Excerpts from a doctoral dissertation written by William Rhett-Mariscal

SETTLING IN:
NEW INDIAN COMMUNITIES AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF CITIZENSHIP IN MEXICO
Dissertation, University of California, San Diego. 1998

THE SAN QUINTIN VALLEY
The San Quintin Valley in Baja California is particularly well-suited for an analysis of the effects of migration on indigenous peoples and their relationship with the state. It is an area of significant seasonal migration, attracting up to 30,000 mostly Oaxacan Indian farm workers (including Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Triquis) to work in the tomato and strawberry fields that dominate the Valley. The Valley has only recently been developed and agriculture is the main economic activity there. This short historical depth and the singular source of livelihood for migrants and settlers simplifies the task of analyzing the development of state-Indian relationships and of new Indian communities in the Valley. The most significant feature of the Valley for this analysis is that there are two main types of Indian farm workers: those who live in camps on private land owned by their employers (ranchers), and others who settle permanently in settlements, or colonias.
The population living in camps is mostly seasonal, with the majority moving on to other sites of migration in a yearly circuit. Settlers tend to stay in San Quintin year-round, or try their luck at working in the U.S.. Differences between these two main types of Indian workers permits a comparison, clearly indicating the effects of settling on their relationship with the state and on their development of new political identities. A study of migration and settlement in San Quintin reveals some of the needs and demands of Indian migrants as they settle outside of their traditional territorial communities, how the state is trying to develop its new relationship with indigenous peoples, and whether Indian settlers are finding new ways to be Indian and modeling new ways to be Mexican.
San Quintin is an agricultural valley along the Pacific coast of Baja California, 48 kilometers long with 14,000 hectares of arable land, lilies about 120 miles south of the city of Ensenada, and over 200 miles from the border with the U.S. (south of San Diego). It is the second most important agricultural region in the state of Baja California (after the Mexicali Valley, an extension of the California Central Valley into Mexico). Its climate and soil (similar to the climate and soil of San Diego County) make it an ideal site for the production of certain cash crops for export (primarily tomatoes and strawberries). A limited water supply, however, has restricted the development of agriculture in the Valley. Only within the last several decades have agribusinesses brought considerable capital and advanced technologies (such as drip irrigation systems) to the Valley and transformed it into the area with the highest production of tomatoes in Mexico (PRONSJAG 1993: 4).

Agricultural production in the Valley reflects both national and international trends. Recent changes in Mexico's agrarian policy are beginning to have an impact in the area as former ejido (a state regulated form of communal land-holding) land-holders sell off parcels to big ranchers in the Valley. These ranchers borrow money from U.S. investors and market their crops across the border. This exchange of capital and technology has transformed agricultural production in the Valley. Ranchers have relied upon advanced irrigation technologies and intensive cheap manual labor to transform this dry, undeveloped coastal valley into a major agricultural site in Mexico's transnational economy.

Agricultural production in the Valley is dominated by about nine major enterprises. These businesses rent all of the best lands from the local ejidos and have the equipment to extract most of the limited groundwater (in the Valley (PRONSJAG 1993: 7). The major producers in the Valley control all aspects of production - from seed development, crop farming, and harvesting, to packing, transportation, and marketing in the U.S.. The economic and political strength of the Valley's producers (at the local as well as the state level) is further enhanced by their participation in different local associations and a larger consortium which sets production levels and wages for each season.

Although state presence in this developing region is growing, it remains far behind the needs of the population settling there. There are no paved roads in the Valley except for the peninsular highway passing through, limited public health facilities, no sewage in any communities, poor coverage of water and electricity, and the absence of many public services and institutions (such as a full capacity hospital, public courts, etc.) which can only be found in Ensenada over 100 miles away. Settlement in the Valley has been haphazard, resulting in a disperse population removed from whatever services are available in the larger population centers (San Quintin, Ldzaro Cárdenas, Vicente Guerrero, Camalü). Of the total settled population around these four centers (35,000), 43% live outside the boundaries of these towns and 57% (20,000) live within them (CODEREQ 1991: 15, 17). The decentralized population, poorly developed state presence, and considerable number of workers living on private property (the majority of the seasonal workers), allow the largest businesses in the region to freely exercise their considerable clout in the Valley.

The Indian population in the Valley makes up much of the work force in the fields.17 Some of the ranchers in San Quintin originally did business in the state of Sinaloa where they had experience with using Oaxacan Indian labor in the fields. San Quintin agriculturists initially sent recruiters to Oaxaca to bring workers to the Valley because of the Oaxacans' docility and the fact that they were unorganized. Eventually, workers came to the Valley on their own. The seasonal swell of farm workers from May to August can almost double the permanent population settled there (CODEREQ 1991: 17). The harvest season in Sinaloa is during the winter, so the majority of the seasonal workers alternate between San Quintin and Sinaloa. A growing non-Indian population is also settling in the Valley. They tend to work as small merchants and employees of the agricultural enterprises or the different government agencies located in the Valley. This population tends to have a more stable, year-round source of income than field workers do and so form a significant percentage of the permanent population settled in the Valley.

RURAL MIGRATION OF INDIGENOUS PEOPLES TO SAN QUINTIN
The migration of Oaxacan indigenous peoples to the San Quintin Valley is part of a widespread phenomenon affecting traditional Indian communities throughout Mexico today. Migration contributes significantly to the contemporary transformation of the relationship between indigenous peoples and the state.
When they leave their places of origin, indigenous migrants lose ties to their traditional practices and their intermediaries with the state. Some migrants stay in a perpetual cycle of isolation from the state and their communities. Others escape from this cycle and return to their traditional communities, or settle in new lands where they adopt new practices, develop new individual ties and new mediated relationships with the government.

