwinners at a distance, Quialanense men compensate for their marginalized status in the United States and transform these disadvantages into strengths when they come back home. Quialanense migrants in their community of origin are seen as brave men, who risk their lives crossing the border, find a job in a country with a different culture and language and manage to improve their lives and their families’ prospects. This shows how Quialanense actively engage in an ongoing construction of masculinity. Migration not only has helped to develop the brave migrant masculinity, but through social and monetary remittances, Quialanense men have also found derivatives that are caught between the brave migrant and the elders’ wisdom masculinities. Los pelones and the born-again or evangelic Christians are also samples of the social impacts that migration has had upon the performance of “indigenous masculinity.” At the same time, this article has discussed how the ongoing conceptualizations of masculinity performed by the brave migrants has come into conflict with the traditional elders’ wisdom masculinity, arguing that elders’ masculinity is trying to cling onto tradition and customs to conserve its hegemony.

We cannot speak about a homogenized and subordinated form of “indigenous masculinity.” Indigenous men in Quialana have evidenced that even in a status of subordination and marginalization in the United States and in Mexico they have found alternative ways to be seen as dignified men. Further research should explore indigenous masculinities that are neither constructed in the notion of the brave migrant nor in the elders’ wisdom masculinity. Hints of this were found in the same town of Quialana among young men who have decided to pursue a university degree. At the time of the fieldwork, there were four young men enrolled at universities and will be the first generation of Quialanense men who have explored a different option “to be a man.”

Through all this, this article has showed that research on indigenous masculinities is a field that needs further exploration. There is an urge to recognize the link between masculinity and ethnicity and overcome essentialist and folklorist approaches of indigenous people. Research should also allow more inclusive perspectives on the social processes (i.e., migration) to which indigenous subjectivities are constructed and their marginalized position in Mexico and around the world.