INTRODUCTION

This paper aims at analyzing one of the several factors that make up and influence migratory processes: the place of Civil Society Organizations (hereafter CSOs) working for the rights of migrant women and men in their capacity as popular mobilizers. These organizations are filling a triple space of action (the migrant community, society, and institutions) that ultimately contributes to improving the processes of democratization (^{Arnold & Spedding, 2007, p. 155}).

The text analyses how three organizations in the United States of America (hereafter USA) articulate themselves to denounce abuse, defend human rights, manage tools of social involvement for migrant women, create networks, and foster civil solidarity. Through this multidimensional approach, we aim at understanding the role of said organizations develop from an inclusive perspective, as to identify how indigenous migrant women are particularly impacted by such. According to ^{Blackwell, Hernández Castillo, and Herrera (2009)}, when it comes to transnational and non-governmental organizations in the context of migration, “many organizations become instrumental in the resolution of problems and enable the empowerment of communities as well as the development of their capacities” (^{Blackwell et al., 2009, p. 30}).

This paper uses the expression “indigenous women” while aware of its globalizing and colonial connotations and without differentiating the features of the particular cultural group these women belong to. Thus, it considers a social collective that, despite the wide cultural differences between the different original communities their members come from, constitutes itself into a sort of union in relation to the otherness not perceived as “ethnic” from the hegemonic perspective.

An intersectional study (^{Crenshaw, 1991}) was the tool employed to analyze this matter, articulated with gender theory. The combination of both approaches allows us to identify and analyze the interconnected impacts and pressure and oppression systems. Intersectionality enables a comprehensive frame of analysis facing the crossing of different domination systems in social entities. For our case study, we also considered other categories, such as the dimensions of ethnicity and migration. In this sense, the use of the joint expression “pressure and oppression” becomes necessary, as women not only raise their voice against the oppressions that the available literature analyses as domination categories and systems, which exclude and impose limits on the subjects held in them, but they are also pressured by them. As such, both categories converge, intersecting each other.

Migration is a dynamic and relational phenomenon that is subject to several factors shaping its processes and results. These factors reach complex dimensions based on systemic-structural circumstances, crossed by gender and ethnic identity throughout the entire process. ^{Marina Ariza and Laura Velasco (2012)} point out that international migration is becoming one of the processes essential in social transformation in the last decades. So historical patterns have changed, and new minority social groups have emerged, such as indigenous people and women. Regarding this, we must consider how ethnicity and gender influence migration projects, as ethnicity is a social construct that marks the differences between the dominant society and the so-called minorities in the socio-cultural arena. As for practices, cultural features, beliefs, ancestry, and collective identity, it also has a political impact (^{Robles Santana, 2017}). Likewise, gender is a social category providing structure to asymmetrical power hierarchies between women and men in relation to biological sex (^{Beauvoir, 2000}; ^{Scott, 1996}). In this context, “the body manifests as a passive medium on which cultural meanings circumscribe, or as the instrument through which an appropriating and interpretive will establishes a cultural meaning for itself” (^{Butler, 2007, p. 58}).

The study of international migration implies a complex analytical process, as the angles and dimensions that make up this phenomenon are many. To glance at the different pressure and oppression axes affecting the analyzed people and how they relate to CSOs, a methodology has been established that prioritizes avoiding the colonial biases underlying the research carried out in the original communities. For this purpose, the present work was carried out by means of a collaborative (^{Hale, 2001}; ^{Speed, 2008}; ^{Paris Pombo, 2012}; ^{Stephen, 2012}) and decolonized (^{Hale, 2001}; ^{Speed, 2006}) methodology, and a feminist ethnography (^{Castañeda, 2012}). These methods show women’s voices as reflective political subjects, with whom a constant dialog is established. As for CSOs, a collaboration from horizontal and feedback positions has taken place, meant to last in time.

The findings of this paper derive from a qualitative study carried out from January to June of 2014, in the cities of Austin and Taylor, Texas, and the city of Oxnard, California (USA). Fieldwork was then completed on a second visit to Oxnard, from April to May of 2016. During both periods, semi-structured and in-depth interviews with 14 indigenous women were carried out: eight Mixteco and two Zapoteco, from Mexico, two Quiche and one Mam, from Guatemala, and one Quichua, from Ecuador, as well as three Mixteco men. Likewise, eight volunteer activist women and men from five CSOs were interviewed; I was actively involved as a volunteer in three of them.