Current proposals for constitutional reform establishing new rights for indigenous peoples in Mexico include special protections for Indian migrants. A closer look at the general phenomenon of Indian migration in Mexico, and at the specific case of that migration to the San Quintin Valley, offers a key perspective for evaluating the effectiveness of these proposals for meeting the needs of indigenous peoples.
Over the past fifty years, indigenous peoples in Mexico have increasingly turned to migration in hopes of alleviating their growing economic hardships. The principal factors contributing to this economic pressure towards migration are: the decreasing productivity of the lands where Indians live, an increasing population in rural areas due to lower mortality rates, a national shift towards a more urban economy, and government attempts to integrate indigenous communities into the national (and international) capitalist economy (Nolasco 1992: 70-71, Rios Vázquez 1992: 27-29).

Because of these economic factors and also political, social, and cultural exclusion, the majority of indigenous peoples throughout Mexico live in conditions of extreme poverty. Indigenous peoples make up about 10% of the total Mexican population and 41% of the population living in municipalities with very high levels of marginality. Of the total Indian population in Mexico, 97% live in municipalities with high or very high levels of marginality (Tello 1996). This poverty and the limited opportunities for escaping it drive many indigenous peoples away from their homes in search of work. Migration has become a necessary survival strategy for indigenous communities (Ortiz Gabriel 1992, Luque Gonzalez and Corona Juapio 1992).

Migration is not a phenomenon that affects indigenous communities uniformly. In Oaxaca, for example, communities vary in the extent of their participation in migration and in the principal destination of the migration of their members (Ramos Pioquinto 1992). This variation in the extent of participation in migration is due to differences in local economic opportunities. Despite the general poverty of Indian communities, members of some communities participate minimally in migration because they are able to find sources of income in their communities or nearby.3 Others manage to continue their subsistence living and remain apart from the international capitalist economy.

Communities also differ in terms of the principal migration destinations of their members. This variation is due to differences in how migrants enter into migration. Indigenous peoples typically enter into migration either by their own initiative or in response to recruiters who come to their communities to contract their work. When new migrants leave home on their own initiative, they follow the footsteps of their family members and friends, relying on the knowledge and support of their predecessors.

Others go in response to labor recruiters who come to their villages and offer them a one-way ticket and promises of a lot of money to be earned in some far off destination. In 1991, 80.56% of farm-workers surveyed in camps came to San Quintin on their own, while 19.44% were brought to San Quintin by representatives of their employers.4 These different ways of entering into migration also account for the heterogeneity of the migrant population in the different destination sites.

Although some migrants who work in the United States are able to eventually "retire" from the migration circuit and go back to live in their native communities, the majority of migrants working in Mexico find themselves caught in a cycle of poverty and hard labor from which they have little hope of escaping. The specific case of temporary migrants to the San Quintin Valley reveals some of the typical difficulties migrants encounter when they leave their homes.

Temporary migration to the San Quintin Valley
When indigenous peoples leave their homes in Oaxaca and come to San Quintin to w ork in the fields, their living conditions improve only slightly. Although migrants to San Quintin generally have little trouble finding work, low wages and high costs of living keep them barely able to satisfy their basic needs. Furthermore, migrants living in camps on their employer's lands suffer a significant loss of personal freedom. Ranchers in the Valley place Indian migrants in segregated and highly controlled working and living conditions. These migrants have little access to help because they have no contact with their traditional intermediaries (their village authorities) and barely any contact with the state. The living conditions in the camps also make it difficult for migrants to maintain cultural practices if they want to.

Several factors contribute to the high cost of living and the low wages for Indian farm workers in San Quintin. The constant influx of needy and compliant migrants to the Valley is one factor that helps keep wages low.
Ranchers recruit new migrants from areas in Mexico where people are not familiar with the conditions in San Quintin, luring them with false promises of earning good money. In the summer of 1995, for example, a bus-load of migrants recruited from the state of Veracruz arrived in San Quintin. Most of them had small farms in their villages and came hoping to make enough money to buy a truck or in some other way boost their earning potential in Veracruz. Once they discovered the conditions in San Quintin, they stopped working and asked the ranchers and the government to help them get back to their homes. They eventually did get enough support to go home. The multi-ethnic composition of the work force in San Quintin (Mixtecs, Zapotecs, and Triquis, primarily) is mostly the result of these recruitment practices.

Ranchers search for new groups of Indians who will accept the conditions of labor in San Quintin and replace those who will not.

Another factor keeping wages low in the Valley is the ranchers' efforts towards stifling organized labor. Informants report that the ranchers have a black-list of undesirables that they pass on to each other. If workers lose their jobs for political reasons, they won't find work at any other ranch in the Valley. Ranchers also reportedly have armed guards that they use to intimidate labor organizers. During one strike at a ranch in 1988, the rancher's bodyguards allegedly threatened the organizers with guns. One of these leaders told me that their organization did not engage in any political activity for over a year because of this threat. Since then, this organization and other newer organizations in the Valley focus their activities on making demands of the state for housing and services. They no longer act directly against the ranchers.

One reason that the cost of living is high for Oaxacan migrants to San Quintin is that they lose access to the natural resources available to them in their traditional communities. While living in San Quintin, migrants become more fully inserted into the market economy than they were in Oaxaca.

San Quintin lacks the resources traditionally used by Oaxacan indigenous peoples to meet their material and ritual needs (such as flowers, foods, animals, water, land). Migrants have to purchase these items that were readily available to them before migrating to the Valley. Migrants in San Quintin also lack access to the alternative economies that their traditional communities depend upon in Oaxaca, such as household farming and scavenging.

