In Search of Providence

Patricia Foxen

Description

In the mid-1990s, Patricia Foxen traveled back and forth between the Guatemalan highlands and Providence, Rhode Island, to understand the migration paths of K'iche' Mayan Indians who had fled the Guatemalan civil war to work in the factories and fisheries of New England. More than two decades later, many Mayans are still migrating to the US, today part of the "border crisis" that prompted the Trump administration's ruthless immigration and asylum policy backlash. As Foxen argues, the recent surge in Mayan border crossings must be contextualized within both the longer history of violence, marginality, and exclusion that has long led Guatemala's Indigenous populations to be "survivors on the move," as well as contemporary push factors such as climate change and growing inequality that have forced people from their communities.

And yet one of the most significant drivers of continued emigration today, ironically, is the very culture of migration (described in the book) that has accelerated social change within many Indigenous communities, setting in motion a complex series of economic and cultural shifts that have compelled a continuous movement of people and generations to the US. Reading this story in 2020—at a time of massive growth in flows of irregular migrations around the world—can help us better understand the highly complex set of factors that propel long-term migrations and that shape transnational communities on both sides of the border.

In Search of Providence offers a layered, historically grounded perspective that speaks to the local specificity behind the migration experience in order to point to the universal themes and contradictions of contemporary global displacements.
Foreword - Francisco Goldman
Preface to the New Edition
Acknowledgments 
Preface: One Foot Here, One Foot There
1 Entering the Field 
2 Mayan Identities through History 
3 The K’iche’ of Xinxuc 
4 La Costa del Norte
Transnational Social Practices 
5 A Dialogue on Indianness
Maya or Mojado? 
6 Memory and Guilt 
Epilogue 
Glossary 
Appendix
Three Transnational K’iche’ Families 
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index 

Sujets

• Latin American Studies
• Histoire
• Sociology
• Ethnography
• Latin America
• Central America
• Anthropology
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Vanderbilt University Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780826501264
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

