Miguel and Beatriz, Citizens of Nowhere
José de la Isla     [Photo]

The last time I saw Miguel Navarro, he was working in his summer vegetable garden. His wife Beatriz and their two children were there also.

“Miyaska, eh?” his pre-school son greeted me. How are you? He wanted to know in Triqui, an indigenous language spoken in the south-central region of Oaxaca, Mexico.

The Navarros are among the millions of migrants from Mexico who are settling in all parts of the United States. Circumstances took them to Anchorage, Alaska.

To understand how they got there is a long story and Miguel Navarro cannot find a short answer.

Since about 1920, the Triqui from around San Juan Copala have steadily lost their traditional communal lands. They are one of 16 native dialect and language groups in Oaxaca. Disputes have divided the Triqui into factions aligned around municipalidades (the equivalent of counties). Political party patronage gets mixed in with land tenure, the passing of a traditional life, and other issues. Land disputes are often settled by violence.

In the 1940s, some Triqui campesinos went to the gulf coast, the central region and along the west coast of Mexico to do migrant agriculture work. Then some went on to U.S. farms. Others made it to Canada. Over the decades, some workers returned to the Mixteca Alta highlands to reclaim plots of land. Others simply settled elsewhere in North America.

Locally, the Movimiento de Unificación y Lucha Triqui, a unity movement, or MULT, started up about the time Miguel was an agriculture student at the state university in Oaxaca. He interrupted his studies to do itinerant work but returned to finish his schooling.

Miguel outlines the chronology like a genealogy, relating political-action groups, the dominant party, local factions, personalities, confrontations and his university experiences. The diagram gets complex quickly. From the conflicts emerged a type of personalismo, a strong-man rule that factionalized the Triqui even more.

He explains how his father was wounded in a land invasion, then his mother was hurt, then his half-brother was killed. “People on the margins are the ones who suffer,” he says.

His family had been self-sufficient farmers but they had to relocate in the 1990s. Some of his brothers and half-brothers became migrant farmworkers.

Miguel tried to finish his thesis for his licentiate. By then he had met Beatriz, a secretary at the university, and they married. Partisan factions threatened him. A friend who advocated asserting Triqui land claims was murdered.

Miguel left again to do farm work in California and Oregon and then joined an older brother in New York. The brothers signed on to do cannery work in Alaska, Miguel returned briefly to California before rejoining his brother in Anchorage.

Working three jobs in two hotels and a restaurant, he found relief to be away from the Oaxaca violence, the marginality, the factions, the assaults, and the murders.

Beatriz eventually joined him, and they now live reasonably well in a small apartment with their two children. Internet, e-mail and a fax machine keep them informed on developments in Oaxaca.

In his vegetable garden Miguel grows carrots, greens, tomatoes, red tomatillo, red potatoes, squash, zucchini, coriander, chiles, corn, white peas, Korean kinchi, asparagus, mustard greens and a medicinal plant he calls flor de muerto.

Miguel’s father, Pedro Celestino Bautista, in his own plot just outside San Juan Copala, must have been preparing to plant maiz and tending to his animals earlier this month. That makes what happened all the more shocking.

On March 7, the plot of land was set on fire by unknown persons. For motives known to the assailants and whoever put them up to it, Pedro Celestino Bautista, about 70, was renown for refusing to align with any faction, neither MULT or its rival UBISORT, which dominates the municipality. Rumors got back to Miguel that the local police had been in the area prior to the crop burning.

The next morning, between 8 and 9 o’clock, Pedro Celestino Bautista was taken from his home by at least four men brandishing automatic weapons, according to Miguel. The men with guns executed Pedro in front of his wife and daughter. It is said bullets from the automatic weapons tore off parts of the old man’s right arm.

I had met Miguel and Beatriz during an assignment to “put a face” on transnational migrants. I had thought “putting a face” was about getting a new start and pursuing fanciful wishes that go with the American dream. But the face presents a chilling reality when unsolved issues back home intrude.

(The names of the “Navarro” family have been changed for their protection. José de la Isla, a contributing writer with Hispanic Link News Service, will report further as developments warrant. He may be reached by e-mail at joseisla3@yahoo.com)

© 2006 Hispanic Link News Service
03/26/06
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