The main alternative means of subsistence available in the Valley is the theft of vegetables from the fields. One informant indicated that he preferred settling in San Quintin rather than other regions in the state because here his family would never starve because they could always get tomatoes and zucchini from the fields.
Theft is a practice commonly allowed by the owners of the fields, though restricted when crops are at their highest value.

When ranchers "kindly" allow workers to participate in this behavior, they are reproducing the paternalistic relationships between benefactors and Indians common throughout Mexican history. These paternalistic relationships keep workers at a disadvantage when they make claims for higher wages or for better treatment from their employers. One rancher told me that Indian leaders complain a lot although migrants really receive many benefits from their employers .

The San Quintin Valley's proximity to the U.S. border and its poorly developed infrastructure are other factors contributing to the high costs of living there.9 Indians living in camps by the fields are usually too isolated to have access to the markets and stalls that dot the peninsular highway passing through the Valley. Most people in camps have to buy their goods from camp stores run by camp bosses or the bosses' family members.
The products in these stores are expensive. In some of the larger, more accessible camps, like Las Pulgas, I saw entrepreneurs drive up either to the periphery of the camps or into the camps themselves and set up shop out of their vehicles. These vendors provide camp-dwellers with a greater variety of goods than is offered in the camp stores, including fruits and vegetables, second-hand clothing, toys, and movies, but at no better price (Garduño, Garcia, and Moran 1989). The lack of readily available and affordable transportation keeps indigenous migrants tied to the camps and their limited options.

Drawn to San Quintin by a desperate need for income to supplement the dwindling productivity of their lands, indigenous migrants find themselves cut off from the material resources that have sustained their cultural existence in Oaxaca. Migrants who wish to reproduce their traditional practices find it hard to do so. They lack the material and financial resources and the communal support they need. One informant indicated, for example, that not many households set up traditional altars for the Day of the Dead because the flowers that grow wild in Oaxaca and Indians pick for this occasion don't grow in San Quintin. In San Quintin, migrants have to use a different type of flower grown commercially that costs them two-thirds a day's wage for a small bunch. This informant told me that [low] salaries were the main impediment to the maintenance of cultural practices in the Valley.

In addition to economic difficulties, Indian migrants in San Quintin also suffer from poor living and work conditions. Migrant camps tend to be cramped and uncomfortable. Many camps have poor sanitation, contaminated water, no electricity, dirt floors, and little ventilation for smoke from cooking fires." Illness is widespread in the camps, limiting the migrants' ability to work and further increasing their living expenses. Illness results in a loss of income and additional expenses for transportation to a public clinic in town, or for medicines that they don't always know how to use.

Few migrants have access to traditional medicinal or healing practices. These poor living conditions are largely due to prejudicial treatment towards Indians. Ranchers give their non-Indian seasonal migrants better places to live than they do their Indian workers. In Rancho Los Pinos, for example, non-Indian migrants live in duplex units with cement floors, glass windows, gas and electricity. One rancher defended migrants' living conditions in the camps, telling me I should go to Oaxaca to see how poorly Indians live there and how well off they really are in San Quintin.

Indian migrants also suffer from abusive treatment in the fields and in the camps. Work captains and camp bosses strictly control the lives of Indian camp-dwellers. These migrants have almost no way to complain about their working or living conditions because their bosses fire them or kick them out of the camps if they do. Migrants no longer have access to their community leaders who act as intermediaries with the state. Without intermediaries, migrants have little recourse for protecting themselves.

Several ranchers in the Valley do not allow any government officials to enter their lands. Some of these ranchers are known for their cruelty towards Indians and the tactics they use to control Indian labor.

Despite these abusive conditions, migrants are tied to the migration circuit or to specific growers in the Valley because of the high cost of living and low wages for migrant field laborers in San Quintin. Few migrants are able to save enough money to return to live in Oaxaca again. Migrants to San Quintin become hopelessly locked into a perpetual circuit of migration unless they find work in the United States or decide to settle in the Valley.
Living conditions improve somewhat for migrants once they leave the camps and settle permanently in the Valley. Although wages and the cost of living remain more or less the same (cost of living tends to go up for the expenses associated with owning a home), settlers at least begin to have more control over how they live.

Settling in the San Quintin Valley
When Oaxacan Indian migrants decide to settle in the Valley, they free themselves from some of the constraints associated with life in the camps. Although they no longer live in highly controlled and isolated spaces, they still tend to live in extreme poverty. My research shows, however, that once migrants move into settlements, they tend to have more access to the state to provide for their basic needs and are more likely to interact with government agents. This access increases their knowledge and experience of the rights and responsibilities associated with the practice of citizenship.

Health care, education, land tenancy, and encounters with the law, are all areas where settlers have more contact with the state than camp residents do. An overview of the settlement process and of settlers' living conditions will indicate some of the difficulties migrants encounter while settling and how these difficulties increase their dependency on the state. A comparison of the government services available to the residents of the camps and the settlements will show how settlers do indeed have more access to the state and how they begin to gain experience in the practice of citizenship.

In my study of the development of settlements, I found that settling is not an easy process and that migrants' options for settlement are limited. Land for settlement is scarce in the San Quintin Valley and generally not affordable for indigenous migrants. Since most of the land in the Valley is used or set aside for agriculture, new land for settlement usually only becomes available by invasion, donation, or the purchase of land too close to urbanizing areas to be safe for commercialization. These limitations shaped the formation of Indian settlements in San Quintin over the past couple of decades.

Farm workers migrating to San Quintin began to live in permanent settlements in the Valley a little over ten years ago. Since then, Indian migrants have established over 16 settlements of mostly Indian settlers. Indians also now live in all of the other communities in the Valley.