Two women lawyers were also interviewed, one member of a social organization, and the other an activist and professor at the University of Texas in Austin, as well as director of the Immigration Clinic at the University’s School of Law. The observation measure focused on the identification and analysis of the gender and ethnic perspectives that these organizations used for their activity and measures for the migrant population in general, and as related to indigenous women particularly. In the quotations included in this analysis, pseudonyms are used instead of the interviewees’ real names. Hence, their names appear in italics; the names that do not follow this format are real.

INDIGENOUS MIGRANT WOMEN AND CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS

“FAILED MIGRATION”: INDIGENOUS WOMEN DETAINED IN TAYLOR, TEXAS

When arrested and detained by the Border Patrol, many women see how their migratory project failed. From there, a process burdened by difficulties starts, which translates into defenselessness and vulnerability in the hostile space that is the detention center where they are jailed. This center conditions them under the cumulative disadvantages they already carry (Papademetrieou, 2011, quoted by ^{Tuñón Pablos & Rojas Wiesner, 2012, p. 12}), and those they begin to face, in which their cultural practices and language barrier will become heavier yokes. Nonetheless, their strategies of resistance to the obstacles they find themselves pitted against come to complement the defenselessness violating them as holders of rights.

The detention center where the research was carried out with these detained indigenous women, the T.D. Hutto Residential Center is a medium-security prison with a capacity of 592 beds, managed by the private company Corrections Corporation of America (CCA).

We started to work in Hutto when it first opened as a detention center for families […] It’s a horrible place now, but you wouldn’t believe how it was before, with children in prison uniforms and all the rules of a regular prison. The program was then modified not to detain entire families anymore. But all this is big business for the companies, they make a lot of money from the detentions of immigrants, and so they had to open it again for detentions and they just changed who was detained, they’re women now, and that was in 2009. What we are trying to do now is documenting what is happening to women at the border (Barbara Hines, director of the Immigration Clinic, personal communication, May 11, 2014).

During the time of my research at this prison, conversations were held with a number of indigenous women detained there. The communication was quite complex since most of them only spoke their original languages, and they hardly spoke or understood Spanish. They did not know how to read or write, and they were ignorant of their rights as migrants, as detainees, and as monolinguals. To this list of “social disadvantages” in a U.S. detention system, the difficulty on the part of the CSOs to understand these women should be added, not only when it comes to oral communication but also pertaining to the clash of two different cultural systems. When they arrive at the detention centers, they already accumulated several violent experiences: those suffered in their journey and those inflicted on them by the security corps, both at the time of detention and in the so-called “ice boxes”² or in the large cages they call “dog kennels” (^{Hines, 2019, p. 62}). Once detained in the center is when they can establish contact with two of the organizations mentioned in previous paragraphs in which I was also participating.

Through its HVP program, Grassroots Leadership promotes social awareness in the community in relation to the unjustified detentions of migrant women. The program has a mission to create a collective of people defending the rights of migrant women, advocating for the need to reform prisons. Once citizens partake in the HVP program, their goal is to stay on the look for any violation of the human rights of detained women. To detect this, the program consists of visiting detained women and have conversations with them. This campaign serves two goals: 1) it alleviates the loneliness of detained women by connecting them to the outside world through the visits, and 2) it raises awareness among citizens, as they begin to understand how difficult and unjust is the situation in which detained migrant women find themselves in. This program started in 2010, and in the words of one of its first coordinators:

They decided it would be important to start this visiting program to monitor conditions, and to find a base of volunteers willing to get involved beyond visiting as they begin to see what’s happening there. People who want to do more to help women once they listen to their stories (Rocío Villalobos, personal communication, May 13, 2014).

As for the volunteers, these same activists state that “we grow a little more every year, and more people knows about this visiting program” (Rocío Villalobos, personal communication, May 13, 2014). What this program has achieved is that different people of different backgrounds have become defenders of human rights by visiting these women and bringing attention to the situation they are living. Now, detained indigenous women face specific obstacles, as stated by one of the American Gateways lawyers:

People who have visited indigenous women, even when we were unable to communicate with them due to the language barrier, we still gain awareness of the obstacles that only they face, as they face more problems that the rest of their fellow migrants due to their ethno-cultural situation (Stephanie Taylor, personal communication, May 11, 2014).