IN SEARCH OF PROVIDENCE
TRANSNATIONAL MAYAN IDENTITIES
IN SEARCH OF PROVIDENCE
TRANSNATIONAL MAYAN IDENTITIES
PATRICIA FOXEN
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY PRESS
NASHVILLE
© 2007, 2020 Vanderbilt University Press
All rights reserved
First edition 2007
Expanded edition 2020
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Designed by Dariel Mayer
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Foxen, Patricia.
In search of providence : transnational Mayan identities / Patricia Foxen.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8265-1580-3 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-8265-1581-0 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Quiche’ Indians—Guatemala—Quiche’—Social conditions.
2. Quiche’ Indians—Guatemala—Quiche’—Migrations.
3. Quiche’ Indians—Relocation—Rhode Island—Providence.
4. Quiche’ Indians—Rhode Island—Providence—Ethnic identity.
5. Quiche’ Indians—Rhode Island—Providence—Economic conditions.
6. Quiche’ (Guatemala)—Emigration and immigration.
7. Providence (R.I.)—Emigration and immigration.
I. Title.
F1465.2.Q5F69 2007
305.897’42307452—dc22 2007019252
IN MEMORY OF MARILU
DEDICATED TO THE YOUNG MAYA OF THE NEXT GENERATION WHO HAVE SURVIVED THE TURMOIL DESCRIBED IN THESE PAGES AND NAVIGATED ITS AFTERMATHS WITH COURAGE AND RESILIENCE. YOU ARE AN INSPIRATION.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Foreword
Preface to the Updated Edition: Mayan Migration in the Age of Trump
Preface to the First Edition: One Foot Here, One Foot There
1. Entering the Field
2. Mayan Identities through History
3. The K’iche’ of Xinxuc
4. La Costa del Norte: Transnational Social Practices
5. A Dialogue on Indianness: Maya or Mojado?
6. Memory and Guilt
Epilogue
Glossary
Appendix: Three Transnational K’iche’ Families
Notes
Bibliography
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I will remain forever grateful to the many teachers, mentors, co-conspirators, fellow travelers, colleagues, friends, and family in Canada, the United States, and Guatemala whose generosity of spirit, heart, and intellect have encouraged me along the road to the first and second editions of this book. My doctoral committee at McGill University included the most exceptional group of committed scholars I could have hoped for as I began my PhD studies many moons ago. First and foremost I thank my supervisor Ellen Corin for teaching me the value of rigor in the field of anthropology, and particularly for the generosity with which she helped me think through the vast, complex, and at times unsettling information collected during field work. Cécile Rousseau’s intellect, humanism, and engagement have continued to inspire me well beyond my academic pursuits; she is a guide and friend whose advice I cherish. I am grateful to Margaret Lock for having set the bar for excellence in the field and always raising it higher. Laurence Kirmayer, Allan Young, John Galaty, Kristen Norget, and the late Roger Keesing, as well as Pierre Beaucage at the University of Montréal, suggested valuable readings that helped shape my understanding of the issues broached in this book. I thank Rose Marie Stano for keeping the trains running during my graduate program. Thank you to the Social Sciences Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) for a two-year grant that supported, in part, the writing of this book.
My immersion into the landscape of Guatemala began with a trip in the summer of 1996 with George Lovell, “mi padre,” and I thank him for the humor, warmth, and vast understanding of the country he has shared through the years. I continue to be grateful to Duncan Earle for steering me in the “transnational” direction early on, and thank Alain Breton, Jim Handy, Manuel Angel Castillo and Linda Asturias de Barrios for giving me a leg up during my early days of field work. I appreciate the institutional support provided in Guatemala by CIRMA (Centro de Investigaciones Regionales de Mesoamérica), ASIES (Asociación de Investigación de Estudios Sociales), and AVANCSO (Asociación para el Avance de las Ciencias Sociales en Guatemala). My work in the highlands would not have been possible without the accommodations provided by Anne Bourgey and the Medicos Descalzos. Many thanks to my friends France Bégin, Pierre Chouinard, Celeste MacKenzie, and Alicia Sliwinski for their companionship and support throughout my fieldwork and beyond. A very special thanks to Felipe, Eustaquia, Fransisca, Josefina, and Wilma for their contributions to the data collection and K’iche’-to-Spanish translations. My compadres Javier Toj and Cristina Toj and my goddaughter Ixalxit and her siblings all embody the resilience and tenacity of survivors, and I thank them warmly for their continued friendship. In Providence, I am indebted to Grace Ashton for offering lodgings in the West End of Providence to this rather desperate anthropologist, and for being a supportive roommate during my fieldwork there; warm thanks to Denny Moers also, whose friendship and humor I value.
My colleagues from the Transcultural Psychiatry team of the Montreal Children’s Hospital were a source of kindness and support during my doctoral years; their everyday work with victims of violence and displacement helped to shape my understandings of these issues. I thank my postdoctoral supervisor François Crépeau and fellow researchers at the University of Montréal’s Centre de Recherche du Canada en Droit International des Migrations for providing a supportive milieu that fostered stimulating discussion and research on immigrant and refugee issues. Portions of Chapter 5 were previously published in the article “À la recherche d’identités au Guatemala après la guerre civile: perspectives transnationales” in Recherches Amérindiennes au Québec 31, no. 1 (2001): 61–70. Parts of Chapter 6 were included in the article “Cacophony of Voices: A K’iche’ Mayan Narrative of Remembrance and Forgetting” in Transcultural Psychiatry 37, no. 3 (2000): 355–81, and are reprinted here by permission of Sage Publications Ltd.
I am grateful for the collegial support provided by the Vanderbilt University Anthropology Department during the final write up of this book’s first version and extend a special thanks to Beth Conklin and Ted Fischer for their encouragement during my years there. Thank you to Michael Ames for his invaluable writing suggestions, and to the anonymous reviewers whose comments on the manuscript were very helpful. I greatly appreciate the invitation of Zack Gresham at Vanderbilt University Press to publish a new edition of this book during this time of turmoil and devastation for thousands of Central American immigrants and refugees. A huge thanks to Eric Hershberg at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS), for inviting me to join a stellar group of CLALS Fellows and colleagues; I particularly value the feedback provided by Rob Albro, Carolyn Gallaher, Ernesto Castañeda-Tinoco, Anthony Fontes, and Dennis Stinchcomb on the new edition of the book.
Many thanks to the host of friends and colleagues whose encouragement, scholarship, activism, stimulating conversations, and understandings of issues relating to Central America, migration, violence, trauma, and human rights and beyond have inspired me through years of academic and advocacy work. To Debra Rodman, Catherine Nolan, Krista House and Alicia Sliwinski—with whom I shared the Guatemala bug early on—as well as Laëtitia Atlani, Dominique Behague, and Lesley Boggs, thank you for the decades of friendship, support and inspiring conversations. Many thanks to James Loucky, Andrew Canessa, Ellen Moodie, Jennifer Burrell, Brent Metz, Karine Vanthuyne, Abigail Adams, Sergio Romero, Norbert Ross, Tiffany Miller, Emilia Barbosa, Lisa Knauer, Olga Odgers, Walter Little, Alberto Esquit, Alicia Estrada, Tim Smith, Elizabeth Kennedy, Andrea Dyrness, Neil Wood, Christina Zarowsky, Maria McFarland, Sibylla Brodzinsky, Donna Stewart, Juanita Cabrera-Lopez, Silvia Tzoc, and Janet Hernandez for sharing, at one point or another, conversations and insights that undoubtedly have made me a better scholar. The vision offered by Brinton Lykes, Norma Chinchilla, Liz Oglesby, Josiah Heyman, Jean Marie Simon, Francisco Goldman, and Richard Wilson have been deeply appreciated. Thank you to Marie Delattre for providing a beautiful garden space in which I was able to finalize work on this edition. I am grateful for the opportunity to have served for six years on the board of the Guatemala Human Rights Commission (GHRC), and thank my colleagues, fellow board members, and Sister Alice Zachmann, who founded GHRC in 1982 to support communities and activists who faced violence and human rights violations during the armed conflict. As current events in Guatemala and at the US border make clear, the need for human rights advocacy nearly four decades after the war remains as critical as ever.
To my parents Richard and Hilda Foxen, who have given me such tremendous opportunity and support, I am forever thankful. Though my father is no longer with us, my memories of his careful and thoughtful reading of the first edition of this book and enthusiastic engagement with its content are ones that I value. I am also thankful for the support of my sister Theresa Timmis, brothers Richard, Thomas, and Anthony, sisters-in-la