Ranchers seeking to develop a small permanent Indian work-force started the first Indian settlements in the San Quintin Valley. In the seventies and early eighties, when Indians first began migrating in large numbers to the Valley to work seasonally in the fields, ranchers provided temporary housing for them in camps. As agricultural production in the Valley started to boom, ranchers began employing new technologies and new crops to extend the growing season to nearly year-round. Employers began to rely on some workers staying on permanently in the Valley to complete the less labor intensive tasks needed during the winter. Because of their need for a more permanent work-force, some employers donated land for their workers to form their own settlements and to live more comfortably than in the camp barracks.

In the 1980s, national labor organizations came to the Valley and started organizing farm workers. These organizations encouraged Indian migrants to fight for their own lands to live on. These mobilizations led to the first land invasions in the Valley and to the subsequent government mediation to provide alternative lands for settlement. Indian migrants were also able to settle in all of the existing urban centers throughout the Valley. Some settlers formed new settlements on the periphery of towns on land sold to them that was no longer valuable for agriculture. Other settlers were able to find and afford rooms to rent in communities throughout the Valley.

Although settled Indians free themselves from the confined and controlled environment of the camps, their living conditions usually remain precarious. As is true for all poor people, the lack of financial resources is a primary factor limiting their quality of life. Throughout the Valley, roads are not paved and only a few communities have electricity, water, sewage, or phone service.15 Newly invaded lands and settlements where the settlers lack titles to their lands have almost no government services. Settlers who do have titles for their properties have to pay for mortgages and for whatever limited public services they receive. The cost of building is so high that settlers have to invest most of their available resources to construct some form of shelter. According to one informant, almost no one can build a house made of cement block without first having earned money in the U.S. to pay for jt.16 As a result, many lots have structures made with cardboard or plywood covered with plastic discards from pesticide bags used in the fields. Transportation is also a costly problem for the settlers, since the residences, employment, and services in the Valley are spread out along its length. Although settlers have easier access to markets than do camp-dwellers, most of the products in them are imported from the United States and only a few basic staples are affordable.

Because of these difficulties, settlers depend upon the state and their employers for assistance in meeting their basic needs. Settlers tend to have greater access to the state to help them than camp residents do. Even migrants living in settlements with limited services are at least able to organize themselves to demand greater access to services. This access to the state, and the process of organizing to press demands for greater access, increases the settlers' experience with the practices of citizenship. Government services in camps and settlements Health care, education, land tenancy, and encounters with the law are some of the main areas where I observed settlers gain greater access to the state than camp residents have.

Although settlers differ in how extensive their contact with the state is in these realms, they begin to become more familiar with the state's practices after multiple interactions with the state and its agents over some period of time. For many indigenous farm workers, health care and education are the only contact they have with the state.17 This is particularly true for farm workers living in camps where some of the owners resist any government intervention. Several ranchers did not allow government health care providers to enter camps where workers were living in deplorable conditions - conditions which were largely the result of the ranchers' negligence.

Due to a fear about the spread of cholera from Oaxaca to Baja California, government agencies have recently been able to insist on access to all of the camps to perform general health sweeps throughout the Valley.'8 During these sweeps, doctors and nurses monitor camp sanitation and provide health education, vaccinations, vitamins, and medicines to indigenous farm-workers. For many camp-dwellers, these sweeps are the only time they have access to a doctor and to free medicines. Only a few of the camps have doctors from government health agencies who provide occasional care in makeshift clinics.

A more detailed account of doctors' visits to the camps provides some insight into the nature of camp-residents' relationships with state agents. Two separate ranchers in the Valley provide INI doctors with a room in one of their camps to conduct private consultations with migrant farm workers.

The doctors go to these camps several days a week for set periods of time - one doctor per camp. Often there are people lined up outside of the makeshift clinic by the time the doctor arrives at the camp. When a doctor consults with migrants, she writes down their name, chief complaint, and the medication given on a form used by tNt to keep track of the services it has offered at the camps. Most of the people a doctor sees come with new complaints. Although the doctor takes down names and follows up on some cases within a few days or a week after an initial consultation, most of the time she works with camp residents without establishing an individual relationship with them. The doctors don't keep files on individual patients, nor do they regularly monitor a patient's course of treatment. The doctors also don't require anyone to present documents or prove their identity before receiving treatment (they do, however, ask parents to present a child's immunization record, if they have it, when giving vaccines). The doctors conduct their consultations with camp residents in Spanish. The primary treatments involve dispensing free medications, giving children vaccines, and identifying and counseling cases that require more specialized attention (such as pregnancy, or cases requiring hospitalization). The doctors usually only leave the consultation room and go from room to room during vaccination campaigns or health sweeps of all the camps in the Valley. At times, I observed the doctors conduct their questioning or provide health education in a condescending manner.

For settlers, health care is more readily available. There are several clinics and pharmacies in the Valley's larger communities. Although cost restricts settlers' access to these services, settlers still have more options. For example, a doctor in a private clinic told me that some Indian migrants come to his clinic. Indian settlers can also go visit the doctors in the tNt offices or go to the hospital run by missionaries. Access to public health care is restricted by a system of passes. Farm workers (camp residents and settlers) must obtain a pass from their employers in order to receive public assistance. Once Indians settle and leave the tightly controlled camps, their access to schools also increases considerably. In the camps, children only have access to teachers when ranchers have set aside a space for them to work. Some camp-dwellers send their children to one of the two public boarding schools for Indian children in the Valley. Many camp children work in the fields and do not go to school. Children of settlers can go to any of the regular elementary schools that are present in many communities throughout the Valley or to the special bilingual boarding schools.20 For some settlers, access to education for their children is one of the principal benefits of settling. One settler told me, "The Mixtecos' greatest pride [in the Valley] is to see our children studying in schools where they can develop professional skills and speak Mixtec as well as Spanish.