The awareness gained by the volunteers and the lawyers about the complex and challenging conditions these indigenous women are in has caused Grassroots Leadership to take a stand in pressuring the authorities and society regarding this matter.

During my visits to the center in 2014 as a member of the HVP program, I had conversations with four indigenous women: two Quiche and one Mam from Guatemala, and one Quichua from Ecuador. One of the Quiche women, María, who at the time of our conversation in the month of March had been already detained for six months, was trying to learn Spanish as fast as possible, as that was her second detention and she constantly remarked all the problems she endured the first time when she only spoke her mother tongue Quiché: “The first time only crying, crying, could not speak Spanish” (María, personal communication, May 8, 2014). She was finally set free in December 2014, after being imprisoned for over a year.

The challenges and obstacles particularly affecting indigenous women quite hardly derive from the lack of a cultural perspective of inclusiveness in the center, able to interact with the different cultures coexisting in its space. All this places indigenous women in a complicated position in terms of this research. As clearly found by following them in this process, indigenous women had serious problems trying to fill in asylum applications (only written in English and Spanish).

On top of the above, these women had a hard time understanding the legal process and could hardly communicate on a daily basis with their fellow migrants and the prison officers. Similarly, the women interviewed were unaware of their rights and they needed interpreters, which is a very controversial aspect being that the bureaucracy associated with this process is quite slow: “I wait for interpreter for Court. I wait, long time, nothing” (María, personal communication, May 8, 2014). In face of these communication problems, their action capacity as active holders of citizen rights decrease, as they find themselves lost in this labyrinth of procedures, language, and pressure due to their new status as imprisoned women: “I’m sad because I think they will send me back to my country soon. Can you help me?” (Aroa, personal communication, May 15, 2014).

American Gateways provides them with legal advice. A network of jurists visits the center once a week to inform all the detained women on their rights, as well as to advise them throughout the legal process of their detention. They are particularly attentive to indigenous women because of the language barrier between them and the lawyers, which represents a bidirectional obstacle of sorts. This organization obtained a permit so that I could accompany the two lawyers who visited the center once a week to provide the detained migrant women with advice, thus I was able to conduct my research. I was also tasked with helping them in the process of advising the detained women.

In this regard, one of the two lawyers I supported explained that one of the factors in which they have worked the most properly advising these women has been the cultural barrier, as their life cycles are different from the western one. And so, indigenous migrant women have a hard time dealing with the formal aspects of the court, and with the applications in which they must recount their background. This cultural dimension complicated the advice that the organization can provide them with.

There has been an increase in detained indigenous migrant women. Most of them come due to domestic violence. One woman had an interview with the court in Spanish and didn’t pass, even when she had a huge machete scar on her leg. We tried to persuade the migration authorities since she didn’t have the chance of an interview in her mother tongue and was deported. That’s how we realized that they are a special population group that requires extra attention, and we included that in the presentation [they have PowerPoint presentations every week, explaining to all detained women the legal process and their rights], that they have the right to have the interview in their language, and that waiting for it is worth it. A fax is sent to the asylum office, stating that they requested an interview in their language, and the migration court addresses that directly. They have the right to an interpreter in the asylum interview and their deportation procedures, but not when filling the applications. There is a professor at the UT [the University of Texas, in Austin] who has helped us a lot in understanding indigenous culture, as the asylum requires them to narrate their story chronologically and indigenous cultures measure time differently. Those questions make no sense to them.” (Stephanie Taylor, personal communication, May 11, 2014).

Through the work carried out by the lawyers in advising and, in some instances, defending imprisoned indigenous women in court, progress in consolidating social justice spaces as previously defined can be attested. The labor conducted by this organization builds stability bridges from among the uncertainty, insecurity, and distrust that this space of domination breeds in these women. That horizontal environment created each week turns both into a moment of relaxation and emotional tension somehow. This is so because they know that the conversations of that day will clear doubts they have in their otherwise complete lack of information.

These lawyers would ask the detained migrant women if they wanted to receive visits from volunteers to break from isolation. They then would make a list of those who did want and hand it over to Grassroots Leadership so the HVP volunteers would know which women to visit. Consequently, the creation of a new space can be perceived, a space of mutual support, a shared space in which a wide network of solidarity among organizations, activists, civil society volunteers, and academics is woven.