Land tenancy provides migrants with exposure to the bureaucratic practices of the state. In some of the settlements, settlers have to get titles for their lands in order to get services for their homes. The title process itself can be elaborate and costly. Often, the government agrees to cover these costs in order to help poor people acquire housing. Once they have titles to their lands, settlers can make petitions for the introduction of services like electricity, water, schools, and road conditioning. Each of these steps involves different procedures and documents, and at times, mobilizations, to press for their demands.

When migrants settle in San Quintin, they increasingly turn to the state to regulate social interactions and to protect them from abuse. Indians and non-Indians frequently take advantage of recent migrants when they settle because migrants tend to be unfamiliar with the legal procedures for buying, settling, and getting titles for land. In one instance - the formation of the first settlement in the Valley - the representative for a group of settlers negotiated with the government to cover these costs completely and then went ahead and charged each settler a fee.22 Settlers are susceptible to this type of exploitation because of their initial unfamiliarity with government requirements. Over time, settlers begin to learn more of these requirements and are more suspicious of their representatives.23 Confrontations with local or federal police also tend to result in greater familiarity with the practices of the state. Because settlers move about more freely and are not as isolated or confined as camp residents, they tend to encounter law officers more often. Usually, these contacts are negative for settlers. For example, Indian leaders in the Valley have recently made several public accusations that local police have robbed Indian migrants.24 These leaders claim that police frequently stop migrants and confiscate money and goods acquired in the United States. According to one informant, if the police see someone who looks "dark" driving an American car, they stop the person and ask for the vehicle's papers, often keeping any money or stereo equipment they find in the vehicle and only returning it after receiving a fee.25 In one case, the federal police confiscated an Indian settlers' pickup truck claiming they suspected it was stolen in the United States. They asked him for documents proving ownership. Since he did not have any papers for his truck, the police kept it. Such encounters with the law often throw indigenous migrants into a system they aren't familiar with. They are forced to produce documents or rely on intermediaries and they are exposed to the language of rights and requirements.

Some migrants are learning that they can turn to the press to help make their claims against this type of abuse. One migrant organizer in the Valley regularly makes statements to the press about abuses and other problems in the Valley. These reports seem to have an impact on some of their targets. An agent from the local tNt office told me he was upset with this organizer when he made statements to the press criticizing tNt.
Settlers' encounters with the police also increase their awareness of their positive rights to state protection. A meeting I attended in February of 1996 offers a good example of this growing awareness. I attended an informal meeting of one of the indigena organizations in which the participants prepared an opinion statement to be delivered to a planning commission addressing present and future needs in the region regarding public safety.
The members of the organization wanted me to type and polish the document for them. Some of the problems they listed were as follows:
that there are no bilingual police officers in the Valley; no local academy for a more adequate training of local police; no appropriate response, penalty, or preventative training for cases of abuse of power; not enough equipment for handling emergencies, such as ambulances, patrol cars, and fire trucks; minimal police presence in many of the communities in the Valley; no translators nor bilingual court-appointed lawyers in the local magistrate's office; excessive fines that fail to take into consideration the financial situation of farm workers; and, no consideration of farm workers' working hours, so that in many instances, going to the magistrate involves a loss of several days of work.

This document indicates, in their own words, some of the difficulties migrants have in San Quintin in their interactions with the state, and that migrants look to the state to offer them certain guarantees. It also indicates that individuals become more familiar with what those guarantees are and with how to get the state to honor them.

SOCIAL-POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS AND THEIR STRATEGIES
The development of indigena organizations and their political strategies in the Valley has fostered multi-ethnic alliances and variable political identities for settlers. I found, however, that these organizations do not have a strong presence in the Valley. No organization of migrants in the Valley has a significant, active following. None has been able to muster more than several hundred supporters to a rally in the last few years (out of a possible tens of thousands of migrant farm-workers living temporarily or permanently in the Valley). Informants say that the weakness of the indigena social-political organizations in the Valley has to do with political leaders' past abuses, migrants' widely held fear of going against the ranchers, and the fact that few organizations really reach out to the masses.

In my analysis of the development of Indian social-political organizations in the Valley, I found that the limited goals of these organizations are the product of past experiences and of constraints on political activity.
Most of the organizations of migrants in the Valley have shifted their focus periodically to find what works best for bringing people together and keeping them together. Settlers in the Valley have organized as Mixtec field laborers, as laborers, as members of a particular ethnic group, as members of a particular village, and as indigenas. The development of these organizations has led to the formation of associations which tend to be variable, overlapping, and voluntary. These bases for affiliation keep ties to any particular organization loose. Settlers can gain political experience and the support of organizations without losing their growing independence from any particular group or community.

In the 1980s, a national organization (the CIOAC), affiliated with the Mexican Unified Socialist Party (PSUM), started organizing Mixtec farm workers in the Valley. The CIOAC brought in an experienced Mixtec organizer from the state of Sinaloa specifically for the purpose of bringing all the Indians in the Valley together (initially the labor force was almost entirely Indian and the main migrant group in the Valley were Mixtecs).
Even though the CIOAC organized the workers on the basis of their affinity to each other as Mixtecs, it promoted their political claims based on their condition as laborers. In their mobilizations they asked for higher wages, better work conditions, transportation, and access to decent housing.

As a consequence of these early organizing efforts, local workers gained experience with political mobilization and with making demands of the state. Newly trained organizers eventually separated from the original leader and formed new organizations.

These organizers continued to adopt a trade-unionist strategy for bringing migrants together, despite their Mixtec heritage.

In part, this strategy made sense since the majority of farm workers still lived in camps owned by their employers and all of their most pressing demands were related to their working and living conditions. This strategy also made sense for transcending village-level or linguistic affinities, bringing people of different ethnicities together on common ground. However, organizing around labor demands was not very successful. Labor struggles are hard to win in San Quintin because workers are very poor and desperate for work. Ranchers in the Valley are powerful and use armed guards and alliances with other organizations to weaken mobilizations against them.
I found that the majority of the indigena organizations in the Valley today maintain a labor-based identity primarily in name only. For example, although the local chapter of CIOAC (Independent Central of Peasants and Agricultural Workers) and a later splinter group, SINGOA (Trade-union Syndicate of Agricultural Workers), maintain an affiliation with broader labor struggles, in practice they both have very local and isolated activities, are run by indigenas, and gain government support as indigena organizations.

Because labor was not an effective basis for organization in the Valley, organizers started focusing their struggles towards obtaining services for new settlements. Former labor leaders who settled and usually no longer worked in the fields (some became semi-professional leaders), shifted the political strategies of their organizations towards obtaining government services for their settled followers. This basis for organization tends to reproduce the paternalistic mode of dealing with the Mexican government that Indians are used to in states like Oaxaca and Chiapas. In these states, leaders have acted as intermediaries negotiating government concessions for their communities. As a consequence of this shift in strategy in the Valley, there currently is minimal political activity in camps. In the summer of 1996, for example, when bosses at one ranch had not paid their workers for over three weeks, the workers gathered in town to protest. The gathering turned into a riot and the government had to intervene. Rather than protest against their employers directly, these workers directed their protest towards the state and the merchants in town.

Recently, local indigena organizations are beginning to focus on ethnicity as a basis for mobilization. It is not clear whether this shift is a consequence of either the relative ineffectiveness of labor struggles in the Valley or of the new national emphasis on indigenas and their communities after the Zapatista uprising in 1994.31 In mid-1994, disgruntled leaders split off from an existing organization and formed the first organization explicitly centered on ethnicity, the OPT, Organization of the Triqui People. Also in mid-1994, most of the local indigena groups agreed to form part of the new Frente Indigena Binacional Oaxaquena (FIOB). The Frente's activities have promoted different political identities for settlers and offered some settlers experience in the practices of the state.

Government agencies in the Valley differ in how they view migrants. One agency (PRONSJAG), treats all migrants as laborers and pays little attention to ethnicity. This agency seeks to promote a worker identity and encourages migrants to make petitions of the government as workers.

Another (INI), promotes an ethnic identity among migrants. This agency helps settlers make demands of the state as Indians. Other agencies (such as CODEREQ), recognize migrants' ethnic differences and their generally limited experience with formal education and the use of Spanish as factors limiting their access to basic guarantees. CODEREQ proposes to try to ameliorate the precarious conditions of these migrants by increasing their access to state services while also promoting their distinct cultural "activities" (CODEREQ 1991: 80).
An account of a meeting of Indian social-political organizations held in Tijuana indicates how settlers view themselves and what some of their contemporary demands are as they are articulated by the members of these organizations. INI provided transportation to a handful of organization leaders and members to attend this meeting, the first state-wide meeting of migrant Indian organizations, on May 11, 1996. The meeting was divided into several work groups, each addressing a different topic. In the work group on Indian political participation and representation in government, some Indian leaders proposed to have one position in local government (regidor) filled by an Indian. They also proposed that this representative would be chosen by a congress of organizations, rather than by general popular vote. Another work group came up with a proposal promoting self-development programs in settler communities. Other groups asked for greater government support in education (scholarships for Indian children through college, more bilingual teachers and schools, bicultural education), support for cultural promotion, for working women (child care), and for senior (retired) workers. Migrants also asked for bilingual public defenders, translators in the agency overseeing labor disputes (the lnspectoria de Trabajo), defense of individual and collective rights, and for government support that is not contingent upon votes for any particular party. The meeting ended with an agreement to establish a Coordinator of organizations in the state and that each affiliated organization would maintain complete autonomy. A professor from the Colegio de la Frontera Norte (a research university in Tijuana), declared that any (non-Indian) support organizations affiliated with this new Coordinator should refrain from generating any new ideas and should instead allow indigena organizations develop their own demands. This account indicates some Indian migrants' demands in their own words and demonstrates how the socio-political organizations influence each other and shape their demands of the state.

Not all new bases for association are political. Religious organizations also draw indigenous peoples together to form new types of association, sometimes to the exclusion of any political activity (some sects prohibit political engagement). Since religious activities are central components of indigenous peoples' communal identity, migrants who adopt new religions generally have to form new communal ties. Protestant missionaries have brought migrants together and helped them establish settlements in the Valley. This phenomenon is widespread among indigenous peoples throughout Mexico. In Chiapas, for example, some indigenous peoples expelled from their traditional communities for religious and political reasons have also found lands and established new communities with new social and religious bases for membership (Rhett-Mariscal 1994).