“ACHIEVED MIGRATION” MICOP: PROMOTING GENDER AND ETHNIC AWARENESS

California is a state in which the migrant community has been organizing since the decade of the 1970s through different associations, “with a diverse social and ethnic composition and different levels of organization” (^{Rivera-Salgado & Escala Rabadán, 2004, p. 147}). These authors also state that there are two main drivers for the organization of these associations or clubs. One is the goal of systematizing the mutual support among migrants from the same communities, who face the same challenges when adapting to a new space. The other is the urge to help their communities of origin, which is perceived as a “moral duty” (^{Rivera-Salgado & Escala Rabadán, 2004, pp. 153-154}). Already in their now-classic work on indigenous migration to the United States, ^{Jonathan Fox and Rivera-Salgado (2004, p. 13)} stated that “in spite of the adverse conditions in which indigenous migrants find themselves, they have managed to create a wide range of civil, social and political organizations standing out for the diversity of their strategies and goals.”

MICOP finds its promoters in the very same indigenous migrant community, where women are a majority. The fact that most of its activists are indigenous women makes it possible and even easier for them to intervene in the community, as they already know the obstacles they face as migrants, as indigenous people, and as women. As a result of this, the tools employed to eliminate these obstacles to the greatest possible extent arise from an ethnic and gender focus. This way, by recognizing the structures halting the development of the community in general and migrant women particularly their agenda can focus on those aspects in which they are affected the most and these projects are in turn managed considering the development of their capacities and agency.

[…] We are interested in the development of power, of leadership in the community, but the idea comes through campaigns that strengthen leadership, telling them: you have a voice, use that voice to make these changes that you need . It’s about changing things and practices in the systems we have here, so the way they serve the community is improved. Here we are, so small as organizations, telling them: you must be proud of who you are, you must believe in yourself, value yourself as an indigenous person, you have the capacity and all the power to be what you want to be with your language, to keep going . And all the media here keeps telling them: no! the model is other here (Arcenio López, Executive Director of MICOP, personal communication, April 29, 2014).

Following this idea, one of the MICOP promoters brings attention to the fact that:

It is very hard when someone lacks knowledge of certain things. That’s what happens to people in my community (they don’t know what to do, for example, when it comes to domestic violence). The Mixteco Project [MICOP] has helped us a lot. There are many needs and many boundaries, and these organization has contributed greatly [in overcoming them] ( Lucía , personal communication, April 28, 2014).

Among the boundaries that these interviews managed to detect, as they were widely voiced by the women, the following stand out:

CLOSING REMARKS: ON CIVIL SOCIETY ORGANIZATIONS AS SOCIAL JUSTICE SPACES WITHIN A MIGRATION CONTEXT

Migration transforms society, identities, and human relations. In this relational and dynamic (ex)change, multiple intervening and negative factors can be detected, as migration is linked to aspects such as irregularity, poverty, and the criminalization of the migrant. This discourse creeps in and reproduces itself in society, magnifying discrimination, and the barriers that migrants must overcome. According to what has been previously shown, there is space that counters these adversities: they have been termed social justice spaces. In them, the figure of the migrant is dignified and their participation as holders of rights in the destination society is promoted.

I’m happy with the work I do. I keep learning and we want to learn more. That is what I try to share with the families that come here, just like my family and me. Having the chance to know, and being a promoter helps me and my community ( Beatriz , personal communication, April 29, 2014).

The analysis carried out stresses the different aspects of pression and oppression on indigenous migrant women, aspects that a priori put them outside of the framework of rights and so makes difficult their endeavors. The patriarchal and neoliberal system constricts by design all people on the periphery of the ethnocentric and ruling class hegemonic order from different axes of pressure, as it does with women that do not represent the westernized gender stereotypes.

In this migratory context, indigenous women are indeed at the margin of the said dominant order, they are subject to exclusion practices as well as to multiple discriminations. On the contrary, this question allows us to analyze their capacities and agency before this interplay of extreme undervaluation devices.

In the empirical work carried out, the voices of these women have revealed the critical thinking they process as relating to the disadvantageous position befalling them, putting their capacity of reaction in the spotlight. Reaction in the sense of becoming interested in knowing their rights, reacting, and acting the mechanisms of change. CSOs play an invaluable role in this reaction, as support for mediation-interaction.