The variety of these bases for affiliation in the San Quintin Valley help keep the ties to any one organization or to any one political identity loose. An account of a few cases of conflict in the Valley will illustrate how variable and contested these new bases for affiliation really are, as well as the types of activity these associations engage in. The weakness of these new bases for affiliation indicate the potential of these organizations to foster experience in the practice of citizenship without permanently establishing new mediated relationships with the state.
In one instance of conflict, a settlement originally formed by indigenas had a dispute with a government agency over its water service. Originally, the government had asked the settlers to contribute financially to the construction of a well, pump, and tubing for their neighborhood. After the construction was completed, the settlers took charge of the operation of this service and set self-imposed fees. When the state's water agency (CESPE) announced several years later that it was going to take over the water service and begin charging fees, the settlers refused to pay the agency. When the agency shut off the water, representatives from the local development agency (CODEREQ) and CESPE came and talked to the community in the yard of the local school. The meeting with the government representatives was heated, in part because the community was internally divided between two leaders. One of them was the original leader of Mixtecs in the Valley, Pablo Morales. The other leader, Juan Perez, had been this man's assistant and had split away to form a new organization after revealing information about Morales' corruption. During the meeting, the followers of each leader shouted each other down. Perez's followers told me later that Morales' followers were all originally from the same village in Oaxaca, and that some of them didn't even live in the settlement but came specifically to support their leader. This accusation suggests that in certain circumstances of conflict, village affiliation can resurface as a salient basis for alliance and identification, and ŒMixtec' or Œindigena' become less important.

Another incident that indicates the flexibility or weakness of new ties in the Valley is a labor strike that took place in 1988. One participant told me that the ranchers brought in members of a union of public transportation drivers to try to break up a field worker strike organized by the CIOAC. The field workers fought off the drivers and even set fire to a taxi-cab.

In this particular political struggle, the organizations involved did not sustain an alliance as laborers.
Lastly, there have been several incidents in the Valley which indicate the existence of a political struggle between indigena organizations and non-indigena organizations. In 1992, a new federal agency, the National Program of Solidarity with Agricultural Workers (PRONSJAG), started to organize select members of different communities in the Valley into committees in charge of managing local development projects funded by the agency.
Indigena leaders and bureaucrats from other government agencies suggest cynically that PRONSJAG tries to set up committees headed by people who support the politics of the agency and thus divide indigena communities between followers of the indigena social-political organizations and followers of these committees. National party politics is implied in this struggle as well.

In early 1996, Diego Olivera organized a multi-ethnic following of land-less people to invade federal lands on the periphery of an existing settlement. Olivera was a non-Indian leader appointed by PRONSJAG to head a Solidarity committee in the settlement. Triqui migrants originally formed this settlement, Nueva Region Triqui, after their own land invasion. As the settlement grew, people of different ethnic origins moved in. Olivera organized people from the settlement who were living on their relatives' properties and were willing to put up with the cold and uncertainty associated with setting up temporary shelters on federal land. The would-be settlers remained on the land for a couple of weeks until the government removed them. The government then negotiated with Olivera to provide him and his followers with some alternative land to purchase for settlement adjacent to the existing community.

Local indigena settlers told me indignantly that Olivera was not really interested in working for "the people" because he had not negotiated a fair price for the lots from the government. They told me how they had fought for a good price after they had carried out their invasion leading to the formation of the original settlement. They suggested that Olivera was more interested in state-level politics than in helping migrants, and that he was using this struggle as a stepping stone to get power.

These words suggest a distinction between this non-Indian leader and the indigenas. and therefore, an inauthentic solidarity between settlers. What started off as a multi-ethnic alliance between members of the same settlement seems to have broken down. So Œrace' or ethnicity comes into play at times as an important factor, despite the nominally labor-based multi-ethnic affiliations of some of the indigena organizations.
These cases indicate the voluntary, flexible, and overlapping nature of membership in organizations in the San Quintin Valley. Because of the flexibility and weakness of the bonds organizations establish with their followers, individuals tend to participate in a particular affiliation only for a short time. Each participation potentially increases the settlers' experience in making claims of the state.

CORPORATISM AND CLIENTELISM
Corporatism is another characteristic of the Mexican state that has historically led to differential access to rights by its citizens. Corporatism is a mechanism for government control of the public sector based on the channeling of public access to the state through officially recognized representative organizations (Cornelius and Craig 1991). Since the Cárdenas presidency (1934-1940), the federal government has reached out to popular political movements and organizations and incorporated them into the machinery of the state. By incorporating these oppositional elements and meeting their needs part way (offering them resources and political support for their leaders), the government has, up until recently, been able to control or contain most possible bases for mobilization against the state.

Corporatism is credited with maintaining political and economic stability in Mexico since the 1930s (see Middlebrook 1989, Fox and Gordillo 1989, Bizberg 1993, Cornelius and Craig 1991).

Corporatism contributes to the inclusive and exclusive tendencies in the Mexican political system. The system is inclusive in that the government seeks to incorporate as many opposition movements as it can (Cornelius and Craig 1991: 24). Different segments of the population are represented by national confederations affiliated with the PR!.14 Other, more independent, organizations are tied to the PR! through their leaders who enter into a clientelistic relationship with the state. Thus, broad segments of the population in Mexico have some form of access to the state through popular organizations. However, this access tends to be minimal and distant.
Corporatism contributes to the exclusive tendencies in the Mexican political system because government control over the public sector through corporatism limits citizens' effective access to political, economic, and social rights. The PRI restricts the type and intensity of demands made by public organizations tied to the state. For example, the PRI government has imposed legal limits to individuals' rights to organize. New unions must be recognized by the state and all strikes must be state approved (Middlebrook 1989: 291). By law, public sector workers can only be represented by one union per sector (one teachers' union for all teachers, one oil-workers' union, etc.) (Cook 1990: 200).

When combined with patron-client relationships with organization leaders, corporatism leads to further exclusive tendencies in the national political system. The PRI has typically catered to the personal needs of organization leaders, thus compromising the representativeness of the leaders' demands of the state. The internal hierarchical organization of many public organizations also typically limits the effective voice of the rank-and-file. Many organizations are run by popular leaders with considerable leeway to direct their organization at their own discretion. For example, Fidel Velázquez, the long-time charismatic leader of the CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers), has for several decades determined the political actions of its members.

In the San Quintin Valley, corporatism affects the capacity of farm-workers to organize in defense of their labor rights. Most of the ranchers in the Valley have signed union contracts with the official CTM union. Independent farm-worker organizations, like the Sindicato Gremial de Obreros Agrfcolas Similares y Conexos (SINGOA) and the Central Independiente de Obreros Agrfcolas y Campesinos (CIOAC) have no official recognition and therefore no legal basis for representing the interests of their followers.'5 Furthermore, ranchers and the CTM allegedly attempt to disrupt the activities of these organizations. In 1988, the CTM allegedly intervened on behalf of the ranchers in an attempt to disrupt a farm-worker strike organized by the CIOAC. Ranchers have also allegedly used hired guns to scare off independent labor organizers.

Clientelism
Clientelism is another feature of the Mexican political system leading to limited access to political rights for the majority of Mexican citizens. A clientelistic relationship entails the exchange of material or political benefits for political support between a person of higher political standing (the patron) and a person of none or lesser political standing (the client).

The conditional relationship inherent in clientelism limits the political effectiveness of individuals or organizations in Mexico and the substantive realization of their citizenship rights (Fox 1994: 152-153). When linked with corporatism, clientelism considerably restricts citizens' rights to associate to press for shared demands of the state.

Clientelism is pervasive in Mexico. To have their political, economic, or social demands met, organizations and individuals in Mexico have typically had to offer loyalty and political support to a party (usually the PR!) or to a person with political clout. According to Cornelius and Craig, "the entire [Mexican politicalj system can be viewed as consisting of interlocking chains of patron-client relationships" (Cornelius and Craig 1991: 39).
One of these chains or groupings of integrated levels of patron-client relationships is called a camarilla. Since members of a camarilla are tied to each other on the basis of personal loyalty to the person at the top more so than on the basis of a shared political stance, there is little room for input or change to come from below (Cornelius and Craig 1991: 41).

Clientelism is a two-way relationship, however, as political leaders do have to be somewhat attentive to their constituents' concerns. Individuals and organizations tend to establish relationships with multiple patrons and clients in order to maximize political access (Cornelius and Craig 1991: 41).

Patrons maintain their support base as long as they can continue to deliver benefits to their clients and their clients' clients. Thus, patrons have to try to stay abreast of shifting political currents because their support base might move away from them. The most typical example of this type of shift in Mexico occurs with every presidential succession which always involves a substantial rearranging of political positions.

As competition for clients has become a more common feature of Mexican politics in the past decade with the growing strength of opposition parties, clientelistic political relations continue to influence access to political and material resources. Critics of president Carlos Salinas' federal social welfare project, the National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL), denounced it as a large-scale clientelistic mechanism for retaining and recouping the PRI's political power after the 1988 presidential elections. These elections presented the first significant threat to the PRI's hold on the government.

In the San Quintin Valley, clientelism manifests itself in various forms. Indigenous migrants' political and social organizations tend to focus their activities on negotiating for material benefits for their followers. Some of these organizations pass on these material benefits to settlers on the basis of settlers' financial or political support of the organization.

One informant told me, for example, that on one occasion a leader in one of the organizations in the Valley provided trash cans and latrines only to people who supported him, and not to others. The government had donated these items to the organization so that it would help distribute them to people in need.
Another organization, the CIOAC, determines the distribution to their members of land parcels obtained through negotiation on the basis of active political participation. One leader informed me that the organization distributed lots in one settlement to "people who really supported us", including people who had participated in a recent march to Ensenada, Tijuana, and Mexicali.

Although it may be reasonable to provide people with benefits if they have participated in informational meetings regarding the acquisition of those benefits, requiring them to also demonstrate strong political support leads to differential access to the state based on clientelistic relations. To gain access to a lot, Indian migrants have to first provide political and material support to particular patron organizations. Patron organizations in the Valley must in turn work with different governmental agencies or politicians (and their parties) to obtain benefits for their supporters. This mediation lends itself to further clientelism. For example, the local office of INI works primarily with three migrant organizations (CIOAC, MUJI, OPT). Whenever this office needs participants for one of its projects it turns to the leaders of these organizations for help. This is a reasonable approach for working with a large population that the limited staff of this local office can't handle on a one-to-one basis. However, this approach does have its negative consequences. Organizations that do not support the INI for political or personal reasons (of their leaders) do not have access to INI's funds for special projects (SINGOA, for example, and to a certain extent MUJI). Also, this local office of INI is able to report nationally about what work it is doing with the migrant population in the Valley, when in reality, in some of its projects INI concentrates its work on only a handful of leaders, benefiting only hundreds of the thousands of migrants in the Valley. For example, for the National Consultation on Indian Rights in Mexico, held throughout 1996, INI staff drafted a proposal in conjunction with only a handful of Indian organizers which was meant to represent the voice of all the migrants in the Valley.
Another possible example of clientelistic relations in the San Quintin Valley is the distribution of resources by the Programa Nacional de Solidaridad con lornaleros Agricolas (PRONSJAG). Informants have accused this agency with seeking to promote its own political agenda via an exchange of economic resources. PRONSJAG channels funds to committees it establishes in local communities for administering these funds and overseeing the projects. In several communities in the Valley, the members of these committees are now trying to wield political power while denying the representativeness of the social-political organizations already established there. These cases in San Quintin indicate the extent to which a dependency on intermediaries lends itself to exploitation, particularly through clientelistic relations. This exploitation resulting from clientelism weakens all Mexicans' access to their individual rights.