According to Martha Nussbaum, this capacity is understood as “a set of opportunities of choosing and acting” (^{Nussbaum, 2012, p. 40}). The opportunities suggested by the author, such as the freedom of action and of being a person, for the purposes of this study, are correlated to the CSOs by the latter providing further knowledge on the scope of both their social and working rights, which widens the framework of action. This situation allows for the resistance and agency of these women to be glimpsed, them being subjects that transform their new socio-political and cultural context.

And so, indigenous migrant women can try to drive themselves with greater success in an extra-communitarian space that a priori restricts their faculties. In any case, and just as this reaction capacity is made visible, the fact that women studied here are not invulnerable should be considered, as they are measured by a heterogeneous knot of structural violence that gives place to different dissimilar and ambivalent responses, depending on the circumstances and the context they unfold in. It is following this line that ^{Abu-Lughod (1990)} pointed out the need to understand the mechanisms of power that generate different forms of resistance.

Within this order of things is that the CSOs promote improving those areas that perpetuate the dichotomies and exclusions impacting on the migratory context. Likewise, these organizations develop political strategies that aim at creating structural changes ultimately resulting in new spaces for citizenship, with a distinct ethnic sensitivity.

Besides the work we do in the community, training both interpreters and promoters, we also do our part in talking to District Supervisors. We’ve had meetings with the police department, the Human Services Agency, and with some people in Congress. Also, in the office of the Senator, as we also advocate for the Migratory Reformation. We worked in one campaign called “ No me llames oaxaquita ” [don’t call me oaxaquita] against the discrimination we live in the city. Little by little, they have paid more attention to us as an organization, as a community, and we have been informing them that most of those picking the produce taken to their tables belong to our indigenous community (Arcenio López, Executive Director of MICOP, personal communication, April 30, 2014).

The organizations studied engage politically and civically with other CSOs, such as Grassroots Leadership and American Gateways, who collaborate to know which women want to receive visits by the HVP volunteers, or with other CSOs around them, as it happens with Austin So Close to the Border, which volunteers from the previous two organizations visit to know the reality of migrants at the USA-Mexico border. In the case of MICOP, they collaborate with other organizations in California, such as FIOB (Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales, Indigenous Front of Binational Organizations), located in Los Angeles and defending the rights of the indigenous migrant population. This multidirectional cooperation fosters a wide social community interconnected by means of new strategies and forms of activism that benefit the entire migrant population. In the two cases analyzed here, organizations, law practitioners, interpreters, academics, citizens, and indigenous women themselves have established a clear connection. These spaces put pressure on the structure and raise awareness among society through the channels at their reach suitable for that purpose.

Indigenous migrant women analyzed hereby have been growingly participating in the activists’ network of the mentioned organizations and have managed to obtain an acknowledgment of their rights greater than what was granted before their arrival. Similarly, most of these women, whether they speak Spanish or only their native language, can now function better in their new social space. The dimensions acquired from being able to be advised and supported by an organization contributes to the overall improvement of their conditions: emotional and working, social, health, and as mothers.

This analysis has approached two of the various migration scenarios that indigenous women may face once crossing over to the USA. These scenarios already imply potentially negative impacts on their entire migration project. The actions of this CSOs network tend to work in the social structure to counteract the lack of information and means of indigenous migrant women and develop a sort of “culture of rights” (Franzoni & Giorguli, p. 706) in which the migrant population can participate. In the face of the ever-growingly strict U.S. immigration laws, resulting in “alarming and inhumane policies” (^{Hines, 2019, p. 60}), small yet firm spaces of democracy and resistance are created.

Consequently, for indigenous women who migrate, the intersection of mechanisms for the acknowledgment and defense of the rights implemented by the CSOs advocate for their migratory vulnerability and allow them to generate resistance and reaction strategies to the pressure and oppression they face. By addressing this, they alleviate the disproportionate psychic and physical impacts deriving from their migration, acting as agents and holders of rights.

Source: By Jesús Noyola, afro-descendant poet and migrant from the state of Guerrero, Mexico, and an activist at MICOP. The hands in the foreground belong to Celia Méndez, a Mixtec woman from Oaxaca, Mexico, migrant, former field worker, and current community promoter at MICOP. 2016.

Image 1. “Manos Mixtecas,” poem by Jesús Noyola